Ashes to Ashes-Blood Ties 3 (3 page)

How could he?
I fumed silently as I took the stairs to the guest rooms on the lower level. I flopped onto the ornately carved bed in my neoclassical guestroom and pulled the duvet over my head.

Cold tears escaped the corners of my eyes. Nathan had made it clear from the beginning that there would never be anything between us except the blood tie, but each new reminder stung more than the last, because I'd never really believed him. I thought it had been settled the night Bella's spell let Nathan relive losing his wife. He'd as much as said there would never be anything between us. I thought it was because be hadn't yet gotten over killing his wife. Now, less than a month later, he appeared to have moved on: So either he'd needed seventy years and a month to get over his guilt, or it hadn't been the memory of Marianne at all. He just wasn't interested in
me
. My parents had raised me to be a logical thinker. Logic insisted that the most plausible assumption was the correct one. Nathan was probably still screwed up, he just wasn't going to be screwing me.

Because I didn't want to break the news to Max yet—he was still in deep denial over Bella—I acted as
if
nothing was wrong as we gorged ourselves on cotton candy and elephant ears on the pier.

Unfortunately, Max picked up on my vibes. "Carrie, what's going on? You're not acting right."

"I'm acting fine," I snapped, then instantly regretted it. It wasn't his fault I had nonstop images of Bella and Nathan engaged in myriad sexual positions. "I'm sorry, I'm just—"

"Homesick?"

Worried the man I love is at this very moment fucking the woman you refuse to admit you
love.

"Yeah, I guess." I tried to sound more cheerful when I said, "You know what's a good cure for homesickness? Alcohol."

Max grinned. "Now you're speaking my language. Let's take a turn on the Ferris wheel, then we'll find some."

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I've never been a fan of heights, so I should have been grateful to be preoccupied on the halting trip to the top. Somehow, I couldn't be grateful for the torrid images of Nathan and Bella that swamped my mind.

It occurred to me that he'd never be able to hang on to Bella, who had Call of the Wild stamped all over her. Knowing they were probably doomed to failure cheered me up a little.

Still, I couldn't shake the torturous scenes, or the self-deprecating commentary that went with them.
Of course he's attracted to her. She probably doesn't wear pajama pants in
public or go a day without washing her hair. She's also a size four around her hips and
the size of a small solar system around her chest.

Feeling fat, ugly and petrified of falling to my doom, I closed my eyes and sighed. Max apparently took it for an expression of contentment, because he looped an arm companionably around my shoulders and sighed in turn. "I know, this is awesome, isn't it?"

"I'm not really into being off the ground. But the view is nice."

"The view is gorgeous." He looked at me as though I was insane for not appreciating the experience. "But that's not what I was talking about." It was my turn to give him the are-you-insane? look.

"This." He gestured broadly, as though he could encompass the entire city with his arms.

"Hanging out, screwing around, just being normal people."

"Normal people who drink blood and burst into flame in sunlight?" I snorted. "But far be it from me to interrupt your little delusion."

He settled against the seat and replaced his arm around my shoulder. "You know what I mean. For the past three weeks there hasn't been any occult shit going on. Not a peep from the Soul Eater. No faxes from the Movement. No drama." Except for in our love lives. But you don't know that part yet.

"Well, there was that whole thing where I broke up with my sire and you got dumped by Bella." I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't bring her up again, but I was desperate to get him off his life-is-great kick. The way he talked with his hands when he was happy seemed bound to tip us out or our car.

Not that I begrudged him his I'm-on-top-of-the-world attitude—okay, maybe a little—but when he found out about Bella and Nathan he would come crashing down from his high as quickly as if he'd fallen from the Ferris wheel.

Instead of arguing with me, he chuckled. "You're trying to pick a fight."

"Guilty as charged."

He inhaled deeply. The air smelled of the city—hot cement and traffic exhaust—and carnival food, the scents of humanity only a vampire could truly appreciate. "Try all you want, I ain't gonna bite. Nothing can ruin tonight for me. Nothing." With a parody of his contented sigh, I leaned my head on his shoulder. "If I don't get a drink soon, I'm going to stake you."

As promised, when we escaped the Ferris wheel of doom, we headed for our nightly circuit of bars and blues clubs. At a few we were becoming regulars. At the rest, Max had already established himself as one.

We'd thrown back enough alcohol to kill a small rhino by the time our final stop on the

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booze tour announced last call. Squinting at his watch through heavy-lidded, red-rimmed eyes, Max frowned in drunker confusion. "What? It can't be last call yet."

"It is," I insisted with the knowing, superior tone of a complete inebriate. "And it sucks."

"It does." He looked around the bar, his mouth set in a grim line. "The band is going to leave."

"Yeah." I rested my forearms on the table and dropped my head onto them. I heard the scrape of his chair, and when I looked up he was swerving across the empty dance floor toward the musicians on the tiny stage. He spoke to them a minute, pointed at me, then returned with a confident, drunken swagger. The band started a slow blues ballad and he gestured for me to join him.

If I'd learned anything since coming to Chicago with Max, it was that he enjoyed any activity that required putting his hands on a woman. I stumbled toward him. It wouldn't be the first time we'd danced drunkenly in a bar at closing time. And that struck me as just a tad pathetic.

Not so pathetic I wouldn't do it again. I liked being close to Max, in a totally platonic way. He was the guy friend I'd never had. Actually, until I'd become a vampire, I'd never had any friends. It was nice being with someone who didn't expect anything from me short of just hanging around.

Unlike Nathan. I was supposed to stay at his side, waiting for him like a faithful dog, should he ever need me. The unfortunate comparison put me in mind of Werewolves, and I had to blink back cold tears.

Max's arms tightened around my waist and he leaned his head against mine as we shuffled clumsily to the music. "Can we just keep doing this forever?"

"Dancing?" I mumbled, toying with a lock of hair at the back of his neck. I felt his chuckle deep in his chest. "No, stupid. Just doing this. Going out and having fun and not worrying about falling in love or being alone. Nothing ever has to change, we'd never have to worry about getting hurt. Wouldn't that be great?" If I hadn't been drunk, it would have sounded as messed up as it really was. Instead, I looked up at Max as though he'd cured cancer and world hunger simultaneously. "That's so smart."

"I know." He frowned. "I always get my best ideas when I'm drank." The bartender called us a cab—rather ungraciously—and I'm sure Max overpaid the driver when we got out at his building.

"This place—" I interrupted myself with a dainty belch. "This place looks like Dracula's castle."

"I know. It's depressing." A fleeting look of sadness crossed his face. "That was Marcus for you."

When we got into the elevator, Max stood a little closer than usual. When we got out, he took my hand for the short walk to the door. Instead of opening it, he pulled me flush against his body and kissed me, the scent of Bell's Two-Hearted ale lingering on his mouth.

I had consumed a lot of alcohol myself, but not so much to silence the alarm bells going off in my head. I jerked back so fast our teeth clinked.

"Max, what the hell are you doing?"

Dazed, he squinted at me for a few seconds before he focused his eyes, then grinned. "Oh,

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come on, Carrie. You know you're curious, too."

I was. Max was like the star quarterback every girl wants to date. Still, he was an emotional wreck and not thinking clearly. "I know you're upset about Bella—"

"This isn't about Bella." He laughed a little too loudly. "Jeez, you're always talking about her. Are you sure
you
don't want to fuck her?"

"No, but if we
went
to bed now, you wouldn't be fucking me." I jabbed my finger into his chest, not merely to make a point but because touching him just seemed good. He grinned again. "Believe me, this isn't about Bella."

"It is." I slid my hands across the front of his T-shirt—Max has great pecs—and gave him a shove.

Rolling his eyes, he held up his hands. "Okay, it's about Bella. Peri… peri—you know, when you see out the corner of your eye?"

"Peripherally." I nodded. "How so?"

He linked his arms around my waist and pulled me forward so I stepped on his toes and our feet tangled dangerously. "I like women. Everyone knows it. I don't fall in love with women, though. So, how come I haven't had casual sex since Bella?"

"Because that wasn't casual sex. You really liked her." I leaned against him, purely to regain my balance, I'm sure.

"You're insane. You women all are. You think men have to be in love to stick their cock in somebody." He inclined his head for another kiss, but halted. "You know that's not true, right?"

I quirked an eyebrow. "Gee, we're drunk, we both just got dumped—"

"You got dumped."

"Whatever." I rolled my eyes. "Do I think you love me? No. I think you're trying to get laid to prove to yourself you don't care about Bella."

"Is that so evil and wrong?" His lips were a millimeter from mine. I shrugged. "I guess not."

He kissed me again. Max is an insanely good kisser. But there was desperation in it, and sadness. I didn't need a blood tie between us to feel it.

"Let's do this, Carrie," he whispered, sinking his fingers into my hair. "Let's just have fun." It made an insane sort of sense. As we tumbled through the door to land on the Persian rug in the foyer, I convinced myself that this wasn't terrible. People did this every day. Max's mouth never left mine as he rolled us both over so that I straddled him, still fully clothed. With a chuckle, Max sat up. I felt him, hard and eager, through his jeans, but he didn't appear uncomfortable. In fact, he seemed more at ease and himself in this intimate situation than he ever did while doing mundane things. I wondered if I was with the real Max now, or just another character. Maybe that was part of his practiced magic. I pitied the women who didn't see it for what it was, because they could fall in love with a man like Max, who made them feel they were the most important woman he'd ever touched. Luckily for me, I couldn't fall in love with him. I was already in love with a man who didn't find me very important at all.

As if on cue, the phone rang.

Max glanced at me, half imploring. Then guilt crept into his expression, and I couldn't look at him anymore.

I groaned and climbed to my feet, more wobbly than I had been when I'd been plastered.

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