La Luxure: Discover Your Blood Lust (31 page)

Armand leaned back in the chair and let his
head fall back against the soft leather. That's what made this
bullshit so frustrating. When they'd been together, any of their
differences were moot. In fact, he'd been surprised how much in
common they'd shared. It wasn't until she'd barged into the bar and
declared him a fake that he saw how different they were.

A heavy rapping sounded at the door. "Armand?
Dude, are you coming down?" Slade's booming voice was barely
audible over the music.

Armand ignored him, closing his eyes and
focusing on the pounding guitar. Slade hammered against the door
again. "Answer the door, man!"

With a sigh, Armand peeled open his eyes. He
glanced at the computer. Slade was going to ask about Vamp Con
again, and Armand wasn't ready to discuss it. He was thinking about
canceling. He wasn't sure if he could be so close to Julia and not
look her up. Being in the same city would make chasing her down to
confront her about fucking up his mind too tempting.

The door rattled with Slade's knocking.
"C'mon, get your ass up!"

Drinking the remaining cognac in one smooth
swallow, Armand powered off the computer, grabbed his coat, and
headed out the back door into the courtyard. Working tonight was
not an option. He'd already exhausted nearly every ounce of
gentility he possessed this week. One more irritation was likely to
send him over the edge.

Unfortunately, slipping unnoticed out the
back gate and into a peaceful evening wasn't in his destiny. He
opened the metal gate and stepped right in the path of Angel and
two of her favorite companions.

"Armand!" she said surprised. "Where are you
off to?"

No amount of effort was able to force his
facial muscles into a courteous smile. "Just out for a walk."

She studied him, her brown eyes thoughtful.
Turning to her companions, she said, "You guys go ahead, I'll catch
up in a minute."

Every muscle in Armand's body tensed. He
wasn't in the mood to deal with her.

She watched her comrades disappear around the
corner before turning back to him, a coy smile on her full lips.
Though truly a stunning creature, Angel did absolutely nothing for
him. They'd been occasional lovers over the years when it was
convenient, but that was it. He'd never felt more than a surface
attraction for her.

"Can we talk?" she wondered.

"I'm in a hurry."

"This won't take long." She glanced around.
"Maybe we could go somewhere a little more personal. Your apartment
perhaps?"

"Whatever you need to say, I'm sure you can
do it right here." He had less interest in taking her up to his
apartment than he did talking to her. Julia's scent still lingered
in the air, and as much as it hurt to breathe it in day after day,
it was beginning to dissipate and he wasn't ready to replace it
with another woman's scent. Not yet.

"I'm worried about you, Armand. Ever since
your argument with Julia, you've been unbearable to be around, and
you've made
Luxure
a rather unpleasant place to be."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," he said
tersely.

"Do you want to talk about what
happened?"

"No." For the last week, Julia's memory had
consumed his mind, her raw accusations a stabbing pain in his
temples. The thoughts were exhausting. He was tired of the endless
doubts and reservations. The last thing he wanted to do was discuss
them with Angel or anyone.

Angel's eyes were pleading. "Please, talk to
me."

"As much as I appreciate your concern, it is
unnecessary and unwelcome. Let me be miserable for a little while.
I'll get over it."

"You might not believe this, but I do care
about you, and not just because you fulfill a certain need in my
life. When I saw you with Julia on Halloween, you were happier than
I remember seeing you in a long time. You looked at her in a way
I've never seen you look at a woman. I want to help."

Armand slowly drew in his breath and exhaled,
forcing the last bit of courtesy he could muster into his words.
"She simply isn't the woman I thought. End of story."

"Is it because she called you a fake?"

With a throaty, mirthless chuckle, he shook
his head in disbelief. Nothing stayed secret in the Community. He
was ready for this conversation to be over, and the easiest path to
that end was to give Angel what she wanted.

"Something like that," he said. "She accused
me of pretending to be a vampire to seduce her. Apparently the real
man wasn't as enticing as the fantasy."

"Huh. She didn't seem the type."

It was fairly common for an outsider to enter
the Community and not be able to separate fantasy from reality.
They were usually Victims though.

"I guess we both misjudged her then," Armand
replied quietly.

"So, did you?" Angel asked.

Armand narrowed his gaze. "Did I what?"

"Amp up the vampire act to seduce her?"

His muscles were rocks under his skin.
"No."

"C'mon Armand, everyone does it. It's part of
the game. Did you ever break character when you were with her?"

"I don't have a character," he replied
flatly.

"We all do, whether you realize it or not,"
she told him, her tone syrupy sweet. "It's just that you and I have
been doing this for so long that it's subtle, and at this point,
part of our personalities."

The last thing he wanted to do was argue with
her. "It's irrelevant."

"I don't know," Angel said with a tiny shrug
of her bare, cream colored shoulders. "I might feel a little
betrayed if I felt like I'd been led to believe something and then
found out it wasn't true."

She offered him a smug smile before turning
and heading down the street, a soft sway to her smooth hips. Armand
was no stranger to practiced grace, but he was always amazed by how
effortlessly she moved in her impossibly high heels.

"Have a good evening, Armand," she tossed
over her shoulder.

When she rounded the corner and disappeared
from sight, Armand was finally able to unclench his fists. He
needed to get out of here, away from the bar, away from his
patrons, away from the games. If he didn't calm down soon, he was
going to split his skin.

The river's gentle churning called to him,
promising to ease his troubled thoughts.

* * *

There was a quiet, cleansing breeze coming
off the water, carrying with it a faint smell of damp earth. A line
of rain showers had drenched the city earlier, leaving in their
wake cool temperatures and wet roads. Armand closed his eyes,
savoring the breeze as it caressed his skin and tousled his hair.
If he ever moved from New Orleans, the location must have a moving
body of water. River or Ocean, it didn't matter, as long as he had
free access.

Dismissing a couple of junkies asking for
blow with a simple "Sorry man", Armand didn't hurry as he made his
way down the levee path.

Character. Did he really have a
character
?

Julia had made the same accusation.

In the past, he'd been accused of being a
Psychic Vampire, but that was an accusation he understood, even if
he wasn't sure how he felt about the term. Armand might be more
attuned than most to the exchange of energy that occurred between
people, but he was perfectly capable of producing his own Pranic
energy. And while he certainly enjoyed absorbing the good energy
people exuded on streets like Bourbon or at parades, he didn't
"feed" off it per se.

Even if he did, it wasn't relevant. Julia had
accused him of playing into some Hollywood vampire stereotype to
seduce her, not of having a physical need to devour another's
Prana.

Pausing at the stairwell leading down to the
river's edge, he watched the rats scurry for cover as he replayed
the early encounters with Julia and tried to see himself through
her eyes. He understood how the unpleasantness with Eve might have
led her to believe something unusual was going on, and it wasn't a
hard stretch to see how the confrontation with Darus might be
interpreted as something supernatural. Adrenalin and anger had a
way of giving him above average strength. And there were certainly
times when he could have clarified his position, like in the café.
A quick, "There's nothing on this menu I can eat,
because I'm a
vegetarian
" would have cleared up the entire
misunderstanding.

He didn't fault her for getting swept up in
the fantasy, but he could not see where he had, at any point, been
deliberately trying to mislead her. In fact, it was quite the
opposite. Being with her had been so refreshing because he didn't
have to assume any role. He'd been able to truly be himself.

But wasn't that the point Angel had been
trying to make? Had he been playing a part for so long that the
character
had become fused with his personality? His
involvement with the Community was deeper than most. For many, it
was of a small piece of their lives, a place they visited on
weekends or evenings after work. It
was
Armand's life.

While the Community exhausted and infuriated
him at times, he hadn't felt insecure about who or what he was.
Julia changed that. She made him doubt himself, his entire life.
Her claim that his life was somehow less real than her own because
it strayed from the traditional path had struck a nerve. Shit, here
he was, wondering whether he'd been part of a fantasy culture for
so long that he'd lost touch with reality.

That doubt was what angered him so much about
her. She'd stumbled into his life, planted doubts about his entire
identity, and then stomped on his heart. He'd be a liar if he
didn't admit he'd had reservations about the path his life had
taken before he met her, but to have them thrown in his face with a
dose of rejection...It was too much.

Armand stared out into the murky water. He
refused to apologize for his lifestyle or be ashamed of it. There
might be a part of him that craved something different, but that
desire could easily be accomplished. A little less time at the bar,
a few extracurricular hobbies...But at no point was he going to
turn his back on something so ingrained in him because
she
made him feel insecure about it. Why was he letting this one woman
turn his entire world upside down? Why was he even dwelling on
it?

Because he missed her. No, it was more than
that. He craved her. In fact, if he wasn't such a coward, he might
be able to admit his feelings ran much deeper than that.

It wasn't just the connection he thought he'd
felt with her that made her so fucking appealing. With her, he'd
been comfortable, truly comfortable. Everything had felt so
natural: the conversation, the sex, sharing blood, cooking her
breakfast...To have it all go to shit because she turned out to be
some fantasy chaser that couldn't handle reality was beyond
frustrating.

But what if Angel was right? What if Julia's
irrational attack was the result of feeling betrayed? If she had
genuinely believed he was a vampire, it was plausible that
discovering the truth might make her feel like she'd been led
astray.

More what if's. He hated what if's.

Armand sighed. Maybe he was searching for
something that wasn't there. Did he want her so desperately that he
was willing to read between lines that didn't exist?

It would be easier to accept that she wasn't
the woman he'd thought than to hope she was and be wrong. And the
only way to find out the truth would be to confront her. But
contacting her and facing rejection was about as appealing as
having his fingernails yanked off.

Frustrated, Armand pressed his fingers
against his temples in an attempt to alleviate the massive headache
threatening to burst his skull. He was tired of these thoughts,
tired of reliving memories of Julia, tired of pouring through every
detail of every encounter he'd had with her in an attempt to
ascertain what went wrong. He either needed to confront her or
forget her, but obsessively dwelling on the issue was killing
him.

One thing was certain, he was ready to take
back control of his life, and he wasn't going to avoid a commitment
because of a bad experience. He'd go to Vamp Con as planned, and if
by some miracle he ran into Julia, well, that bridge could be
crossed when and if it were built.

He turned and headed back down river,
crossing the streetcar tracks at the first opportunity. Keeping his
pace brisk, he made his way down Decatur towards the Marigny
neighborhood, passing St. Philip without even glancing down the
street. There was bound to be some live music on Frenchman St.
Something distinctly New Orleans and something to remind him of his
roots.

He was more than
Luxure
. It was time
he reconnected with life outside the Community.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sitting at her small dining room table, Julia
huddled over her laptop, crunching numbers in an Excel spreadsheet.
Her entire fiscal life was laid out in this spreadsheet. She
tracked everything, from bills to savings to investments.

Until today, every aspect of Julia's life was
accounted for.

What an abrupt shift in scope.

Her decision hadn't been easy, but once she'd
made it, all the jagged edges in her heart softened and she knew
she'd made the right one. Until New Orleans, her existence had been
mediocre at best. All of her life she'd assumed the role she
thought others expected of her, and it never made her happy. Being
with Armand made her realize that maybe the straight and narrow
path wasn't for her. Maybe, in order to find true happiness she
needed to follow a curvier, less established path.

Julia leaned back in her chair, the bold
TOTAL staring back at her. Financially, she'd be fine. One of the
benefits of being single, making a decent wage, and not living a
lavish life-style, was she had managed to save up nearly a year's
salary. And that didn't include her 401K or other, modest
investments. If there was ever a time to change her life so
dramatically, it was now.