Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) (5 page)

That connection he had with her had been temporary and was already fading fast, but he had developed a kind of a profile on her and that didn’t look like it was going anywhere any time soon.  A French 75, that was the drink for her. A French 75 would be just the thing for her and she would be there to drink it very, very soon.

He could practically hear her footsteps falling, pounding against the pavement as if her life depended on it.  Pretty soon, she was close enough that he could actually smell her sweet perfume and the equally sweet smell (to him, at least, and he was willing to recognize that his tastes did have a tendency to go to the strange) of her sweat mingling with agitation and just a little dose of fear.

It was an animal smell and it made Philip’s mouth water.  It was funny, the way desire worked on a man.  It didn’t seem to matter what kind of man he was, either, what sort of background was his to call upon or barriers he had in his past.  Desire could become an all-encompassing thing, eating through him with an insatiable hunger that could not be ignored.  That he did not
want
to ignore. 

Desire could make everything else in the world pale in comparison of its sweet face, could kiss you sweetly and then slap you in the face hard enough to rock your head backwards on your neck.  Desire was a funny thing indeed, and his particular desire was now standing beside his front gate and peering up at his large and admittedly lovely house. 

He could see her silhouette through the billowing white curtains of his front room and he realized that he positively burned for her.  Even just that silhouette, that hint of the perfect curved lines of her body, was enough to drive a man insane.  Philip wasn’t any kind of man, he was far more than that, but even he was not immune.  He wondered if she knew just how much of an impression she could make. 

It seemed to Philip that most women realized just exactly how they affected the men they interacted with.  It was both their gift and their curse, the thing that helped them to get what they wanted and also sometimes restricted their lives into spaces far smaller than the ones they perhaps deserved.

But Megan, Megan seemed to be different, at least to him,  from the little bit he had intuited about her.  Megan struck him as the kind of girl who didn’t know much about herself at all.  She struck him as the kind of girl who just existed, flitting from one place to the next without any real intention.

It was part of why she was here now.  It was part of why she was standing outside of his home and gawking up at it, then opening the little picturesque gate (a gate that had to be there for decorative purposes only; there was no way it could keep anyone out besides a child) and moving with uncertainty through his gardens. 

He could feel her awe at those gardens and then the sense of pride he felt at said awe.  The gardens were something he really did love, although he would rarely admit such a thing.  He didn’t like admitting things like that.  He had an archaic sense of male pride that kept him from wanting to tell people when he loved something, especially when he loved something as feminine as a garden.

But he vaguely remembered his mother’s love for the gardens of his childhood home and it had carried into his own strange half-life.  No matter where he landed to live, a garden was something he always made sure to have.  They existed in various degrees of excellence and extravagance, but the one in New Orleans was by far the grandest.  It was the place he went to feel human, the place where he could still (more often than not) appreciate that there were good and beautiful things in the world.

He was standing by the front door now, pulling the door open silently and watching Megan’s face.  She looked like she’d landed herself in Wonderland and couldn’t remember why she had gone searching for it in the first place.  Those gardens were a place where even time went for a little break, where the whole world seemed to stand still and rest its weary head.

It was a place of peace and curiosity and now that Megan was there,
Philip thought somewhat smugly,
she would not turn and go back in the direction from whence she had come
. 

She was looking at him now, her eyes veiled and all of his every kind of communication with her, communication she probably didn’t realize had ever been there at all, gone.

He could not read her face but he could see that she was still walking towards him in a daze, and that was enough.  He was right.  He was dead right.  She wasn’t going anywhere.  She was sucked into the mystery of it all, and then there was the house.  He had seen that she, as so many people in the grand city of New Orleans did, wished feverishly to get even a glimpse at the inside of his property.  That was the real hook, not him.  That was the thing that kept her feet moving forward, but there was also a growing curiosity about him as well, and that was a pretty good omen.  At least for Philip’s purposes and desires. 

“What’s that?” she asked, managing to look both interested and aggravated at the same time.

“It’s a French 75.  Classic drink, clean flavors.  I had a feeling it might be the kind of thing you’d enjoy.”

He watched her face closely, waiting to see what her response to
that
one would be.  She had a good poker face, he’d give her that much, but he still sees the faintest of little twitches at the corners of her mouth that gives her away.  He got it, nailed it, in fact.  It must not only be the
kind
of drink she liked.  He was willing to bet, bet a large amount of money on those little twitches, that it was her absolute favorite cocktail there was.  She reached forward, hesitating and then further closing the gap between the two of them, and then practically snatching it from him.  She wanted to step away from him again, he could see that too, but she didn’t. She won’t. 

She’s stubborn
, he thought,
and brave
. 
She’s not the type to back down and run away once she’s done a thing.

“It isn’t poison or anything right?  I mean, this isn’t some kind of a weird plan to get me all drugged up, is it?”

“Seriously?”

He couldn’t help chuckling, but he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or insulted.  She really must have been through some shit to have the balls to come right out and ask a question like that.  Little spitfire, that’s what she was.  A little spitfire and he was going to make use of her.  He was going to do things to her, to make her feel things she hadn’t even known were possible, and did she know it?  He thought she just might, or at least part of her.  He thought she just might.

“Yes, seriously.  I don’t know you, not at all.  It seems like a pretty reasonable question to ask.  Honestly, I shouldn’t even be drinking this.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to, but I probably shouldn’t.”

He liked the way she spoke.  There was something irreverent about it, something slightly accusatory but funny at the same time and it made Philip grin.  Grinning wasn’t something he really did a whole lot of, but he was doing it now.  In a life that sometimes became unbearably weighty in its boredom, he was entertained by this girl.

His wanting her to be there with him was more than just an act of attempted heroism.  It was selfish also.  He liked her and he wanted to see what the inside of her mouth tasted like.  Even thinking about it, thinking about the velvety feel of the insides of her thighs, must surely have made him positively vibrate with his want.

He was sure that the way he was looking at her made his less than honorable intentions at least partially known, and he was pretty sure that most women would have shrunk back from it.  Not this girl.  Not this completely odd and irresistibly compelling Megan Wright.  She held his eye contact defiantly, slammed back her drink in one long swallow, and then let out a little gasp. 

“So you liked the drink, I take it?”

“Yes, it would appear that I did.”

“Would you like another?”

“Sure, why not?  If I’m going to be poisoned, might as well go out with a fancy cocktail and a house tour.  Because you are going to show me the house, aren’t you, Philip?”

“Would you like that?”

She sighed in exasperation, actually tapping her foot impatiently and taking the second drink he made her without so much as a thank you.  He smiled at that as well.  He enjoyed the game.  It was like a less R rated version of the hunt, and what predatory beast didn’t enjoy the hunt?  She took a sip of this second drink, closing her eyes briefly in satisfaction, before answering him.

“That’s a stupid question, don’t you think?”

“Is it?  And why would I think that?”

“Because you already know the answer.  What’s the point in asking questions you already know the answer to?”

“Point well taken.  Now, finish your drink so I can pour us both another before we begin the tour.”

“Really?” she asked with one eyebrow raised. “Another?  What if I don’t want another drink?”

“Don’t you?”

She bit her lip as she thought about it and Philip felt that most animalistic part of all begin to stir against his thigh.  She
had
to know how alluring that was, the innocent, thoughtful biting of the lower lip.  That was something universally known to drive men wild.  Except that even when he looked at her sharply, coming as close to looking right through her as he was able, he saw no artifice in the movement.

It looked to be completely unconscious and that on its own, made it that much more seductive.  That and the fact that she didn’t immediately tell him yes.  He was so used to women telling him yes, whatever he wanted, a thousand times yes.  He hadn’t realized until just this moment how tired he was of being told yes.  It wasn’t that he wanted to be told no, just that he wanted to have to work for his yes every now and then. 

And she would say yes.  He could see that, too.  There was a little twinkle of mischief in her eyes that made him even more turned on than he had already been.  The big struggle for Megan had been whether or not she was going to come to him in the first place.

She hadn’t wanted to, had fought it tooth and nail, but it was an internal struggle she had lost and so here she was.  Now here, what was the point in denying herself that third drink?  As if to punctuate the point, Megan took another long sip of her drink, licked her lips, and tossed the rest of that one back, too.

This time Philip did more than just grin.  He actually laughed out loud, a large peal of laughter that surprised him. 
Well this was positively delightful, wasn’t it?
  This was much more fun than even he had predicted it might be.

“Yes, it looks like I do.  Three time’s the charm, right?  Isn’t that what they say?”

“I don’t know.  Who's ‘they’?” 

“I don’t know.  They.  That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it?  Anyway, who cares?  It’s out there in the world for all of us to hear now.  Who really cares who put it there?  Now, how’s about you make me that drink you were so intent on me having and then I want to see the house.  I’ve been waiting for long enough, I think.”

She had only been in his home for maybe twenty minutes, tops, but he knew what she meant by that last comment nevertheless.  He could see her wanting to see this place, longing to wander through its corridors and discover its mysteries.  He found that he, too, was excited about the tour.

Almost nobody was allowed inside of the walls of this home.  Even the girls he hooked up with, and there had been many, did not come into his home.  He would book them a hotel and take the girl in the penthouse suite,  not caring a bit for the cost.  What did something like the money mean to someone like Philip?  He had more money than he would possibly be able to blow through if he were to live another several hundred years (which he fully intended to do) and a five hundred dollar night in a hotel seemed like a small price to pay to keep his solitude and anonymity intact. 

But not this time.  Again, Philip believed that Megan Wright was not like the other girls he had been with, and there were very few people in the world who were anything close to her. He wanted to show her his home, which surprised him, but there it was. 

His home, the truest expression of who he was.  Showing his home to another living soul felt like one of the most vulnerable things he could do.  It had all of the bits and pieces of himself he had amassed over the past century and opened him up to scrutiny and any number of questions.