Vamps: Human and Paranormal (34 page)

I closed my door and collapsed back against its cool painted surface.  Oh god, this couldn’t get any worse, I thought as I absently tossed the package on the table.

Another knock on my door.  Probably that UPS asshole with his camera phone out, trying to get a new picture to add to their hall of fame.

“Look asshole,”  I screamed through the door.  “If you don’t leave me alone I’m fucking calling the cops.”

“Fine,”  came Bess’ voice back at me.  “You can do your own make-up and hair then.  And forget wearing my slinky red silk dress..”

I tore open the door and drug Bess into my apartment.  “You wouldn’t believe my day.”

Bess spun around and pulled the stunning red silk dress from its carrying sleeve.  “Forget today, you’re not gonna fucking believe your night!”

*****

Chapter
12

“Tomorrow we’re going to have to buy you your own make up,”  Bess said while applying my eye shadow.  I gave her a hysterical glare with my free eye.  “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you how to apply everything.  I’ll even show you how to do your own hair.”

I couldn’t imagine being able to do these things for myself, but then I couldn’t imagine I’d ever look the way I did with this junk on.

Moments later I slipped into the red silk dress and Bess zipped me up.  I stood there looking at myself in my dinky mirror, wishing I had the mirror from my dream.  I looked sensational ... just like last time, but sexier.  This dress not only clung to my every curve but shimmered when I moved.

“Just don’t get any stains on it, okay cupcake.”

“Yes ma’am.”  I saluted Bess.  But my whimsical smile slid off my face as she held out tonight’s pair of shoes.  The heel was lower, but impossibly thin.  It was red, but almost as unsubstantial as my tooth-floss inspired underwear. 

“Can you say Jimmy Choo?”  Bess cooed, as if presenting a stuffed bear to a toddler.

“Jimmy who?”

Bess shook her head with disappointment.  “You sure you’re a girl?”  She sat me down on the bed as she latched the ultra light leather heels to my feet.  “I don’t even know another woman that wouldn’t kill their housekeepers -- or their first born -- for a pair of these shoes.

“Well, I don’t have a housekeeper or a first born.”

“Yet.”

I reached out and hugged her.  “You have such high hopes for me.”

Bess patted me on the top of my perfectly groomed head.  “I just don’t want to visit you when we’re old and you’re still in this apartment ... with a dozen cats.”

Bess pulled me up off the bed and helped me gain my balance as I wobbled in my new ultra elegant and ultra misogynistic pair of shoes.

“Why are these harder to walk in than the other pair?”  I laughed as I held on to Bess for dear life.  “They’re not even as high a heel!”

“Because they cost more, that’s why.”  Bess finally let go after I’d taken a few tentative steps across the room.  “Okay, I think you’ve got it.” 

I stood there trying to look elegant, but instead I knew from the look on Bess’ face that I looked pathetic.

Bess slipped off her own impossibly high, impossibly slim heels.  “Just remember to walk on your toes, never on your heels.”  Which sounded like the most ironic statement ever spoken in human history.  Bess demonstrated walking across the floor in front of me on her toes.

“I didn’t know you were a freaking ballerina.”

“I’m not, I just practiced and practiced, until I could walk in any shoe that they could think of.”  She looked at me with an air of triumph.  “Why do you think I try on almost every good shoe in any shoe store I frequent?”  

“You’re training?”

“Yep, and now I look so good walking in any shoe, women everywhere glare in envy,” her voice turned wispy.  “And men everywhere can’t keep their tongues in their mouths.”

“Thanks for the visual.”

Bess took me for a few more laps around the apartment, and slowly I started to feel more balanced, sturdier.  But then she let go of my hands and my usual clunky gait returned.

“I gotta go.  You’re not the only one with a date with a doctor.”

“Anyone I know.”

“Nope.  I already checked.”  Bess air kissed me, which made my eyebrows furrow incredulously.  “Don’t wanna mess up your make up, comprende?”

A flourish of satin and lace, and she was out the door like the wind ... the wind on five inch heels.

*****

I practiced more laps in my fashionably torturous shoes.  I was just about getting the hang of it when there was a knock at the door.  This made me topple onto the back of the couch, groping for a position to push myself upright again.

I suddenly felt really sorry for the waitress with the new boobs.  To have to wear these infernal things to work every day would be true hell.

Finally I got myself back on my feet, straightened out the dress and wobbled to the door.  I pulled it open and the sight of Dean standing there took my breath away.  Gone was the jacket and the tie.  Instead he wore just the most glorious blue silk shirt.  It fit his well muscled torso well enough to show off his fantastic physique without being so tight as to show his nipples.

“You look beautiful,”  he said, his voice a low growl.

“So do you ...”  And suddenly I was tripping backwards into my apartment.  Dean caught me in his arms and held me steady.”

“Are you drunk?”  His smile was so sexy, and so infuriatingly smart-ass.

“New shoes.”  I didn’t mind having his arms around me, and I really didn’t mind having his lips so close to mine again. 

“Well, we can’t have you falling into every strange man we come across tonight ... my ego can only take so much.”

I could only take so much, too.  Every word he uttered brought his mouth closer and closer to my own.  I just wanted to grab him and kiss him -- screw dinner! My bedroom was sounding better and better.

“Where’s your bedroom?”  Dean asked, reading my mind.

I gulped.  “In there.”  I pointed to my right.  I was sure he was about to scoop me up in those strong, thick arms of his and carry me back to my bed, where he’d no doubt tear Bess’ dress off and make love to me until dawn.

“Be right back.”  He wriggled his eyebrows as he propped me up against the back of the couch.

Or maybe not, I thought to myself.

As he disappeared into my bedroom I suddenly envisioned my unmade bed, and my hastily shedded scrubs and undies -- and bra! -- scattered on the floor.  Oh god!

Dean came back with the heels I’d worn last night.  The black satin three inch ones.

“You did much better in these,”  he said as he dropped stealthily to his knees and took m right foot into his hands.  Slowly he unclasped the spaghetti-string leather straps and slid the shoe from my foot.  His fingers sensuously gliding over my insole, making me squirm, and not just on the outside.  He fitted the black shoe on with more slow caresses, and then moved to the other foot.  I felt like Cinderella, but the R-rated version.

When he stood up again he leaned into me until our lips grazed.  “That better?”

I felt dizzy and breathless as I nodded yes, my chin moving upward to kiss him.  But the bastard moved away, receding out of lip lock, and pulling me toward the door. 

“Good,” he said, taunting me by acting oblivious to what had almost happened.  “I’m starving.”

*****

This time we walked.  Dean said the Indian restaurant was only a couple blocks away.  I was walking with confidence in the old shoes, and with Dean’s hand in mine I felt not only like a movie star, but also like my core temperature had risen about ten degrees.  I imagined the trees planted along the sidewalk would burst into flame as I walked past.

I’ve never been one for the hand holding stuff, but I had to admit I was really getting into holding Dean’s strong, surprisingly soft hand.   And with every step we took I was more sure that I wasn’t going to let him get away tonight with just a kiss.  Even if I had to board up and padlock the front door.  Even if I had to tie him up with duct tape.  He was going to be mine.

Again, I sounded just like Bess.  Maybe it was because I was wearing her clothes? 

I suddenly flashed back to something Bess had instructed me to do: shave my legs.  Had I?  I suddenly couldn’t remember what I’d done this evening in the shower.  I reached down as we walked and gave my bare leg a feel.

Dean looked back at me over his shoulder, a quizzical smile on his face that said, Caught you!

“Everything alright?”

“Yep.  Everything’s great.”  Better than great, I thought.  Spectacular.  I shaved my legs.

*****

Dean was right about the Indian restaurant.  The service was lousy:  the waiter was slow; you had to tell him a pitcher of water and a pitcher of ice, because if you just asked for a pitcher of ice water you only got around three cubes.  But when the Curried lamb and the garlic flat bread, and the strange little chips with plum jelly came, now that was divine.

We dug in as if we’d never eaten before, starving.  Of course it had taken almost an hour to get the food, so we might have been in the throes of starvation.

As I started in on my second helping of lamb I suddenly thought of my breath.  Oh god I thought, surveying the lamb and the garlic flat bread I’d used like petta pockets.  My breath is going to reek!

I hadn’t brought a purse filled with breath mints either.  I didn’t even own a purse.

But then I reasoned, Dean was eating the exact same thing as I was, so his breath would be the same as mine.  Nothing to worry about, right? 

Right then and there I started to strategize a way to procure some mints without him ever knowing.  There were three pharmacies within the last three blocks, and three bodegas, so I had a great chance of pulling him into one and snagging some without him noticing.

When there wasn’t a scrap of flat bread, no chip, not a morsel of lamb left, then Dean left money on the table, not waiting for the ever-so-slow tortoise of a waiter, and then we exited the restaurant.   Luck would have it there was a small bowl of mints on the counter by the door.  I snagged one and popped it in my mouth.  Thank god for the complimentary mint.

He pulled me close as we weaved through the evening throngs to the ice cream parlor.  I’d forgotten all about it.  Desert.  I was so stuffed already.

But when I saw all the different flavors, the waffle cones, and the luscious colors the place was painted, I suddenly had a craving for a strawberry waffle cone.  Magically my stomach made room for it, and a few moments later we were strolling along the street in the opposite direction as my apartment, eating ice cream, our shoulders touching as we walked.

After we’d devoured the ice cream we still kept walking.  Slow and aimlessly.  A breeze had kicked up and I could smell rain.  I didn’t care.  All I wanted was this.  Well, maybe this and a lot of other stuff later in my apartment.  But this was pretty great.  Dean stopped and said, “We’re a long way from your apartment, maybe we should head back.  Looks like it’s going to rain.”

“Okay,” I whispered as I looked up into his pretty brown eyes.  And right before me his eyes darkened, and I could see the heat buildup in them again.  He pulled me to him.  He smelled amazing, and the feel of him through his silk shirt made me gasp.  He leaned in to me, our lips locking, our tongues touching as we sank into the deepest of kisses.

I could swear I heard music ... I could practically see fireworks going off in my head.  I wrapped my arms around his neck as his arms enveloped me and crushed me to him.  Suddenly I could hear the fireworks too.

Our lips parted and slowly, as if waking from a dream, I realized it was raining.  A flash of lightning clapped above us, making the entire street throb in its dangerous light. 

That’s where the fireworks were coming from.

He tugged me in the direction to my apartment.  “I should get you back home and out of those wet clothes ...” He wriggled his eyebrows at me again.  “Hypothermia, you know.”

“We wouldn’t want that.”

We walked quickly back to my apartment, stealing kisses in doorways every twenty or so feet.  Each kiss deeper and longer than the one before it.  I started to think we wouldn’t make it back to my apartment before we finally just did it there in the street.

Finally we were in front of my apartment building.  I pulled him in through the front door, into the elevator and we made out like crazy until the elevator rang and the doors opened onto my floor.  I let us into my apartment and laid one hell of a lip lock on him.  I could feel his was hard, his cock pressing against my thigh as we groped each other.

Abruptly he pulled away from me, shaking his head.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t do this on our second date.”

“Really?”  I’d barely been able to keep myself from doing it on our first date.

“Really.”  His face looked so firm.  “I just can’t.”