chapter Seventeen
CRUEL SUMMER
JOHNNY removed his sunglasses, as instructed by the French version of TSA, and tucked them into his sweatshirt pocket. That had been the longest flight of his life. Literally. When he’d come over from Europe to the States he had taken a boat. He had to admit flying was more convenient, but it had still felt like half his life. The whole time he had been wondering if he was going to get to Paris and Lizette was going to slam a door in his face. Or worse, if he was walking right into a VA trap.
But he’d had to come here. He had to make it right. He’d been sitting around surly for a week and he’d decided the only way to fix the situation was to get his sorry ass on a plane and make things right with the VA. And hopefully right with Lizette. She hadn’t returned his calls, and at the very least he wanted to let her know what Saxon had told him about the infamous night of the wedding.
“Is your suitcase locked?” the customs official asked him. She was a petite woman in her forties, yet she looked like she wouldn’t hesitate to billy-club him.
“No.” Johnny tried not to look illegal or vampiric. This whole process made him nervous. Everyone scrutinizing his passport and giving him beady-eyed stares. He had a little better understanding of Lizette’s fears after having just made his way through three airports. The world at large was much more suspicious than the average person in the French Quarter.
“I’m going to open it and look inside.”
Great. “Okay.” Johnny shifted on his feet, already knowing what the woman was going to find.
Yep. There it was.
As her gloved hands peeled back a pair of jeans, the vibrator Lizette had ordered was revealed. He had taken it out of the box to save space.
Her eyebrows shot up and she gave him a look.
He remained stoically silent. Let her think what she wanted. Everybody had their thing, and he wasn’t going to be embarrassed. Much.
Then she found the six pairs of sheer panties and the crotchless one-piece teddy. The corner of her mouth twitched. Damn it. When more digging revealed the heels Lizette had ordered, she was clearly biting back a grin. She also was studying all of it with way more attention than any of it deserved. He started to lose patience.
“Those are gifts for my girlfriend,” he told her, because girlfriend was a better explanation than his one-time lover who had ordered all of this under the influence, then had ditched him to go home to France. This customs chick was already being judgmental. He didn’t want to add fuel to her fire.
“Uh-huh. You have good taste.”
“She has good taste since she’s the one who ordered them. But I guess I have good taste for loving her.” Now that he thought about it, he realized that was true. Maybe he wasn’t so unworthy of her after all. “And even if these were for me, what of it? I happen to have transgender friends and your attitude is offensive.” So there. Having his done his part to promote equality, he took his passport back while she closed up his suitcase.
She made a face at him. “Welcome to Paris, Mr. Malone.”
“Thank you. Merci.” He took his suitcase and got the hell out of there before someone changed her mind. He had an appointment he did not want to be late for.
* * *
LIZETTE WAITED FOR the elevator, looking forward to heading back to her apartment and stripping off her work clothes. The office had been quiet tonight, just her and two other employees, plus the janitor, who was used to their nocturnal work habits. The front for the VA was technical support, so it wouldn’t seem unusual to their landlord that there were employees there during the night shift. The day shift was manned by mortals who had no idea who they really worked for, primarily doing accounting and payroll for the vampire VA employees.
She still felt jet-lagged, even though she had been home for a week. A solid eight hours of sleep sounded delicious, even if it was only 4:00 a.m.
The elevator door opened and she started to step on. Then immediately stopped. Johnny was on the elevator. He was just standing there in jeans and a T-shirt, like she had conjured him up out of some jet-lagged hallucination. The door started to close, hitting her on the shoulder.
“Careful.” He reached out and pulled her forward by the hand. “You okay?”
She nodded, struck dumb.
He smiled. “Hey.”
“Hello.”
“Lobby?”
“What?” Lizette shook her head slightly, clutching her attaché case. “What are you doing here, Johnny?”
“Are you going to the lobby?” He gestured to the buttons on the wall. “And I’m here for two reasons. To clear my name through the proper channels of the VA. And to see you.”
“Oh. I see.” Heat flooded her cheeks, but at least her brain no longer felt completely frozen. “Yes, the lobby, thank you so much.” When caught off guard, she always fell back on proper manners. “Are you leaving as well?”
“Yep. I just finished with my appointment. I think we’ll have the red tape wrapped up in a few days, and I’ll be off that damn list, hopefully forever, if not at least for a few centuries.”
“That’s excellent news. I wasn’t aware you had a hearing now that I am no longer on the case.” She was actually quite irritated with her co-workers. Someone could have at least warned her. Then she would have touched up her lipstick at the very least. She probably looked as exhausted as she felt, and she would much prefer impressing Johnny with her beauty, not making him relieved that she had left New Orleans.
The elevator door opened on the first floor and Johnny gestured for her to move out into the lobby first. He said, “I didn’t have to come here for the hearing. But I wanted to make sure it got cleared up as soon as possible. I do respect what the VA is doing. I know that I’ve made mistakes.”
Lizette stopped in the lobby and turned to look at him, her heart suddenly crawling up her throat. She had missed him. He was so handsome, so rugged, so different from other men in her life, both past and present. “Oh,” she said eloquently. God, she wanted him to touch her. She found herself even leaning toward him slightly, just to catch a whiff of his scent of soap and something else she had never quite been able to define.
“Are you busy?” he asked. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
Then, he did touch her. He reached out and brushed the back of his hand down her cheek. “I’ve missed you, Lizette.”
Whatever walls she had erected around her heart came crumbling down without warning. “I have missed you as well. Would you like to come to my apartment? Most cafés are closed for the night.”
“That would be awesome.”
Lizette headed to the door and pushed it open. June in Paris was different from New Orleans. It was greener, not as hot. “How was your flight?” she asked politely, then hated herself for doing that. Manners were as much an armor as metal, and she wanted to learn how to be more open, more honest about her emotions. “I am sorry for leaving the way I did. That was not fair to you.”
They strolled down the sidewalk together. “That’s okay,” he said. “I know I was being an ass, and I’m sorry for that. I was thinking, you know, that maybe we could sort of put that behind us. Start fresh.” But then he seemed to doubt her response because before she could answer, he starting speaking again. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this is a cool neighborhood. I like it. It suits you.”
“It has been home for a long time.” She lived in the fashionable 18th district, where the river and the Eiffel Tower dominated the landscape, along with cafes and shops. It was primarily residential, though offices such as her own were tucked here and there. “I do love it here.”
“I brought the stuff you ordered with me. You know, your shoes and the other . . . things.”
Oh dear. She remembered precisely what that other stuff meant. She had tried to cancel her orders when she’d gotten home, but it had been too late. She had written the purchases off as lost, and she realized she had underestimated Johnny yet again. He wasn’t going to let a thousand dollars of her drunken purchases languish on his doorstep. That wasn’t him. “Thank you, I appreciate that very much. I do love those shoes.”
“What about the sexy panties? You love those?” he asked with a grin as she stopped in front of her building. “Because I have to say, I kind of was digging them when I opened the box to pack them in my suitcase.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them yet.”
“By the way,” he added, as she used her key on the front door. “I talked to Saxon about the wedding night. He actually remembers everything. It turns out he didn’t drink the punch. He said that we were never alone. After the reception we were hanging in the group with everyone just having fun, and that the only reason we were in the dungeon was because you insisted such a thing couldn’t exist.”
That did sound like her, expressing skepticism over a sexual fetish. “So what does that mean?” Good God, she hoped they hadn’t had sex in front of other people.
“No funny business. Saxon said it was all good clean fun. We were in handcuffs because he wanted to show us a magic trick with them, only he couldn’t remember it and he couldn’t find the key.”
She didn’t even care about the handcuffs. She was just relieved that they hadn’t had exhibitionistic sex. Though she found herself oddly somewhat disappointed that they hadn’t had the private, intimate night of wild and unbridled passion she had been envisioning. Of course, they had the next night, but there had been something romantic about the idea. “So where did my panties go? And why did I feel so . . . aware down there?” That seemed a rather puzzling mystery to her.
But Johnny didn’t seem to think anything of it. He gave her a big grin. “You rode the mechanical bull at the Bourbon Cowboy. I saw the pictures. I’m guessing that might have had some impact on your girl parts. I’m sorry, I can’t account for your underwear.”
“What? Bull riding?” Lizette started up the marble stairs, her shoes echoing loudly as she walked rapidly. Of course, she couldn’t stomp her way past her actions. “I’ll have to see that to believe it. So did you find out who drugged the punch? It was the punch, yes?”
He nodded, keeping up with her on the steps. In a minute they were in front of her apartment. “It wasn’t the Chers, like Drake suspected. It was Ashley, Josie Lynn’s catering help.”
“Really? Well, I have to admit I’m glad to hear the cross-dressers weren’t involved. They seemed so helpful in the bar, and I rather liked their style. But why on earth would she drug a punch at a wedding reception?”
“It turns out she is the daughter of another cross-dresser who has lost business to the Chers in the last few years, so her plan was to roll the wedding and frame the Chers to give her father a leg up. Though one of the Chers did make off with Zelda’s wedding dress. So basically it was like an entire night lost because of a catfight over clothes and stage time. Totally insane.”
That was insane. “I am speechless.” Lizette led him into her apartment, which was a typical Parisian place, with a small living area and an even smaller bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable.” She still felt nervous, like what happened in the next few minutes could determine the course of her immediate future.
“This is a nice place,” he said, sitting down on her sofa. “Have you been here long?”
“Ten years. Probably in the foreseeable future I’ll have to move. My neighbor has been here the whole time and she is starting to ask me how I keep my youthful appearance.” Which was a shame. She loved this apartment. She sat down next to him because she wanted to be close enough to touch, to read his eyes.
“It looks like you. It feels elegant and cozy all at the same time.”
“I have to confess something to you,” she blurted. “There is a reason why I am so committed to the VA and to our secrecy as a species.”
“Why is that?” He sounded genuinely curious. “What happened to you? Beyond your family being killed, that is. It seems like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Lizette swallowed hard and studied her manicure. This was important. She needed to share the whole truth. “I want to tell you about Jean-Baptiste.”
* * *
HOLY FUCK, WAS she serious? He’d flown halfway around the world and she wanted to tell him about her dead boyfriend? He literally wanted to talk about anything but that dude. They could even not talk at all and that would be preferable. But he forced himself to remain nonchalant and just say, “Yeah?”
Lizette kicked off her heels and tucked her slim legs under her skirt in a move that he found wildly distracting and really sexy. Okay, she could talk about the dead guy.
“You see, we had a solid relationship, but as I said, we were not without our issues. But I was committed to him and assumed we would have a future. But during the late nineteenth century, when medical schools were getting so heavily into dissections, you know there was a lot of grave robbing and whatnot going on, yes?”
“I can’t say I’m really familiar with the time period, since I was born at the end of the century, but I can see how that would happen.” Just a little before his time.
“Due to advances in science and anatomy, the human body was considered essential to the study of young medical students, and they were willing to look the other way as to how bodies were acquired. It was a booming business. Jean-Baptiste was stolen from his coffin in the catacombs on the assumption that he was a corpse.”
That was more than a little fucked-up.
“But of course what happened was that when they dissected him, he woke up. Since it was daytime, he was disoriented, I presume, and they were able to secure him to their operating table and watch as he healed. So they dissected again. Again he healed.” Lizette swallowed hard. “I witnessed a good deal of this as I followed the carriage in the hopes of rescuing him.”
Shit. That was why she was so afraid of being caught. She’d seen the consequences. Johnny felt like a complete jerk-off. He reached out and took her hand, which she had clenched into a fist on her knee.
“But they never left him, and I couldn’t see how to get him out of the restraints and help him move when it would take all my strength to protect myself from getting caught. So I watched his torture. It went on for hours and hours and he was awake for the entirety.” Lizette stared at him with glassy eyes. “I will hear his screams of agony forever.”
“That’s horrible,” he said, because there were no words adequate enough to express his sympathy and disgust. “I’m so sorry.”
“Finally, after they posed for photos with his bleeding body, skin peeled back from all his bones, head scalped, nails driven through his hands to see what the result would be, they went out for a pint to celebrate their real-live Frankenstein. It was my plan to release him then. But Jean-Baptiste begged me to merely kill him. He didn’t think he would survive anyway, and I would only be slowed down and putting myself at risk.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it. How could I?”
“Holy shit, baby . . .” Johnny was speechless. She shouldn’t have had to make that kind of choice.
“But then one of them came back because he had forgotten his hat, and I knocked him unconscious. I knew I had to kill Jean-Baptiste then, so . . .” Lizette took several deep breaths. “So I did.”
Johnny took her hand and stroked her cool skin gently. He spoke softly, awed by her strength, her tenacity for the last several hundred years. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like for you. I understand completely why you feel the way you do.”
“Thank you. It is important to me that you understand, because I do care about it. I do wish to live a life that is more spontaneous, but without unnecessarily risking my own safety or that of those I care about.” Tears glistened in her eyes, true vampire tears of blood and pain. “I do not want anything bad to happen to you.”
“It won’t,” Johnny assured her, humbled and experiencing a deeper sense of admiration for her than any woman he had ever met. This was what Stella and Wyatt were talking about. There was no urge to run, no need to fear commitment, when you had such a deep, impenetrable respect for the person you were with. “I am going to lie low for a while, and fix things with Benny and Raven. I’ve got some growing up to do, and if you’re okay with it, I’d like to do that here, in Paris. With you.”
That was throwing it all out there. She might laugh, reject him in two seconds flat, or feel sorry for him. But you know what? He had flown halfway across the world, so he might as well go for broke. He may be maturing, but he was always going to be a risk-taker.
“I think that perhaps I would enjoy that,” she said.
Oh, so French. She wasn’t about to gush on him or squeal with delight. But Johnny could see it there, in her eyes. She was both excited and relieved. Just like he was. “Is there room in your pint-sized Paris apartment for an Irish drummer or should I find myself a hotel?”
Lizette gave him a smile that reminded him, discreet or not, the French were the inventors of some of the world’s greatest love acts, starting with kissing with tongue and ending with the ménage. It was in her blood, and he wanted a bite of her.
“Oh, there is definitely room here for you. Shall I model some of the garments you were so kind to bring for me? Or should I start with the oral sex I would like to give you?”
Um. The choices boggled the mind, but he’d be a fool not to go for broke. “I’ll take door number two if you’re down with it.” He kissed her. “And thank you, by the way. For being so amazing, for being so you. I think we’re going to have some serious fun over the next few months.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Lizette bent over and unzipped his jeans.
Then Johnny discovered what the meaning of eternity really was as her head descending at an agonizingly slow pace.
But it was worth the wait.