Even Vampires Get the Blues (6 page)

I froze when the man's eyes met mine, holding my breath as if that would make my invisible self even more invisible. He held out his arm for the monkey, going still when Beppo scrambled up to his shoulder.
Then he smiled at me. Slowly. With so much menace that a scream built up inside me. Just as it was about to burst from my formless lips, a voice in the distance called my name.

“Samantha!”

The man snarled something and lunged toward me, but my ethereal body was yanked out of the room, whisked back toward the voice that so imperiously demanded my attention. “Samantha, you will answer me!”

The trip back to my body was conducted much more quickly than the journey out—the world seemed to shimmer and blur, shaking itself for a moment, then suddenly I was sitting in Paen's car, my neck tingling, my body tight and tense as if it had been on the verge of an orgasm.

“Welcome back,” Paen said dryly.

“Hi,” I said, touching my neck. There didn't seem to be any open wound, so I gathered he had some power to heal up any signs he had been dining at Café Sam. “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.”

“For what, boring you?” he asked, reversing the car, turning so we were headed back into the hills.

“Boring me? No, Paen . . .” I put my hand on his arm, slightly surprised to find that I was shaking from my encounter with the dark man. “I was thanking you for pulling me back. I . . . there was someone I would not care to meet again, and you anchored me when I needed it, so thank you. But I wasn't bored with you—it's not that at all. It's just . . . I have . . . oh, it's a little difficult to explain.”

“Is it?”

I sighed, rubbing the chill from my arms. Just
being near Paen seemed to drive away the nightmarish quality of my out-of-body experience. “The truth is that it's all my mother's fault.”

His jaw tightened as he drove. “Indeed.”

“I didn't mean that it's her fault I'm here, and thus with you—I meant it's my mother's fault because she passed on a couple of elf traits to me. I was born with her pointy ears, elf-tipped eyes, talent for finding lost things, and a really warped version of her ability to do out-of-body trips. Unlike Mom's skill with astral projection, however, mine only hits whenever I'm sexually aroused.”

He looked at me in patent disbelief. “You what?”

I nodded, then pointed to the road. He turned back to it, but glanced curiously from the corner of his eye a couple of times. “Whenever I get aroused, my body and consciousness part ways, and I go drifting off while it has all the fun. I can't begin to tell you how frustrating it is.”

“I can imagine,” he said dryly.

“Oh, you think you can, but I doubt it,” I said mournfully. “It's awful, and there's nothing I can do about it. I've tried everything, too. Once I'm gone—pfft! I just have to wait it out. No one has ever called me back like you did. That was pretty amazing.”

“Hmm.” He didn't look like he disbelieved me, but he didn't look like he was buying everything I was saying, either.

“The worst is when I come back and find out that evidently I've been having wonderful sexual experiences, but wasn't there to enjoy them.”

He shot me a curious glance. “Are you saying this happens
every
time you engage in sex?”

I nodded. “It doesn't even have to be sex. Just doing what we were doing is enough to send my brain into astral mode.”

“So you've never actually . . . er . . . for lack of a better phrasing, been there for any of the times you've had sex?”

“No.”

“Not any of the times?”

“None. It's not like I've had tons of sex, though. I pretty much gave it up after I realized what was going on. I mean, what's the use? Just when I start getting into it, whammo! I'm taken off and return to find my body either apparently fulfilled and no longer interested, or tense and frustrated, while my boyfriend is snoring away.”

“I see.”

“I've only had three boyfriends,” I said, compelled for some reason to make it absolutely clear I wasn't a thrill-seeking trollop. “But I tried everything I could think of to stay there for the whole thing, and never had any luck.”

“Perhaps the fault lies with them, not you,” Paen said, his eyes back on the road as we drove.

“What do you mean?”

“Were your partners mortal?”

“Yes. One was a Diviner, but he was mortal all right. He died last year in a plane crash.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“So was I. He was a nice guy. Not a great Diviner, but a nice guy. But what do my boyfriends being mortal have to do with me drifting away during the fun time?”

He shot me a silver-eyed look that was completely
unreadable. “You have immortal blood. Perhaps you would have better luck with a man who shared that trait.”

My jaw dropped for a moment before I had enough wits about me to snap it back. “Are you offering yourself as a potential partner?”

There was a pause. “In the interests of scientific understanding, yes, I would be willing to undertake that role.”

He noticed the surprised look on my face.

“I don't normally proposition women in this manner, but I will admit to being physically attracted to you, and believe that you feel likewise.”

“Oh, really.” We were deep in the heart of the country now, heading into a rural area with patches of forest and wilderness, so there were no streetlights. The only light illuminating Paen's face was that from the dashboard, but it was enough for me to eye his profile. It was just as handsome as the rest of his face.

His jaw tightened. “I see. I have misread your interest in me, then. I apologize for—”

“No!” I interrupted, not wanting him to misunderstand. “That ‘oh, really?' wasn't challenging your statement about me being attracted to you—I am—but more just . . . well, annoyed.”

“Annoyed?” A slight frown wrinkled his forehead. “Are you always annoyed when someone tells you he finds you attractive?”

“Of course not, but you have to admit that someone telling you they want to go to bed with you purely in the interests of science sounds a bit
condescending. I mean, sheesh, talk about martyring yourself . . .”

His lips thinned. “I didn't intend for you to take my offer that way. I am a man. I find you an attractive woman, and since you apparently reciprocate that feeling, you are not presently dating anyone—” He paused and gave me a quick glance.

“Nope, not dating,” I said.

“—and as you appear to be of legal age—”

“Thirty-four in September.”

“—then I assumed I could express my interest without you taking offense.”

“Oh, I'm not offended,” I said, smiling. He was so cute when he was in a snit. “Just surprised.”

He said nothing.

“Tempting as your offer is, I hasten to point out that you
are
immortal, and I just
did
do the astral thing, so the answer to what I would do with you is pretty evident.”

“Not necessarily. I was feeding, not attempting to arouse you. It would be different if I were to focus my attention on bringing you pleasure.”

I digested that morsel for a moment and admitted that he could well be right. “We just met, Paen. Yes, the physical thing is there, but we haven't known each other for more than a couple of hours at most. I've never been one for casual relationships. In fact, I was madly in love with all three of my boyfriends before we ever got physical.”

“Perhaps that's the trouble,” he said, still not looking at me.

“What, having an emotional commitment with my boyfriends before having sex with them?”

“Yes. Sex is a bodily function no different from any other bodily function. You need air, you breathe. You need sexual pleasure, you have sex. It's that simple.”

I gawked. “You are really screwed up, aren't you? We're talking serious commitment issues here, the kind that you see on
Montel.
”

“You don't have to be committed to a hamburger to gain sustenance from it, do you?”

“No, of course not, but—”

“Why should something so simple as sex be any different?” he asked, his eyes all but lighting up the inside of the car. “I have no doubts that were you willing. I would be able to provide you with sexual pleasure without any messy emotional issues becoming involved.”

“ ‘Messy emotional issues,' ” I repeated, aghast. “Is that what being in love is to you? Messy?”

“Yes. Love for a sexual partner serves no real purpose. It is unnecessary.”

“Thus speaks a man who has never been in love,” I said. “Are you sure you're a Dark One and not a Vulcan or something?”

“On the contrary, I love my parents and brothers,” he answered, ignoring my Vulcan quip.

“That's splitting hairs, and you know it. Love in a relationship is a wonderful thing, Paen. Sex can be nice on its own—or so I've been told; I've never been present to feel it for myself—but sex without love is empty. Shallow. Meaningless.”

He snorted. “Why do women have to sugarcoat everything?”

“How's this for sugarcoating—what you're
talking about is the difference between fucking and lovemaking.”

“You say that like there's something wrong with fucking.”

“Of course there's nothing wrong with it. Even people deeply in love can indulge in it. But one is pure physical pleasure, while the other has a deeper meaning. Lovemaking is more than just sex—the pleasure received from it comes not just from sexual stimulation, but from sharing something profound with a person who is more than just a casual acquaintance. Lovemaking is just that—making something, creating a bond, forming a loving relationship.”

He shot me an annoyed look. “You are using a woman's typical arguments. Until you've tried it my way, you can't make a statement like that.”

“The same could be said for you making generalizations against love. Boy, you are so lucky I'm not in love with you. You'd have some serious shaping up to do.”

“That is a moot point. You are not in love with me, nor I you, but I
would
be quite willing to show you the pleasure I could give you sexually.”

“You're still saying you want to screw me?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I wasn't going to put it quite so crudely, but yes. I want you in a sexual sense.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he asked, confused.

“Yes, why do you want me? That is, what about me is attractive to you?”

The annoyance that flared in his eyes had me smiling to myself. “You intrigue me. I find you
stimulating, both physically and mentally. And . . . er . . . you smell nice.”

“I smell nice?” I tipped my head to the side to sniff myself.

His eyes flickered my way for a moment. “Yes. You smell like a woman, untainted by harsh chemical scents. You smell like a sun-warmed field of wildflowers.”

“Wow,” I said, momentarily renderd speechless by his comment. “That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.”

“Your scent permeates the air around you,” he added.

“I take it back—that just makes me sound like I have gas.” I did another covert sniff of myself, but didn't notice any sun-warmed wildflower smell being emitted from any part of me.

“On the contrary, your natural scent is very pleasing. Very arousing. That's why I want you, and that is why I offered what I did.”

I sat wordless for another few minutes before finally saying, “All right.”

He slowed the car down to a stop right in the middle of a windswept stretch of road. “All right? You wish to have sex?”

“Well, not right this second, but yes, I will go to bed with you. You can do your best with me. But when it ends up being a hollow experience and my mind goes drifting off on its own, I'm going to let you know.”

“I accept your terms,” he said, setting off again.

“The only reason I'm doing this is because I have a point to prove to you,” I said, which was mostly
true. I still didn't really understand why I was willing to do this; I wasn't like Clare, falling in love with a new man every week. It took months for my emotions to ripen to a point where I found a man sexually stimulating.

But there was just something about him, something that seemed to call out to me, something that
needed
me . . .

“As I have with you.”

“There's no way that sex without affection can possibly be better than sex with it. And although I can't show you that for yourself, I can certainly prove to you that your way is not going to work for me.”

His lips quirked upward. “I have no doubt that there will be little difficulty in showing you the delights in a wholly physical relationship unencumbered by any emotional expectations beyond that of sexual satisfaction.”