“Aw, come on,” I said.
“Never scare me like that again. Never never never.”
“You’re too lame and uptight to be a widower, though no worrieth.” Oh, dammit. The smell of my own blood, the heat of our excitement, had made my fangs pop, too. Stupid vampire lisp.
Sinclair laughed into my neck, a deep, joy-filled bellow. Then he was dragging me past Marc and Tina—
“Hey, guys, thanks for—”
“Whoops, there they go, off to compete yet again in the Sexual Olympics.” Marc shook his head. “New record.”
—and up the steps of the super RV, past Nick, who was waving at us from the wheel—
“—riding to my rescue—”
—past the gorgeous furniture and accessories, this thing was a
mansion
on eight wheels! Or twelve . . . How many did RVs have?
“—and picking me up!” I hollered before we were in the bedroom and Sinclair kicked the door closed. Which was fine with me. If you were wondering.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
You’d think we hadn’t had fast nasty sex earlier that day. Or
the morning before—I had no idea what time it was, which day of the week it was, how long I’d been back from hell, how long it had been since I got run over on The Magnificent (ha!) Mile, what hideous terrible thing we had to avert, who was alive in this timeline, who was dead, and who we had to save, nor did I care.
My husband demonstrated his pleasure in our reunion by shredding my borrowed shirt, ripping my borrowed scrubs off, yanking his own shirt off, nearly strangling himself by removing his tie (who wears a tie on a rescue mission?), and though he managed to get his belt unbuckled and his fly down, he couldn’t quite manage to rid himself of his slacks before he fell on me.
Which was fine by me; I was the ultimate welcoming vessel. I practically had a “Help Yourself, Neighbor!” sign hung around my neck. Our mouths nearly slammed together, his teeth cut me, hurt me, and I didn’t give a ripe shit.
He seized my thighs and slung them apart, then surged forward and I felt his cock enter between my thighs and stop somewhere around my throat. Felt his mouth on my neck, nuzzling, not biting, and heard him, heard him murmuring into my throat, “Sorry, sorry, my own, my queen, oh forgive . . . oh . . . oh . . .”
He . . . he thought he was hurting me! Which he was. But, as above: I didn’t give a ripe shit. I loved it; I loved
him.
It didn’t matter what he did to me; I’d heal in minutes or even seconds. It was worth anything. It was worth anything to be with him.
I had to die to learn about love.
Dumbass.
(Love I love I love O Elizabeth I love I love . . .)
(Don’t stop. If you stop, I’m getting a divorce lawyer.)
(Love O I love O O O O O O O O O O O O O!)
I saw stars. Cliché, right? But they were streaming past my eyes, they were screaming through my heart. They were everywhere,
we
were everywhere, and while we were together it was impossible to worry, or be scared, or . . .
. . . or anything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Are you . . . all right?”
“Extremely very all right.” I scratched at some of the dried blood, which had pooled in the center of my throat. “Aw. You were worried.”
“I think I shall kill you soon,” he speculated to the ceiling. “After I use your body more, of course.”
“Of course. Wouldn’t have it any other way. Not a jury in the world would convict you.”
He didn’t laugh, or even smile. His hand, which had been gently cradling my wrist, tightened. “I was . . . afraid.”
“Me, too. I do not like being run over on the so-called Magnificent Mile. And I’m going to wring Laura’s neck when we see her.”
“Yes.” I didn’t think I’d ever heard him sound so grim, so I tried to cheer him up.
“But you’re here now. And we’ll figure it all out.”
He turned and was looming over me, his dark eyes piercing, his forehead furrowed. He looked terribly, terribly concerned. “What? What will we figure out?”
“What we have to. Sinclair, don’t you know? Didn’t you read the memo? We can do anything. Anything
.
”
“I love you,” he said, and kissed me deeply. His mouth tasted mine for a long, long time and I remembered, again, that I had to die to understand about love.
I broke the kiss, and not without regret.
“Something I’ve always wondered, Sinclair. And by ‘always’ I mean ‘for the last few hours.’”
“Ah, I await all a-tremble for your random comment.”
“If you died when you were in your late teens, why do you look like a handsome-but-weathered thirty? I can remember first meeting you and thinking you were thirtysomething, but in the past you were just a kid. Younger than Laura, even! Oooh, don’t get me started on Laura.”
“I shall not, then.” My husband wiggled his dark brows at me. Like me, and Jim Carrey, he had the gene that let him raise them independently. He hardly ever indulged, so it was hilarious when he did. Over the sound of my appreciative snort, he said, “You recall, of course, that my last week of life as a human being was somewhat stressful.”
“Dead sister, dead parents.” My throat tightened. How would I handle it if my mom . . . if BabyJon . . . bad enough to contemplate the scenario at all, but to lose them both the same
week
?
Leaving Eric Sinclair alone . . . with Tina, his family’s very own pet vampire. Small wonder he made the decision he had. And it worked. And it was a bargain. The only price he paid was his soul . . . and decades of loneliness.
My father and stepmother’s deaths were startling, but not all that traumatic. Hey, I’m not going to pretend I loved her. I mean them. We never got along; death didn’t change that. Or her. I mean them.
“That’s just . . . I don’t have the words.”
“A rare and wondrous occasion.”
“And I’m so sorry. I was sorry then and I haven’t—I didn’t have a chance to tell you—I guess I should tell you now. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know,” he said, and leaned in and kissed me above my left eyebrow. “I know the things you think, and cannot say.”
“Okay, creepy. But we’ll get to that another time. But about your past—about your sister and—and—I can’t believe you didn’t jump off a bridge.”
His eyebrows climbed higher, if that was possible. “In a manner of speaking, I did. Certainly I was dead quite soon after. But even if I hadn’t endured the worst week of my life, it was the early twentieth century, darling. We lived hard.”
“And ate hard. I can still taste your delicious live blood. I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Speaking of your bite, beloved . . .”
“Were we?”
He was licking the column of my throat. “Not . . . precisely . . .”
“Wow!”
“Really?” He looked pleased, and licked harder.
“This is the coolest room!”
He snorted, then rolled over so he was again on his back. “I had hopes I was dazzling you with my seductive skills.”
I held up a double handful of shredded T-shirt and raised my eyebrows at him. The bum didn’t even look apologetic, just pointed to some dresser drawers and went back to lolling. What is it about tearing clothing that made men all “me Tarzan” as opposed to embarrassed they showed the patience of a four-year-old?
The RV bedroom could have been an expensive Miami hotel room . . . everything was cream and chrome and glass. The carpet was
so
plush! The sofa was also cream, and beautiful . . . this was
not
a low-rent mobile home on wheels. Nor was it child-friendly. Plasma TV, mirrors everywhere. The living area, which I’d gotten a bare glimpse of while Sinclair was dragging me through it, was just as plush. Velvety cream-colored couches, small exquisite tables, swivel chairs, another TV . . . wow.
“It’s not Jessica’s private plane,” I said, digging through the drawers, which someone (Tina . . . the clothes were appropriate and neatly folded) had stuffed full of my outfits. “But I suppose I can put up with the crudeness of a seven-figure recreational vehicle.”
“Plane?”
“Mmmm.” I jerked a thumb toward a door I assumed led to the bathroom. “Shower?”
“Of course.” Sinclair bounded up from the bed like a big cat.
“I don’t need a tour,” I said, amused. Damn, he was a fine specimen of a man. Even if he was practically tripping because his slacks had clung to his ankles. I’d never seen a sexy stagger before.
“I wasn’t going to give you a
tour
,” he said, and I laughed.
I heard a lively honk and poked my fingers through the shades, making a tiny tent of the blinds. There, in the lane beside the Mansion on Wheels, were Tina and Marc . . . and Marc was driving Sinclair’s Ferrari!
“I specifically told Marc he could
not
,” Sinclair humphed, glaring out the window. Marc tooted more and zigged back and forth in the lane, waving. Tina was covering her eyes and shaking her head. “If we did not require a discreet physician who would never betray us . . .”
I was dazzled. This was the coolest week ever! Maybe. “Why’d you bring the monster RV
and
a car?”
“Oh, some silly nonsense they were bleating about not wanting to listen to our lovemaking.”
“Nick must have lost the coin toss,” I said, remembering I’d seen him at the wheel for half a second when I was hauled (“Thar she be, matey!”) aboard the vessel like booty. Or booty (get it?).
“And quite cross about it, too,” Sinclair said, and I laughed so hard I fell down.
That was okay, though. My husband kissed my boo-boos in the shower. Do I have to tell you it was shiny and luxurious and stuffed with high-end gels and shampoos?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Well, finally,” was how Jessica chose to greet me. Nice.
“I’ve been waiting all night. Literally all night. The sun’s coming up pretty soon.”
I was in no mood for discussing the hours I’d been in transit, or dead. “If you’d come with, you wouldn’t have had to wait,” I sniffed back. I was in zero mood for attitude. Too bad, because Jess had a belly full of it.
Tina and Sinclair had their heads together in one of the parlors, Marc was out parking the Ferrari in the garage, and Nick was getting the RV gassed again. I’d run right into the house to change my clothes and update my footgear. Tina had been a dear, but who packs flats with everything?
Everything?
“Could have come with? Are you kidding me? A six-hour drive and me eight months pregnant? And knowing you and the King of Dick, you were banging all the way back to St. Paul, and there’s only one bathroom in the Mystery Machine.”
“Lame,” I announced, though I was giggling. “Was your plane in the shop?”
“Plane?”
“Your private—you don’t have a private plane in this timeline, do you?”
“In
this
economy?” Jessica looked horrified.
“Okay, that makes sense, but the private plane was cool. Though the Mystery Machine was an acceptable substitute. And Nick—”
“I knew,” my (ugh!) stepmother announced from behind Jessica, “she’d be as big as a house when she got pregnant out of wedlock. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Oh, yuck!”
“Don’t be like that,” Jessica said. “You don’t have to be a jerk
all
the time.”
“You’re one to talk,” I snapped back to the Ant. I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself the way I did when I found out Garrett was alive. Betsy Taylor learns from her mistakes. Of all the people, though! Mother Teresa was dead and the Ant was alive?
“Mother Teresa’s dead, right?” I whispered to Jessica.
“It’s disgusting,” my annoyingly alive stepmother continued. She was the only person I knew who could skulk as well as she mocked. “Flaunting that belly when she should be flaunting a wedding ring. And that sweater is too small. And all wrong for her complexion, which is too dark.”
“You got knocked up to get married!” I cried, amazed, as always, at the Ant’s selective memory.
“I did not!” Jess and the Ant said in unison.
“And your complexion’s fine.”
Jess blinked. “What?”
“Disgusting,” the Ant said. She was everything a man could want: her hair was too dyed and too tall, her electric faux silk dress was too faux, her pantyhose was all wrong for open-toed sandals, her faux fingernails were too red, she wasn’t especially smart, she wasn’t especially nice, and she used sex to get what she wanted.
Not in a romantic hey-Sinclair-let’s-stay-in-bed-all-night-and-find-new-ways-to-hurt-each-other way. In a darling-let’s-leave-your-seventh-grade-daughter-behindwhen-we-go-on-vacation-so-we-can-make-Disney-World- just-for-the-two-of-us way.