Chapter 6 #3
The way she looked at him quickly, gauging his reaction only to dart away, made him wonder how much of that last type she was leaving out.
Pippa’s short speech seemed to have exhausted her, and he felt a little guilty for pressing. But he was almost done, and he didn’t enjoy the idea of closing a wound on her if she was unconscious.
One stitch away from the end, Pippa exhaled heavily and slumped against the countertop.
“Hey,” Maxim said, pinching her knee until she started and opened her eyes. “I need you to stay awake. Tell me more.”
“About . . . what?”
“Magic exists, and demons. What about werewolves? They real?”
“Nah. No one turns into a . . . a big, hairy dog thing with teeth. Or if they do, they don’t tell me about it.”
“What else? Zombies? Ghosts? Mummies?”
“Are you just going through costumes you saw last Halloween?”
“Of course not. I haven’t asked you if sexy pirates exist, have I?”
“True.” Some of the pain had left her face, and she was smiling. A tiny smile, barely there, but he counted it as improvement.
“What about vampires?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. Dated a few, actually.”
As he knotted the string and snipped off the extra, Maxim sent her an unamused look beneath his eyebrows.
She showed no sign that she’d been joking.
“You dated vampires?” Maxim said, baffled. “But they’re evil. They’re demons. Killers.”
Pippa rolled her eyes. “I’m sure every one of your hook-ups has been well-thought-out and free of regrets.”
He pinched his lips together. “Are you implying I fuck murderers?”
“No,” she said slowly, “I’m implying that you might have fucked someone who made a few bad choices in their past.”
“No one I’ve slept with has killed people.”
“That you know of.”
Maxim exhaled sharply. “I’d like to think I have higher standards than that.” As soon as he spoke, he cursed himself for how rude he’d sounded.
“Oh, you can take your judgmental attitude and shove it,” Pippa said, her posture stiffening and her skin flushing.
“They’re not as monstrous as you think. Don’t look at me like that.
I’m serious.” She grabbed a washcloth from a neat stack by the sink and scrubbed at her hands.
“Everyone makes mistakes, and if you live several lifetimes, you’ve just made that many more and have that much longer to feel guilty about them. ”
“Ah,” Maxim said. Not the most eloquent way to express both understanding and contrition, and since he couldn’t bring himself to say, “I’m sorry for assuming bloodsucking monsters aren’t as bad as they sound,” he settled for something else.
“So what are they like, if they’re not monstrous?”
Pippa threw the washcloth into a corner. “Arrogant as fuck.” A low laugh rolled out of her. “Imagine having two hundred years of confidence with no reflection to deflate it.” She shook her head. “Exhausting.”
“Wow. I feel betrayed by the media.”
“‘Sexy’ sells better than ‘douchebag,’ I guess.”
He set the needle on the counter and grabbed a washcloth from the pile. The hot water knob squeaked as he turned it.
If Pippa wondered why he felt the need to wipe off her leg, she didn’t say anything, and just watched him run the cloth over her skin.
He didn’t remember the last time he’d bathed someone; it was distractingly intimate, even with the coppery bite of blood in the air strong enough in the air to taste at the back of his mouth.
Maybe this was part of him repaying her.
Maybe he needed to apologize for judging her previous partners. Maybe he just wanted to do it.
Caretaking, one therapist had said to him years ago, was tending to another person in order to make yourself feel better.
He needed that right now. Yesterday, he’d discovered that demons were real and more horrible than he’d ever expected; today, he discovered that some of them were dateable.
If gaining some sense of control and comfort over his life meant that he processed recent events with bare legs and a damp washcloth, then fine, sure, better that than some of his previous forms of self-soothing.
Maxim could hear Pippa’s soft breathing over his head and the light drip of the faucet he hadn’t completely turned off.
Her sweater’s wide neck dipped down in a shallow “V” and had shifted to one side.
He found himself staring at the smooth skin along her collarbones, the gentle curve of her shoulder.
As the washcloth skimmed her hip, the air grew warm against his neck.
It was pure insanity to become aroused in a moment like this, so instead of veering down that path, he began to talk.
“I had an ex who was really into them,” he said.
“Into what?”
“Vampires.”
“Ah.”
“I mean, not the real ones. The fictional kind. Had hundreds of books on the shelf, every vampire movie, more than one Queen of the Damned shirt.”
Pippa huffed a laugh. “She sounds fun.”
“He,” Maxim corrected.
“Oh, uh, sorry. I didn’t— Sorry. I didn’t mean to assume your . . . hrm.”
She’d gone bright pink and was worrying her bottom lip, staring at the towel rack behind Maxim as if it had begun a fascinating conversation.
Her embarrassment was intriguing, so much so that he didn’t want to leave the bathroom with her thinking he wasn’t interested in her. That she wasn’t his type.
It came upon Maxim suddenly that, yes, he was indeed very interested in Pippa Beverly. She was a mystery wrapped in a slouchy sweater; an intriguing bundle of frizzy hair, pretty lips, stubbornness, and the power to char him into oblivion. And fuck, the combination was just . . .
Hot.
“You could always ask me,” he said in a low murmur.
Pippa caught his gaze and swallowed, the sound audible over the rasp of the washcloth. “So who do you, uh . . . go for?”
He could have spoken then about how long it had taken him to realize who he was attracted to, how strange it had felt to be the only one in his friend group who’d had a crush on both the Prom Queen and the Homecoming King.
He could have spoken about how great New York had been for that—in a city so large and diverse, no one ever questioned who he went home with, not even the old woman who lived in the apartment next to his.
She smelled like cats and mothballs and would give each of his dates an approving nod after asking, “They being nice to you?”
He didn’t want to explain; he wanted to continue flirting. He wanted to stretch this moment with the washcloth lingering on her skin and her pulse a barely visible flutter at the hollow of her neck.
So instead, Maxim didn’t bother to hold back his smirk as he said, “I go for humans.”
“Wow.” Pippa scoffed. “You fuck a few vampires and suddenly everyone’s a critic.”
Maxim tried not to analyze her expression too much. She looked pleased, though. Maybe a bit relieved.
“They’re demons, aren’t they?” he said.
Her look turned mischievous. “Yeah, but they’re great at oral.”
Maxim choked. “Sounds like a scene from a horror movie.” Without rising from his position by her knees, he tossed the washcloth into the sink, then snapped off the gloves.
“No, no,” she said, holding up a finger. “See, if they’ve been around long enough to learn the restraint to not drain your blood, that means they’ve been around long enough to get really good at giving head.”
Maxim forced out a considering “Hm,” instantly aware of how close he was to Pippa.
His throat felt much too tight. He tugged at his tie only to remember he’d already loosened it.
Oh, it was really quite wrong of him to imagine something or someone giving Pippa oral.
How would she respond? What did she like?
He gathered those thoughts close before they could fully unfurl.
Pippa snickered, and for a panicked second, he wondered if she had the ability to read his mind.
“Something funny?” he said in a calm voice he entirely didn’t feel.
“Queen of the Damned,” she said. “I just got that.”
He laughed, more out of relief than humor.
Then Pippa’s smile fell, her eyes widened, and she gasped. In pain? In shock? Maxim couldn’t tell. Her hands fell to her sides as if all the strength had been sapped from them.
“What’s wrong?” Had he fucked up the stitching? Was her leg becoming infected? Could that even happen so quickly? “What can I—”
Her whisper cut through his question.
“It’s back.”