His knee came up through the mound of bubbles, a surprising glimpse of bare wet skin. He turned his head and opened his eyes. The midnight blue of his eyes seemed darker. Maybe it was the way the water made his hair seem heavier, blacker.
I took a shallow breath and said, "Here are the towels."
"Could you place them here, please?" He gestured with that one half-suspended hand.
"Here" was the closed top of the toilet, which was close enough to the tub for grabbing. "I'll, put them on the edge of the sink."
"I'll drip water all over the floor getting them from there," he said. His voice was neutral, no vampiric tricks, almost no tone at all.
He was right, and I was being silly. He wouldn't grab me and ravish me. If that'd been the plan, he could have done that years ago.
I placed the towels on the stool, eyes studiously anywhere but the tub.
"You must have questions about tonight," he said.
I glanced at him. The water on his naked torso caught the light like quicksilver. Suds clung to his chest, just under one nipple. I had a horrible urge to brush off the bubbles. I stepped back until I was standing by the far wall.
"It's not like you to offer answers," I said.
"I am feeling generous tonight." His voice had that quality that voices get when they are edging towards sleep.
"If you weren't naked in a tub of bubble bath, would you be offering to answer questions?"
He smiled then, a quick, familiar expression. "Perhaps not, but if I must answer your ravenous curiosity, isn't it more fun this way?"
"Fun for whom?"
"Both of us, if you would only admit it."
That got a smile from me, and I didn't want to smile. I didn't want to be enjoying watching him all soapy and wet. I wanted to be afraid of him, and I was, but I also wanted him. Wanted to run my hands down his wet flesh, wanted to touch what lay under those bubbles. I didn't want intercourse. I couldn't imagine that with him, but I wanted to do a little exploring. I hated that. He was a corpse; surely what I'd seen tonight convinced me of that.
"You're frowning, ma petite; why?"
"I asked you if the two rotting vampires were illusion, you said no. I asked if your form was real, you said yes. Both forms are real, you said."
"That is true," he said.
"Are you a rotting corpse?"
He settled lower in the warm, soapy water, drawing his arms into it, until only his head showed above the surface of the water. "That is not one of my forms."
"That isn't an answer."
He raised a pale hand from the water, a handful of bubbles cupped like a snowball. "There are different vampiric abilities, ma petite; you know that."
"What's that have to do with it?"
He raised his other hand and began to play with the bubbles, trailing them from hand to hand. "Janos and his two female companions are a different type of vampire than I am. Than most of us are. They are much rarer. If you ever see me as a rotted corpse, I will be well and truly dead. They can rot and reform, and it makes them much harder to kill. The only true surety is fire."
"Volunteering an awful lot of information, aren't you?"
He lowered his hands in the water, washing the soap away. He sat up a little straighter; suds clung to his body. "Perhaps I am afraid you will think that what happened with Jason would happen with us."
"We will never test that theory," I said.
"You sound so sure of that," he said. "Your lust perfumes the air, and yet you truly believe that we will never make love. How can you want me almost as much as I want you, yet be sure we will never know each other's bodies?"
I wasn't sure I had an answer for that one. I slid down the wall and sat with my knees drawn up to my chest. The pocket with the gun in it clunked against the wall. I moved the gun to a better position and said, "We just won't, Jean-Claude, not ever. I just can't." A part of me regretted that, but only part.
"Why, ma petite?"
"Sex is about trust. I'd have to trust someone implicitly to have sex with them. I don't trust you."
He stared at me with his blue, blue eyes, looking all scrumptious and wet. "You mean that, don't you?"
I nodded. "Yeah, I do."
"I do not understand you, ma petite. I try, but still I do not."
"You're pretty much a riddle to me, too. If that's any comfort."
"It isn't. If you were a woman who had casual lusts, we would have been in bed long ago." He sighed and sat up even straighter in the water so it hit him just above the waist. "Of course, if you were a woman of casual appetites, I don't think I would love you."
"You enjoy the chase, the challenge," I said.