The front doorbell clanked again, but I wasn’t a good enough person to walk out of here now without saying something. “You going to be around tonight for dinner, Ivy?” I asked, cocking my hip. Maybe it was mean, but I was mean.
Ivy took a bite of her muffin, crossing her legs and leaning forward. “I’ll be in and out,” she said, wiping the corner of her mouth with a pinkie. “But I’ll be here about midnight.”
“Okay,” I said lightly. “I’ll see you later.” I beamed at Skimmer, now sitting primly but obviously torn between seething and sulking. “’Bye, Skimmer. Thanks for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome.”
Translation: Choke on it, bitch.
The doorbell rang a third time, and I hustled down the hallway, my good mood restored. “Coming!” I shouted, fussing with my hair. I looked okay. It was only a bunch of teenagers.
I plucked Jenks’s aviator jacket from the post in the foyer and shrugged into it just for looks. The coat was a remnant from his stint at being people-size. I’d gotten his jacket, Ivy had gotten his silk robe, and we’d thrown out his two dozen toothbrushes. Shoving the door open, I found Kisten waiting, his Corvette at the curb. He didn’t work much until after sunset, and his usual trendy suit had been replaced with jeans and a black T-shirt, tucked in to show off his waist. Smiling with his mouth closed to hide his sharp canines, he rocked from heel to toe in his boots with his fingers jammed in his front pockets, tossing his dyed-blond hair out of his blue eyes with a practiced motion that said he was most assuredly “all that.” What made it work was that he was.
“You look good,” I said, my free hand slipping between his trim waist and his arm, using him for balance as I leaned up and in for an early-afternoon kiss hello right there at the threshold.
Eyes closing, I breathed deeply as his lips met mine, intentionally bringing in the scent of leather and the incense that clung to vampires as if it were a second skin. He was like a drug, throwing off pheromones to relax and soothe potential blood sources. We weren’t sharing blood, but who was I not to take advantage of a thousand years of evolution?
“You look dirty,” he said when our lips parted. I fell back to my heels, my smile growing to meet his when he added, “I like dirty. You’ve been in the garden.” Eyebrows rising, he tugged me back into him, angling us into the darker foyer. “Am I early?” he said, the richness of his voice under my ear sending a shiver through me.
“Yes, thank God,” I replied, enjoying the mild rush. I liked kissing vampires in the dark. The only thing better was being in an elevator descending to certain death.
I was blocking his way into the sanctuary, and when he realized I wasn’t going to invite him in, his grip on my upper arms hesitated. “Your class isn’t until one-thirty. You have time to take a shower,” he said, clearly wanting to know why I was rushing out the door.
Maybe if you help me, I thought wickedly, unable to stop my grin. He caught my look, and as a spark of titillation zinged through me, his nostrils widened to take in my mood. He couldn’t hear my thought, but he could read my pulse, my temperature, and considering the randy look I knew I had, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was on my mind.
His fingers tightened, and from the hallway came Ivy’s voice: “Hi, Kist.”
Not dropping his gaze, Kisten answered, “Morning, love,” not bothering to take out the heat rebounding between us.
She snorted, the soft sound of her bathroom door closing a clear indication that she was all right with the relationship Kisten and I had, despite their old boyfriend/girlfriend status. If he touched my blood, things would get nasty, which was why Kisten wore caps on his teeth when we slept together. But if I was going to be sharing my body with someone other than Ivy, she’d rather it be with Kisten. And that’s…where we were.
Ivy and Kisten’s relationship was more platonic these days, with a little blood thrown in to keep things close. Our situation had become a balancing act since she had tasted my blood and swore never to touch it again, but she didn’t want Kisten touching it either, unable to give up the hope we could find a way to make it work, even as she denied it was possible. Defying his usual submissive role, Kisten had told Ivy he’d risk it if I succumbed to temptation and let him break my skin. But until then, we could all pretend that everything was normal. Or whatever passed for normal these days.
“Let’s just go?” I said, my ardor cooling at the reminder that this screwed-up situation would hold steady as long as the status quo didn’t change.