Skin Trade(60)

“You really think he’d kill you for sleeping with me?”

“He might, and might is good enough from him.”

“So, if I just tell you how beautiful you are, then we can go back to work?”

“If you mean it,” he said, and sounded offended.

“You know, this is usually a girl problem.”

“I’m vain, so sue me.”

I smiled, and it was my turn to hold my hands up. I took a deep breath and made myself look at Bernardo. I started at his face. His eyes were that dark solid brown, almost black, darker even than mine. The hair was shiny and black, and I knew it had blue highlights in the right light. The skin was that nice even dark that only certain genetics can give you. But it was the curve of those perfect cheekbones, the line of that nose that plastic surgeons only gave movie stars after lots of money changed hands, the lips full and wide, kissable. His neck was long and smooth, and I could see his pulse in the side of his neck like something that needed kissing. The broad shoulders under his white shirt were nice, and the chest looked like he’d been hitting the gym; so did the arms. My gaze slid to the slimness of his waist, and then the hips. I let myself linger, and had to admit to myself that the bulge in his pants was distractingly bulgy. I knew that the bulge got bigger because I’d seen him nude once. I knew he was actually so well endowed that even I might find it a bit much, and I didn’t say that about most men.

I forced myself to keep going down the muscular legs in their jeans, to the boots. I came back up to his eyes.

“You’re blushing,” he said, but he was smiling.

“I was remembering that time in the bar.”

He grinned wider, obviously pleased. “Thinking about seeing me naked.”

The blush that had been fading flushed back to life. I nodded and started walking. “Happy now?” I asked.

“Very,” he said, in a voice that showed it. He glided beside me, to the stares of every woman we passed, and some of the men. I would have thought they might be looking at me, but Bernardo was a treat both coming and going. I’m used to being the plain Jane when it comes to the men in my life. If it had bothered me to be less pretty than a man, I could never have dated Jean-Claude… or Asher… or Micah… or Richard, or Nathaniel. Hell, Bernardo made me feel right at home.





21




I APOLOGIZED TO Dr. Memphis and got the name of Sherman’s high priestess. She was in the phone book. We hit the heat outside, sunglasses sliding over our eyes like some sort of science fiction shield. The gesture was already automatic, and I hadn’t been in town a day.

There was music playing, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was my phone. It was playing “I’m Not in Love,” by 10cc, but it was not a ring tone I’d chosen. I was really going to have to learn to do my own ring tones. Nathaniel’s sense of humor was beginning to get on my nerves.

I hit the button and said, “What’s with the choice of songs, Nathaniel?”

“It is not your pussycat, ma petite,” and just like that, I was standing in the Vegas heat talking to the Master Vampire of St. Louis and my main squeeze. He never called me when I was working with the police unless something really bad had happened.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. My pulse was suddenly in my throat.

Bernardo looked at me, and I waved a hand, shaking my head, moving toward Edward and Olaf by the car.

“Why should anything be wrong, ma petite?” But his voice held anger, which it didn’t usually do. He could say nothing was wrong, but his voice said otherwise, and since he could make his voice as empty of emotion as a blank wall, either he wanted me to know he was angry, or he was so pissed that he couldn’t hide it. He was more than four hundred years old; you learned to hide a lot of emotion in that much time. So what had I done to piss him off? Or what had someone else done?

I suddenly wanted privacy for the call. So I got in the SUV and the men stood out in the heat. I offered to do it the other way around, but Edward had insisted, and when he insists there’s usually a reason for it. I’ve learned not to argue when he insists; we all live longer.

I turned on the air-conditioning and got comfortable while the three men seemed to be talking, quietly but intensely. Hmm.

“Ma petite, I wake and find you far away.”

“I’m not happy about it either,” I said. I thought about him, and that was enough to see him lying in our bed, the sheets draped carelessly across his body, one long leg clear of the sheets. One hand held the phone, but the other was playing idly along Asher’s back. He would be dead to the world for hours yet, but it never bothered Jean-Claude to touch another vampire when they were still “dead.” I found it disturbing. Maybe I’d been at one too many crime scenes.