Ava pressed her tongue into the roof of her mouth, then left the room in a huff. In the kitchen, she discovered her refrigerator had been stocked, and was nearly bursting with food and drinks. Her cabinets, too. And on the counter was a bowel of butterscotch candy. Real candy, not the fake stuff she could afford.
McKell’s doing, she was sure. Forget lazy. He was diabolically genius. Rather than fill a glass with ice water to dump on him, she sucked on a candy—like sex in her mouth, man—and filled a glass with water, minus the ice.
She’d already chewed and swallowed the candy by the time she reached the bedroom, glass in hand. A girl couldn’t teach her man a lesson under those circumstances. So, before she did any dumping, she returned to the kitchen, unwrapped a second morsel, chewed, swallowed, unwrapped another, then finally skipped back to McKell, humming under her breath.
He still lay on his belly, that pillow over his head, the rest of him completely bare. Impervious to cold? She’d soon find out. She emptied the glass directly over his shoulders, and he jumped up sputtering.
No goose bumps, but definite anger. “What was that for?” he demanded. Droplets splashed onto his stomach.
She arched a brow, praying she appeared stern rather than sated from her candy—and awed by the sheer beauty of him. “Oh, good. You’re up. We can go to work now.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, his nostrils flaring with his every inhalation. Then his pupils expanded, and he grinned slowly. “You discovered the butterscotch.”
Mmm, butterscotch. Would it ruin her waistline if she had one—fifty—more?
“Nap time is over, yes,” he said with a husky edge, “but I believe the next item on my list was sex. And after all, you made me wet, so now it’s my turn to return the favor.”
A tempting proposal wrapped in such a wicked package. One thing she knew: where he was concerned, she was always wet. Not that she’d admit it. Until later. “We’re leaving in five minutes whether you’re dressed or not. The car’s been waiting for a while already.”
“The car or the driver?”
“The car. There’s no driver.”
That kept him quiet for a minute, then he shook his head. “The car won’t mind. Besides, I can love you and dress in four.”
She had to turn away from him to hide her smile—and her sudden surge of panic. Love. The word beat through her brain, both a paradise and a churning storm. “I’ll, uh, be waiting in the living room.” With that, she stomped out of the bedroom and jabbed the wall console to close the door. So she wouldn’t coax herself into returning. Or peeking.
Resisting, though, became harder and harder with every minute that passed. Didn’t help that Hellina stared at her the entire time, fangs protruding past her bottom lip, sharp, glistening. McKell really had turned her. Un-freaking-believable.
When he finally deigned to join her, he was clean and smelled divine. Like he’d slathered himself in the butterscotch bodywash. Maybe he had. Her mouth watered for another taste of him. He also wore clothing she’d never seen him don before. Clothing that hadn’t been in his bag. A real cotton T-shirt, too expensive for someone who made a pittance like her. Soft-looking black slacks that fit him perfectly, as if tailored exclusively for his magnificent body. Leather boots.
Holy Lord, he took her breath away.
“Did you rob a bank?” At the moment, they didn’t look like they belonged together. They were opposites. Her, the poor good girl. Him, the rich bad boy. To his credit, he didn’t seem to notice the difference. He eyed her as if she had never looked lovelier, as if she was already naked and he was already pumping inside her.
“A bank? No. I robbed Devyn Targon.” As he spoke, he petted Hellina behind the ears, the adoring dog licking his free hand. A domestic sight, one that had Ava’s chest clenching. “Perhaps robbed is the wrong word. He owed me.”
“And you didn’t make him buy me clothes like yours?” she demanded, hands on her hips. Had he wanted the scale to be off?
“No. That’s my job. Which I can now do.” He could have been banging his chest, so proud did he sound. “He gave me money, too.”
Wait. Backtracking. “So you’ll be buying me stuff with his money?”
“Yes.”
“But he wasn’t allowed to buy me anything?”
“Right.” Fury suddenly detonated in his expression, and he stiffened, as if ready to attack. “Do you want him to buy you something?”
Men. “No. I just don’t want to look like your poor girlfriend.” Who was using him.
The fury faded, the danger passed. “Haven’t you realized yet? No one will ever look good enough for you.” A sultry promise, seductively delivered. “How can they? You’re so far above the rest of us, we can never hope to compare.”
The clenching in her chest migrated to her lungs, building so much pressure that tears actually beaded in her eyes. Freaking tears. No one had ever complimented her like that before. She spun away from him, not wanting him to see. “We’ll, uh, discuss this later. Right now, we need to leave.”
“All right. Later. But we will discuss it.” He paused. “Hellina, stay,” he said, then strode to the door, bypassing Ava and thankfully not looking back. He pressed the correct code, and the entrance opened. “So what would you have bought yourself?”
She wiped her face and squared her shoulders, under control by the time she passed him. “A kilt for you.”
“I don’t understand,” he said as they trekked out of the building and into the car. “I thought you wanted something for yourself.”
“That’s something else for us to discuss later.” The sun had disappeared, the moon taking its place, but unlike all the other nights of their association, this one was not cool and dry. Rain pounded. Dirty rain, probably acid, and enough to sting the skin.
During the drive, he told her the True Story of Hellina Tremain-McKell, How I Became a Real Vampire, and she could only shake her head in wonder. At herself! She should have known he would experiment. He wasn’t the kind of man who took things at face value. He had to see for himself.
“So how do you feel?” she asked. “About being able to change, well, anything and anyone?”
He stared up at the roof, at the panel revealing the constant sledgehammer of rain. “Relieved, tortured, confused. Why am I able to do so, yet no one else can?”