“Maybe you should,” he said mildly.
That annoyed her. “Can we just get some shoes please and get out of here?”
“Of course. Though looking at your feet, Zelda isn’t going to have much you can wear. What size are you?”
“I don’t know American sizing.” Lizette went with him to the closet, because of course, she had to go wherever he went.
“You are size teeny weeny. Zelda is American-basketball-player size. But maybe these will work.” He held up a pair of heels with pink poufs on the ends.
“I’m not wearing those!” Those were stripper shoes. She did not wear her sexuality so blatantly on her feet. She just didn’t.
“How about these?”
They were flats, a big improvement, but they were bedazzled. “I am going to look ridiculous if I wear those. Everyone will be staring at me.”
“So?”
“So the point is to blend in, not to stand out. We’re vampires already, with odd habits. If we draw attention to ourselves, we’re at risk.”
Johnny scoffed at her and pulled out a pair of boots that had a mouth painted on the front. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t want to argue with you about this again. That is how I feel.” And she was right.
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“I could be killed! I don’t want to die!” What was difficult for him to comprehend about what she was saying? Lizette grabbed the boots out of his hands and tossed them back in the closet.
“Well, I want to live,” he told her emphatically. “What’s the point of being here if we have to be afraid of our own shadow? I’d rather die than live forever as a pale, boring, zero-fun version of myself slinking around in the dark.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” she insisted, though she had to admit, there was something about his statement that stung. She lashed out at him, unwilling to admit he could be right. “And I was never fun!”
Wait a minute. That wasn’t what she’d meant to say.
What she meant was that she had seen horrible things done to first her parents, then Jean-Baptiste, and it had changed her forever. She wasn’t carefree, and that wasn’t a crime. There was nothing wrong with exercising caution.
So why did she suddenly feel so terrible?
Lizette lifted her right hand and eyed the handcuffs. “We should try to get these off now.”
“You want me to yank? There’s going to be blood. And then we’ll still both have a handcuff ring around our wrists. Is that really what you want?” He eyed her. “Cause I’ll do it. If that’s what you want.”
Why did he sound so belligerent? She was the one being put in an impossibly awkward position of jeopardizing her job at the VA. Speaking of which, she needed to call Dieter and see if he had any idea what had happened the evening before. She was torn between wanting answers and not wanting Dieter to know anything out of the ordinary had happened.
“Yes, that’s what I want.” Blood would wash off, and unattached to Johnny she could at least go back to her hotel and shower off the remnants of the tawdry whore that seemed to be clinging to her. Every time she shifted, she smelled a man’s cologne wafting off her blouse and other areas.
Johnny lifted his hand and then dropped it again. “Shit. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” Once again, Lizette found herself among the many women who were mystified by men.
“I can’t hurt you. I just can’t.”
“I’m asking you to.” Yes, it would hurt, but she was an aging vampire, and would heal fairly rapidly. She wasn’t looking forward to the pain, but of course, she would live. “It will be easier to move around.”
“Sorry.” Johnny bit his fingernail, a habit she found both disgusting and endearing. “I don’t want to see you bleed. It’s not right. We’ll find another way.”
Suddenly aware of how close they were standing, Lizette averted her gaze. It was far too easy to stare at him, far too easy to imagine the power he would have in his thighs as he rose over a woman. Over her. These weren’t things she thought about particularly often, but now that she was almost positive she had slept with him, she couldn’t keep her mind from straying in that direction. It was embarrassing, yes, to think that she had done whatever it was she had done, when she didn’t know him at all, and was supposed to be in New Orleans in an official capacity, but at the same time, it was even more upsetting to think that if she had done such things, she couldn’t even remember them. Shouldn’t she at least be afforded the right to have her curiosity appeased? It had been nearly fifty years since she had taken a lover, and that had been something of a letdown.
Her body seemed pleased to have been reawakened the night before, and she found herself wanting to touch his arm, his chest, wanting to slide her tongue across his bottom lip. It was disconcerting.
“That’s very gentlemanly of you,” she told him, because it was. There was something pleasing about his discomfit with causing her pain.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of that before, but I suppose you might actually be right. Maybe I’m improving.” He grinned. “Now let’s find a shoe that fits, shall we? Or at least something that isn’t going to fall off of you.”
What they settled on were little stretchy slippers that women were supposed to put on when their feet hurt from wearing high heels. Because of their stretchy nature, they weren’t as huge as other options would have been, and they were black, which was a relief to Lizette. It was not a relief that Johnny had to help her put them on, lifting her leg up with his hand, his flesh cool and smooth on her calf as he helped guide the slipper. Lizette held on to his shoulders and tried not to think about her body or his body or any bodies, just on getting her foot into the fabric. Except that she was acutely aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties, and that vampires had excellent powers of scent. If she could smell his cologne on her, what else could he smell? Besides, it was not her imagination that his hand was lingering.
He glanced up at her, his black eyes intense. “Do you think something happened between us last night?” he asked her.
So to the point. Lizette would have blushed if she had been able to, and reminded herself that Johnny had lived in America for a long time. He wasn’t going to dance around a topic for ages with flowery expressions like European men. Clearing the air was definitely advisable. “Well,” she told him, lowering her newly slippered foot to the floor. “I would say that there are indications that something of a sexual nature occurred.”