The Dodgers game had been a welcome distraction for both of them, but Josef couldn't help but notice how Beth had gotten quiet all of a sudden once they'd reached the car. Not another word had been spoken about their deal since Josef had accepted, and he knew it was preying on her mind now.
"You aren't having second thoughts are you, Beth?" Josef asked quietly. He'd seen women get cold feet once the lust had settled.
"What? No, it's just that…" Beth just shook her head and made no further effort to continue.
"You're worried Mick will say no."
"Yeah," she said, sounding defeated before the battle had even begun.
"You're probably right. You know, you could always remind him of that time that Coraline tied him to the bed while she and I…"
Beth sat bolt upright in her seat. "Oh my God, too much information, Josef. Just stop there. Please." Beth begged him with a completely horrified look on her face, and Josef was thoroughly enjoying the effect that image had on her. When it came to this gorgeous human reporter, Josef just couldn't help but push his advantage; it was his nature, and Beth's too now that he thought of it.
"Oh, I see. You're more the vanilla type then?"
"Why… you…" She was flustered. Over him.
"Old fashioned missionary position then?"
"I am not having this conversation with you."
"Really? If all goes well in a few nights you will be doing this conversation with me," he said smugly, all the while wishing his jeans weren't so tight. "So sue me if I'm trying to get an idea of what you want ahead of time. Or were you planning on being the one doing the tying up?" Josef raised an eyebrow as if he hadn't considered that possibility before and was exploring it mentally.
"Just stop, Josef, please."
He laughed quietly for a few seconds, but when Beth didn't join him he changed his tone. "In all seriousness Beth, if you're having second thoughts, it's ok. I won't tell Mick you even brought it up and I'll let you two go back to making eyes at each other in peace." The smirk crept back onto Josef's face unbidden. "Well, come to think of it, not really in peace, but I won't tell him about the ménage a trois if you don't want me to."
"I never should have brought it up. There's no way Mick is going to agree. He may not even want to sleep with me at all… or he'd have been feeding from me. That's what you said, right?" Josef watched as she dug herself deeper into the emotional hole with this one.
"Stop, Beth, please. Mick loves you, he's incredibly attracted to you and has been for years, and he's never said a word to me that would make me believe anything other than the fact that he's scared to death of hurting you. It would kill him for good." This was not appearing to make Beth feel any better, and they had pulled up outside of her building. "Once it became clear that you had similar feelings for Mick, I offered him several of my freshies who had expressed an attraction to him. Not just to feed from, but sort of a dress-rehearsal if you will, for the main event with you two. He seriously considered it, Beth, only because he wants you, but in the end he declined because he didn't want to be 'unfaithful' to you. For the last twenty years he's refused to drink fresh blood that isn't flowing out of someone that deserves their death at his hands."
There were tears in Beth's eyes when she looked up at him. "Josef, what happened twenty years ago that made him quit drinking fresh blood? I'm no expert, but you make it look and feel so natural I just don't understand."
Josef sighed and decided this conversation wasn't going to be quick. He got out and opened Beth's door for her, walking her slowly up to her apartment as he talked. "Because Mick isn't much into admitting to himself that he's no longer human. If he drinks blood from a glass, why is that so much different than any beverage a human consumes? He wants to trick himself into making it not so, but if he wants to be closer to you physically, he's going to have to deal with the elephant in the room."
"But what happened, Josef? Why twenty years ago? The way you said it made it seem like he was drinking from… freshies… before then." Beth unlocked her door and went to get a glass of water while Josef sat down on the couch.
"You mean, other than you?"
"Yes, other than me."
"Fine. But I want you to remember that you were the one who asked." He paused to let Beth reconsider, but when she just stared at him from curled up in the chair across from him, he went on. "After he thought Coraline was dead by his hand, he went into a really deep depression. As bad as the relationship was for both of them, Mick did love her, and he was having problems reconciling this with the knowledge that she deserved what she got. At one point he went on a binge with the blood. He killed a freshie. Drained her dry. Though thankfully, not one of mine. It happens to all vamps sooner or later, usually sooner, and it was I think a testament to how much Coraline loved him that she never let him kill while he was with her because she must have known what it would do to him. So since that time he won't drink from willing humans, only those he's going to kill. I don't know how many 'bad guys' he's drained since then but I think his entire sense of feeding from humans is intertwined with killing and violence and guilt. Not necessarily a good combination for sex with someone he loves."
It took Beth a while to absorb the implications of what Josef said. "This is bad," was all that she could manage. She sat hugging her knees, resting her head down on them.
"You think so? I've been trying to snap him out of it since I realized it wasn't just a little phase he was going through. Honestly, half the reason he may hate what he is so much is that he's missing out on the best part of being a vamp." Josef licked his lips at the thought of how much he enjoyed his own life, and decided to get up and pace for the rest of the conversation. It helped him think.
"Josef, can I ask you something else?" Beth was quietly getting more upset. This was not going the way Josef had thought it would.
"The last time I accidentally drained a freshie as two hundred years ago. I've had quite a bit longer than Mick to work on my… control. Does that answer your question?"
"Ah, good to know, but not what I was asking. I figured you weren't too worried about taking too much blood from me yourself or you wouldn't have agreed to, um,"
Josef stopped his pacing behind Beth's chair and leaned down to whisper in her ear, his breath brushing against her hair but he never got close enough to actually touch her. "…to take you to bed and make love to you for hours? Yeah, I'm not in a hurry to end up dead for good at Mick's hand. With a few hors d'oeurves I'll be quite able to savor the main course without any ill effects to you. And I'm hoping you'll be dessert too, if you aren't too exhausted from coming so much." Then he backed away before she could react and resumed his loop around Beth's living room, not bothering to look at her reaction. He could feel it in her blood.
She was having trouble looking at Josef now, because he knew she felt the pull between them. She hugged her knees tighter and just closed her eyes to ask her next question since the image conjured up in her mind by Josef's comments was trying to project itself onto her reality.
"What happens when Mick says no to the idea of the three of us. Is there a Plan B?"
"Of course there is, Beth. I always have a backup plan, but I think you underestimate my powers of persuasion once I set my mind to something. I honestly haven't been trying hard enough with Mick in recent years, but for you, I'll change that."
Letting out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding, Beth looked somewhat relieved. "Can he, I mean, is his bite, like yours? Or is that just you?"
"Ah, my dear, how tempting it is to tell you it is something only I can do for you. If you weren't in love with my best friend, I'd do just that." He was standing across from her, not close enough to touch. "Mick and most other vamps can bring pleasure with their bites when they want to. Mick will certainly want to, and I doubt he's forgotten how."
Beth looked up at him briefly, like she wanted to ask something else, but she just went back to looking at her knees. Josef studied her a moment before continuing, "No, you don't have to worry about giving birth to a half-vampire child, or any child out of this experience. Vamps can't carry any diseases other than vampirism. You will not become a vampire from exposure to certain non-blood bodily fluids. Other than the feeding and the biting and the need to be careful with your fragile but gorgeous body, sex is pretty much the same as between humans, if a bit more adventurous. I'll make sure Mick is well fed on fresh blood so he won't be likely to take too much from you. I will also not arrive in your bed without having fed well just before. Mick will confirm for me by demonstration that he remembers how to make his bite worth the price of admission before he feeds from you. Say you want us to stop and we will, I'll make sure of it. I enjoy women who enjoy sex, so if there's something you want more of, or anything you've ever been afraid to ask your human lovers for, just beg me and I might give it to you."
She was now staring at him in complete surprise, both for how he managed to anticipate most of her questions, but how he was also taking it farther than she would ever have asked. His comfort level with what they had agreed to do was far beyond her own. Beth couldn't even believe she'd had the nerve to ask him in the first place.
Josef continued after a short pause to let her process the answers to the questions she had wanted to ask him. "It's okay to ask me to bite you. I have every intention of doing so, and I do not want you to be embarrassed about your needs in that or any other regard. Mick may have a complex about being a vampire, but I do not." He walked closer to where she was sitting and rested his palm against the side of her cheek and gently turned her face up towards his. "You have my word I will keep you safe. And I'm not doing this for Mick. I'm coming to your bed because you asked me to." A brief soft kiss on her lips was all that she knew before Josef was suddenly no longer in her apartment.