Harvest -- IV
He has no doubt, God help him, that in her current state she would be more than willing to share the intimate details of their life – as if this evening hasn't stretched his comfort zone enough already. He really, really, doesn't want know the ins and outs - or lack of, so to speak - of their relationship, and suspects that in the morning, when whatever it is she has taken has worn off, any further disclosure now might shame her, give her cause to escalate the undeclared war in which they've been engaged since her unrelished occupancy of his mansion.
Josef glanced down at Beth and sighed. He is beginning to think that, if given the choice, he would gladly have traded Mick, taken the option of waltzing into Chateau DuVall himself to rescue Coraline, rather than having to play Daddy and wrestle the intricacies of Beth's too-boisterous humanity up-close-and-personal like this.
Thanks, Mick, yeah, thanks a lot for that buddy.
And thinking of Mick -- Josef is incredulous -- Has his fledgling completely lost his mind? The boy is more damaged by his human moral code than Josef had believed. What can he possibly be thinking? This woman burns for him, and he runs halfway across the world for a wife who only seems to want him when he's finally found someone else! Josef shakes his head in disbelief.
Before tonight, after all the shenanigans she has pulled in his home, his haven, Josef would gladly have delivered Beth's cold, dead body personally to the cleaners if the opportunity had arisen.
My condolences, Mick. That open manhole just came out of nowhere.
Or even - as an image floods his mind for the umpteenth time of his hands around her pretty little neck -
I swear we were only roughhousing over the TV remote, Mick. You know how fragile humans are.
Despite fulfilling his obligations to Mick with the fastidiousness he is famous for, he has never really warmed to the difficult girl their friendship has foisted upon him. But he's seen her now, really seen her, and she's like him, all brass and armour over tender vulnerability and he won't forget it.
And while she is pining here, speaking of deeply private matters to a man she has barely acknowledged for the last two months, Mick may well be making love to the woman who has had him by the balls for decades. He snorts. Coraline is almost as old as Josef himself, and is more than wily enough to take care of herself.
Josef has seen this irrational behaviour about Coraline from Mick many times; only this time it fills him with a wintry fury. Mick has been granted the privilege of finding a love Josef waited over four hundred years for, is still waiting for, and he's squandering it, as if this soul deep connection to another were a product one could shop for on a supermarket shelf. He shakes his head and wonders for a moment whether having Mick horse-whipped on his return might knock some sense into him.
A small sigh disturbs his reverie and Josef looks down at the soft blonde hair falling over his sleeve. Her big blue eyes blink up at him, the pink flush of emotion on her cheeks making her more beautiful than any makeup she might apply ever will. Her luscious beauty cries out to be swallowed whole, yet Mick won't even nibble at the edges.
Fortunately, Josef has managed to forestall any further conversation about the lunacy of his brother's sexual policy by insisting they leave the club before sunrise. For the first time he is grateful that she is intoxicated, for she is more compliant and hasn't yet pushed him to comment on her disclosure.
She will though. She will.
But for now she is curled up against him in the limousine in the attitude of a small child held close by a trusted relative. The drug has allowed her to seek emotional intimacy in the arms of the vampire she despises, because physical intimacy has been denied to her in the arms of the one she loves.
He had intended to chastise her about the substance use tomorrow, but now he thinks not, for he, too, knows the torment of craving the touch of a beloved that never comes. He, too, is always willing to indulge his desires if it will dull the ache of abandonment for brief moments.
He will forbid her possession of the substance on legal grounds certainly, for the trouble it could bring into the compound, definitely. He'll ask her to hand over anything remaining tomorrow morning and have her suite searched thoroughly over her screaming howls of protest if need be, but no, he'll neither punish, nor sit in judgement of her for having used it to turn the tide this evening and attain a fleeting moment of solace.
He is unaware of it, but he has just made the unconscious decision to commit fully to the role of her guardian thrust upon him by Mick. He strokes her hair in absent-minded consolation and is unaware that he will soon be entering dangerous waters.
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All predators are voyeurs and he is no stranger to waiting and watching as a woman disrobes. He is unfamiliar, though, with being an interloper in his own home, standing on her balcony in the dark before dawn. He doesn't understand it, doesn't want to. He just tells himself his vigil by her window is the act of a responsible adult, monitoring the effects of the unknown substance in her system, his concern merely avuncular.
He averts his eyes when she walks naked from the bathroom, her flesh rosy from the shower, lifting his head only when he hears her slip between the sheets, her modesty no longer an issue.
She is obviously unharmed by the substance and he doesn't know then what he is waiting for. But when he hears the gentle susurration of skin sliding against cotton, the soft but sharp increase in tempo of her indrawn breaths, he wonders whether it might have been for this. He feels no guilt at this intrusion; merely surprise that he desired an extension of the shared intimacy of their evening so much that it has ended here. Then it strikes him, like a sudden sharp blow to his solar plexes -- he misses Sara. Sweet Jesus, he misses Sara. For a moment the astringent tang of true loneliness fills his mouth and he combs a shaking hand through his cropped hair in an unfamiliar gesture of defeat.
Her breath is louder now, and the name, when she finally calls it, is an elongated sigh of pleasure.
Mick. Oh, yes Mick. Yes.
Hearing it makes him shiver. She loves him. She really does love him.
He tells himself that the metallic taste in his mouth is anger at his friend's stupidity, and he marvels at Mick's self-control, having this and not eating it whole. He flips his phone open with a savage flick of his wrist.
"Send me Cherry."
He needs to bite down, hard, and she enjoys a little pain.
By the time she rolls to her side ready for sleep, he is already gone.
*********************************
That first evening with Josef has broken the ice.
The innocent, easygoing warmth bestowed on him during her intoxication is never again referred to, but neither is it forgotten by either of them. It sets the tone for all her interactions with him now, and as is her style, she pushes the limits, expecting to get her way.
She breezes past his private secretary, an airy wave her only acknowledgement of the seething beauty behind the desk, and barges into his office, already talking.
".. so I'm meeting a lead at a dodgy downtown bar late tonight and I need you to come with me. For my safety, you know -- wouldn't want to risk that."
She pulls a face in response to his stony glare, and looks around in mock confusion. "What? You can't leave because you only made a million today? You won't have enough pocket change to pay the pool guy this week?"
"Rocco," he says to her finally, after a cool, hard stare and jerks his thumb toward the monolith in the corner, before turning his back on her, engrossed in his conversation with his junior traders.
The sound she makes leaves Josef in no doubt that she's not at all impressed by his suggestion.
"I need someone who can pass for a homo sapiens. No offence big guy. Besides, he'll scare my contact away."
She blinks, waiting, an infuriatingly persistent child. She knows she has him when she sees his shoulders stiffen, the back of his head lower before he turns, regarding her with a deceptively bland face.
"What's the difference between a vampire billionaire and a vampire bodyguard, Beth?"
"Aaaah, I don't know, Josef?" she says, knowing that beneath his bland exterior her impudent confidence is surely needling him.
"Clearly." His tone is biting. "You might not have anything better to do, but as you can see, I'm working here. If you weren't Mick's favourite pet I'd tie an anvil to your ankle and drop you into the tar pits myself."
She grinned. "Consider me intimidated. Can we go now?" He was coming, he just didn't know it yet.
"Ok, then, " she sighed when he didn't move, adding a little girl lilt to her voice. "I guess I'll just have to go meet my ex-con sex offender stoolie all by myself. I'll be in a lot of danger, a helpless little girl like me, in the bad part of town, all on her own. In her stilettos." She pulled up her trousers to let him see. "Most likely I'll be mugged or -- "
Even though he doesn't blink, move a muscle, she has him, suspects in fact, that he secretly enjoys these random encounters, the chaos she brings a welcome relief to his regimented routine. She is positive he will accompany her when he says, "You - ? Helpless - ? Doll face, you're about as helpless as a piranha in a goldfish pond."
As a last minute salve to his pride he makes sure he growls at her for just long enough before he gives in.
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Although he works from dusk til dawn most nights, she's finding it much easier to persuade him to allow her some freedom from the restrictions of Camp Josef. The occasional evenings become more frequent, and neither of them comments that it is he, rather than a bodyguard, who has begun to accompany her.
In an underground exhibition space they share cheap wine with avant-garde artists who harass Josef shamelessly for commissions; in a tiny bar with no discernible name they share deep philosophical discussions with ex-pat journalists bemoaning the need to provide two minute entertainment reports for their home networks when wars are raging overseas.
On one or two evenings when Simone is working, he takes revenge on Beth by escorting her to black tie business functions, where she rests her head on the table and pretends to snore when she sees that nobody else but Josef is looking.
She doesn't notice lately that he's always looking.
These evenings usually end with them walking along an empty avenue, limousine trailing a discreet distance behind, their easy camaraderie evident in the way her shoulder nudges his to let him know she has only been teasing or in the way he rolls his eyes with affectionate disdain when she's become too pushy, said something too human.
They discuss a variety of issues as shadows begin to separate from the soothing darkness, the first timid rays of sunrise smudging elongated copies of the surrounding buildings along the pavement ahead, but it always comes back to one thing.
"Come on, Josef, you promised. How do I please a vampire?"
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