Harvest VII
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He'd made her stop when he heard the pain in her voice and propped himself against the bed head. With nothing to keep her hands busy, Beth curled into herself beside him, ankles crossed, knees hugged tight to her chest.
"He didn't want to bite you," Josef said, almost to himself. It was the only explanation. He knew Beth wouldn't understand; he needed to explain this, help her realise that whatever was going on, it wasn't her fault. His voice softened. "Vampires find it difficult to finish the act if they don't bite down, Beth."
She winced and when she spoke her tone was bitter. "Act? There was no act. It didn't get far enough for 'acting'."
"What do you mean?"
"I kept.. touching.. him and right at the point of, you know, he changed.. - his eyes - his fangs - " Her hands began to rub her upper arms. "He wasn't himself - squeezed me a little too hard."
That meant he'd hurt her, maybe even frightened her.
"That gave me a start. I gasped." She looked at Josef pleadingly, "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to."
"Of course you didn't," he said in a soothing voice. That wouldn't have mattered to Mick though. The fear is all he would have seen. "What did Mick do?"
"He made me stop. I begged him to let me keep going, to let me please him, but he shoved me away. Jumped up. Grabbed his coat. Practically ran out of the house."
Josef could see it now, the overwhelming passion, the prospect of a mind-blowing fuck at long last with the woman of his dreams, the Vampire exploding out him, needing to rend, to swallow, to fuse with the beloved, become one. Then to see that terror in her eyes… no wonder he lit out of there like the devil himself was on his tail. Jesus, she was lucky Mick had had eighty-five years to perfect at least that much self-control.
He kept his voice steady and asked, "And then?"
"It took a little convincing, but after that we tried another couple of times, slower, more clothing, less petting. He seemed to be okay about it, but each time I thought we were getting somewhere, he'd stop, tell me he needed to meet a client, an informant, drive to Santa Monica for a document drop, pick up a client's daughter from the airport. Pretty soon it was back to hand holding and he was 'too busy' even to pretend to want to unzip my Levi's."
She cradled her face in her hands. "Oh God, Josef, what's going on? How do I fix this?"
The tone in her voice was too anguished. She wasn't telling him everything.
"What did you do, Beth? What did you do?"
When she looked up her eyes were blazing with self-recrimination.
"I'll tell you what I did. I'll tell you what I did and you'll hate me for it. Even if he didn't want to come, I did. I wanted him so much I was out of my mind. I made him touch me. I told him if he didn't, we wouldn't have a future."
Christ. Mick had been giving clear indications that he doubted his ability to control the Vampire around her when he became aroused. An out of control Vampire Mick was like a revolver and when she forced his hand she may as well have put a single bullet in the chamber and spun the barrel.
"What happened?" He said, already knowing the answer.
Her tone was still bitter. "He was great, really accomplished. Celibacy hadn't diminished his skill in the least and when I came it was the same. Only, that time I felt the scrape of his fangs at my throat before he was gone."
Of course it had been the same. His balls were beginning to contract at just the thought of her aroused and begging for it, no wonder Mick had nearly lost it. Christ what a mess. Mick had had no problem controlling himself with freshies and short-time fucks in the past, he knew that for a fact.
Beth looked him in the eye for the first time. "Soon he stopped touching me at all."
Her head sank back down onto her arms. He'd never seen her look so defeated. He hated seeing her that way. It was time he told her the truth.
"He loves you, Beth."
She looked up, her hair in disarray, her blue eyes stricken, a broken angel in pink flannelette pyjamas. Hell, maybe he'd even tell her the whole truth. His eyes softened.
"When he looks at you he wishes he were human again, for just one ridiculous, miraculous moment, so you could see how you take his breath away. Beside you he feels fresh and clean and whole again and he wants to reach out and cradle you in the palms of his hands for eternity. You fill his endless nights with possibility." He paused. "You make a vampire want to be a better man, Beth."
Her eyes were shining and a single tear spilled onto her cheek. "Do you really think so?" She whispered.
Josef lifted a finger to her face with the delicacy of a lover and wiped away the wetness.
"I know so."
Beth's breath caught in her throat and the nearness of her body began to fill him with languorous warmth. His face began to incline downward.
Beth jumped.
The phone rang again.
"Oh my god. Mick!" Beth dived for the nightstand, flipping her phone open in one economical movement. "Mick!" She smiled across at Josef. "No, no it's ok, I'm still up…. No, he hasn't been working me too hard, I've been in bed for a while now… Josef - ?.. Not too bad – well, his usual curmudgeonly self really.." She smiled to show she didn't mean it. "He's right here, do you want to talk to him?.. No - ?.. Ok. So, when are you coming home..?"
She rolls over, doesn't even notice the door closing quietly behind him.
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**********
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Twenty-three minutes.
That's how long she speaks to Mick. He knows because his phone rings immediately afterward.
"What the fuck, Josef?"
The crackling down the line isn't just from a poor trans-Atlantic connection.
"She won a case, a case of my favorite was delivered. So what?," he says in an insultingly offhand tone. How dare Mick imply that he's thinking the things he might actually be thinking. " – and what about you, boyo? Slayed the dragon, saved the damsel in distress yet?"
"Fuck you."
"You seem to be doing a lot of that. Sure you haven't already rescued Coraline?"
There's a shocked, angry silence from Mick, and an unspoken question hanging in the air.
"Humans who won't open a vein aren't my type," Josef said. It was cold, clipped. This is exactly the sort of mess he was afraid would happen and all of a sudden he's very, very angry. "She's a bother, Mick, an annoying, demanding princess who's turned the household upside down since the day she arrived. The only reason she's still here is because I promised you."
Mick is immediately contrite.
"She can be a little feisty," he said, his tone apologetic. "I thought she'd grow on you."
Josef lets that one pass.
"When are you coming home?"
"Jeez, Josef, you sound like Beth. If I'd known you'd miss me so much, I would have left a framed photograph and some cute little notes scattered through your underwear drawer."
An accusatory pause echoes down the line. They both know damn well who's missing him.
"So what can I tell Miss Turner about when she can go back to her apartment?"
"That's why I rang. It should only be a couple more weeks at most. That hostile takeover stuff you had Ryder set up finally got Lance's attention. According to village gossip, Monsieur Lance has pressing business that will keep him in Belgium for another month. The rest of the family think I'm just some dim-witted Yankee desperate to do a little protection work for the local aristocracy to fund a nasty gambling habit. I've made myself very - useful - to them in the time Lance has been gone."
Josef had the feeling he wasn't going to like what came next.
"The problem is, I'm going to be out of touch. I told them I'm avoiding certain unhappy former acquaintances in the States, and they offered the hospitality of their estate, so I'm going to have to ditch the phone when I move in. It's the only way I can get access to the chateau unsupervised and rescue Coraline. I'm not sure they fully trust me, and I sure don't trust them, so I don't want anyone finding a thing that might undermine my cover. "
Wallis Simpson once famously said that a woman could never be too rich or too thin. Josef's vampire version was that you could never be too rich, or too paranoid, so he wasn't about to argue the logic of that.
It was going to complicate things, though.
"You've told her?"
"Just now."
A muscle twitched in Josef's jaw.
"Fine. Just get this done, Mick. And soon. "
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*************
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She thinks no one can hear her. To her they're only whimpers, but in this house, misery wafts through walls and bounces off the hardwood floors in jagged little angles that catch his ears no matter where he is.
"Jesus, Blondie, tone it down, will you? I don't care who died. All this blubbering is stressing out my girls and let me tell you, stale cortisol tastes like crap."
He's shooting for cruel, but the callous he's hitting is just fine for his purposes. You can't molly-coddle heartache. He learned that the hard way. He's entered unannounced and she's lying there, sheet hastily jerked up to her chin, red eyed, soggy cheeked and glaring at him in almost comical outrage.
"What the…? What are you… ? Get out of here!"
"All that red must be wearing off. You weren't this modest an hour ago," he drawled. "And why would I leave when the ringside seat is right here?"
"Oh, of course this is funny to you. The only thing you care about is your profit margin."
Her claws had been sheathed for so long the words catch him by surprise and it hurts. Not that he's going to let her know that.
"You got me. The big bucks these days aren't in goldmines and Goldman-Sachs shares, they're in human baby-sitting services."
He handed her a box of tissues.
"He's never coming home, is he?" Her voice wobbled. She was going to start crying again, and he's not sure how to respond. He's certainly not going to tell her that he always thought Mick's departure was a mistake.
"Of course he is." He patted her hand like a condescending uncle. "He doesn't hate me enough to stick me with you forever."
"Oh, hardy, har, har," she sniffed, flashing him a reproachful glance and looking calmer already. And then, in that way she has of going right to the heart of things, she says,
"He kept going back to Coraline because of the sex, didn't he?"
His carefully neutral expression is answer enough.
"I thought so." She catches her lower lip between her teeth, looks miserable again. "It's obvious that I can't compete with that."
He can understand her despair. Coraline oozes sex appeal the way a skunk does stink, but Beth is missing the obvious. He leans over, taps her forehead several times with a fingertip.
"Oh, listen to that -- it echoes. Lucky you're not in charge of anything really important, BuzzWire, like air traffic control or getting all the little dimples onto golf balls, because right about now there'd be a million unhappy caddies out there looking for those suckers lost in the rough." He lowers his head, a finger under her chin forcing her to look up at him. "Coraline had to take The Cure because it was the only way she could compete with you." He raises his eyebrows for emphasis. "With you."
Her eyes are like saucers and he could say more, wants to say more even, but it's not his place and not his tenderness she's wanting.
Lucky Mick is finishing this business in France soon. Josef's not sure how much more either of them can take of this.
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