“Yeah?”
“I was going to light some candles.”
“I don’t need candles.”
“Huh. What do you need?”
I pressed my fingertips to the space just below his collar bone, feeling the steady beating of his heart like an echo of my own. I flattened my hand, and ran my palm down his chest until I could cup the heel of my palm against his hip bone. “You.”
His breathing had gone thready but that was all the invitation he needed.
He bent, I lifted. Warm arms wrapped around me. I tucked one foot behind his ankle, pressing into all the spaces of him where I fit.
His lips lowered to mine as the song cried out about seeing his baby in the morning.
“What about Vivian?” I asked.
He paused, his lips so close they brushed mine when he spoke. “Gone.”
“Hotel?”
He pulled back a little and looked down at me. “You want to talk about her right now?”
“Just trying to keep track of loose ends. It’s been a day.”
He tightened his arms once, then eased up on the pressure, and took me by the hand.
“Wait,” I said. “No. I thought there was going to be kissing. What about the kissing?”
“Buried under loose ends,” he said. But he smiled. “I put a blanket and pillows on the couch. Let me pour the wine.”
I protested and tugged on his hand, and almost got him wrestled down on the couch with me, but he was flexible and strong and got out of my hold.
“That better be good wine,” I grumbled as I kicked off my shoes with a groan and crawled up the couch, messing with the bed pillows he’d stacked there and pulling my favorite blanket down around me.
“So where is she?” I asked.
“Spokane, I think.” He poured thick red port into small glasses. “She got a tip fromUnder the Oregon Moon. It’s a Facebook blog that follows supernatural sightings in the area. Wouldn’t tell me what it was, but I ran the police reports from the area. Wanna guess what showed up?”
“Aliens?”
“Close.” He brought both glasses over, handed me mine, then eased onto the couch with me. It took some finagling, but we both managed to get comfortable, my head on his shoulder, both of our glasses of wine forgotten on the floor.
“What did you find?”
“Reports that cows in the area are being drained of their blood. But the only wound they can find are two punctures on their necks. They’re not saying they look like vampire bites.”
“But they totally look like vampire bites,” I finished for him. The text Rossi had sent earlier suddenly made more sense. “Well, hell,” I said.
“Mmmm?”
“I don’t think we can have our wedding in a church now that he’s called in that favor for us.”
“Rossi?”
“Yeah. Such a meddler.”
“I don’t care. He got Vivian out of our hair. So no church wedding it is.”
