FIFTEEN
Letter from Mrs. Edwina Fitzwilliam to Mr. Frederick J. Fitzwilliam, dated November 11
My dearest Frederick,
I will not beat around the bush with you.
I have it from the Jamesons directly that you have continued to ignore my entreaties and are still returning Miss Jameson’s gifts to you unopened.
This will not stand.
I have booked passage on a direct flight from London, where I am currently on holiday, to Chicago next Tuesday evening. Given that the mail is not a speedy business, I suppose there is a chance that I will arrive in Chicago before this letter does. If that happens, so be it. Perhaps it would be better if you have no forewarning before I arrive. That way I will be able to see for myself the mess you have made of your life.
Despite all, I do love you, Frederick. In time I hope you come to understand I have only ever had your best interests at heart.
With kind regards,
Your mother,
Mrs. Edwina Fitzwilliam
After Frederick and I got off the train we walked towards Sam’s apartment in lockstep. Even though we sprang apart the instant the train stopped moving I could feel his touch as acutely as if we were still embracing.
Frederick drummed the fingers of his right hand rapidly against his leg—what I’d come to recognize as his most obvious nervous tell. He kept his eyes straight ahead, not sparing me so much as a sideways glance.
“I have made a list of several topics of conversation for this party,” he said, repeating himself from earlier in the evening. He slid his hand into the front pocket of his jeans and extracted a small, folded piece of paper. His hand was trembling. He must have been affected by what happened between us on the train, too—because his hands rarely shook, and he never repeated himself.
The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying.
“You already told me that,” I said.
A car drove by us, its windows rolled down. Hip-hop music I didn’t recognize blasted on its radio.
“I already told you that?”
“You did.”
“Oh.”
Fortunately, it wasn’t far to Sam’s building. When we got there I pushed the buzzer on the front door panel to let Sam and Scott know we’d arrived. The door lock clicked a moment later, and I grabbed the door’s handle to pull it open.
Frederick put his hand on my upper arm, stopping me. The urgency of his touch cut through my thick winter coat like a knife.
“Remember? I need explicit permission from them before I can enter their home.”
I blinked, trying to understand what he was saying. “What?”
He looked away, sheepish. “Remember, when we watched Buffy, how I told you that some vampire legends are rubbish while others are legitimate? This one is legitimate.”
Then it clicked. That evening with him on the couch, when we’d discussed Buffy—shortly before I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder.
“Oh,” I said abruptly, warming at the memory. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry I forgot about that.” I pointed at the button I’d just pushed. “But they unlocked it for us. Isn’t that enough?”
“No.” His eyes were on his shoes. He was embarrassed, I realized. My heart clenched. “It . . . must be a direct, explicit invitation. Could you possibly text Sam or Scott and ask them to invite me in?”
Laughter drifted down to us from an open window. The party was already in full swing. “They’re going to think that’s weird, Frederick.”
“Be that as it may, I don’t have much of a choice.”
Just then, a guy I recognized as Sam’s downstairs neighbor appeared in the doorway, dressed in a bright pink leather minidress that stopped about six inches above his knees. He had an occasional gig as a burlesque dancer at a club in Andersonville, if I remembered correctly.
He was fumbling around in a purse he carried that matched his outfit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Frederick gaping at him and his outfit in stunned silence, his dark eyes wide as saucers. I ignored him.
“Jack!” I exclaimed, hoping to get his attention, and hoping that was actually his name.
He looked up.
“Cassie?”
“Yeah, hi.” I looked over my shoulder at Frederick, who nodded encouragingly. “Can we come inside?”
“You heading up to Sam’s?”
“We are.”
He opened the door wider for us and motioned for us to come inside. “Sure. I’m just on my way out.”
I glanced questioningly back at Frederick, who gave me a subtle nod that I interpreted to mean good enough for me.
“Thanks, Jack,” I said. I made my way across the threshold, Frederick close behind me. He let out a quiet sigh once we were both safely inside.
Fortunately, Scott was already waiting for us in the doorway to his second-floor apartment.
“Can we come in?” I asked, hoping my voice didn’t betray how nervous I suddenly was. A loud cacophony of voices and some kind of avant-garde house music poured out into the hallway from inside.
“Of course,” Scott said. He gestured to the apartment behind him. “I’m just waiting for Katie to get here, then I’ll go back inside.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Katie? As in, Gossamer’s Katie?”
“Yeah,” Scott said. “We got to know her from all those nights visiting you at work. I was happy when she said she could make it.”
I wished I was happy, too. Katie and I got along well—but Frederick had made such a weird first impression on her the night he’d tried to order coffee and then pay for it with his fanny pack of gold doubloons.
He’d made real strides towards passing as normal the past few weeks. He’d learned how to order clothes online. He’d ridden the El without anyone thinking he didn’t belong there. The last thing he needed was to see Katie at this party and have her ask uncomfortable questions.
But I supposed there was nothing to be done for it.
I turned to Frederick. “Want something to drink?”
His brow furrowed. “No. I ate before we got here. You know I can’t—”
I grabbed his lapel and tugged him down until his ear was at a level with my mouth. I resisted the urge to just stand there, breathing him in—but barely. “You have to do some pretending tonight for this to work.”
He swallowed, then straightened.
“Right.” He nodded. “Let’s get a drink.”
As we made our way inside, I turned to him and asked, very quietly, “By the way, what happens if you don’t get permission?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said you can’t enter someone’s home without an invitation,” I reminded him. “What happens if you try?”
“Oh. That.” He quickly looked over his shoulder to make certain no one was within earshot, and then leaned in close. “Instant disintegration.”
I stared at him. “You’re kidding.”
He shook his head gravely. “When I first heard about this phenomenon, I thought it was a joke, too. But not long after I was turned, I saw another vampire try and break into a local farmer’s house while he and his family were out of town.” He paused, then leaned in closer before adding, “Vampire bits everywhere.”
I shuddered, though I was somewhat distracted from the graphic story by both the fact that in telling it, Frederick had chosen to share with me another closely guarded detail of his prior life—and the fact that his mouth was now just a hairsbreadth away from mine.
“How awful,” I said, trying to keep it together.
“Yes,” Frederick agreed, somberly. “It’s not a mistake you make a second time.”
“Cassie.”
I looked up to see Sam, striding towards us from the kitchen. He had a beer in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other.
He handed the wine to me, but his eyes were on Frederick.
My stomach was suddenly a hard, tight knot of anxiety. It had been one thing for Frederick to interact with my best friend for two minutes at the mall the other day. It was another thing for them to spend an entire evening together. From the look on his face, Sam seemed to have gotten over whatever oh no he’s hot moment he’d succumbed to during their last brief meeting and was prepared to come to a final decision about whether Frederick was a creep or was trustworthy.
I fidgeted with the stem of the wine glass and inclined my head towards Frederick. “Sam, you know Frederick.”
Sam extended his hand. “Nice to see you again.”
Frederick clasped Sam’s hand in his and gave it a firm shake. “Thank you for extending us this invitation to your home. It is nice to see you again as well.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked. “Wine? Beer?”
Frederick was quiet as he pondered how to answer that. He may have studied for tonight but he and I hadn’t actually gone over small talk at parties. Which, in hindsight, was an incredibly stupid oversight on my part. I braced myself for Frederick’s answer, hoping it would be at least somewhat within the realm of normal.
“I . . . cannot decide,” Frederick eventually said. “What would you recommend?”
I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Since joining his law firm Sam had become the world’s biggest lawyer cliché by getting into different kinds of fancy wines. He loved boring everyone else with endless details about his latest discoveries.
I gave Frederick a small nod, which I hoped conveyed That was the right thing to say. His rigid posture relaxed slightly.
“That depends on your preference. I have a bunch of different reds,” Sam said. “Do you like Malbec?”
Frederick glanced at me, his eyes a question. I gave another small, encouraging nod.
“Yes,” Frederick said with the conviction usually reserved for questions about Halloween candy preferences. “Yes, I do like red wine. Very much so. In fact, Malbec is my favorite.”
“Mine, too.” Sam grinned at him, and if I weren’t so relieved that Frederick was doing so well, I’d have laughed at how easy it was to play my friend. “Come into the kitchen and I’ll get you set up.”
Frederick stared at him like a deer caught in headlights.
“Go get a drink,” I encouraged. And then, gesturing towards Sam, I added, “Sam will make sure to get you something good.”
“Something good,” Frederick repeated, an eyebrow raised. I winced, kicking myself for not warning him ahead of time that if he went to human parties he’d be expected to walk around with a drink he wouldn’t want for most of the evening.
Once Frederick and Sam left for the kitchen I glanced around the room, trying to see if there were familiar faces. I vaguely recognized some guests from other get-togethers Sam and Scott had thrown over the years, but then I saw David—Sam and Scott’s friend who was involved with the River North Gallery art exhibition—sitting on the couch beside Sam’s sister Amelia.
My heart sped up. Professional networking was just above tooth extraction without Novocain on my list of favorite activities. Chatting with Amelia, Sam’s extremely competent and put-together sister, was only marginally more enjoyable. But David was right there, less than ten feet away, chatting with a perfectly dressed, not-a-hair-out-of-place Amelia as he sipped from his glass of Chardonnay.
It had been forty-eight hours since I’d emailed David my submission. The River North Gallery was making their decisions within the coming week. A person in charge of her life would take this opportunity to talk with him, right?
Might as well pretend I was in charge of my life and do the same.
I squared my shoulders, reminded myself that I did hard things all the time, and approached them.
“Hi,” I said.
David and Amelia looked up at me at the same time.
All at once, I remembered I wasn’t remotely in charge of my own life and this was probably a terrible mistake.
“Cassie,” Amelia said. Her tone was bright, and she smiled at me—but even over the din of the party I was reminded of how condescending she used to be whenever she deigned to speak with me back in high school. “It’s so nice to see you again.”
“It’s been a long time,” I said. I would make an effort tonight for Sam, I decided. “How have you been?”
Amelia shook her blond head and sighed, then took a sip of her white wine before setting the glass back down on the coffee table.
“Busy,” she said. “Not as busy as I’ll be in the spring, but busier than I want to be.”
I tried to think of a time when Amelia wasn’t so busy with her accounting practice that she was utterly miserable. My mind drew a blank.
“That sucks,” I said, meaning it.
Amelia shrugged. “It is what it is, I guess. It’s what I signed up for when I joined the firm. But enough about me,” she said. “Sam says you’ve been really throwing yourself into your art again.”
I nodded, too proud of what I’d been doing lately—and too cognizant of the fact that someone on the River North Gallery committee was sitting beside Amelia—to feel self-conscious.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have been. In fact—”
I was cut off from finishing my sentence by Sam—who was now rushing over to Amelia’s side with a petrified-looking Frederick in tow.
“Amelia,” he said, laughing. “You have got to talk with Cassie’s new roommate.”
Sam’s words distracted me completely from my anxiety over talking with Amelia and David, catching my attention as effectively as a record scratch in a quiet room. Alarmed, I turned to look at Frederick, whose wrist was in Sam’s iron grip.
He was staring, wild-eyed, down at his shoes.
Before I could ask what was going on, Sam turned to me and said, delighted, “You never told me Frederick was such a big Taylor Swift fan.”
I choked on my sip of wine.
“I’m sorry,” I said, once I recovered. “But . . . Taylor Swift?”
Frederick shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I . . . might have mentioned a few things I knew about Taylor Swift to some people in the kitchen.”
“A few things?” Sam laughed again and shook his head. “Don’t be so modest. Your knowledge of her 1989 era is encyclopedic.”
I had to stifle a laugh in my palm. “Is that so?”
“It is!” Sam gushed. “Like I was saying, Frederick—you need to talk with Amelia. She loves meeting other Swifties, especially when they’re people who don’t fit the usual stereotypes.”
“Oh, yes,” Amelia said. She was beaming now. I’d never heard her sound so delighted. “When people outside the expected demographics are really into her, too, it just proves how broad Taylor’s appeal is, and how deep her talent.”
I stared at her. It hadn’t occurred to me that an accountant could have opinions on music. Though perhaps that was just me being overly judgmental. “You’re a Taylor Swift fan?”
Amelia shrugged. “I mean, what’s not to like?”
“I agree,” Frederick said, with an enthusiasm that stunned me. “Taylor Swift, who was born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1989, has won eleven Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.”
Amelia stood up and, still grinning, smoothed her hands over her wrinkle-free skirt. “Let’s go into the kitchen and fangirl together,” she proposed to Frederick.
Frederick’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon, but . . .” He glanced at me. “Fangirl?”
I leaned over a little and murmured, “It just means to get excited about something.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll get another glass of Malbec,” Sam suggested. “I won’t be able to contribute much to the conversation, but I always enjoy watching Amelia in her element.”
Frederick cast a helpless glance at me over his shoulder as Amelia guided him back into the kitchen.
With Amelia gone, the only person left for me to talk to was David. He looked up at me with a smile of recognition.
I swallowed, my nerves from a few minutes ago racing back now that the twin distractions of Frederick and Taylor Swift were out of the room.
“Cassie.” David motioned to the empty spot on the couch beside him. I took it, feeling both eager and terrified. “Nice to see you. It’s been a while.”
“Nice to see you, too.” I started fidgeting with the hem of my skirt as I tried to decide whether I should just tell him I’d submitted something for the art show, or if I should be more subtle about why I wanted to talk with him. “How are things going?”
“Busy.” David laughed, and then—perhaps realizing that’s exactly how Amelia answered that same question a few minutes ago—he rolled his eyes. “Busy is such a bullshitty small-talk nonanswer of a way to answer that question, isn’t it?”
I stifled a laugh. “Maybe?”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah. Well, in my case, at least, it’s true.”
“Getting ready for the art exhibition?” Might as well get it over with.
“Yeah, actually.” His smile grew. “I’ve never been involved in a juried show before from the administrative side of things, but it’s a lot more work than I expected it to be.”
“I can imagine it would be a ton of work.” I swallowed, then mustered up my courage to ask for the information I really wanted. “Are you seeing a lot of good submissions?”
“So many.” He shifted uneasily on the couch beside me. “I think the committee has made its final decisions on who to invite.”
My heart was suddenly hammering so hard inside my rib cage it felt on the cusp of breaking bone. I set my wine glass down on the coffee table in front of us; my hands were shaking too badly to trust I wouldn’t spill Chardonnay everywhere.
“Oh?”
“Yes.” David was looking at the beer in his hands like it was the most interesting thing in the room. “Cassie, I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you this, or if I’m supposed to wait to let the committee get in touch with you, but seeing as we’re both here . . .”
He trailed off without finishing his sentence. But I could tell by the way he wasn’t meeting my eyes that whatever he’d been about to say next, I wouldn’t like it.
I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the worst. “I promise I won’t tell them that you told me.”
He nodded. “Everyone agreed your piece was terrific, but the committee decided your take on the Contemporary Society theme was too abstract and attenuated to accept into the exhibition. A classic painting subverted with such modern materials just wasn’t what they were looking for.” He paused before adding, “I’m sorry, Cassie.”
Time seemed to stop. All the noise of the party fell away as what David had just told me slowly sank in.
“The judges had mostly finalized their decisions before we got your application,” David continued. My despair must have been written all over my face because he reached out and gently put a hand on mine. “You know how it goes with these things. Unfortunately, your piece didn’t grab them enough for them to change their minds.”
Tears prickled at the corners of my eyes. I’d known there was no guarantee that my piece would be accepted, and of course I knew that most of the slots would likely go to people who were already established names in the art world. So, really, I had no idea why I was reacting like this.
But I was, all the same.
I turned and looked at the floor so David wouldn’t see me cry.
“I understand,” I mumbled.
“I’m sorry,” David said again, his hand still resting on mine. “We’re going to be doing another show next fall. You’re really talented, Cassie. I hope you’ll consider submitting something else when that request for submissions goes live.”
“Okay,” I said. I turned to smile at him, but his face was blurry. The tears were threatening to fall in earnest now.
Why I’d ever thought I’d be anything but a complete and total fuckup was beyond me. I would always just be Cassie—the quirky eccentric who couldn’t hold a job or even an apartment for more than a few months. The girl who would never achieve her dreams or amount to much of anything at all.
I glanced around the room. More guests had arrived. Sam and Scott were talking with a group of people I vaguely recognized as Sam’s law school classmates. One of them was laughing at something Sam had just said.
Frederick and Amelia were nowhere to be seen.
Even a centuries-old vampire had his shit more together than I did.
I had to get out of there.
“Excuse me,” I said to David in a watery voice, keeping my face turned away from him. “I . . . need to go check on something.”
Sniffling, I quickly made my way out of the room, heading straight for the bathroom.
I was on the cusp of a full-on pity party.
Nobody needed to see that.
I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror. For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long I’d decided to wear mascara, and I regretted that decision now. A raccoon’s face stared back at me from the mirror, eyes ringed with smears of black makeup and cheeks splotchy with tears.
It made me feel like an even bigger idiot than I had when I’d run in here to hide ten minutes earlier. Which was saying a lot.
A quiet knock on the bathroom door startled me out of my self-pity.
“Cassie? Are you in there?” Frederick’s voice. It was low and full of concern. A gentle, reassuring warmth flooded me at the sound of it.
“No.” Without thinking, I scrubbed away my tears with the back of my hand. It came away streaked with black.
“I just spoke with someone who said she saw you rush in here. I’m concerned. May I come in?”
“I said I’m not in here.”
A quiet huff of a laugh. “Clearly you are.”
I shut my eyes and leaned my forehead against the door separating us. The smooth wood felt refreshingly cool against my flushed skin. “I am such an idiot.”
“You are not.”
“You have to say that.” Fresh tears pricked behind my closed eyelids. “You don’t know how to ride the El by yourself and you’ll be stuck here at this party forever if you aren’t nice to me.”
Another quiet laugh, then more firmly, “Move away from the door, Cassie. I’m worried about you. I’d like to come in.”
His slightly authoritative tone flipped some sort of switch inside of me. “Okay,” I said, sniffling.
He stepped inside the small bathroom—all six feet two inches of him, broad-shouldered and beautiful—before quietly closing the door behind him. All of a sudden I was reminded of just how small this space really was.
He seemed to notice it the same instant I did, his eyes widening as they darted over the shower stall behind me, the toilet, the sink. But then he saw my face, and the mess I’d made of it—and then his attention was all on me.
“Who did this to you?” His voice was low, but urgent. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” I tried to turn away from him, but he grabbed hold of my arm, keeping me in place. I shivered, the chill from his touch burning its way through the fabric of my shirt and creating a stark contrast with the rush of warmth I suddenly felt everywhere else. “I’m a failure, is all.”
“You are not a failure,” he said firmly. “Anyone who made you feel like one will have me to deal with.”
I smiled a little at the idea of Frederick threatening anyone at all. He might be an undead creature of the night—but as undead creatures of the night went, he was a marshmallow.
I sniffled. “That person, unfortunately, is me.”
“You?”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes. “I submitted a piece I’ve been working on for weeks to an art exhibition. I was really excited about it, but I just found out it’s been rejected.”
“Oh, Cassie,” Frederick said, his tone laced with sympathy. “I am so sorry.” His hand was still on my arm. His touch was grounding. I hoped he wouldn’t pull it back anytime soon. “Is that all?”
I sighed. “I’m such a fuckup, Frederick.”
“People are rejected from things all the time, Cassie.” He paused, thinking. “In a way, I was rejected from the entire past century.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not the same thing.”
“You’re right. What I did was worse.”
“How is it worse?”
His eyes twinkled. “I drank something Reginald offered me at a party. Like an idiot. Talk about being a fuckup.”
I hiccup-laughed a little in spite of myself. Hearing Frederick use modern slang was like seeing a toddler with a fake mustache. He smiled at my reaction, clearly pleased with himself.
And then, all at once, his expression grew serious. “If anyone fucked up here, Cassie, it was the committee that refused to accept a visionary artist into the exhibition.”
I blinked at him, stunned at the intensity of his praise.
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I never say things I don’t mean.”
Before I could decide how to respond to that, Frederick pulled a square of fabric from the front pocket of his jeans. Muttering something under his breath I couldn’t make out, he turned on the faucet and ran the fabric beneath it.
“What are you doing?”
“No one seems to carry handkerchiefs anymore,” he mused. “It’s a pity. They work so much better than the thin paper tissues used nowadays. Now close your eyes.”
He turned to face me with a look of quiet concentration. His eyes flicked to mine. Or, more specifically, to the mess of black eye makeup smeared beneath them.
Embarrassment flooded me. “Frederick, you don’t have to—”
“Close your eyes, Cassie.” His tone brooked no opposition, his stern insistence touching some raw, primal part of me that was helpless to do anything but obey.
His free hand cupped my cheek, gently tilting my face upward so he could look at me more clearly. Suddenly, it felt like all my nerve endings centered right where he touched me.
My eyes slid closed of their own accord.
“What is this black substance you have used to paint your face?” His voice was quiet, curious, as he tenderly wiped away the remnants of my mascara with his handkerchief. His face was so close to mine I could feel each of his shallow exhalations of breath on my skin. “I’ve not seen this sort of cosmetic before.”
My mouth went dry. “It’s . . . called mascara.”
“Mascara.” He said the word with obvious distaste, but I only dimly registered it. It was hard for me to focus on much of anything at all but the gentle swipes of his fingers beneath my eyes and the press of his free hand to my cheek. All the oxygen seemed to have vanished from the too-small room. My heart was thundering in my ears.
“It’s vile,” he added.
“I like mascara.”
“Why?” His handkerchief dipped into the corner of my right eye, where the smudges were the worst. He leaned in even closer—probably to give himself a better view of what he was doing. He smelled like red wine and the fabric softener he used on his clothing. My lungs seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
“It . . . makes me look good.”
His hands stopped moving. When he spoke again, Frederick’s voice was so low I almost didn’t hear him. “You do not need cosmetics for that, Cassie.”
All at once, the noise from the party, the slow drip of water from the shower behind me—all of it melted away. There was nothing but Frederick’s tender hands, touching my face so gently I could hardly bear it—and the steady, rapid beat of my heart.
After what might have been a few minutes, or an hour, Frederick dropped the handkerchief onto the counter. I could feel him shift even closer to me, in the small, confined room, until our knees touched.
My eyes stayed closed. My stomach tightened with anticipation and nerves. I suspected that once I opened my eyes again everything between us would change.
I licked my lips without thinking—and registered his sharp intake of breath.
“Are . . . are the smudges gone?” My voice was shaky. I felt moments away from flying apart at the seams.
His hand was steady against my cheek. “Yes. They’re gone.” Frederick was standing so close to me now his words were cool puffs of air on my lips. I shivered, the need for him to move even closer nearly overwhelming. “Open your eyes, Cassie.”
His mouth was on mine before I had a chance to comply, the gentle pressure of his lips stealing the breath from my lungs and pushing out any worries I might have had about whether this was a good idea. His hand slid down to my chin, gently tilting it up a little to give him better access. I was so overwhelmed with sensation that I was helpless to do anything but let him kiss me, and to kiss him back. My hands slid up his broad chest of their own volition, the fabric of his shirt soft beneath my fingers as I clutched at the ends of his collar with both hands.
My touch elicited a quiet moan from the back of his throat that made me dizzy with a spike of searing desire.
“We can’t do this here,” I mumbled against his lips. Mostly because it felt like something I was supposed to say, given that this was Sam’s bathroom and an entire apartment full of people was having a party on the other side of the door.
But I knew, even as I said the words, that we were absolutely going to do this here.
It didn’t seem like Frederick even heard what I’d said. If he did, he certainly wasn’t paying it any mind. His kisses grew bolder, the exquisite pressure of his mouth increasing until I parted my lips for him on a ragged sigh. He tasted like breath mints and the wine he must have pretended to drink earlier this evening. I wanted to lose myself in it—in the way he slid his tongue along mine, coaxing a whimper from my throat; in his strong arms, as they encircled me and pulled me closer. I could feel his sharp, prominent canines against my tongue as I kissed him, something I’d certainly never noticed before when I’d seen him smile. A thrilling flash of heat shot through me, the visceral reminder of who and what he was startling me for only a moment before I lost myself in the kiss again.
“I have not done this in over one hundred years,” he breathed, pulling away. He looked so dazed I didn’t know if he was telling me this or saying it to himself. “Not since the other night.”
He didn’t wait for me to respond, only quickly maneuvered me away from the sink until I felt the bathroom wall pressed firmly against my back. He loomed closer, crowding me, leaning forward against the wall himself until his forearms bracketed my head. His dark eyes were all pupils, blown wide with the same desire I could feel coursing through my bloodstream. His mouth was less than an inch from mine. It took all my self-control not to lean forward right then and capture those plush lips of his in another kiss.
“Cassie,” he breathed. “I—”
Whatever he’d been about to say was interrupted by a series of very loud, insistent raps on the bathroom door.
Frederick jumped back and away from me as if I’d scalded him.
“Anyone in there?” A woman’s pleasant voice cut through the haze of lust like a knife.
Oh no, Frederick mouthed, his eyes wide.
“Just a minute,” I yelled, trying not to laugh at how horrified Frederick looked. “We’re almost done in here.”
“All good!” the woman said, a bit too loudly. “I’ll come back in a few minutes.”
“Why did you say we are almost done in here?” Frederick whispered hoarsely. He looked like he was about to throw up. Could vampires throw up, I wondered? Something to think about later. “There are at least two dozen other people out there. And now, they will all know we were in this very small bathroom together all this time. Alone.”
“So?”
“So?” He stared at me, incredulous. “What will they think, Cassie?”
If Frederick had pearls to clutch, he certainly would be clutching them now. He looked so petrified I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
“Who cares what they think?”
“Your reputation, Cassie!” He shook his head. “The conclusions they will likely draw!”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “What sort of conclusions? That you were drinking my blood?”
His eyebrows shot up his forehead. “No! That we were . . . that we were . . .”
I slowly crossed the room until I was standing just a few inches away from him. I placed my hands flat on his chest. He made a little pained noise in the back of his throat that only spurred me on. If I had my way, he would be making that noise for me again and again that night.
“That we were what, Frederick?”
He swallowed. I tracked the movement of his Adam’s apple, fighting the sharp urge to trace its shape with my tongue.
“That I was debauching you.”
It was only the deadly serious expression on his face that kept me from laughing out loud.
“They might assume we were making out in here, yeah. But who cares?”
He looked horrified. “Cassie—”
I placed a finger to his lips, silencing him. “Things have changed in the past hundred years. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.”
He didn’t seem to believe my assertions that he didn’t need to worry about protecting my virtue or my honor. But when I grabbed his wrist to pull him out of the bathroom, he followed me all the same.
“Let’s say goodbye to Sam and Scott and thank them for inviting us,” I said. “Then let’s go home.”