was habit, or maybe Larry was right. I just didn't believe that Jean-Claude was a rotting corpse.
I called for more towels.
They would be happy to bring some up. No one bitched about the time. No one questioned. You can always tell how much you're paying for a room by how little they complain.
A maid brought me four big, soft towels. I looked at her for a full minute, hesitating. I could have her take the towels into Jean-Claude.
She said, "Ma'am?"
I took the towels, said thanks, and closed the door. I just couldn't let a strange woman see that I had a naked vampire in my tub. I wasn't even sure the vampire part was what made it embarrassing. Good girls do not end up with naked male anything in their bathtubs at four something in the morning. Maybe I wasn't a good girl. Maybe I never had been.
I hesitated at the bedroom door. The room was dark. The only light came from the bathroom, spilling in an oblong across the carpet.
I crushed the towels to my chest, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room. I could see the bathtub from here, but mercifully not all of it. I had a glimpse of white porcelain and a mound of white bubbles. Just seeing the bubble bath made the muscles in my shoulders relax a little. Bubbles can hide a multitude of sins.
I stopped at the bathroom door.
Jean-Claude lay back against the edge of the tub. His black hair was wet and had obviously been cleaned. Strands of it clung to his bare shoulders. His arms lay propped on the edge of the bathtub, his head resting against the dark tile of the wall. One pale hand was suspended in midair as if reaching for something, but the hand was utterly limp. His eyes were closed, making black half-moons against his pale cheeks. Beads of water clung to his face and what I could see of his body. He looked almost asleep.
His knee came up through the mound of bubbles, a surprising glimpse of bare wet skin. He turned his head and opened his eyes. The midnight blue of his eyes seemed darker. Maybe it was the way the water made his hair seem heavier, blacker.
I took a shallow breath and said, "Here are the towels."
"Could you place them here, please?" He gestured with that one half-suspended hand.
"Here" was the closed top of the toilet, which was close enough to the tub for grabbing. "I'll, put them on the edge of the sink."
"I'll drip water all over the floor getting them from there," he said. His voice was neutral, no vampiric tricks, almost no tone at all.
He was right, and I was being silly. He wouldn't grab me and ravish me. If that'd been the plan, he could have done that years ago.
I placed the towels on the stool, eyes studiously anywhere but the tub.
"You must have questions about tonight," he said.
I glanced at him. The water on his naked torso caught the light like quicksilver. Suds clung to his chest, just under one nipple. I had a horrible urge to brush off the bubbles. I stepped back until I was standing by the far wall.
"It's not like you to offer answers," I said.
"I am feeling generous tonight." His voice had that quality that voices get when they are edging towards sleep.
"If you weren't naked in a tub of bubble bath, would you be offering to answer questions?"
He smiled then, a quick, familiar expression. "Perhaps not, but if I must answer your ravenous curiosity, isn't it more fun this way?"
"Fun for whom?"
"Both of us, if you would only admit it."
That got a smile from me, and I didn't want to smile. I didn't want to be enjoying watching him all soapy and wet. I wanted to be afraid of him, and I was, but I also wanted him. Wanted to run my hands down his wet flesh, wanted to touch what lay under those bubbles. I didn't want intercourse. I couldn't imagine that with him, but I wanted to do a little exploring. I hated that. He was a corpse; surely what I'd seen tonight convinced me of that.
"You're frowning, ma petite; why?"
"I asked you if the two rotting vampires were illusion, you said no. I asked if your form was real, you said yes. Both forms are real, you said."
"That is true," he said.
"Are you a rotting corpse?"
He settled lower in the warm, soapy water, drawing his arms into