Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #3) - Cynthia St. Aubin Page 0,1
the blade into his skin just enough to create a tiny dart of flesh.
His chest ceased to rise. He’d been undead long enough that breathing was no longer a habit and died away under pressure.
“And before you explain to me why I should be honored by your visit and reveal the sacred purpose which brings you, let me save you some time by telling you the answer is no. And not just no, but hell no.”
“I don’t recall asking a question.” Hemingway’s thick brows drew together, creating a ponderous crease in the center of his forehead.
“You didn’t,” I said, “but you will. All the others have. Twain, Poe, Dickens, Fitzgerald...”
He sat forward in the bath, the water sloshing against the sides of my once-beloved claw foot tub. “They have been here?”
“Bro, I’ve had enough famous writers wander through here to make a tenured literature professor cream his starched boxers.”
Hemingway’s eyes took on the same kind of gleam I often caught in my own accidental reflection in a doughnut shop window. “Wilde said—”
“Oh, I know what Wilde said.” A hot blue flame of irritation flickered to life at the base of my skull. “I know what he said because I lived it.”
Hemingway opened his mouth to speak, but I retracted the knife from his neck, plopped down on the toilet lid and rattled on.
“There I was, minding my own business, schlepping around London looking for my 431-year-old werewolf boss, and shazaam! Oscar Wilde starts snackin’ me down like I’m a triple cream brie croque monsieur. And if that’s not bad enough, he’s got to tell every damn vampire in his knitting circle I’m the sanguine equivalent of crack. Next thing I know, I’ve got a line of vampires around the block asking for samples. Samples! ‘Oh just one little sip, Miss Hanna. I promise I won’t try to eat your soul, Miss Hanna’.”
“Well, I—”
“If you run into Oscar, tell him there’s a dick punch coming his way,” I said, pointing the knife’s tip for emphasis.
“Might you be persuaded to cease waving your weapon in my vicinity?” he asked.
“Might you be persuaded to get your undead ass out of my tub?”
Hemingway appeared to consider this. “I might.”
“Look, it’s not like I don’t understand your curiosity. I really do. I mean, shit. There’s all kinds of cheeses I want to try. Pule, for instance. Never mind it’s made from the milk of a genetically superior pack of Serbian donkeys. Speaking of, did you know that donkey’s milk has sixty times the amount of vitamin C compared to cow’s milk?”
“I can’t say that I—”
“True story,” I said. “And it only has one percent of its fat content, which is why Pule is so crumbly. Why anyone would want to pay $567 a pound for crumbly ass cheese is way beyond me, when there’s such a thing as triple cream brie in the world. You follow me?”
Ernest Hemingway blinked.
“Okay, maybe not my best work metaphor-wise.” Scooting forward on the toilet seat, I looked Hemingway straight in the eye. “The point is, I get it. But all the same, the answer is no. I know that as a werewolf heir, my blood is super tasty, but I’m kind of determined to keep it inside my body.”
Hemingway folded his arms. The resulting wave drove the bubbles away from his groin. I looked away before I accidentally caught sight of his kibbles and bits. “Perhaps I could write you something. Something to express my appreciation,” Hemingway suggested. And suggest he did. His eyes were mischievous beneath their straight, dark brows. His sensitive lips drawn into a lascivious curve, the masculine dimple like a thumbprint in his chin. He was younger than he had been when he died to the world.
This was the chief advantage to being a vampire, I supposed. Werewolves only continued the lives they lead before transformation. Vampires banished life, and all its skin-sagging, boob-drooping indignities, into retreat.
“I’m flattered,” I said. “I really am. But I kind of already died once with Wilde, and I didn’t really care for it.”
“I understand,” Hemingway said, setting his pipe in the soap dish and pressing himself upward. I jerked my head over my shoulder and shoved a towel at him. He scrubbed it brusquely over his body as I kept my eyes trained firmly at the floor.
When the tub voiced its final, gurgling protests, Hemingway pulled the curtain and set the shower running to rinse it.
An oddly gentlemanly gesture for someone who had come to guzzle my life’s blood.