Shane made a pleased sound in the back of his throat, picked her up around the waist, and moved her backward until she felt a cold brick wall against her shoulders. Then he set about really kissing her - deep, sweet, hot, intent. She lost herself in it, drifting and delirious, until he finally came up for air. The look in his brown eyes was focused and dreaming at the same time, and his smile was . . . dangerous. "Are you still analyzing?" he asked.
"Hmmm," Claire said, and pressed against him. "I think I've come to a conclusion."
"Damn, I hope not. I've still got a lot of ways left to try to make my case."
Someone cleared a throat near them, and it was unexpected enough to make Shane take a giant step back and turn, putting himself between the source of that noise and Claire. Protecting her, as always. Claire shook her head in exasperation and moved to her right, standing next to him.
The throat clearing had come from Father Joe. The priest of Morganville's Catholic church was a man in his early thirties, with red hair and freckles and kind eyes, and the smile he gave them was only just a touch judgmental. "Don't mean to disturb you," he said, which was a lie, but maybe only a small one. "Claire, I wanted to thank you for coming to last Sunday's choir practice. You have a very nice voice."
She blushed - partly because a priest had just closely observed her thinking very impure thoughts about her boyfriend, and partly because she wasn't used to those kinds of compliments. "It's not very strong," she said. "But I like to sing, sometimes."
"You just need practice," he said. "I hope we'll see you again at mass." He raised those eyebrows at her, then nodded to Shane. "You're always invited, too."
"Thanks for asking," Shane said, almost sincerely.
"But you won't come."
"Not too damn likely, Father."
Claire continued to blush, because as Father Joe walked away, hands clasped behind his back, Shane had turned to stare at her. "Mass?" he echoed, raising his eyebrows. "Tell me you're not confessing, too."
"No, you have to be a real Catholic to do that," she said.
"So - what was the attraction?"
"Myrnin wanted to go." That said volumes, brief as it was. Claire's boss - a dangerously nuts vampire who was an utter sweetheart, most of the time, until he wasn't - was not a subject Shane really liked very much, and she hurried on as she saw his expression shift a little toward annoyance. "I went with him a couple of times as, you know, sanity control. But I'm more of a Unitarian, I guess. The church is nice, though. And so is Father Joe. Hey, did you know there's a Jewish temple in town, too, and a mosque? They're both really small, but they're here. I don't think the vamps are too welcome there, though."
"Just don't go telling him about, you know, anything personal. About us."
"Embarrassed?"
He buffed his fingernails on his coat and looked at them with an exaggerated smugness. "Me, embarrassed? Nah, I was just worried he'd feel bad about his celibacy thing."
"God, you are such a jackass."
"That is three times you've called me that in one walk. You need a new compliment." He tickled her, and she mock-shrieked and ran, and he chased her, and they raced each other around the block, down the street, all the way to the white fence around their not-very-attractive yard, up the walk to the big pillared porch of the peeling Victorian house. The Glass House, called that because the last (and current) owners were the Glass family - Michael being the last of that family still in residence. The rest of them were, technically, renting rooms, but over time Shane, Claire, and Eve had become Michael's family. As close as family, anyway.
As evidenced by the fact that when Shane opened the door, he yelled out, "Put your pants on, people; we are back!"
"Shut up!" Eve yelled from somewhere upstairs. "Jackass!"
"You know, when people say that, I just hear the word awesome ," Shane said. "What's for lunch? Because personally I am down two pints of blood and I need food. Cookies and orange juice did not cut it."
"Hot dogs," Eve's distant voice said. "And no, I didn't make chili. You'd just criticize how I make it. But there's relish and onions and mustard!"
"You're a princess!" Shane called back on his way to the kitchen. "Okay, a lame Goth half-dead princess, but whatever!"
"Jack. Ass!"
Claire shook her head as she dumped her backpack on the couch. She was glowing and tingling from the run, and felt a little light-headed - probably hadn't been smart, doing that so soon after giving blood, but that was one thing you learned quick in Morganville: how to run even with blood loss. Shane wandered into the kitchen, and she heard things banging around for a few minutes. He came back with two plates, one with plain hot dogs, one with hot dogs buried under a mound of whatever that stuff was - onions, relish, mustard, probably hot sauce, too.
Claire took the plain plate. He dug a can of Coke out of his pocket and handed that over, too. "You're officially no longer a jackass," she told him, as he thumped down on the couch beside her and started shoveling food in his mouth. He mumbled something and winked at her, and she ate in slow, measured bites as she thought about what she was going to do about Eve.
Shane finished his plate first - not surprisingly - and took hers away into the kitchen, leaving her holding the second hot dog. He was gone - conveniently - when Eve came downstairs. Her poufy black net skirt brushed the wall with a strange hiss as she descended, like a snake's, and Eve did look poisonously fierce, Claire thought. A leather corset and jacket, skull-themed tights under the skirt, a black leather choker with spikes, and loads of makeup. She flung herself on the couch in Shane's deserted spot and thumped her booted feet up on the coffee table with a jingle of chrome chain.
"I can't believe you actually got him to donate without some kind of four-point restraint system," Eve said, and reached for the game controller. Not that the TV was on, but she liked to fiddle with things, and the controller was perfect. On her left hand, the diamond engagement ring twinkled softly in the light. It was a silver ring, not gold; Eve didn't do gold. But the diamond was beautiful. "You're going to be around on Saturday to decorate, right?"
"Right," Claire agreed, and took a bite of her hot dog. She was still hungry, and focused hard on the delicious taste to take her mind off what Oliver had said. "Anything you want me to get?"