Mexico. Ric loved the stucco wall niches between climbing vines dripping blossoms and rich scent, where he could back me into the dark for butterfly and brimstone kisses.
Quicksilver whined impatiently and then lapped noisily at the fountain pool. He was big enough to sound like a herd of thirty water buffalo.
"I bet he's jealous," Ric said, turning to stare at the wolfish lapper.
Quick stared back and stopped drinking, wearing his innocent-dog look.
"Why don't we leave him on guard duty out here?" Ric suggested.
I walked over to Quick, who promptly sat and gazed at me with his limpid baby blues. My hand brushed his head and neck, fingering the silver medallions on his collar, now all sliced in half, like the moon.
"Okay?" I asked.
Could a dog roll his eyes? Mine did. I took that as a yes.
Ric and I walked through the heavy hacienda-style wooden front door as it opened for us. Ric's house might not contain the Enchanted Cottage's invisible helpers, but he had high tech.
"I don't see any ritzy liquor cabinets," I mentioned as Ric took my hand and hustled me through the dim living room.
"We don't need liquor. We're running on liquid silver."
"You actually like sharing a bit of my silver magic. Concealing your one silver iris most of the time isn't a drag?"
In the dark living room Ric stopped to grasp my upper arms, even then his palms unable to stop caressing my velvety, metal-studded suit.
"I like us sharing everything. What's not to like about you saving my life if the only side effect is a cool silver eye I can cover with a contact lens?"
"Maybe your eye doesn't reflect an aspect of my silver talents. Maybe the color was leached from your eye, rather than added. I didn't even know I had any silver mojo until I came to Vegas."
"Delilah, querida. I really don't care about the why and wherefore of my quirky eye right now. What I don't know is how Christophe's rescue party kept their hands off you in this thing. Mmm, that warm velvety black stretchy stuff embedded with all those silver metal mega-goose bumps except here. ... What's the matter? You're holding back."
I felt like such a fraud for not telling Ric I might have brought him back from the dead with the leftovers of Snow's Brimstone Kiss, not my own determined CPR.
"I'm ... not used to such blatant booty calls."
Ric laughed, a rich and wonderful sound I thought I'd never hear again only a few days ago. "Shy Delilah," he crooned. "Don't you know that's even more seductive? Yeah, this is a booty call. We're going into the lighted bathroom and you're going to strip me naked, shy girl, but then we'll go into the dark bedroom and I'm going to make love to you in that suit like you've never had it before."
"But Ric, I've only ever ... had ... you before."
"Maybe not like this. We've both got the silver mojo now, and I've figured out how to use it some. There's no telling what we can do together."
"Who knows what the silver eye will do for, or against, you. I don't think sex is going to prove anything."
"Aw, Del, sex proves everything. Our connection was white-hot from the first, with our finding those not-so-dead embracing skeletons in Sunset Park. ... What should I call that co-ed dowsing moment? A sensual shudder?"
"Nicely put," I admitted. He was right. We'd had it all from the first. Sex and death and dark delight.
I swallowed. "This could be dangerous. My silver talents, your quicksilver eye. We could ... spontaneously combust."
"Yeah, baby."
"You're killing the mood with that word."
"Si, Senorita Paloma." His kisses avoided my mouth, tracing my temple and cheekbone, along my jawline down to the side of my neck to the drumming pulse there.
The sweet spot for teenage boys and vampires.
I twisted my shoulder away from his lover's grip. I didn't want to play vampire games. It wasn't safe sex.
Allowing myself to tease the site of the vampire bat bite that had introduced Ric to puberty in the Mexican desert had made it an instant highway for the real Millennium Revelation vampires to nearly suck him dry and kill him. I wanted no more neck-nibbling, even if it had been a basic foreplay move since cave days.
"I'm back now, Delilah," Ric reminded me. "Better than ever."
"Your ego never went missing, for sure," I teased. "You really want me to strip you?"
It wasn't like I'd never been there before, but I'd never been the