iris to add an exotic air. An eye patch would look dashing too.
I stared into that silver eye, unguarded by a brown contact lens for this night-work, and saw my face reflected, tiny and shiny, exactly as he'd described it. His left iris was a reflective silvery surface, a miniature mirror, but I doubted I could dive into and through it with anything but my mind's eye.
"You never got this mushy before your eye turned," I said more throatily than I'd expected. "Maybe I just look better through it now."
There you go, Irma objected. Putting us down again.
Ric mock-growled back and kissed me like yesterday, today, and tomorrow rolled into one mega-moment. His lips slipped along my cheek and under my ear, nibbling.
"Back to my place, then, for all that jazz."
By then Quicksilver had finished checking out the perimeter and even he was growling. His tolerance for sloppy sentiments was lower than mine.
"We do leave the motorized critter behind?" I asked.
Ric glanced over his shoulder at the ATV. "'Fraid so. You're gonna be my only ride tonight."
Um, frisky. Irma approved. Quit worrying, girlfriend. The man had a blood count of zero for a couple days there. Even vampires need a fresh feed to get it up.
I do so not want to think about that, I told her. You are getting a time-out, girlfriend, starting now.
Chapter Two
"WHY THE SMIRK?" Ric asked, swinging an arm over my shoulder. Navigating the shifting sands made us swagger toward the road, bumping hips and weapons systems.
I was not about to convey Irma's saucy thoughts to my guy.
"Look at Quicksilver," I told him instead.
As usual, Dolly had her top down, and Quick had raced ahead to jump into her backseat. "He's ready to roll."
The wolf-spitz family dominated the wolfhound in Quicksilver's looks, so he was a "smiley" dog, with the perked ears and grinning face that looked ever so friendly. It was hard to tell when he was just happy to see you, or ready to attack. His paler beige face showed a gray lupine widow's peak, but his eyes were a lovely "spacious skies" shade of blue, a trait that came from a rare wolfhound gene.
"Do zombies make him nervous?" Ric asked. "Any ordinary dog wouldn't know whether to attack or bury 'em like a bone. These Zobos rambling out here like Xanax addicts must really confuse the issue."
I patted Quick between the ears before working the car keys out of my duty belt and going around to Dolly's driver's seat while Ric stowed my night vision goggles in the trunk.
Ric imitated Quick and bounded over the convertible's closed front door into the passenger seat, just to prove he was fully recovered from the Karnak Hotel mob vampire attack.
I was hoping he was out to prove something else tonight.
"When we go to Wichita, we share the driving," Ric said, glancing at the luminous dial of his seriously multi-function watch. As a former FBI agent, he knew where to get all the latest paramilitary gizmos.
I'd never let anyone else drive Dolly before. Well, except for the Inferno and Karnak Hotel demon parking valets, and those occasions had been emergencies. Dolly had been my BFF since I bought her at a Kansas farm sale five years ago, when I'd been nineteen. Her looks were electric. Licorice-black body paint, channel-stitched red leather interior, and white convertible top. I didn't lightly let other hands curl around her extra-large pizza-size steering wheel.
"Sure," I told Ric, meaning our road trip. "We go halves all the way to yellow-brick-road country. I don't know why you're so keen to leave Vegas for the boonies right away."
By then I had Dolly's three hundred and sixty-five vintage horses kicked in and we - slowly - moved through the abrasive sand-drifted road toward the highway.
"You do let her stretch out all her horses on the freeway, right?" Ric asked.
"Actually, I don't like state highway patrol stops."
"No problem. You just gotta know where they typically lie in wait."
"You do?"
"First thing you figure out in the FBI. We didn't like local cop stops, either."
I heaved a dramatic sigh. "I'm installing a fuzz buster before we go anywhere, speed demon."
Ric's grin in the moonlight was as white as Quicksilver's. "What a waste of money when you've got an inboard one riding shotgun."
His hand stroked my nearest inner thigh. "Any Navy Seal would salivate to have this Inferno Hotel battle suit. As impenetrable as Teflon, you say, yet the surface feels as smooth as velveteen." His strokes became longer and