“Nyet,” he protested. “Why would you think that?”
“Because guys—especially guys with the sort of reputation you’ve earned, Maximilian Rusakova—don’t just sleep next to a girl and expect nothing else will happen. And nothing else is going to happen, do you understand? Comprende?”
He stared at her, stricken. “Nothing else…”
But she turned on her heel and strode away, into the foyer, the door slamming behind her.
“… was going to happen,” he concluded. “Damn it.”
I sat still as a rabbit waiting for the hunter’s hound and wishing I could tell him to go to her, to tell her exactly what he’d meant to before she’d cut him off.
Jessie
I brushed the snow off my coat and followed Pietr inside. “So.” I looked him over and did my best to smile. Suggestively. “Wanna try and warm me up?”
He nodded. “I’ll heat some water for tea.”
“That’s not what I was thinking about,” I countered, putting a hand on his arm. “I was thinking about something we could do together that would get my blood pumping.” I glanced toward the upstairs as plainly as I could.
“Oh,” he said.
“So … shall we?”
He nodded slowly and, taking my hand, we climbed the stairs together and headed to his room. The knot I felt in my stomach eased as the door to his room clicked shut behind us. We had our privacy.
The knot doubled when I sat on the bed and he sat a healthy distance away. “Kiss me, Pietr,” I said, leaning toward him.
His response was a firm closed-mouth kiss that was cool in every way except the good one. Carefully, he put an arm around my waist and I scooted closer so our hips and legs touched.
Oblivious, he just looked at me. Blankly. I pressed myself to him and pushed my lips against his until he responded.
Awkwardly.
Romance is supposed to be awkward, my mind whispered. He was just a late bloomer when it came to the awkward, stuttering, and clumsy part of it.
We flopped onto his bed together, kissing, my heart pounding against the cage my ribs formed.
His lips were too soft or too wet or … They never managed to find my own frantic ones as my hands raced across his back.
Or maybe he’s just been an idiot savant and now we are more firmly in the realm of idiot than savant.…
“Pietr,” I whispered, surprised by the need I heard in my voice and hoping it was enough to silence the sniping voice in my head …
… or to help him home in on my lips.…
Damn it.
Then he said, “Jess,” and snuggled me into his arms, holding me so politely and carefully, his chin resting on top of my head, that I wanted to die.
And as long as we lay there together—twenty-seven minutes precisely—that was as far as Pietr was inspired to go.
It felt perfectly like rejection—although I knew it wasn’t; it was the result of the cure, an effect of the very thing my own blood caused.
Like so much else, this was my fault, too.
So I rolled over and placed my head on his chest and tried to enjoy the slower rhythm of his heart at rest.
When I finally gave up on our time turning romantic and tugged free of his gentlemanly embrace, I kissed his forehead and left the room.
Amy sat on the bottom of the steps, staring at the door to the front porch.
I plopped down beside her. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She continued to stare straight ahead.
“What’s got so much of your attention?”
A shadow moved on the door’s other side, and I instantly recognized the silhouette.
“Oh. Not what. Who. What’s Max done now?”
“He asked me to sleep with him.”
A year ago I would have needed to pick my jaw up off of the ground after hearing a statement like that. Now? I barely stopped myself from nodding. “The … bastard?”
She glared at me. “He thinks I’m easy.”
“How do you know?”
“Why else would he suggest that I sleep with him if he didn’t think I was easy?”
“Because maybe he actually meant sleep with him? Not sleep with him. Like, the passive form of the verb, if there is such a thing, compared to the”—I cleared my throat—“more active form?”
She snorted. “So you actually think Maximilian Rusakova, stud of Junction High, just wants to have me in his bed to hold me like some lame body pillow—or teddy bear?”
“It happens,” I said with a sigh.
“Really? Max actually means sleep as in sleep?”
“Why not?”
“I never thought…” She stared even harder at the door and the small window set into it covered by thin and lacy curtains.
As if by her wish, the door opened and Max appeared, pausing on the Oriental rug, his boots shining with snow and slush. He saw her instantly and hung his head, his tousled curls falling into his eyes.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
How was it that between the two of them that single word had so much more intimacy and immediacy than I’d ever heard it have used in any other way? The weight of those three letters felt totally different stretching across the air between them.
Amy shifted beside me and tugged at her ponytail. “I may owe you an apology,” she said to Max. “It might just be possible I misinterpreted your words.”
Without raising his head, Max lifted a single eyebrow, his eyes darting from one of us to the other and back again as he tried to figure out what she actually meant. “Want to talk about it?”
Amy pulled me close and said in a whisper loud enough for Max to hear, “It freaks me out when he suggests we talk and it doesn’t mean he’s breaking up with me.” Then she turned and looked at him again. “You’re not like most guys, are you?”
He raised his head, straightened his shoulders and back, and gave her a cocky grin. “The werewolf thing didn’t give you a hint?”
She blinked at him, nonplussed.
The grin faded back to a simple smile, and he cleared his throat and tried his answer again. “Undoubtedly not.”
“Good,” Amy said firmly. “Because most guys suck. Let’s talk.”
She rose, pausing to rest her hand on my shoulder. Then she left, taking Max’s hand in her own and leading him down the basement steps so they could be alone and discuss what sleep actually meant.