Carole Douglas - Virtual Virgin

“And you don’t really hate me.” Snow moved toward me. “Hate is inspired by something you see of yourself in someone else that you’re not ready to admit.”

If it wasn’t Snow I hated, it was the damn calculated stagy sexiness of a breed I despised, a woman-using rock star who actually had the charisma and—could it be?—the soul to seduce the upright, maybe uptight, liberated woman I liked to think was me.

Oh . . . not God.

Champagne is a fast drunk. And anger is an aphrodisiac.

I learned that lesson for once and all when I stood hypnotized, watching Snow’s white snakeskin boot-toes slide across the plush carpet. I couldn’t read his intentions . . . hostile or worse, personal.

I wanted to face off Snow, to lift my eyes to his cheatin’ heart and sunglasses, but they insisted on keeping a groupie’s mosh-pit-eye view and moved from those boots up to his white-leather-clasped thighs and . . . tight-stretched leather-swathed pelvis and . . . torso bared from the hip-slung belt above the jeweled fly to sculpted chest muscles endorsed by Jack Frost with jagged edges of scar tissue and . . . to a corded neck branded with the cheesy purple passion emblem of my most inflamed soul kiss at the hollow of his throat . . . to his pale white lips . . . that a woman might want to kiss until they reddened . . . or to bite until they bled.

The Snow groupies online had called him Ice Prick. I liked the sound of that, ice meeting fire, ice melting into me. They’d tossed around imagined dimensions, as if for rainfall. Didn’t matter, just the sky raining down moisture, just the earth giving ground.

I could see why the groupies found him totally tasty. I’d already dipped an ‘impudent toe’ into that pool of sexy whitewater and found it unforgettable. I’d seen how my mouth and lips could blaze a hot, warming trail over his albino skin, his scars, his Sanscouci tits, over the entire bleached, muscled, beloved Carrara marble of Michelangelo’s David come to life.

Did I want him groveling at my feet—toes would do—or conquering me utterly?

I was your typical conflicted modern woman. And he knew it.

His hand cupped the back of my skull, brought my lips to the hollow of his throat. “Yes, I know.”

I told you he was obvious.

I tried and failed to shake off his erotic spell. My lips met the familiar cool skin—once surprising myself at the Emerald City, now surprising no one here, neither of us—and fastened hard with intent to suck another soul-shaking orgasm out of him. Just to prove . . . I didn’t know what, that I could be a vampire too? That I might as well be one now?

At this moment I believed he’d let me chain him between two pillars, his dark-glasses-shielded eyes blinded by the light, and die from pleasure. I wanted to feel those pillars shake, rattle, and roll, because of me.

Except . . .

Shoot. Biblical femme fatales weren’t my style. Not really.

I broke the contact and stepped away, admiring the still smoldering trace of my handiwork on his perfect body.

“So I’m human,” I said. “You’re not. How can I help Ric be even better than both of us?”

“Admit the truth about him, as long as you’re at it.” Snow stepped back, unshaken by my about-face, to drain his champagne glass.

Every little thing he did was magic, or so I thought, watching my blood bruise seem to throb on his throat as he drank. I was developing a serious addiction problem. I understood Sanscouci now.

Ric loves you.

And me, him.

I want you.

And I like him, an honest vampire in a naughty world, bless him.

And Snow needs you .

That is probably true, but I don’t know why. And not knowing why is my most unacceptable condition.

Snow began pacing the lush carpet. “You can’t hide from me or yourself anymore, Delilah. You have to understand what’s happening. In the desert, Montoya called on the Silver Zombie. You called on me.”

“No. I didn’t. I’d never ask you for help.”

“Never? Why, Delilah? Why never?’

“I . . . don’t do that.”

“Maybe you should try it sometimes. Everybody needs help sometimes.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me now that I’m . . . defaced.”

Oh, kick me in the conscience, why don’t you? “I didn’t consciously call on you.” I’d remembered calling to the heavens for help, to any force anywhere.

“You did. And I came.”

Well, that was unfortunately too true, a few days before in Wichita.

“I just wanted to save Ric. He had the Silver Zombie to call on. You’re saying you had to butt in with the Seven Deadly Sins because of me?”

“The Sins only come when called.” Snow paced close again, tossed his long hair so the very ends sizzled across my skin. “And only you can call on me.”

“I didn’t ask for that favor. It was Ric drawing down the power of the Silver Zombie that saved that situation in the Valley of Guadalupe.”

“He survived it, Delilah. We all need more than mere survival.”

I recalled a favorite line: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

Snow had certainly been that man tonight as he rang down the false front to reveal the new Metropolis he’d already built with a lot of money and also magic, probably.

Now Snow stood watching me. Waiting for me. I eyed the pulse in his throat and leaned forward to place my fingers on the beating blue-purple bruise.

“Why won’t this fade?” I asked.

“Maybe a succubus comes every night to renew it. Do you have any succubus tendencies, Delilah?”

“In your dreams.”

“That’s the place.”

I managed a smile.

Sansouci’s mantra replayed in my head.

Ric loves you.

I want you.

Snow needs you .

And I needed, maybe wanted, all of the above.

“You are the Silver Zombie, Delilah.” Snow had recognized my confusion and indecision and zeroed in. “ You are the bleeding-heart purity of Mother Maria and you are the hot-blooded temptress who drives men to extremes, maybe bad, but maybe good despite themselves. The Silver Zombie is celibacy and sexuality in one contradictory, addictive package. Don’t think I don’t know all about that. But you , on the other hand, know nothing of my curse.”

“Curse?” That sobered me up fast. I stepped back. “You’ve been cursed. For how long?”

A white eyebrow lifted above the black sunglasses. A reporter soon learns nobody ever wants to tell you his or her age. Especially nowadays.

“How?” I asked next.

“Isn’t it obvious why I keep the groupies in their mosh pit forever? I can only give pleasure, never receive it.”

No! Yes. That would explain the Brimstone Kiss, the ultimate dead-end pleasure trip for women. It wouldn’t explain . . .

“But . . . when I . . . we—”

Can a smile both calm and sting?

“Every curse has an antidote, Delilah,” Snow said. “That’s the quest that keeps me going for . . . however long I have been. You can always find an antidote. Some time . Some where . Some body .”

I’d truly been shocked sober.

“You’re going to have to decide who you’re safest with, and who’s safest with you.” Sansouci’s words again.

Or, I added mentally: who I most want and need to save and who most wants and needs to save me.

Not a cakewalk.

No, indeed.

I left without another word.

Finis for now.

AT HOME IN the Enchanted Cottage, I worked on dozing off with my e-reader on my stomach.

My red velvet gown had disappeared into the cottage’s bottomless closet, probably snuggling up to the green silk one from Wichita and the ivory satin thirties wedding dress Ric had unbuttoned all seventy-two buttons of, up the sleeves and down the back. The Mrs. Peel section was Sansouci’s. I’ve always been a versatile chick.