“The truth is,” he said, his tone suddenly very serious, “I want you. I’ve wanted you since that first night in New York. The time was just never right. Maybe now I could take you to dinner, or—”

I went up on my tiptoes so I could kiss him again, a chaste brush against his lips that ended up being sexier than I’d intended. Urgently, he wrapped his hands around my waist and picked me up, pressing my back against the sun-soaked wall so that our eyes met. It was maybe two thirty in the afternoon.

“Come to bed,” I whispered.

Chapter 24

“Scarlett. Wake up, babe.”

“Mmmf. Don’t wanna.”

“I need to go soon.”

I cracked open an eye, instantly aware of Jameson in my radius. I was starting to really enjoy that feeling. He was sitting at the edge of the big king-size bed in my palatial hotel room. He’d already put his pants back on, which was just tragic. “I fell asleep?” I mumbled, stupidly. Of course I’d fallen asleep. “Time’s it?”

He grinned, a flash of white teeth in the darkening hotel room. “Almost five. The sun’s going down soon. I need to get to work.”

I yawned and rolled over so I could reach for his arm. “Come back to bed. Be my friend.”

He let me pull him until he was propped on one hand, right next to me. “I seem to recall already being your friend,” he teased. “A couple of times.”

“Shh. It’s better for me when you don’t talk.”

Still smiling, he bent his head and kissed me. I yanked at his arms, forcing him to fall on top of me. He chuckled and let me roll us both over so I was on top. “I win!” I crowed.

“You wish.” Jameson rolled me hard the other way, holding himself on his elbows so he could look down at me. “I accept your surrender,” I said graciously.

“Oh, well, thank you.” He kissed me again, then held up his head, looking at me intently.

After a moment, I got embarrassed. “What?” I said. “Is it my hair? It’s my hair, isn’t it?”

“Oh no,” he said solemnly. “It’s your best hair ever.” He brushed his thumb against my eyebrow, tracing the lines. I had a hard time reading his expression in the fading light, but he looked almost . . . sad.

“Do you think this has ever happened before?” I asked without thinking.

His lips quirked. “Yes, Scarlett. My understanding is that interracial sex is a fairly everyday thing now.”

I made a face at him. “I meant between two nulls, dummy.”

“Oh.” He tipped himself onto his side, holding his head up with one elbow. Damn. I didn’t know the names for all the muscles in his upper arms and shoulders, but I could certainly see them just fine. “Probably not, now that you mention it. Before the Internet, or at least long-distance phone service, I’m not sure how two nulls could have ever met. Then getting two nulls who can travel to meet up, are within acceptable age ranges, and are attracted to each other—”

“Whoa, slow down, buddy,” I objected. “I never said I was attracted to you.”

Jameson wrapped one hand around my bare hip, drawing me close. He kissed me until I was breathless. When he finally pulled back, I was very much awake.

“I accept your surrender,” he whispered.

I swatted him, and he started to roll off the bed. I touched his arm. “Wait,” I said. “Don’t go.”

“I have to work, Letts.”

“No, I mean, don’t go back. At all.”

Jameson reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. The sudden light made me flinch, but I resisted the urge to cover myself up. Jameson had already seen the show, what did it matter now? “If the skinners know you’re working for the Holmwoods,” I said, not bothering to keep the worry out of my voice, “they know right where to find you tonight.”

“Maybe so, but I still have a job to do. You know what that’s like.”

I did, didn’t I? It was strange, because Jameson and I sort of had the same skill set without having the same job. Oh, and our skill set wasn’t really a skill at all, just something we could do. It was like we’d made completely different careers out of being able to juggle. Our lives were so weird.

“I know you gave your word . . . but I also know that Arthur and Lucy Holmwood are not worth your life.” I reached up to touch his face. “Come back to LA with me,” I pleaded. “I’ll talk to Dashiell, maybe he can negotiate with Malcolm.”

“Bargain for my life, you mean,” Jameson said, echoing my words from earlier. “How is that any better?”

“I trust Dashiell. He would do this for me.” At least, I was pretty sure. “And I can work off whatever he needs to pay Malcolm to get him off your back.”

“So you want to get your rich white boss to buy a black man’s life for you?” he said in a teasing voice. “That’s pretty twisted, Letts.”

“I’m serious.”

He sighed. “I know you are. But Dashiell’s still a vampire. He cares about blood and power, and that’s it. He’s just another monster. Like the rest of them.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” I said, sitting up in bed. I pulled the sheets up over my chest, feeling self-conscious. “He loves Beatrice, and he cares about his community. Hell, if I were to be brutally murdered, I think he might even feel a twinge of displeasure. He can be a dick, but he’s not a monster.” At least, not any more so than the rest of the Old World. All of them—werewolves, witches, the undead—had the power to mess around with forces that humans probably shouldn’t be allowed to touch. But that alone didn’t make them evil.

“They’re all monsters, Letts,” Jameson said with surprising vehemence. He sat up, too. “Lucy and Arthur are at least up-front about it.” His face had hardened, and my eyes dropped down to the thick line of light scar tissue on his collarbone. I didn’t know much about his years with Malcolm, but I did know this was not an argument I would win.

“Look,” I said, trying again, “those guys downtown, they didn’t come here to give you a love tap. They’re the real thing, and if they work for a whole company, there will be more of them. Come to LA with me.” I leaned forward to kiss him again. Kissing Jameson was beginning to feel really . . . right.

He leaned his head forward so his forehead rested on mine. “I love that you want to save me,” he said softly. “But I can handle things here. And I can handle Malcolm. I know how he operates, remember? I’ll talk to Arthur and Lucy tonight; we’ll figure something out.”

“But you said yourself that you don’t trust them!” I protested. I didn’t really have another argument, or a better one. But going to Lucy and Arthur just felt wrong to me.

“I trust how much they want what they’re doing here, and that they need me to do it,” he reasoned. “I’ll be fine.”

“And . . . you and me?” I suddenly felt completely pathetic. Was I really sitting here begging him to . . . what? Go steady?

He smiled. There was a little sadness in it. “When things settle down with Malcolm, I’ll come to LA for a weekend, okay? You can show me around. We can figure out what this is.”

Why didn’t that make me feel better? Was I being paranoid and weird, or was there something in his face like he didn’t really believe it would ever happen?

He reached out to play with a strand of my hair. It tickled my shoulder, making me shiver. “Listen,” he said, “I still want you to go home tonight. Back to LA.”

“Oh, so I can’t protect you, but you can protect me?” I said indignantly. “I’m gonna have to call bullshit on that one.”

He tucked the wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “The difference is, this isn’t your fight.” His voice was firm. “It never was.”

“But I can still help. I’ve got this idea—well, I had some help—about the phone records of the vampires who went missing. I think maybe the last or second-to-last person who called them might have been the skinners, or someone working for the skinners. And—”