Author: Molly Harper

“Is this a violation of couch-date protocol?” he asked when I opened my eyes, half-dazed.

“No, this is, in fact, exactly in keeping with couch-date protocol,” I murmured.

“I’m so glad,” he said, toying with the hem of my blouse before dragging it over my head and tossing it into a pile on the other side of the couch.

I enjoyed the skim of his hands against my bare arms, my stomach against his chest, as I slid onto his lap. He bent his head to run his lips along the contours of my ribs, flexing his fingers around my hips when it made me jump. His hands slid up my back, dragging me down to meet his mouth.

He glided his fingers across my belly, brushing them over my aforementioned panties and the little strawberry-shaped damp spot I’d left on them. I jumped again, forcing his hand harder against me in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I made a breathy little noise that had Gabriel grinning. His clever hand rubbed slow circles over the fabric. I felt his mouth close over my nipple, through the lace of my bra, as he pushed the fabric aside.

And then the doorbell rang.

“Seriously?” I gasped as Gabriel bit gently at the place where my neck and shoulder joined.

“Ignore it,” Gabriel whispered. He undid my bra completely and tossed it across the room. “Please.”

I nodded in mute agreement as my mouth closed over his again. I was fully prepared to ignore anything less than an alien invasion on the front lawn, when the bell gave three more quick peals. Apparently, whoever it was refused to go away, which would have been the reasonable response of any reasonable person harassing a girl who hadn’t had sex in three years.

“Whoever it is, I’m going to kill them,” I vowed as the doorbell chimed again.

“What if it’s trick-or-treaters?” he asked as I disentangled myself and straightened my clothes.

“Anyone over five feet tall is fair game,” I conceded as I struggled into my blouse. “Where is my bra?” Gabriel looked around the room and shrugged. “Well, whoever it is will have to deal with free-swinging Jane,” I said. “And let that be a lesson to them.”

I opened the door to find Jack and Rose from Titanic standing on my porch. Or, at least, Zeb and Jolene dressed as Jack and Rose in their “jump scene” clothes. Because I needed Gabriel to meet Jolene while she was wearing a gorgeous Edwardian rental gown. I wouldn’t pale by comparison or anything.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked, my tone not exactly welcoming.

“Well, we just finished up at a costume party, and we thought you might not have plans tonight,” he said.

“Zeb, honey, I think she has somebody here,” Jolene said, pulling him back as she took in the tousled hair, the general state of me. I would have blushed if I still had circulation. Even I could smell the coppery scent of arousal in the room, and with Jolene’s senses…At that moment, Jolene motioned down to my shirt, which was inside out. I groaned. With my vampire senses and agility, you’d think putting on a blouse wouldn’t be that difficult.

“Yeah.” I looked back toward my parlor. I really hoped Gabriel still had pants on, because, otherwise, this could be awkward. “Actually, there is someone here whom I want you to meet, in a way that you remember.”

“OK, that’s not cryptic,” Zeb said, hauling a duffel bag and some carry-out sacks from Smoky Bones BBQ into the house.

“You are going to change clothes before you eat the barbecue, right? If not, she can kiss that costume deposit good-bye,” I asked. I’d seen Jolene around ribs.

“I heard that!” Jolene called as she went into the kitchen to search for plates.

Sensing that Seminaked Happy Fun Time was over, Gabriel, pants intact, came out of the parlor just as Jolene came back in to claim her share of the ribs.

“Hi! I’m Jolene. It’s real nice to meet you.” Jolene crossed to him and shook his hand.

“Gabriel Nightengale,” he said, tapping his teeth. “McClaine clan?”

“Very good,” she said, grinning. “Not a lot of people pick up on canine patterns.”

“Behavior patterns?” I asked.

“No, the actual pattern of her canine teeth,” Gabriel said. “Werewolves have strong and specific genetic markers, even for something as simple as dental configuration. Different clans have different bite patterns. Jolene has the classic McClaine arrangement, a slight overbite with nicely spaced bottom incisors.”

“You know an alarming amount of information about regional teeth,” I told him.

Jolene giggled, a sound that was followed by a long conversational pause.

“Well.” Zeb rubbed his hands together. “This is really awkward.”

Zeb and Jolene busied themselves with unwrapping enough barbecued ribs, potato salad, and cole slaw to feed about ten people.

“So much food.” Gabriel marveled at my coffee table, groaning under the weight of the spread.

“Um, you know we don’t eat, right?” I asked.

Jolene laughed, a throaty sound that was equal parts growl and giggle. She wiped a smear of sauce from her chin. “Oh, this is just a snack.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll probably have to eat a pork shoulder or somethin’ before bed.”

“On our first date, she ate a whole lasagna and still had room for tiramisu. Who’s my bottomless pit? Who’s my little bottomless pit?” Zeb said proudly, snuffling behind Jolene’s ears.

“Down, boy.” Jolene giggled. “We didn’t forget about y’all, though. We brought bottled blood, and we got wine. It’s strawberry.”

She held up an obscenely red bottle with dancing berries on the label.

Gabriel shuddered, an imperceptible movement caught only by my vampire eyes. “I don’t drink…wine.”

I shot a look at Gabriel. I hoped he could see me thinking, I know you stole that line from Dracula!

Undeterred, Jolene offered the bottle to me. “Jane?”

“No, thanks.”

Handing Gabriel and me each a warmed bottle of an imported, upmarket synthetic blood called Sangre, Zeb gave me a sly look. “Jane never drinks, anyway. Not since the ‘incident’ her sophomore year.”

“Zeb,” I growled.

“Having seen Jane drink, I think I’d like to hear this story,” Gabriel said, cheerfully passing the wine to Zeb.

“Like I’m the only person who’s ever vomited while drunk,” I grumbled.

Zeb grinned. “You were the only person I know who’s done it on an occupied police car.”

I glared at him. “If you want to start trading stories, we can start trading stories. As a former member of the Richard Marx Fan Club, you don’t want to start this arms race.”

Zeb smiled meekly around a rib. “Agreed.”

“Richard Marx?” Jolene asked.

“He went through an obnoxiously cheerful pop phase. Don’t ask.”

Over the course of the evening, I saw again how besotted Jolene was with Zeb, and vice versa. He hung on every word that spilled from her perfect pout. If they would just have stopped smooching and slobbering all over each other, I could have stood being in the same county with them.

As predicted, Jolene and Zeb plowed through the food. I used Aunt Jettie’s favorite glasses to serve the wine and a delicious dessert version of synthetic blood, Café Transylvania by General Foods International Coffees. There was that awkward moment when everyone runs out of food and drink to occupy themselves, and we were all left looking at each other with nothing to say. Well, Jolene was still engrossed in her barbecue, but Zeb, Gabriel, and I were at a weird conversational impasse.

Fortunately, Gabriel had a full century’s worth of experience with uncomfortable social situations, so he was able to break the ice. “Zeb, Jane says you’re a kindergarten teacher.”

“Yep,” Zeb said, bracing for the inevitable “Isn’t babysitting a bunch of kids sort of a weird job for a grown man?” questions that inevitably followed. Since entering the classroom, Zeb had found that male teachers were welcome at the high-school level but that men who wanted to spend their time with small children were immediately suspected of being lazy or creepy.

“I admire people who can work with small children,” Gabriel said. “I have always found them to be…unsettling little creatures.”

Zeb grinned. “Well, they are, but I’d rather spend time with them than most of their parents. Yesterday, I had a mother try to tell me that her son shoving another kid off the top of the jungle gym was a form of creative expression, and then she launched into a lecture on why I should only serve gluten-free carob cookies for snack time. Between the helicopter parents and the parents who drop their kids off without a word except to tell me that their kids are ‘my problem now,’ I will take nose picking and toy grabbing anytime. Also, I just really like taking a nap after lunch every day.”

Gabriel chuckled and poured Zeb another glass of wine.

“So, Gabriel, Jane says you saved her life with this whole vampire thing,” Zeb said. “I appreciate that. She’s been my best friend since we were kids, and I’m glad she didn’t die in a deer-hunting mishap. For me to win the pool, her death had to involve a tragic waterskiing accident.”

“Touching, Zeb,” I muttered.

“But Jane also said you played shake-the-Etch-a-Sketch with my memory. I would prefer you not do that again. Even if you think I can’t handle some part of your world, let me decide whether I want to remember it or not.”

“Same goes,” Jolene said, raising her hand, her voice muffled by a rib. “Hey, Jane, Zeb told me about the telemarketin’ thing.”

I tamped down the urge to be annoyed with Zeb for sharing my humiliation with his girlfriend. Of course, he told Jolene about my disastrous one-night stand with phone sales. I needed to accept that my life was now their “And how was your day?” fodder.

“Don’t feel bad,” Jolene told me. “My uncle Lonnie gave me a job in his bait shop one summer, and I let a whole cooler’s worth of crickets loose. One of the customers started screamin’ that it was a biblical plague and started havin’ chest pains. We had to call nine-one-one. For the rest of the summer, all my cousins called me Cricket, and Uncle Lonnie sent me to work at the sandwich shop. It was a much better fit for me. That’s all you have to do, Jane, just find your fit.”

“Or I can follow your lead and unleash a plague of locusts like this town has never seen,” I said, rubbing my chin with an evil-genius glare.

Jolene snorted, clapping her hand over her mouth to keep from spewing potato salad over my coffee table. “No more jokes while I’m chewin’!”

The good news was that Jolene and Zeb really seemed to like spending time with me and Gabriel. The bad news is that meant they stayed, and stayed, and stayed…and stayed. Gabriel and I were cuddled under a throw at one corner of the couch, barely able to cover that we were desperately trying to touch each other without being noticed. We watched the rest of Dracula, moved on to From Dusk till Dawn, and resorted to Fright Night before Gabriel finally gave up and decided to take his leave for the evening. I walked him out as Jolene popped her fourth bag of Super Butter Lovers’ Popcorn in my microwave.

“I think they’ve moved in with you and just haven’t told you,” Gabriel whispered as I closed the door behind us. He clutched my face in his hands and seized my mouth in a fierce kiss. “What are they trying to do to us?”

“I don’t know!” I giggled as Gabriel pulled me with him on his trek to the car. “Zeb is usually much better at taking hints, but I think he’s doing some sort of weird brotherly protection thing. It’s either very sweet or just this side of cruel and unusual.”