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Which was how it felt every time, but something about the trapped vamp and the cozy darkness and the need to be silent and the perfect rhythm that we fell into despite the fact that he couldn’t use his hands . . .
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh God—
His patience broke barely a minute later, and he rolled me over, cursing and fighting with the damned sweater while I laughed and laughed, and while the chair we’d banged into again squeaked and squeaked, and while the musicians below, who had started playing for real now, probably started wondering which of them was making that weird noise—
I bit his shoulder, because it was that or give them a screaming demonstration.
And then Louis-Cesare stopped, and stared around.
“What?” I asked breathlessly. “What is it?”
He swallowed. “We usually get to this point, and your roommate shows up. I believe I’ve developed a complex.”
“Well, Claire’s not here.” I moved sinuously underneath him, and felt him shudder. “We should come to the theatre more often.”
“Or you could move in with me, and we could do this in a bed,” he pointed out. “Just for a change.”
His eyes were serious, but his head came down, catching my lips again, before I had to answer that, and the mounting rhythm resumed, and damn, it was even better this time. Slow and sweet and hot and—yeah. Might have been wrong about that whole climax thing. Because the shuddering was getting harder, and the fireworks were getting brighter, and I was biting my lip to keep from crying out at every . . . passionate . . . thrust . . . and yeah, oh yeah, right there, right there—
The door banged open and someone came in, carrying a tray of something I couldn’t see, because I was looking at it from below.
And because the fireworks were in the way.
“Hey, sorry it took so long. The meeting went okay, but I hadda go down the street for snacks. You wouldn’t believe the crap they have at the—oh.” Ray peered over the tray, blinking. “Are you guys busy?”
“Out!” Louis-Cesare roared, loud enough to cause the musicians to miss a beat, and flung his nice pullover at Ray. Who didn’t have the greatest reflexes, and who promptly spilled a tray of convenience store treats everywhere, including onto us.
Louis-Cesare looked furious and tragic and crushed and half a dozen other things, all in quick succession. I don’t know what I looked like, and didn’t care. I kicked the door closed, rolled on top of him, and finished what we’d started, complete with cola in my cleavage and Twizzlers in my hair.
’Cause that’s what love is.
Chapter Twenty-four
“Well, how was I supposed to know?” Ray said, settling into one of the seats behind us, and handing me some more napkins. “You oughta put a sign on the door. If the balcony’s rockin’, don’t come a knockin’—”
“This isn’t a hotel,” Louis-Cesare grated out. The mess was cleaned up, and the pullover was back in place, but the hair was still a tousled mess. I grinned at it. And then reached over and tousled it some more. He caught my sticky-with-cola wrist and placed a kiss on it. Ray snorted.
“That’s my point. There’s hotels all over the city. You two need to get a room—after the show, all right?”
“When’s the meeting?” I asked, deciding that I was as clean as I was going to get, despite the fact that the cola had made the jumpsuit cling in all the wrong places. I gave up dabbing at myself with dry napkins and stole some of his Bugles.
“Intermission. Curly said he’s got some stuff to do, but’ll meet us for drinks.”
“Curly?”
“The theatre owner. His real name’s Meredith, ’cause I guess his parents hated him. But he goes by Curly, even though he don’t have too many anymore.” He sat forward. “This oughta be good.”
“What ought to be good?” I asked, because they still hadn’t raised the curtain.
And then, almost as if they’d heard me, they did, pulling it not up but across, in one huge swish of red velvet. And I just sat there, a Bugle about to fall out of my suddenly slack mouth. Because that . . . wasn’t a stage.
“Okay, oh boy, okay,” Ray said, as I took in the sight of a wall of water. It spread over the entire area where the stage should have been, with the bottom disappearing behind the orchestra pit, and giving the impression that it went down a lot farther. With the top and sides hidden by the framework of curtains, it looked like a whole reef had somehow been transported into the theatre. It must have contained millions of gallons. It was huge.
Yet that wasn’t the weirdest thing about it.
I stared at the setup, which looked like nothing so much as a kid’s first aquarium, complete with a bunch of fake-looking plants, some colorful coral, a turreted, backless castle perched on a rocky outcropping, and some bubbles.
But that wasn’t the weirdest thing, either.
