LITMIR.BIZ

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all I could think was that when he stood that way he looked exactly like the Jolly Green Giant, if the Jolly Green Giant wasn’t green, but blond and tanned and wasn’t jolly but about to stomp the tiny valley-dwellers by his feet to puree.

      Then I got ahold of myself. “So when you first laid eyes on me half an hour ago, you knew you and I would do the till-death-us-do-part thing,” I clarified, “because your grandmother was a gypsy and you inherited her crystal ball abilities. Do I finally have it right?” I asked politely.

      “Da, except first time I saw you was not half hour ago, but night of battle against Kane and his army,” Dmitri began, but at that point I dropped my pretence of politeness and let the fury that had been bubbling up inside me boil over in a scalding flood.

      “Are you insane?” I yelled, striding toward him and grabbing him by his biceps. I tried to give him a shake, but it was like trying to shake concrete. My anger grew. “I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you! The only connection between you and me is that you’re using your family’s underworld contacts to look for my father and as far as I’m concerned, that’s no connection at all! So screw your sud’ba and the cygan it rode in on, Dmitri—not only won’t I be walking down the aisle with you anytime soon, but I want you out of my apartment right now!”

      “Your act is good.” With a quick flexing of his muscles he broke my grip on him. “You shout loudly instead of answering my questions, but your anger is enough answer. You have met with vampyr called Lockridge. What I need to know now is whether he already has hold over you.” His gaze chilled to a subzero blue. “You have slept with him?”

      My attempt to slap his face was a purely reflexive action, but his reflexes made mine look like I was moving through molasses. My hand was still inches from his cheek when I felt his grip wrap around my wrist. I glared at him, frustration mixing with my rage.

      “Maybe it’s different in Russia,” I snapped, “but here in the good old U.S. of A. when a man deserves what’s coming to him he’s supposed to take it. Let go of my wrist, you lug.”

      “Not until you answer, l’ubimaya,” he said evenly. “Is vital I know truth on this matter. Has he had you yet?”

      The way he said it made it sound all earthy and raw and uncivilized, and suddenly there was something else mixed in with my anger and frustration.

      Dmitri Malkovich was a pain in the butt. I didn’t want him in my apartment, I didn’t want him poking around in my life and I totally didn’t buy in to his crazy assertion that the two of us were bound together by some mystical gypsy fate. But there was no denying it, the man was incredibly hot, I thought as his gaze held mine. Every inch of him was solid muscle. His T-shirt fitted him like a glove, his jeans were taut in all the right places, and even though blond men weren’t usually my type I couldn’t help but appreciate how sexily his hair and eyes contrasted with his dark lashes and eyebrows and the tan of his skin.

      A couple of hours ago I’d been drooling over the delicious Heath Lockridge. Now I was wondering how it would be with a hard, tall Russian. Not only was I turning into a vampire, I was well on my way to becoming a complete slut, I thought in selfdisgust, and it was all the fault of the man standing in front of me holding my wrist in his viselike grip.

      Comrade Malkovich needed to be taught a lesson. Luckily, he’d handed me the perfect weapon for doing just that.

      “Of course Heath’s had me, sweetie,” I said, channeling Kat at her most ball-breaking. I widened my baby-blues at him and gave my strawberry-blond curls a careless toss. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, seeing as how you say we’re fated to be an item, but he’s had me standing up, lying down and every which way in between. One thing puzzles me, though.” I tipped my head and scrunched up my nose adorably, as if I were struggling with a problem I couldn’t quite figure out. I felt Dmitri’s fingers tighten on my wrist, and hid my smile.

      “What is this puzzling thing?” His tone was clipped. “Is it that you do not understand how you can find attraction to vampyr? Answer is easy. He uses glamyr against you to make you think you like being bedded by him. Is usual trick of undead to seduce—”

      “Oh, he didn’t glamyr me into being bedded by him,” I said with a husky little laugh. “I practically threw myself at the poor man. I mean, he’s totally gorgeous and sexy and dreamy, so why wouldn’t I? No, what’s puzzling me is how in the world those Revolutionary War soldiers ever came to be known as Minutemen, because if Heath’s any example I think they should have been called Three-Hour Men. Or maybe All-Night-Long Men. Or—”

      “Enough talk about vampyr who should have been dead two centuries ago,” Dmitri said hoarsely. “I show you what it is like having man with heartbeat make love to you, l’ubimaya!”

      Okay, I know what you’re thinking and it goes something along the lines of, Girlfriend, how skanky can you get? You totally set up this situation so it would turn out exactly how it did, and to that my answer is, I did not. Not consciously, anyway, although I suppose somewhere in the murky depths of my mind I knew I was striking a match and tossing it into a big, exciting pool of gasoline. I will admit this: when Dmitri pulled me to him with a hoarse Russian oath and his mouth came down on mine, little Tashie Crosse sure wasn’t complaining for the first few minutes.

      He kissed with the same single-minded determination he probably gave to bench-pressing small cars, and if that doesn’t sound all that sexy, just think about it. Here was this strapping hunk of blond male and every fiber of his being was concentrated on bringing me to miniorgasm with just his mouth and his tongue. And when I say his tongue, he didn’t use it merely to kiss me.

      “First time I saw you, I thought you were warrior princess from Russian fairy tale,” he muttered against my lips. “You were staking vampyr during battle against Kane’s army. Your hair was like Siberian gold and that night you come to me in my dreams.”

      He broke off to cover my mouth with his again, his tongue moving masterfully into me while his wide-spread hands slid over my arms to the buttoned vee-opening of my sweater. Before I could say, “Don’t snag the cashmere,” I realized he’d deftly slipped open the first three flower-shaped buttons and was using the same impressive sleight-of-hand to push the pink lace straps of my La Perla push-up bra off my shoulders. I broke off our kiss with a gasp.

      “Tell me what happened between us in those dreams,” I said breathlessly, my knees turning to jelly and my top teeth sinking into my lower lip as a kaleidoscope of sensations swirled through me.

      Call me psychic, but I bet I know what you’re thinking this time, too. Yes, asking Dmitri to get me all hot and bothered with the details of his wet dream about me didn’t exactly jibe with the fact that I’d been furious with him a few minutes ago.

      Confession time, ladies…except if one word of this ever leaks out to Meg or Kat, I’m totally denying this conversation ever took place. So where was I? Oh, right—confessing. Well, the truth is that I’ve never really seen what the big deal is with sex.

      And now I’ll give all of you a minute to pick yourselves up off the floor.

      Everyone over their shock/hilarity/pity-mixed-with-a-smidge-of-revulsion? Good, because there’s an explanation for my lack of enthusiasm for the horizontal mambo, and that explanation can be covered in two words.

      Word one: Todd.

      Word two: Whitmore.

      Okay, maybe it should be three words: Dr. Todd Whitmore, because even as I stood over the dust pile that had been Toddie on the night before Megan’s wedding-that-never-happened, holding the bedpost I’d just used to stake him with, I realized I’d never really been in love with him, I’d been in love with the idea of marrying an up-and-coming cosmetic surgeon.

      And part of the reason I’d never been in love with him was that he was an absolute yawn in bed. He didn’t think so, of course. On the two dismal occasions we did it, Dr. Todd flailed away with all the spasmodic jerking of a landed

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