Page 17 of Santa's Wish
"Trained in classical and ballroom until I was twelve. The other boys didn't like the way I kept getting boners when we danced together, like any of us could help it." He twirled out of my arms while I was distracted. "I quit."
He grabbed his wallet and keys from the kitchen counter. "What time are our reservations?"
"Six."
"Shit. We're going to be late."
"We will not be late," I said. "They have a roof entrance."
"A what?"
"Do you trust me?"
He frowned at me for a few seconds, but then he nodded.
"We're going up on the roof. From there, it's a quick hop across the street, up six blocks, and over two."
"You're going to use your super speed to take us across the rooftops?"
I nodded. "I can't fly, but I'm just as fast when I run and leap."
His hand trembled when I led him from the room. He locked the apartment, and then I guided him to the fire escape exit. The old metal grate creaked, but she was sound. I'd checked earlier in the morning and replaced the rusted through bolts and damaged rungs.
"May I pick you up?" I asked.
"How?"
"Bridal carry results in fewer questions if anyone sees us on the other side." While it didn't take me any longer to drop someone from a fireman's carry, or even piggyback, people tended to think the first meant an injury and the second meant something kinky.
"Fine," Boz huffed.
I grabbed him behind the knees and braced his back. He felt so good cradled to my chest. He curledinto me and grasped my neck, shielding his face from the wind by pressing against me.
I didn't have time to think about why he felt so damn good in my arms. We were almost late, as he said.
I raced across the rooftop, picking up enough speed to vault from my building to the next, and then across a row of connected brownstones. The peaks of their roofs were so close together, I hopped from one to the next before leaping across another street, changing direction, and sprinting across the flat roofs of the business district.
Many of the establishments near my home also had roof entrances for vampires. I found myself wanting to introduce Boz to all of them.
I dropped Boz to his feet as soon as I slowed to a complete stop. If anyone had been on Irena's roof when we arrived, we would have popped into existence together simultaneously. One of my human coworkers was a gamer. He'd once told me sprinting vampires seemed to materialize from nothing, like a teleportation spell.
Boz grabbed my lapels and pressed his face to my chest, still breathing harshly from the travel. "I had no idea you were so fast," he said when he could speak again. "I need a minute before I can think about eating."
To guide him to the door, I eased his hands frommy suit and laced our fingers together. "You'll have plenty of time to catch your breath on the way down."
Outside, the roof was a nondescript flat asphalt, but inside the plain metal door, the stairwell was a work of art, or several, depending how you viewed it. Each delicate image overlaid others with gradual color changes. What was a kangaroo leg for one image was a giant snail's shell for another. Cocking my head slightly at an angle changed the entire tapestry for me.
"This is beautiful." Boz tilted his head, and his glasses slid down his nose. "It's like a giant magic eye puzzle, only better because you can see something, even if you can't see all of it at once."
"I hate magic eye puzzles, for the record," I said. "It's really hard for a vampire to unfocus our eyes. It hurts like a motherfucker, too."
"Good to know." Boz's chuckle did things to my libido. I wanted to bend him over the stair railing and fuck him senseless, but that wasn't what tonight was about. No, I was supposed to be the perfect gentleman on this date. Boz deserved that much.
I didn't recognize my own thoughts. Since when did I think I was a gentleman, or that I could give Boz what he deserved? I wanted to be a better person, if only for tonight.
By the time we reached ground level, Boz's breathing had returned to normal. Our fingers were still linked together when we reached the sign askingus to wait to be seated. A passing server told us to hang on a minute and grabbed two menus, and then she led us to a corner booth close to the kitchen.
The smells … God. It had been forever since I'd smelled anything so close to my meat-and-potatoes upbringing. Irena served all manner of comfort food, from mutton to roast beef and shashlik.
