Page 4 of The Vampire Always Rises
“No, of course not.” I held a protective hand over my pubic mound, and consulted the box of wax strips. “That sort of thing is for special occasions, isn’t it?”
He shuddered delicately, and took a long pull on the glass of wine. “Darling, I couldn’t in a hundred years imagine being with someone without first removing everything unsightly.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, reading the instructions.
“There is no sensation quite as delightful as that of a shorn scrotum. You’re not listening to me, are you? Tempest. Tempest!”
“Hmm? What does this mean? ‘Once the strip has been applied, pull it off quickly in the direction opposite of the hair growth.’ Pull off quickly like pulling a bandage?”
He gawked at me. “You can’t possibly mean ... when you said special occasion, you didn’t by any chance mean that you’ve never waxed?”
“No, but—”
“Not once?” Horror was rife in his voice, a fact that irritated me. It wasn’t as if my pubes had anything to do with him.
“No. You know what my life was like. Can you imagine what my father would have said if he found out I was waxing my pubic hair?” I shuddered at the rage I knew such a thing would generate in my late parent. “He locked me in my bedroom for three days just for shaving my armpits. Waxing pubes would have given him a coronary.”
“How you lived with that tyrant for all those years ...” Ellis shook his head. “Why don’t you go to a salon like everyone else and have it done?”
“Ugh. And let some stranger touch me? No thanks. I bought this box of hoohaw wax strips when I turned eighteen, and I fully intend to use them.Finally.”
He made a face. “Are they even still good?”
“It’s just sticky wax. That can’t go bad, can it?”
“No clue, I’m afraid. Why didn’t you use it when you bought it?”
“I never found the perfect opportunity, and then I hid it away under a floorboard so no one would find it.”
He made a sympathetic moue. “I suppose I can see the wisdom in you hiding it. I can’t imagine that the cult would like you waxing things.”
“There wasn’t very much theydidlike. But that’s in the past. Let’s focus on the here and now.”
“Your bucket list?”
“My bucket list,” I said, nodding, and returned to silently mouthing the wax-strips instructions to myself.
“You’re the only woman I know who has tearing out her pubic hair by the roots on her bucket list, but then”—he rose and poured himself another glass of wine—“you’re also the only woman I know who is taking a sizable amount of her inheritance and using it to find vampires.”
I grinned at him over the top of the wax box. “Papa is probably rolling over in his grave at this very moment knowing that I’m using his precious money to enjoy myself.”
“No doubt, given how little enjoyment you’ve been allowed. I have to admit that I’ve always thought it was a miracle you didn’t turn out like the other women in your sect.”
“Browbeaten and mindless?” I shrugged one shoulder. “I probably would have been if it hadn’t have been for Mom. Her tying the custody terms so that I had to attend public school was the best thing she did. Well, that and pay to have her letters smuggled in to me. I probably would have believed everything that Papa and the Elders told me if it wasn’t for those two things.”
“I don’t know why you’ve never been angry for her not taking you when she left the cult,” Ellis said.
“Oh, I was for years. And then one day Papa told me that when she was getting ready to leave, the cult Elders threatened to hunt down her family and harm everyone if she took me, so he begged her to leave me with him.”
“Yes, but it’s a cult!” Ellis protested. “How could she do that?”
“There was one thing Papa never bad-mouthed, and that was Mom,” I answered, getting a bit nostalgic. “I think that’s why he never fought her slapping so many requirements on the custody ruling—it was his way of reassuring her that he would take care of me.”
“Different strokes,” Ellis said, shaking his head.
“Definitely. OK, I’m going to go do this before I lose my nerve. Have the wine ready for me. I have a feeling I’m going to need it!”
Ellis lifted his glass to me, and pulled over the spiral-bound notebook that served as my journal. I disappeared into the bathroom, leaving the door open a bit so I could talk to him.
