She pointed behind him. “Alligator.”
“What?” Her accent was particularly thick, and he couldn’t figure out what she was saying.
She pointed again. “Alligator!”
Johnny turned. “Holy shit! There’s an alligator in the hallway!”
“That’s what I said! Get back before he . . .” Lizette made a snapping motion with her left hand. “Chomp, chomp!”
Johnny almost laughed. Almost.
Instead he jumped back into the room and slammed the door. Then he laughed. “Oh my God, there’s an alligator in the hallway.”
“That’s insane!” Lizette said.
“Very.” Johnny looked back to Drake for assistance, but he and Josie Lynn seemed to be arguing. “I guess we can bum-rush him. Otherwise we’re trapped here.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
“Well, we are vampires. We’ll live.”
“Shh!” Lizette covered his mouth with her free hand. “You cannot speak of such things!”
Johnny pursed his lips and again fought the urge to laugh. She was so damn earnest. Slowly, he stuck the tip of his tongue out and licked her fingers.
She let out a yelp and yanked her hand back, eyes wide. “What are you doing?”
Now he did laugh. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”
Her eyes narrowed in anger. “We need to remove these handcuffs immediately. It will make it easier for us to rush past the alligator.”
“I could probably try to yank them. I do have supernatural strength. It might tear our flesh, but it will heal.”
His suggestion got the exact response he’d expected from Lizette. “We can’t do that in front of Josie Lynn. It won’t look normal.”
“Then let’s get out of here and do it in the other room. Then we can go our separate ways.” He would continue to look for Saxon, and she could go write a list detailing the ways they should look normal.
“Fine. Let me get my purse.” The haughty Frenchwoman was back in place, her delicate nose in the air as she marched over to the spot where they’d been sleeping, or more accurately, where they’d been passed out cold. It took them a second to get their walking coordinated, because she strode and he ambled, but they only needed to make it a few feet across the room.
When she bent over, Johnny had to admit he eyeballed her ass. It was a good ass, what could he say? He adjusted his pants a little. What a shame to make the ice princess thaw and not even be able to remember it. It was an actual tragedy.
“Hey, Drake,” he said. “There’s an alligator in the hallway, so be careful. We’re going to head out and look for Saxon and the key to these handcuffs.” He gave the cuffs a more thorough inspection. “They look like titanium to me, which will make this more of a challenge. Stella and Katie are on their way to get Zelda dressed and off to the ER.”
Drake just nodded, like none of that was particularly strange.
“An alligator?” Josie Lynn asked. “Are you freaking kidding me? What kind of a weirdo fun house is this?”
“If this is a fun house, it’s a terrible one,” Lizette said, sounding put out. “I think it’s time to leave. Has anyone seen my shoes?”
Johnny gave a cursory glance around the room. There were a few whips and ball gags strewn about, and the sex swing dominated the center of the room, but he didn’t see any clothes or shoes. He had a hard time picturing Saxon spending hours of pleasure in here with Zelda, who was actually much smarter than Saxon. The woman ran her own business and had raised two kids, so she clearly had more than cotton between her ears. Saxon, on the other hand? He wasn’t so sure.
Johnny had to admit he was ready for some fresh air. This was all just a little too much togetherness and more of a glimpse into his friends’ private lives than he needed. “I don’t see your shoes. We can see if Zelda has flip-flops. You shouldn’t be walking around the quarter barefoot.”
“Oh, heavens, no.” Lizette gave a delicate shudder. Her fingers fluttered over her chest.
It was then that he realized she was in fact far too classy for him. Here she had woken up in a strange place surrounded by sex paraphernalia and people she didn’t know in various states of undress, and she was completely holding it together. In fact, she was buttoning her blouse one-handed, and despite their being attached at the wrist, she was assessing him coolly, like nothing was out of the ordinary whatsoever. Johnny did not have that kind of self-control. He’d never had that. Most likely he never would, given that he was damn near a century old and it hadn’t happened yet. Which meant Lizette was out of his league.
Which suddenly pissed him off.
Chapter Six
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
LIZETTE didn’t want to admit it to Johnny, but she was terrified of the alligator. So while she knew intellectually that it couldn’t kill her, she still couldn’t help but imagine that teeth crushing her flesh and bones would not feel particularly wonderful. So she was hiding her fear under an aristocratic veneer. It was something her mother had taught her back when she was a child in France. Her mother had frequently been afraid in the tumultuous days of the Terror but she wouldn’t let her tormentors have the satisfaction of seeing they had made her so. Lizette wasn’t going to let Johnny see that she was quite possibly on the verge of having a complete meltdown.
It was becoming more and more clear that she was attached to Johnny for at least the next hour or so, when all she really wanted to do was run away to her hotel room to take a long shower, before putting on her most demure panties and business suit, so that she could pretend none of this had ever happened. It was a little hard to pretend nothing untoward had happened, when the evidence was a living male attached to her wrist.
She supposed that she only had one option: She needed to get past the alligator so they could proceed with their lives outside of this windowless room.
Johnny pulled a riding crop down off the wall.
“What are you doing with that?” She was simultaneously horrified and just a teensy bit aroused, which then horrified her all over again. What on earth was she thinking? One night in a sex dungeon and she was willing to be spanked? Her cheeks heated as she wondered what exactly had transpired between her and Johnny. And had there been witnesses? It didn’t bear considering.
“I’m going to give the alligator a whack if I need to.”
“Oh.” Right. Of course. He was thinking about their safety, not about the sexual escapades they might have engaged in. Lizette cleared her throat and put her purse firmly over her shoulder. “Bonsoir,” she called to Josie Lynn and Drake. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and please extend my felicitations to Zelda when she awakens.”
Johnny just stared at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Drake waved and gave her a smile. Lizette kept her eyes firmly above his waist as she waved in return, then she nodded to Johnny. “I’m ready. What is our plan?”
“The plan is to run past the alligator. If he snaps, I whack. That’s it. Nothing fancy.”
“In other words, you do not really know what to do.”
“Exactly.”
Well, she supposed she could appreciate his honesty. “Understood. Shall we? On the count of three?”
“Let’s just go.” Johnny pulled open the door and they both ran.
Which was something of a challenge, given that they were attached at the wrist and they both tried to squeeze to the left, out of the path of the alligator’s jaw. They were stumbling and bouncing, Johnny’s free arm swinging with the crop even though the alligator wasn’t doing a damn thing. He just sat there looking like they were a couple of complete idiots. He was probably right.