Nic was frankly thankful for the elevator's slow descent; he needed all the help he could get, even from simple machinery. "I never meant for you to feel stupid. And I love it that I made you feel special."
Poking a finger into his chest, she retorted hotly, "Liar! I know what you're thinking. You think you can sweet-talk me and I'll cave like a Jell-O mold. Well, Mr. Big Shot Strakhov, I know what I know, because of what I know. I also knew what you thought, but you were way off base about what I thought. Think! You're the equivalent of Russian rat poison to a woman like me. I demand respect. I deserve it! I'm nobody's plaything. I'm not something to pick up when you're horny and then shove back in the corner when you want to get on with your regular life."
The elevator doors finally clanged open. "Now shove off, Petroff, Pete—or is it Nic or Nicolas? Just what in the hell am I supposed to call you?" Sam taunted.
She stepped inside the gold gilt elevator, but Nic followed, not wanting to be left standing outside with his hat in hand. Punching floor nine, he turned back to his red-faced quarry.
"Call me anything, anytime, Sam, and I'll come. Or just whistle."
Shaking her head, she replied in a clipped tone, "That line is a cliché. Go bother some other unsuspecting sap and stay out of my hair."
"If I'm annoying you now, you're really going to get annoyed shortly, because I can't leave you alone. I wish to God I could, but I can't. You're like a fever in my brain—and call me Nic," he finished, his voice lowering at the end. Logically he knew she had every right to feel betrayed and angered by his actions, but enough was enough. Why couldn't she accept his apology and go back to the way things had been at the castle, particularly in bed? This was new territory for him, and he was finding himself up in the air on how to deal with this Bustin' temptress with her bad temper. "I know you have every right to be angry, but—"
Sam interrupted snidely, ignoring the warm spicy scent of him in the closed quarters. She could also feel the heat waves coming off his body, burning in more ways than one. "Give the guy a gold star!"
Nic reached and pulled her into his arms. He would kiss some sense into her. Or at least he would try.
Leery of his quick moves, and of the feelings his kiss might engender, like making the earth move, Sam put up her dukes. "You try it and I'll pop you right in the old kisser."
Dropping his arms, Nic sighed. "I remember. You have a mean right hook."
Sam nodded. "Tell me, Nic, how does a guy like you get to be a guy like you? You talk a good talk, but you're all hot air."
Nic hit the emergency button, halting the elevator on eight. He leaned in close, his breath on her neck. "Oh, honey, I'm a lot more than hot air and you know it."
"Ha! Since I've known you, you've sabotaged my company, lied to me, pretended to be someone else, left after a night of wild, hot, wonderful sex with not so much as a good-bye—a night I thought was extremely erotic and rare. I thought you did too. But you fooled me so completely that you should go to Hollywood, because the role you played that night was Oscar material."
Placing his arms on either side of her shoulders, he pinned her, glaring daggers. "I had a damn good reason at the time, or at least I thought I did. I believed you'd sabotaged my company, and now I've apologized like a man. Take the apology like a woman!"
Sam blinked twice. His words made her angrier, but his nearness was confusing her with his virile sex appeal. He made her feel like she was flying, like her feet were eighty feet off the ground.
Her Uncle Myles had once told her it took a big man to apologize, that she should always accept. The problem was, her heart, pride and femininity had been wounded. The least Nic could do was beg, crawl on his hands and knees.
Shoving hard at his chest, she shook her head. "You're just horny and you think I'm easy."
"Oh, come on, Sam! Be fair. There's nothing easy about you."
Reaching behind her, she fumbled until she felt the switch and hit the emergency button, releasing it. Nic stepped back.
"I started to call you a dozen times. I had my fingers on the phone, but I thought you were the enemy."
"And you only sleep with the enemy once, is that it?"
"Not in your case," Nic answered savagely. He was irritated, sad and going to go to bed alone tonight. One look at her face showed no miracle was headed his way, either.
"Sam, I care about you. Even when I thought you were my enemy. It made me angry at myself, but I couldn't help it. I care for you, and believe me, I don't say that too often. I also want you. I want you desperately, like a starving man hungers for a bite of food."
Nic's intensity was too much for her, and she had to look down at the elevator floor. Her body ached from needing his body joined with her own. Foolishly she wanted him like a drowning woman wants a lifesaver; he was everything male, magnificent and macho. He had rung her bells over and over that night they had made love, until all she could do was almost faint from the pleasure. She'd floated away on the clouds of the most earth-shaking orgasms she had ever experienced. Still, her sanity and self-respect were hanging in the balance, making her aware that it was time to downplay all the sex stuff going on in the cramped space. "Look, Nic, I never discuss love on an elevator."
Dragging his hands through his hair, he cursed in Russian. The elevator doors slid open with a ding.
"Saved by the bell," Sam said. Leaping out of the elevator, she hurried down the hall to her room.
Nic followed like a dog after a very tasty bone, talking to the back of her head. "You'll forgive me, Sam. You're just as hot for me as I am for you!"
Inserting her card into her door, she muttered loudly, "You can apologize up, down and sideways. You can apologize until the cows come home, but mad is mad. And that's me right now."
Shoving the door open, she quickly reached into her purse, pulled out two quarters and threw them at Nic. "Now go call somebody who gives a damn." And with those words, she slammed the door in his startled face.
American Gothic
There were over eight million stories in New York City, most of them not pretty; but the gorgon story was downright ugly, and looking for that extinct Greek monster, who was not extinct, in a city of over eight million people, was like looking for a needle in a haystack. A needle that could turn you to stone.
Sam had known from the very first that this was going to be a tough case, a dangerous case, maybe the worst of her life. It would be a case to tell her grandkids about, a case to be written up in the Unusual Monsters Scientific Journal, a case she might not survive. But then, that's why she got paid the big bucks, she admitted as she walked up to the American Gothic Club, where she was meeting Nic and the others.
Along with her research today, she'd been thinking over Nic's apology. It had been a nice apology as far as apologies went, even if he hadn't gone down on his knees and begged. There was also a lot of sexual chemistry between them. She would cut him some slack, she decided reluctantly.
Patting down the sides of her French braid and straightening her skirt, she glanced up at the outside of the club. The façade was painted a deep scarlet, with various black paint decorations, and it looked rather like Andy the ghost had somehow won the bid for this particular paint job. On one side of the club, gold American graffiti was prominent with words such as "Fangs feel great" and "Call Vlad for a good suck." Sam shook her head, paid the cover charge and walked inside.
The American Gothic Club took its theme from vampire movies of the sixties and seventies. There were five-foot paintings done on black velvet of the various Draculas and werewolves of that period, such as Frank Langella, Christopher Lee, Lon Chaney and Jack Palance, and Bob Kelljan and Robert Quarry, who'd done the popular 1970 Count Yorga vampire series—true vampire and werewolf Americana.