A Tale of Two Vampires by Katie MacAlister Page A

her lips, “that I am not trying to do either. I don’t play the superior game with people, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t with someone for whom English isn’t a first language. I’m horrible at languages, so honestly, I’m impressed with anyone who can speak more than one.”
    “I will accept your apology for making me feel inferior,” he said magnanimously.
    “I didn’t apologize—”
    “But only because you will now proceed to explain the phrases I do not understand. Let us commence with ‘ladygarden.’”
    She started laughing again, but after a few false starts, and quite a number of blushes, he was finally able to store the words ‘ladygarden,’ ‘vibrator,’ and ‘love rocket’ away in his mental dictionary.
    “Do women from the colonies use phalluses frequently?” he was driven to ask as they neared the outskirts of town.
    “It’s no longer a colony…. Oh, skip it. Yes, women in the U.S. use lots of vibrators. And…er…other things. Nonvibratory ones.”
    “Why?”
    She blinked at him again. He was beginning to find it a wholly endearing gesture. “Why do they use a vibrator?”
    “Yes, why? Are there not enough men in the colonies?”
    She took a deep breath. He enjoyed the effect that action had on her chest, one breast of which was pressed against him. He began sorting through conversational gambits to pick out the ones that would continue to make her take deep breaths. “Some women,” she said with obvious emphasis, “don’t need a man in their life. Some of us are quite happy as we are, and like to be in control of our sexual needs and gratification, rather than leaving it to a man who may or may not get his jollies in two minutes flat and leave us lying there unfulfilled and so frustrated we could scream.” She took another deep breath, and his penis commended the action. “Not that I’m speaking from experience, you understand.”
    “You are a virgin?” He found that difficult to believe, not because he had first assumed she was a prostitute, but because she was so clearly meant for male delight, he didn’t believe any man would be so foolish as to leave her alone.
    She sat bolt upright in his lap, her eyes spitting annoyance. “That, sir, is none of your business.”
    “You are a virgin?”
    “No, of course not! I’m in my thirties, for heaven’s sake. What do you think I am, some sort of nun or something? Sheesh.”
    “Ah. Good. I dislike virgins. They tend to weep, and wring their hands, and recoil in horror from the sight of an erect penis, and nothing disturbs a man’s peace of mind more than a weeping, hand-wringing virgin shrieking about his penis up and down the house.” A thought occurred to him at that moment, an unpleasant thought. If she wasn’t a virgin, then she must have been with a man. He gritted his teeth at the thought of some man, probably one of those rough, unkempt colonials, sating his manly lust upon her.
    “I think a wee chink in your research armor is showing, Nikola,” she said softly, turning her back to him.
    He wanted to demand she tell him the name of the lusty colonial who took pleasure in her tempting body. He also wanted to tell himself he didn’t care one infinitesimally small jot about how many men had touched her body, but he knew that thought wouldn’t even complete itself satisfactorily before it was dismissed as irrelevant and untrue.
    “In the history books I’ve read,” she continued, just as if he weren’t suffering untold torment envisioning the dirty, slovenly, no doubt ale-addled wastrel as he touched her with his filthy paws, “men were always super big on virginity for their women.”
    His fingers itched for the rapier he’d left at home. He’d teach that odious, woman-defiling colonial a thing or two about sullying innocent, silky-thighed maidens!
    “I hate to say it, but your Google-fu must not be very strong if you missed turning up that fact.” She glanced over her shoulder at him and