Long sleeves belled from her elbows to flutter around the tops of her hands, on which she sported half a dozen cheap, gaudy rings. She had painted her fingernails a dark, almost black purple. She wore black hose, black shoes with ankle straps and very high heels, and dangling silver bat-shaped earrings. She’d forgone the obvious peaked hat, instead slicking back her brown hair with a dollop of gel and pinning a black silk rose just above her right ear.
Her foundation was light, her brown eyes smudged with dark-purple shadow and veiled by a heavy coat of black mascara. She wore a glittery blackish-purple shade on her lips.
She felt like an idiot. An imposter. What had she been thinking to go for sexy and mysterious? She should have just stolen Bill’s idea and worn a lab coat and some nerdy plastic glasses or something. Nerd she could do. Seductress was pretty much out of her range.
Maybe there was still time to change. For all she knew, it could be another half hour before Mike arrived. She had a couple of clean lab coats in the closet….
The doorbell rang just as she reached automatically for her makeup remover.
Norman appeared in the bedroom doorway and meowed to announce her visitor. She thought he eyed her oddly when she moved away from the mirror toward him.
“Don’t mock me,” she warned him, “or I’ll make you go to this stupid party as my familiar.”
He twitched his tail as if daring her to try.
Perhaps she and Mike had been on the same mental wavelength, she thought when she opened her door. He wore unrelieved black. Silky black shirt, buttoned to the throat. Black slacks that fit him like a caress. Black
boots. A long, purple-lined black cape that fell almost to his ankles. A ring with a big, bloodred stone on his right hand.
Gel darkened his swept-back blond hair, which made such a striking contrast to his dark clothing. Interestingly, a new scar had appeared on his face, running from the corner of his right eye down to his jaw. Looking as though it had been there for years, the scar added a touch of danger and mystery to his pretty-boy face.
He smiled at her, and she noticed something different about his teeth. The canines were definitely longer and sharper. They, too, looked startlingly real.
“You look amazing,” he told her, his voice deep and a little startled. “Absolutely stunning.”
The blush that warmed her cheeks didn’t exactly match the coolly sophisticated image she had tried to capture with her costume. “Thank you. You look very dashing yourself.”
Making a face that twisted his newly acquired scar into a classic, sardonic expression, he admitted, “Between work and classes, I didn’t have much time to come up with anything clever this year. I borrowed the cape from a drama-major friend who played Dracula in a play last semester.”
“The scar is an interesting touch.”
“Same friend’s stage makeup kit.”
“It’s very effective.” She couldn’t seem to keep her eyes from following the path of that fake scar to his lips. Even with the eerie, pointed teeth, he had the most beautiful mouth of any man she had ever known. Or maybe she had just never noticed any of those other men’s mouths.
Mike reached out to trace a fingertip from her jaw down her throat to the bat pendant that hung just above her cleavage. A tiny shiver trailed behind his touch. She held her breath as she waited to see if his finger would move any lower.
But he merely toyed for a moment with the pendant as his gaze held hers. “I suppose it would ruin your lipstick if I kissed you right now?”
Her smile felt shaky. She wanted to tell him to hell with the lipstick, but she said, instead, “Yes. Not to mention that you’d get it on your face.”
“It might be worth it,” he murmured.
She placed a hand on his chest, resisting the urge to curl her fingers into his silky shirt and draw him closer. “Whoa, there, Vlad. We have a party to get to. And we’re already late.”
He laughed at the ironic nickname, flashing his fake teeth and easing the sudden tension between them, if only a little. “Okay, Elvira. Let’s go. Before I decide to find out just how good that pretty neck of yours tastes.”
She absolutely had to stop this silly blushing, Catherine told herself sternly, turning her head to try to conceal her warm cheeks from Mike. She was too old for such nonsense, and it hardly fit her costume. But just thinking about him nibbling on her neck made her go warm all over again, much to her despair.
Mike couldn’t get over the way Catherine looked. Yeah, sure, he’d always thought she was attractive. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about the way she’d looked in that red dress the night she’d gone out with Dr. Bill. He even liked the casual clothes she wore on a day-to-day basis, and the way she made simple camp shirts and khakis look oddly elegant.
But tonight…tonight she took his breath away.
The black dress fit her like a second skin, gliding against her body when she moved. The skirt flirted with her legs, drawing his attention once again to the length and shape of them. The neckline dipped just low enough to send his imagination into overdrive. Her glittering dark lipstick almost begged him to take a leisurely taste. Even the damned flower in her hair made him hot.
She brushed lightly against him when he helped her into his truck, and he caught a scent of something spicy and exotic. He could imagine her dabbing the perfume lightly behind her ears. On her wrists. Perhaps between her breasts. He drew his cloak a bit more snugly around him as he rounded the front of the truck, thinking that maybe the concealing garment was going to come in handy tonight, after all.
He slid behind the wheel and fastened his seat belt, glancing at Catherine as she snapped her own. Funny how her appearance tonight made her look so much more distant. Unobtainable.