Even Vampires Get The Blues

"Samantha!"

The man snarled something and lunged toward me, but my ethereal body was yanked out of the room, whisked back toward the voice that so imperiously demanded my attention. "Samantha, you will answer me!"

The trip back to my body was conducted much more quickly than the journey out—the world seemed to shimmer and blur, shaking itself for a moment, then suddenly I was sitting in Paen's car, my neck tingling, my body tight and tense as if it had been on the verge of an orgasm.

"Welcome back," Paen said dryly.

"Hi," I said, touching my neck. There didn't seem to be any open wound, so I gathered he had some power to heal up any signs he had been dining at Cafe Sam. "Oh, thank you. Thank you so much."

"For what, boring you?" he asked, reversing the car, turning so we were headed back into the hills.

"Boring me? No, Paen…" I put my hand on his arm, slightly surprised to find that I was shaking from my encounter with the dark man. "I was thanking you for pulling me back. I… there was someone I would not care to meet again, and you anchored me when I needed it, so thank you. But I wasn't bored with you—it's not that at all. It's just… I have… oh, it's a little difficult to explain."

"Is it?"

I sighed, rubbing the chill from my arms. Just being near Paen seemed to drive away the nightmarish quality of my out-of-body experience. "The truth is that it's all my mother's fault."

His jaw tightened as he drove. "Indeed."

"I didn't mean that it's her fault I'm here, and thus with you—I meant it's my mother's fault because she passed on a couple of elf traits to me. I was born with her pointy ears, elf-tipped eyes, talent for finding lost things, and a really warped version of her ability to do out-of-body trips. Unlike Mom's skill with astral projection, however, mine only hits whenever I'm sexually aroused."

He looked at me in patent disbelief. "You what?"

I nodded, then pointed to the road. He turned back to it, but glanced curiously from the corner of his eye a couple of times. "Whenever I get aroused, my body and consciousness part ways, and I go drifting off while it has all the fun. I can't begin to tell you how frustrating it is."

"I can imagine," he said dryly.

"Oh, you think you can, but I doubt it," I said mournfully. "It's awful, and there's nothing I can do about it. I've tried everything, too. Once I'm gone—pfft! I just have to wait it out. No one has ever called me back like you did. That was pretty amazing."

"Hmm." He didn't look like he disbelieved me, but he didn't look like he was buying everything I was saying, either.

"The worst is when I come back and find out that evidently I've been having wonderful sexual experiences, but wasn't there to enjoy them."

He shot me a curious glance. "Are you saying this happens every time you engage in sex?"

I nodded. "It doesn't even have to be sex. Just doing what we were doing is enough to send my brain into astral mode."

"So you've never actually… er… for lack of a better phrasing, been there for any of the times you've had sex?"

"No."

"Not any of the times?"

"None. It's not like I've had tons of sex, though. I pretty much gave it up after I realized what was going on. I mean, what's the use? Just when I start getting into it, whammo! I'm taken off and return to find my body either apparently fulfilled and no longer interested, or tense and frustrated, while my boyfriend is snoring away."

"I see."

"I've only had three boyfriends," I said, compelled for some reason to make it absolutely clear I wasn't a thrill-seeking trollop. "But I tried everything I could think of to stay there for the whole thing, and never had any luck."

"Perhaps the fault lies with them, not you," Paen said, his eyes back on the road as we drove.

"What do you mean?"

"Were your partners mortal?"

"Yes. One was a Diviner, but he was mortal all right. He died last year in a plane crash."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"So was I. He was a nice guy. Not a great Diviner, but a nice guy. But what do my boyfriends being mortal have to do with me drifting away during the fun time?"

He shot me a silver-eyed look that was completely unreadable. "You have immortal blood. Perhaps you would have better luck with a man who shared that trait."

My jaw dropped for a moment before I had enough wits about me to snap it back. "Are you offering yourself as a potential partner?"

There was a pause. "In the interests of scientific understanding, yes, I would be willing to undertake that role."

He noticed the surprised look on my face.

"I don't normally proposition women in this manner, but I will admit to being physically attracted to you, and believe that you feel likewise."

"Oh, really." We were deep in the heart of the country now, heading into a rural area with patches of forest and wilderness, so there were no streetlights. The only light illuminating Paen's face was that from the dashboard, but it was enough for me to eye his profile. It was just as handsome as the rest of his face.