InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 9: Subterfuge ❯ Rebuff ( Chapter 110 )

"So . . .?"

Valerie didn't move, didn't even blink, as she sat, arms crossed over her chest, staring at the television with a blank kind of expression that gave away nothing—or maybe it gave away everything.  It was too soon to tell.

Clearing his throat as he reached for the remote control to turn off the television, Evan waited for her to say something about what she'd just seen.  As a minute passed in utter silence, he started to wonder if she was actually going to say anything at all, and for reasons he didn't delve into, it tickled him beyond belief . . .

"No comment?" he hinted, arching an eyebrow as he nudged the attorney with his shoulder.

She finally deigned to shift her gaze to the side, entirely nonplussed.  "Do you honestly think that that . . . that . . . that hussy looks like me?" she demanded dryly.

Evan really wasn't sure how he was able to keep his amusement from showing in his expression, but he did.  "You don't think so?" he asked innocently.

She blinked once, twice, without taking her eyes off him.  "No," she stated flatly, "I don't."

"Well . . ." he drawled.

Her snort cut him off.  "You think that bottle blonde, big-haired, fake-boobed, lyposuctioned overgrown Barbie doll looks like me?" she countered.

His lips twitched.  He couldn't help himself.  "Her boobs didn't feel fake," he allowed.

She was even less amused by that comment if the look on her face meant anything at all.  "You slept with her, didn't you?" she asked though it sounded more like an accusation than an actual question.

"Nope," he replied with a good natured wink.

Valerie didn't look entirely convinced.  "You're naked with her," she pointed out, flicking a hand at the television.

"Nope," he repeated, "and actually, I had a cup on."

Valerie snorted and rolled her eyes, attesting to the idea that she really didn't believe him; not at all.  "Like that matters," she scoffed, "and she was naked, too!"

"Well, not completely," Evan drawled.

Valerie was having none of it, though.  "Have you no shame?" she demanded hotly.  "She could be dirty!  You don't know where she's been!"

He chuckled, mostly because the poor girl in question actually had spent quite a bit of time, rolling around in a mud pit—actually a child's wading pool filled with very clean mud—for the shoot.  "Now, V, you know that you're the only woman for me so you don't have to be jealous," he quipped.

His statement drew a series of snorts and indignant blustering from her.  "W-I-Y—I am not jealous!" she sputtered, smacking Evan in the center of his chest with the back of her hand.  "As if, Roka!  In your dreams!"

"V, baby, in my dreams, you're as naked as she was, and so am I," he countered, shaking his head slowly.  "You want to hear what you're doing to me in my dreams?"

"No!" she growled, her cheeks pinking prettily despite the show of righteous indignation she was displaying.  "Sometimes I think there's something wrong with you.  You know, right?  You're dirty, too.  In fact, it's not surprising in the least, really.  The two of you were probably being dirty together since you're such a—"

He laughed.  "You want to hear what I'm doing to you?"

"Huh?" she asked, apparently caught off guard since he'd interrupted her tirade.

He blanked his features.  It took a moment of very real effort on his part.  "In my dreams," he clarified.

She stared at him for a full minute before rolling her eyes and throwing her hands up in the air.  "I give up.  You're rotten to the core, you twisted little monkey, and no, spare me the details—please."

With a shrug, he went on as though he hadn't heard her at all.  "You've got those sexy as hell legs wrapped around my waist while I slam my co—"

Slapping her hands over his mouth, she pinning him with a very chagrined scowl despite the livid blush staining her cheeks, and she didn't seem to notice that twisting her body to shut him up had accomplished one very important thing: she'd smashed her breasts against his chest, and it didn't matter that they were both wearing shirts, the heat of her body was very nearly his undoing, and he groaned involuntarily.  "Don't you dare finish that statement," she warned, refusing to move her hands off his mouth.

"B . . . Boobies," Evan gasped, his voice muffled.

"What?" she demanded.

He reached up and gently but firmly pulled her hands away.  "I said, 'boobies'," he half-groaned.

She blinked but must have realized just what he was talking about because a minute later, she launched a series of smack-hits against his chest as he laughed helplessly.   "Is that all you ever think about, Roka?" she complained.

"What?  Am I supposed to ignore the fact that you had your squishy parts smashed against my not-so-squishy parts?" he laughed.

Uttering a terse growl of complete frustration, she scooted away from him and crossed her arms over her chest again.  "Anyway, that girl looks nothing—nothing—like me."

"She didn't have to look like you," he pointed out a little too reasonably.  "I mean, she was just an actress in the video."

"Yeah," Valerie shot back, crossing her legs, her left foot bobbing fast as she fought to control her irritation, "but you wrote the songs about 'V', didn't you?  And that woman was not—not—'V' material."

Clearing his throat since he figured she wouldn't like to have it pointed out again that she really did sound jealous after all, Evan heaved a sigh and hauled himself to his feet.  "I think that the video's fucking hot," he ventured as he strode over to the portable metal box where he kept the temporary tattoos.

"I guess," she allowed grudgingly, a hint of poutiness explicit in her tone.  "If you like that kind of thing, that is."

He wisely hid his amusement as he pulled the tattoos out that he needed to apply.  Considering the bulk of that video was him, rolling around almost naked with a gorgeous model with lots of sexual imagery and bordering on pornographic?  Yeah, 'hot' was a good way to describe it.

That he had spent pretty much the entire time during the two day shoot wishing that Erin, the girl that had been hired to fit the part of 'V' was a certain attorney wasn't even important, was it?  And as much as he hated to admit it, he'd told Valerie the honest-to-God truth about not doing a damn thing with her, either, even though she'd made it abundantly clear that she'd be more than happy to ride the bony pony.  Of course, that didn't mean that she was unhappy.  Oh, hell, no.  He'd found out later that she was more than willing to give Bone a go instead, though that was a little surprising since the head of security usually wasn't attracted to her type.  A little skinnier than Bone tended to like without as much backside as he'd have preferred, too, but she apparently gave a good titty-fuck, and that had made up for it, according to the big man . . .

"It looked like the two of you were having sex," Valerie pointed out in an entirely accusatory tone.

"Totally did, didn't it?" he chuckled as he pulled out the bottle of activator spray from the box then set it aside to pull the tee-shirt he'd been wearing over his head.

She snorted indelicately.  "Are you sure you didn't?"

"As much of a turn-on as it might be to film it, V, I assure you that Ryder has way too much integrity to film porn—more's the pity . . ."

She stomped over and yanked the large tribal tattoo out of his hands.  "You're such a pervert," she grouched, carefully positioning the tattoo on Evan's back.  "I'm not sure why that is.  Your mom doesn't seem like a pervert, and your dad doesn't seem like a pervert . . ."

It was Evan's turn to snort.  "Are you kidding me, woman?  Cain's the biggest damn pervert in the northern hemisphere," he retorted.  "Do you have any idea how many times in my lifetime I've been unfortunate enough to see his ass while Mama's legs were high in the fucking air?"

"Nuh uh!"

Her response made him blink—and grin.  "Yuh huh," he parried.  "'Oh, Zelig-sensei!  Not here!  The children might see—oo-o-o-o-oh!'" he added in a high falsetto.

Valerie snapped her mouth closed, her cheeks puffing a few times as she tried to control her amusement.  "You're talking about your mother," she pointed out when she finally managed to get her laughter under wraps.

He heaved a sigh and grimaced when she sprayed the cold activator on his skin.  "I know . . . That's what makes it about a hundred times worse, don't you think?"

"Oh, my God," Bas Zelig grouched as he stepped into the living room with a scowl on his face and a large blue cooler in his hands.  "Thanks for the flashbacks, Evan," he went on darkly.  "I appreciate it."

Craning his neck, Evan peered over his shoulder to smirk at Valerie.  "See?"

She did manage to keep her face straight despite the telltale flaring of her nostrils.

"Here," Bas said, setting the cooler on the table.

"Dead body?" Valerie asked, bracing her hands against Evan's back and standing on tiptoe to look over his shoulder.

Evan grinned.  "Oh, sweet," he breathed.  "Thanks, Bubby!"

"What is it?" she asked.

"Yeah, well, Mom said that she was afraid that you'd miss having Thanksgiving dinner with the family, so . . ." Bas remarked, frowning at Evan's blue-black hair.  "That color makes you look like a vampire," he muttered, shaking his head as he turned to go.

"You sure you don't want to stay?" Evan called after him, his grin widening.  "I just got a copy of my latest video if you want to see it . . ."

That earned him a darkened scowl, and he snorted.  "Pfft.  I'll pass, Evan, thanks," he remarked dryly.

"You sure?" Evan couldn't help but ask.  "It's really hot . . ."

Bas snorted again, his cheeks pinking slightly as he quickly shook his head and started moving toward the doorway.  "I've seen some of your other videos, Evan, and I'm still paying off the therapy bills."

Evan's laughter followed Bas out of the house.  By the time the front door closed, he'd wound down to chuckles.

"What's this?"

Evan leaned over to look into the white plastic container in Valerie's hands.  "Cranberry salad," he said, sitting up straight and stabbing a forkful of dressing.  "Try it.  It's good."

She scooped a spoonful and lifted it to eye level to inspect it.  "So your mom packaged up all this food just because you couldn't make it home for Thanksgiving?"

"Yup," he replied.  "What can I say?  She loves me."

Valerie stared at him for a moment.  "God only knows why," she muttered.

Evan nabbed a forkful of salad and popped it into his mouth.  "Eh, she felt bad when I told her that I had to go to court Wednesday," he explained, "and she knows how much I love her Thanksgiving dinners."

Tasting the salad, Valerie chewed thoughtfully.  It was good, she had to admit.  She wasn't sure what to make of it to start with.  It looked like jelly with tiny bits of carrot and celery and stuff in it.  "Yeah, speaking of court," she drawled, setting the plastic container aside and turning to face Evan, "you're damn lucky that the judge let you off with restitution and community service.  Obstruction of justice is a pretty big deal, you know."

"I know," he agreed, but he sounded a little too placating for her liking.

"Don't you humor me, Roka," she warned.

Evan chuckled.  "I'm not," he assured her, sounding even more like he was.  "Besides, a couple of benefit concerts and a PSA?  No big deal, right?"

She shook her head.  True enough.  He'd arranged to do a couple benefit concerts: one for inner city kids youth clubs and another for a battered women's shelter, and that would take care of both the restitution as well as the community service.  Those shows were being planned.  Mike had scheduled the first one for early December, and the other one should take place in early January.  The public service announcement was set to film tomorrow, which was why he was getting all decked out in his Zel Roka gear, though when she'd heard what the PSA was about, she'd very nearly snorted right in Mike's face.

"So you're really going to film a PSA for condoms?" she asked at length, reaching for a slice of perfectly cooked and very moist turkey.

He grinned.  She'd figured that he would.  "Of course!  That's a cause I can get into—literally."

She snorted.  "And you're one to talk?  You can't tell me that you always use condoms, rocker-boy."

"I certainly do," he argued.

"Every time," she challenged mildly.

"Every fucking time."

She snorted again to let him know just what she thought of his claim.  He just laughed.

"Hey, V, I've been thinking . . ."

Valerie blinked and quickly shook her head.  "You know, that's a terrible habit of yours," she pointed out.

"I know it," he agreed with a shrug.  "Gets me into far too much trouble, right?"

"That's right," she said.  "If you've noticed, a lot of your bad ideas start with, 'So, I was thinking . . .'."

He grinned.  "Never thought of it that way, but I guess you're right."

"Of course, I am," she insisted.  "Now, I'm sure that I'm going to regret this, but what were you thinking?"

Laughing at the foreboding in her tone, he locked his arm around her neck and pulled her over to kiss her forehead.  She shoved against his chest to regain her freedom.  "I was thinking that you should come home with me for Christmas."

She blinked and leaned back to stare at him.  Of all of the things that she'd thought he might say, that wasn't one of them.  "Home with you?"

He nodded.  "Maine."

"You're going to Maine for Christmas?"

He nodded again.  "Of course."

She smiled, shrugging as she tucked her hands between her knees.  "As much fun as that sounds, I've got plans."

"You do?"

Making a face, she wrinkled her nose.  "You make that sound like it's a miracle or something," she grumbled.  "I do have a life, you know."

"I know," he argued, holding his hands out in a mock show of surrender.  "So, what are your big plans?"

"I'm going skiing with Marvin," she stated.

Evan snorted.  "Skiing," he repeated.

She nodded.  "Yes, skiing.  In Vermont."

"Oh . . ." he drawled, an enigmatic little grin surfacing on his face.  "A holiday on the bunny slope.  Sounds wild, V."

She narrowed her gaze.  "I'll have you know that Marvin is very good at skiing."

"Oh, I'm sure," he said.  "So, what does he do?  Get down and roll?"

"You're such a jerk, Roka," she growled, throwing a pumpkin cookie at him.

He caught it in his mouth and grinned at her as he tried to chew.  "He doesn't really strike me as the 'sporty' type, V."

"Marvin's in very good shape for a guy his age," Valerie insisted, which was true enough.  Granted, he wasn't anywhere near Evan's insane condition, but he was what she'd considered to be 'normal'.  Besides, he was too busy trying to drum up the funding for his research to spend all of his time working out or something, and as far as she was concerned, Marvin was a very respectable-looking man.

Evan grunted, obviously not believing her in the least.  "Aah!  It's an avalanche!  Oh, no, it's just Durwin . . ."

"You're not nearly as amusing as you think you are," she pointed out dryly, opting to ignore his irritating commentary as best as she could.

Evan chuckled.  "Well, if you change your mind . . ."

"I won't," she predicted with a smile.  After all, she was really looking forward to going skiing, and even though the idea of spending Christmas in Maine with Evan was compelling, she had already made plans . . .

His grin widened.  "I know; I know, but if you do, the offer still stands."