Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I don’t get to have orgasm unless you tell me I can.”

  The look on my face must have been eloquent, because he said, with a smile, “I knew that would weird you out, but look at the benefits, Anita. I can go for a very long time, because that’s the way I was trained.”

  “Trained,” I said.

  He nodded.

  I closed my eyes again. “You’ve been begging for orgasm, for intercourse. You had the perfect excuse, and you don’t take it.” I opened my eyes and stared at him. “Why didn’t you take it?”

  “I want you to want me, Anita. Not just use me for a metaphysical emergency.”

  I sat up and was reminded that I had no underwear on. I glanced at the carpet and for the first time was glad it was a dark woodsy brown. The wet spot didn’t show as badly. “Where are my underwear?” I asked.

  He started looking around as if he weren’t sure either. Great. He was also still perfectly erect, and it was distracting.

  “If you’re not going to . . .” I started to make a gesture, but stopped, “then can you put . . . that away.”

  He turned with a smile that was perilously close to a grin. “Why, does it bother you?”

  “Yes,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, pulling my skirt down over my hips.

  He held my underwear out toward me. He was fighting a smile, but it filled his lavender eyes with supressed laughter.

  I snatched them from his hand, but couldn’t think of a slick way of getting them on. Truthfully, I was wet enough that I needed towels before I got back into my panties.

  I walked, a little wobbly, around my desk. I had baby wipes in the desk drawer. They helped with cleanup when I came into work with a spot of blood I’d missed. I was debating whether I could sacrifce my extra T-shirt that I kept in a drawer for blood emergencies, too, when Nathaniel started talking again. And not about anything I was comfortable hearing.

  “You know it’s rare for a woman to be able to do that.”

  I had the drawer open and the moist towelettes in hand. “What’s rare?”

  “You’re a rainmaker.” He was kneeling on the other side of the desk, with his arms on the desktop and his chin resting on them. It was a strangely childlike gesture, and it did nothing to make me feel better.

  “The only definition I know for that term is a lawyer who brings in big bucks for their law firm. I’m assuming that rainmaker has a meaning that I don’t know.” I made sure my unhappiness about the whole topic showed in my voice. I was uncomfortable enough just cleaning myself up. I was wet down to my knees and beyond. Jesus, what a mess.

  “It’s a term for a woman who can ejaculate.”

  I took in a lot of air and let it out slowly. “Can we not talk about this?”

  “Why are you mad?”

  That was a fair question. Why was I mad? I had to think about it to be honest even with myself. I got the spare T-shirt from the bottom drawer and dried off with it. So much for extra clothes. I slipped my underwear back on, and felt better. I always felt better dressed. Why was I mad?

  I sat down in my chair, getting out the spare hose that I also kept in a drawer. I went through a lot of hose in my line of work. They just weren’t meant to be worn to animal sacrifices, bad guy chases, or vampire slayings. Nope, nylons were just not made for my lifestyle. I started unzipping my boots so I could take off the hose we’d shredded struggling on the carpet.

  “Why am I mad?” I said, almost to myself. My fingertips hurt, a sharp immediate pain as the last of the endorphins left. I’d torn off half my nails down to bloody quick. Once I saw the blood it hurt worse. Why did it always hurt worse when you saw the blood?

  He stood up and zipped himself back into the dress slacks. There were stains on the legs of the trousers that weren’t going to be fixed by baby wipes and a T-shirt. I didn’t have extra clothes for Nathaniel. “Yes,” he said, when he got himself safely inside, still hard, still thick, still ready. “Why are you mad?”

  “You didn’t go,” I said, and started peeling off the hose. It gave me something useful to do instead of meet his eyes.

  “You’re mad because I didn’t go?”

  “I’m mad because if you’d gone we’d have that barrier crossed, and now we don’t.”

  “And?” he said.

  I sighed. “And, if we’d crossed it, it would be easier to cross it again. But doing it this way, makes it more . . .”

  “Important,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  He came around the desk and went to his knees at my feet. “I want it to be important to you, Anita. I don’t just want to be someone you take because you have to take someone, anyone. I want you to want me.”

  “You said that before.”

  He touched my hands where they held the new hose, and he moved them gently out of my hands and laid them on the desk. He took both my hands in his, and there was such a serious look in his eyes that I was afraid. Afraid of what he’d say. “You loved me before today. You loved me without sex. No one’s ever loved me, or even wanted me, without fucking me first. No one since my mother died and . . . Nicholas . . .” He bowed his head for a second, and I squeezed his hands. I’d seen that memory, and I didn’t want him thinking about it. So horrible, and he’d been so little. I wanted to protect him from things like that. I wanted to keep him safe.

  He smiled up at me. “Gabriel and Raina taught me that I could be worth something, but that worth was all about my body, the way I looked, and how good I could fuck.” He squeezed my hands tighter. “You taught me that I was worth more than just fucking. You taught me that I was worth more than just being used.”

  I started to say something, but he put his fingertips against my lips. “I know what you’re going to say. You think you use me with the ardeur, because I’m your pomme de sang. You don’t know what using somebody is, Anita. You just don’t know.”

  There was that look in his eyes that he got sometimes that made his eyes look so much older than he was. A look of murdered hopes and more pain than anyone his age should have had to experience.

  I kissed his fingers, then rested my face against his hand. “Someday I want you to stop getting that look in your eyes. I want there to be enough good in your life to balance that out.”

  He smiled, and there was a tenderness in his eyes that made me have to look away. “See, Anita, you think you’re hard, and that you use people, but you aren’t, and you don’t.”

  I pulled away a little. “I can be hard when I need to be.”

  “But not to me, and not to Micah. Not to anyone that will let you be nice to them. If they’re shitty, you’re shitty back, but you give them the chance first.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not that good a person, Nathaniel.”

  He smiled and touched my face where Barbara Brown had scratched me. I winced. “Yes, you are, you just don’t like admitting it.”

  “We better get dressed and out there before someone calls the cops.”

  “Bert won’t call the police, he’s too afraid of bad publicity.”

  I laughed. “You haven’t met Bert often enough to know him that well.”

  “I’ve known a lot of people like Bert. He’s not as bad as they were, but it’s the same . . . kind of thinking. He wants his moneymaker to keep on making money more than he wants anyone to be safe or happy.”

  I looked into that terribly young face, and there was no one young looking back at me. As much as I’d seen of life, Nathaniel had seen things that would have broken me. Or at least bent me all to hell. I cupped his face in my hands, and said, “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I want you to make love to me,” his voice was soft, but oh, so serious.

  I tried to make a joke of it. “Not right now, I hope.”

  He gave me his gentle smile, the one that said he wasn’t going to let me get away with it. “No, not right now, but soon.”

  I drew back from him, and I was almost afraid of him, afraid in a way that gun
s can’t help with. “Why are you making this so hard?”

  “Love should be hard, Anita, or what is it worth? You taught me that all these months in your bed, with your body against mine and no release. You taught me how hard love can be.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t understand until yesterday.”

  He leaned up on his knees and got close enough to kiss my mouth. “Don’t be sorry, make love to me.”

  My voice was shaky as I said, “Not right now.”

  “No,” and he breathed against my lips, “but soon.” He kissed me, one chaste touch of lips, then he stood and moved away to give me some room.

  I watched him move across the room toward the door. “I’ll tell them we’re alright.”

  I nodded, because I didn’t trust my voice. He’d given me room, physically, but emotionally, emotionally, he was giving me no room at all. I waited for the panic to set in, but it didn’t. What came was the memory of him inside my body and the thought of what it might be like to have him spill himself inside me.

  31

  I’D BEEN LOUD enough, and it had taken long enough, that part of me wished there was a back door to my office. But there wasn’t, so I couldn’t slink off even if I’d been willing to do it. Besides, if Bert ever suspected that I was that bothered by it, he’d use it against me. Try for some kind of leverage in the ongoing game of one-upmanship that Bert and I had played for years. The only cure for it was a bold face. Sigh.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, which is all you’re supposed to do when your hair is as curly as mine. Brushing just makes it frizz. I checked my makeup in the little mirror that I’d started having to keep in the desk. The problem with dressing more like a girl was that it forced you to have to care. Once you put on the lipstick, you had to look at it periodically to make sure it hadn’t smeared like clown makeup. I liked the way lipstick looked on me, but I hated having to think about it.

  The eye shadow had surived pretty well, but the lipstick was pretty much smeared all over my mouth. Again, I was grateful that the carpet was dark. Red lipstick on a pale carpet would have looked awkward. On the deep brown, you couldn’t see it.

  I used some makeup remover that was supposed to be used to take off eye makeup, but I’d found it worked dandy on lipstick. I used a moist wipe to get everything off and then had to reapply the lipstick. See, so much trouble. I was just happy that I almost never wore base makeup. That would have been a bitch to get off the carpet.

  When my mouth was as red as when I started, I put everything back into the desk drawer, got up, straightened my skirt, took a deep breath, and went for the door. With everything that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, having to face Bert down still took more courage than was pretty. You do not fuck at work. You just don’t. It’s déclassé to say the least. Shit.

  When I stepped out into the reception area, I got a surprise. No one assumed we’d been having sex. The screams had been violent enough that everyone assumed it had been a bloody battle, a near thing. The fact that both Nathaniel and I came out bloodier than when we started helped. Mary had sat him down in her very own office chair. She was laying out bandages, while Nathaniel cleaned the wounds on his hand. They were deep, bloody nail marks. Once I would have said that it looked like a leopard ripped him up, but I’d seen the damage that real leopards could do, and I knew better now. I was sort of amazed that I’d done that much damage, though.

  I went to stand near him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I’m not mad.”

  This close I could see that the front of his knuckles on both hands were raw as well. I frowned. “I didn’t do your knuckles.”

  “Carpet burn,” he said.

  I looked at the bloody scrapes and made a face. “Ow,” I said.

  “I don’t mind,” he said.

  Mary looked up at me. “That woman and man are in with Bert. They wouldn’t leave without their son’s things.” She looked pissed. “I cannot believe that they abused you like that.”

  I licked the edge of my lip where Steve Brown had belted me and realized that it was healed. I’d put on lipstick and it hadn’t hurt. Shit, and wow. A very positive side effect. It’s nice that there were positive ones.

  I touched my cheek where Barbara Brown had sliced me, and it still hurt. I hadn’t seen it in a mirror, but it had probably looked worse an hour ago.

  “I’ll help you clean that up, when I’m finished with your friend,” Mary said without a trace of sarcasm. Friend, without any double meanings. It wasn’t just her typing skills that had kept Mary on as our daytime secretary. She had a real gift for taking things in stride. She had Nathaniel hold a gauze pad over his hand while she taped it. She hadn’t put plastic gloves on. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her what Nathaniel was, or not.

  In human form he wasn’t contagious, but she probably had the right to know. Almost as if Nathaniel read my mind, he said, “I tried to get her to let me clean it up myself.”

  Mary glanced back at me. “He told me”—she seemed to search for a word—“he told me, and I told him, that you can’t catch lycanthropy from a human being.”

  Nathaniel looked up at me with those big eyes. The look said, I tried.

  “You’re right, Mary, in human form there’s no contagion.”

  She smiled at Nathaniel in a very motherly way. “See?”

  “Most people don’t want to take the chance,” he said, softly.

  Mary finished bandaging his hand and patted him on the shoulder. “Most people are just silly.”

  He smiled at her, but it left his eyes wounded. Most people are just silly. She had no idea. I guess I didn’t either, not really. I’d just begun to get the reactions from people who thought I was a lycanthrope. I hadn’t lived with it for years the way Nathaniel had.

  Mary turned to me, touching my cheek gently. She was shaking her head. “I wanted to call the police on them. It’s enough to file assault charges.” She started dabbing at the scratches. There must have been some alcohol in the stuff, because it stung.

  I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t wince. “I don’t want to press charges.”

  “You feel sorry for them?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a better woman than I am, Anita.”

  I smiled, and the cheek was a little tight for it. “I’ve been hurt a lot worse than this, Mary.”

  “Never by a client,” she said.

  I let that go. There were stories that Mary didn’t know, and we all stayed out of jail that way.

  She was frowning at me. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re healing.”

  “It’s clean enough, Mary, thanks.” I went around her to the desk and the bandages. I’d need a gauze pad bigger than the one on Nathaniel’s hand. Of course, my scratches would probably be healed by dawn, and his hand wouldn’t be. Damage that I caused seemed to heal as if another lycanthrope or vamp had cut them up. We’d noticed that just lately.

  Mary turned me around with a hand on my shoulder. “You hold the gauze in place, and I’ll put the tape on, just like I did for your friend.” The look in her eyes said plainly that I was being silly, too.

  I let her tape up almost the entire left side of my face just short of the eye. Barbara Brown had done this before, I’d have bet money on it. Women will try to scratch in a fight sometimes, but most of them aren’t good at it. Barbara was good at it, like she’d had practice.

  Mary looked at my torn nails. “Does that hurt as much as it looks like it does?”

  I never know how to answer questions like that. Hell, yes, or how should I know? “It hurts,” I said.

  She handed me a small bottle of alcohol. “Take this and soak your hands in the bathroom until they stop bleeding.”

  I looked at her. “Hell, no.”

  She gave me the parental look. “You’ve ripped off most of the nails on both hands. Do you want to get infected?”

  I thought about telling her that I couldn’t
get an infection, but we didn’t know that for sure. I wasn’t truly a lycanthrope, and while I’d gained their ability to heal, I had no way of knowing if I’d gained all their abilities to keep healthy. It would be a bitch to ignore Mary’s advice, and then lose a finger to gangrene or something. But damn, it was going to hurt.

  The door to Bert’s office opened before I could run off to the bathroom. His face was very solemn, though there was something in his eyes, some flicker, that I didn’t trust. Not supressed laughter, but something.

  “Anita, do you want to press assault charges on the Browns?” He said it straight-faced, in a serious voice. He spent a great deal of effort making me take all kinds of shit from clients and never before suggested we press charges.

  I studied his face, trying to read where this was going. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Steve Brown showed at the door first, with his arm around his wife. “We are so sorry, Ms. Blake. Really, I don’t know what came over us. It was . . . inexcusable.”

  “Thank you for not pressing charges, Ms. Blake,” Barbara Brown said. She’d been crying, and the last of her makeup had worn away. She looked older than when she’d entered my office, and it wasn’t just the lack of makeup. It was as if what had happened had sucked a little more of her life away.

  “We just need our son’s things, and then we’ll go,” he said. He looked horrible, too. Not that they shouldn’t have looked horrible, but something else was going on. I didn’t know what, but something wasn’t right. Something beyond just grief and embarrassment, and fear of the cops.

  “Mary will escort you into the other office for your things,” Bert said.

  Mary couldn’t keep her opinion completely off her face, but she led them into my office. When they were out of earshot, I stepped up to Bert and said quietly, “What are you up to?”

  He gave me innocent eyes, which meant he was lying.

  “What did you do, Bert? You know I’ll find out eventually, so just tell me.”

  He kept giving me that innocent blank face of his, with that false sincerity that was still in place for when the Browns came back out. I had an idea. But the act was so low I didn’t think even Bert would have tried it.