“A group of shapeshifters, or whatever, attacks me in my own home, kills one of my guests, wounds another, and you’ll bust me. What the hell for?”
He shook his head. “You are holding out on me, Anita. Sometimes I think you do it out of habit, sometimes just to be a pain in the ass, but you don’t tell me everything anymore.”
I shrugged again. “I’m not saying I’m holding out anything about today, but I tell you what I can, Dolph, when I can.”
“How about the new boyfriend with the cat eyes?”
I blinked at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Micah Callahan. I saw him touch you.”
“He brushed my hand, Dolph.”
He shook his head. “It was the way he touched you, the way your face softened when he did it.”
It was my turn to look down. I didn’t look up until I was sure I could keep an empty face. “I’m not sure I’d call Micah my boyfriend.”
“What would you call him?”
“I appreciate you sharing your personal life with me, Dolph, I really do, but I don’t have to return the favor.”
His eyes hardened. “What is it with you and the monsters, Anita? Us poor humans not good enough for you?”
“It’s none of your business who I date, Dolph.”
“I don’t mind the dating, but I still don’t know how you can stand for them to touch you.”
“If it’s none of your business who I date, it sure as hell isn’t any of your business who I have sex with.”
“You fucking Micah Callahan?” he asked.
I met his angry eyes with my own, and said, “Yeah, yeah I am.”
He stood trembling in front of me, big hands in fists at his side, and for just a second, I thought he might do something, something violent, something we’d both regret. Then he turned his back on me. “Get out, Anita, just get out.”
I started to reach out, to touch him, then let my hand drop. I wanted to apologize, but that would have made it worse. I was uncomfortable with the fact that I had sex with Micah, and that made me touchy. Dolph deserved better. I did the best I could to make up for it. “The heart wants what the heart wants, Dolph. You don’t plan on making your life complicated, it just happens, and you don’t do it on purpose, and you don’t do it to hurt the people who love you. It just turns out that way sometimes.”
He nodded, still turned away from me. “Lucille wants to call you and talk about vampires sometime—wants to understand them better.”
“I’d be happy to answer any questions she has.”
He nodded again, but wouldn’t look at me. “I’ll tell her to call.”
“I’ll look for the call.”
We both stood there, him still not looking at me. The silence stretched between us, and it wasn’t companionable, it was strained. “I don’t have any more questions, Anita. Go on out.”
I stopped at the door, looked back at him. He was still carefully turned away, and I wondered if he was crying. I might have been able to sniff the air and use my newfound leopard senses to answer the question, but I didn’t. He’d turned away so I wouldn’t see, wouldn’t know. I respected that. I opened the door and closed it quietly behind me, leaving him alone with his grief and his anger. Whether Dolph cried or not was his business, not mine.
42
WHEN THE LAST policeman had wandered away, the last emergency vehicle driven off, the summer silence settled over the house. The kitchen was a mess—broken glass ground into the floor, blood drying to black-red puddles on the polished wood. I’d never get all the blood out from the crevices in the wood. It would be there forever, a reminder that superior fire power had prevailed, but not without cost.
I was going to have to call Rafael and tell him I’d gotten his man killed and his woman wounded. I had to admit that it had been a damn good thing I’d had them. The two extra guns had made the difference. If I’d been the only one armed, things might have gone differently. Okay, I might be dead.
A noise behind me whirled me around. Nathaniel stood in the doorway with a broom, a dustpan, and a small bucket. “I thought I’d clean up the glass.”
I nodded, my heart in my throat too much to talk. I hadn’t heard him come up behind me. He was only in the doorway, not so close, but close enough if he’d been a bad guy with a gun.
I had been utterly calm through everything. I hadn’t fallen apart when the police were here, but suddenly I was shaking, a faint trembling. A nice delayed reaction, damn.
Nathaniel set the dustpan and the bucket on the table, propped the broom against a chair, and walked slowly to me. He peered into my face, lilac eyes concerned. “Are you alright?”
I started to open my mouth and lie, but a small sound came out when my lips parted, almost a whimper. I closed my mouth tight to hold the sounds in, but the shaking got worse. If you’re too damn stubborn to let yourself cry, then your body finds other ways to let it out.
Nathaniel touched my shoulder, tentatively, as if not sure he was welcome. For some reason that made my eyes burn, my chest tighten. I clutched my arms tight around myself, as if by holding tight I could keep the tears squeezed inside. He started to move in, started to hug me. I pulled away, because I knew that if he held me I’d cry. I’d already cried once today; that was all I was allowed. Hell, if I cried every time someone tried to kill me, I’d have drowned in my tears by now.
Nathaniel sighed. “If you found me like this, you’d hold me, make me feel better. Let me do the same for you.”
My voice came out squeezed tight. “I fell apart once today. Once is enough.”
He grabbed my arm. Almost anyone else I’d have been watching for it, but not Nathaniel. I thought of him as safe. His fingers squeezed my arm, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to let me know he was serious. I stopped shaking, like a switch had been thrown. I was focused, not even close to tears.
He shook me by the arm, hard enough to have me glare at him. “You wouldn’t take a hug. I knew that this,” he squeezed the arm a little harder, “would help.”
“Let go of me, Nathaniel, now.” My voice was low and careful, purring with anger. Nathaniel had never laid hands on me before in any way that was close to violent. Underneath the anger was sadness. He was supposed to be safe, and now he wasn’t. He was becoming a person, not just a submissive mess, and it hadn’t occurred to me until just this moment that I might not like everything that Nathaniel would grow into.
I felt movement, as if the very air had changed current, just before Micah stepped through the doorway of the kitchen. His hair was still wet from the shower, slicked back from his face, giving me the first real glimpse I’d ever had of that face without the curls to distract the eyes.
His face was as delicate as the rest of him. I’d assumed the long curls only made him seem more delicate, but it was bone structure, just him. If you could ignore the broadening of his shoulders, going down into that slender waist, the straight line of his hips, you might almost say, girl. He wasn’t really anymore feminine looking than Jean-Claude, but he was more delicately boned, slighter. It was just easier to pull off being masculine when you were an inch away from six feet than when you were an inch away from five-feet-five. Only one thing ruined the delicacy of his face. His nose wasn’t quite perfectly straight; it had been badly broken once upon a time and not healed quite right. It should have ruined the near-perfection of his face, but it didn’t. It, like his eyes, seemed to add to Micah, make him more interesting, not less attractive. Maybe I’d just had my fill of perfect men.
He’d added an oversized T-shirt to the sweatpants. The shirt hit him at mid-thigh, which hid more of his body than it showed, but even covered, I was aware of him. Aware of him in a way that I was aware of Richard and Jean-Claude. I’d always assumed it was love mixed with lust, but I didn’t know Micah well enough to love him. Either pure lust felt pretty much like love, or there was more than one kind of love. It was too confusing for me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.<
br />
Nathaniel went back to his broom, bucket, and dustpan. He picked them up and began to sweep the glass up, ignoring us.
“Nothing, what’s up?”
He frowned at me. “You’re both upset.”
I shrugged. “We’ll get over it.”
He closed the distance between us, but the movement was too sudden after Nathaniel’s grab, and I backed up.
Micah stopped, looked at me, clearly puzzled. “What happened? You didn’t look this spooked when the guns were out.”
I glanced at Nathaniel, who was kneeling, sweeping glass into the dustpan. He was studiously avoiding looking at me, at us. “We had a disagreement.”
Nathaniel stiffened then, his whole body reacting to what I’d said. He turned slowly around until he looked up at me with those flower-colored eyes. “That wasn’t fair, Anita. I’ve never disagreed with you in anything.”
I sighed, not because he was right, but because of the hurt in his eyes. I went to him, balanced on my heels, because I didn’t dare try to kneel in the glass. I touched his bare shoulder, the side of his face. “I’m sorry, Nathaniel, you just caught me off guard.”
“Why won’t you let me in, Anita, why? I know you want to.”
I touched his back where the bite marks had almost healed, dim reddish circles. “I don’t let anyone in without a fight, Nathaniel. You should know that by now.”
“Not everything has to be a fight,” he said. His eyes were very wide, glittering.
“For me it does.”
He shook his head, closing his eyes, and tears trailed down his cheeks. I helped him stand, because I was still worried about the glass. When we were standing, I eased my arms around him until my face touched his bare skin, my mouth pressed into the hollow of his shoulder where the collarbone spoons inward. His arms wrapped around me, held me close. His skin was so soft, so warm. I took a deep shaking breath. He smelled of vanilla, like always. I was never sure whether it was soap, shampoo, cologne, or just him. But underneath was a ranker scent—one that no perfume-maker in the world would bottle. Something feral and far too real, the scent of leopard, of pard.
I felt Micah at my back. I knew the feel of his body, like a line of heat before he pressed himself against me. But his arms didn’t encircle me, they touched Nathaniel. Micah’s body spooned against mine as we stood, but his hands, his arms traced mine, holding Nathaniel to us, embracing him.
Nathaniel let out a trembling breath. A deep, rumbling sound came out of Micah’s throat, and it took me a second to realize he was purring, a deep rhythm of contentment. The purr vibrated against my back. Nathaniel started to cry, and I heard myself say, “We’re here, Nathaniel, we’re here.” We’re here. Pressed into the rich vanilla of Nathaniel’s skin, Micah’s purr thrumming against my body, the feel of both their bodies so solid, so real, and I did cry. I held Nathaniel, Micah held both of us, we cried, and it was okay.
43
SOMEONE CLEARED THEIR throat loudly from the doorway. I blinked through the soft tears and found Zane standing there. “Sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got a crowd out here.”
“What do you mean?” Micah asked.
“The swan king, his swanmanes, and pretty much at least one representative from every other wereanimal in the city, as far as I can tell.”
Nathaniel and Micah pulled away from me. We all rubbed at our faces; even Micah had been crying. I wasn’t sure why; maybe he was just an emotional kind of guy. “What do they want?” I asked.
“To see you, Anita.”
“Why?”
Zane shrugged. “The swan king won’t talk to us flunkies. He insists that he talk to Anita, and her Nimir-Raj, if she pleases.”
Micah and I exchanged glances. We both looked as puzzled as I felt. “Tell Reece that I need a bit more info before I grant an interview. I’m a little preoccupied.”
Zane grinned wide enough to flash his upper and lower cat fangs. “We deny him entrance to the house until he tells us peons what he wants. I like it, but he won’t.”
I sighed. “I don’t want to start a fight just because he shows up without calling. Shit.” I started to walk out, but Micah caught my hand as I went by. I turned back to look at him.
“May your Nimir-Raj accompany you?”
I smiled, partly because he’d asked, rather than assumed, and partly because looking at him made me smile. I squeezed his hand, and his hand closed around mine, pressing back. What I wanted to say was, “I’d love the company,” what came out was, “Sure.”
He smiled, and for the first time it wasn’t mixed, it was just a smile. He raised my hand to his lips and pressed his mouth against my knuckles. The gesture reminded me of Jean-Claude. How was it going to be to have Micah and Jean-Claude in the same room at the same time with me?
Micah frowned. “You don’t look happy now. Did I do something wrong?”
I shook my head, squeezed his hand, and led him towards the living room. He pulled me back towards him. “No, you thought of something that bothered you. What was it?”
I sighed. “Truth?”
He nodded. “Truth.”
“Just wondering how awkward it’s going to be when you and I are in the same room with Jean-Claude.”
He pulled on my hand, drawing me against him. I put a hand up to keep our bodies from touching completely, and found his heartbeat under the palm of my hand. Even through the cotton shirt, I could feel the thud of his body, as if his heart were naked in my hand. I had to raise my head just a little to meet the green gold depths of his eyes.
His voice came out a little breathy. “I told you, I want to be your Nimir-Raj, whatever that means, whatever it takes.”
My own voice wasn’t doing much better than his. “Even if that means sharing me with someone else?”
“I knew that coming in.”
I felt a frown forming between my eyes. “You know what they say about things that are too good to be true, don’t you?”
He touched his fingertips to my face and bent towards me, speaking softly as he moved. “Am I too good to be true, Anita?” He whispered my name against my lips, and we kissed. Gentle, soft, wet. His heart was beating so fast under my hand, my pulse was in my throat, and I think I’d forgotten to breathe.
He drew back first. I was breathless and a little disoriented. There was a look on his face—delight, I think—with the effect the kiss had had on me.
It took me two tries to find my voice. “Too good to be true, oh, yeah, definitely.”
He laughed then, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him laugh before. It was a good sound. “I can’t tell you how much it means to see that look in your eyes.”
“What look?”
He smiled, and he was suddenly all male, pride, pleased with himself, and something else—almost embarrassed. He touched my face. “I love the way you look at me.”
It made me lower my eyes, and I blushed, even though I wasn’t thinking a damn thing that was sexual.
He laughed again, a surprised burst of sound that held so much joy. He laughed the way children laugh before they learn to hide how they feel. He picked me up around the waist and swung me around the kitchen.
I would have told him to put me down, but I was laughing too hard.
“I hate to interrupt,” Donovan Reece, the swan king, said from the doorway, “but I told them you’d help us.” He frowned at us, his pale, pale skin, showing almost no lines, as if his skin was like the water that his alter form swam upon. He had obviously decided not to wait outside.
I asked, still held above the ground in Micah’s arms, “Help you do what?”
He shrugged. “Nothing important, just find some missing alphas and try to convince the Kadru of the werecobras that her Kashyapa, her mate, isn’t dead, just missing with the rest. Trouble is,” Reece said, “I think she’s right. I think he’s dead.”
Micah let me slide back to the ground. I wondered if my face looked as grim as his. Marianne tells me that the universe/deity loves me and
wants me to be happy. So why is it that every time I get a little happy all hell breaks loose? The message seems clear, and it’s not about love.
44
DONOVAN REECE HAD curled up on the far end of my white couch. He was dressed in blue jeans so faded they were almost white. His pale pink shirt brought out the natural pink and blue undertones of his near translucent skin. He was beautiful, but not in the way a man or woman is beautiful, in the way a statue or a painting is beautiful, as if he wasn’t quite real. Maybe it was because I knew that he had baby swan feathers on his chest, but of all the people in the room he seemed the most surrealistic.
A tall woman with hair almost as white as his sat on the arm of the couch by him. Her pants were black leather, her loose-fitting blouse a pink that matched his shirt, almost. I’m not sure I would have remembered the woman if the other two hadn’t been kneeling on the floor at their feet. The second blond’s hair was pale yellow and matched her long summer dress. The brunette’s hair fell like a curtain around a navy blue dress with tiny white daisies all over it. The swanmanes that we’d saved from the club were all looking at me with large, almost fearful eyes.
I only recognized one person other than the swan king and his entourage. I’d met Christine for the first time at the Lunatic Cafe back when Raina still owned it, and Marcus, her Ulfric, was still trying to control all the other wereanimals in town and make himself high supreme commander, whether everyone else agreed or not. Christine’s hair was still blond, short, professional. She was dressed in a navy business suit. Her powder blue shirt was partially unbuttoned, as if she’d removed a tie, though I don’t think she had. She was perched on the other end of the couch from Donovan, her sensible navy pumps still on. Almost everyone else had gotten casual. There were a pile of shoes near my front door.
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