“Of each other, yes,” Nicky said.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means,” Olaf said, “that we know each other’s work. Jacob’s pride of werelions had a reputation in some circles for handling things that other mercenaries would not attempt. They were as good as their reputation until they came up against you, Anita.”
I wondered how much Olaf actually knew about what Nicky’s people had tried to do last summer, and how badly they’d failed.
“Did you truly kill Silas with a blade?” Olaf asked, and that said he knew some real details.
Truth was I’d only hurt him with a blade, and then he’d knocked me unconscious and damn near killed me. I’d gotten another chance at him with a blade only after he got shot by somebody else. I don’t know how much I would have shared, but Nicky answered for me. “Yeah, she did.”
“Silas was good with a blade. That you killed him with one is impressive,” Olaf said.
I squeezed Nicky’s hand; he squeezed back. Was he telling me to just agree? “It wasn’t as easy as it sounds,” I said. Nicky squeezed my hand again, and that was yes, enough. He didn’t want me to overshare with Olaf. Probably the smart thing to do, so I did it; I could be taught.
“Then it must have been difficult indeed, because I worked once with Silas before he joined Jacob’s lions. He would not have been an easy kill before he became a werelion. You are better than you have shown me.”
“Didn’t Anita just break your wrist? How much better does she have to show you?” Lisandro said.
Olaf moved his head to look at the other man. He just looked at him, but apparently it was his signature cave-deep look. Lisandro gave him cold eyes back, and it was a stare that would have given a lot of people pause, but Olaf wasn’t most people, and neither was Lisandro. “Save the scary stares for the civilians.”
Someone’s phone began to go off. It took me a few seconds to realize it was mine. The song was “Bad to the Bone,” by George Thorogood. I’d managed to figure out how to get the song “Wild Boys” off as my main ring tone, but Nathaniel had chosen a lot of individual ring tones; I hadn’t caught them all yet. Nicky didn’t seem to want to let go of my hand so I could get the phone. That answered the question about whether it had bothered him that he hadn’t had more attention when I first saw him.
“Yeah,” I said, when I finally answered the phone; I admit it was something of a snarl.
“Anita?” It was Edward’s voice, but he made my name a question.
“Yeah, I’m here, I mean, it’s me. What’s up?”
“Is everything all right on your end?”
“Yes, yes, what’s up?”
“Did you run into Jefferies at the emergency room?” he asked.
“Olaf has a wrist cast, but its not really him that’s causing the problem.” I walked away from the other men. Nicky trailed me. I started to tell him not to, but I wasn’t sure if he and the other guards had decided I wasn’t allowed to be alone, and I didn’t want to argue, I just wanted to talk to Edward.
When the only person who could hear was Nicky, I spoke to Edward. “Olaf was flirting with a nurse at the hospital. She’s petite, long, dark hair, just his type.”
“She looks like you,” Nicky said. He moved closer to me, his broad shoulders probably hiding me from the view of the others.
I glanced up at him, and he was actually too close, so I had to step back a touch to focus on his face. “No, she didn’t,” I said.
“No, she didn’t what?” Edward asked.
“Nicky says the nurse looked like me. I disagree.”
“Did Bernardo think she looked like you?” Edward asked.
“I don’t know.”
Nicky moved close again, putting his hand on my shoulder. I started to move away from him, but two things stopped me. First, he seemed to need to touch me. Second, I’d almost totally ignored him when he got to town. Third, it felt good for his hand to be on my shoulder. It was like that with almost everyone who was tied to me metaphysically; it felt good to touch and be touched.
“If Bernardo says she looks like you, then she does.”
“I don’t know what Bernardo thinks about it, but we already knew I fit his victim profile,” I said.
“You fit it, but not absolutely; if he was flirting with a nurse that looks a lot like you, Anita, that could mean things. Bad things.”
“It isn’t good that he’s looking to date a woman at all, Edward.” Nicky put his hand on my other shoulder. I stayed stiff for a moment, and then let myself sink in against the front of his body. The moment he felt me relax in against him, he relaxed even more, folding his big arms across my shoulders, going all the way across the front of my body. He could have wrapped me around a second time with all that muscle. I put my free hand over one of his arms, sliding it over the swell of his muscles.
“I don’t give a damn about some stranger, Anita. Either he’s flirting with this woman to see if it bothers you, or he’s trying to find a substitute because you won’t date him.”
“We can’t let him date anyone, Edward. He doesn’t date, he tortures and kills.” I rested my face against Nicky’s arm, wishing that his jacket weren’t in the way. It was leather, and a new jacket that I’d bought him to fit over the extra inches of muscles he’d put on since moving in with us, but even the soft leather wasn’t as good as bare flesh would have been to me in that moment. Now that I’d given in to touching him, I wanted more skin contact; it was part of the problem with giving in to touching him at all, that once I started I didn’t want to stop. Touching Domino would have been the same; almost anyone I had a metaphysical tie to would have been the same. I wondered if Ethan would affect me like that eventually, and I him.
“He says he’s willing to date you,” Edward said.
“I know he wants to hurt me, Edward.”
“I don’t mean date you like that.”
“You mean a date-date like dinner and a movie?” I asked.
“I don’t know about dinner and a movie, but he would try something more normal than his usual.”
“He said that to you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see you and Olaf sitting around and talking about girls.”
“I made sure he and I were clear on what he meant by dating you before I’d let him come as backup for me, Anita.”
“So what did he tell you?”
“He’d be willing to have vanilla sex with you.”
I tried to stand away from Nicky, but he curved his taller body over me, so I could stand more upright but he could still wrap himself around me. It felt warm and safe to have his arms around me, so good to have my body against the front of his, held so close. Close enough that I could feel the front of his body begin to swell. Sex had been part of the “magic” that I’d used to bind Nicky to me, to steal his free will. He and his lion pride of mercenaries had kidnapped me and had been threatening to kill three of the men I loved. They’d almost killed me, and in the end they’d stripped me of every power I had except for one. I’d used that one power to make Nicky betray everyone and everything, so he’d help me save myself and the men I loved. Until Nicky I hadn’t understood what I was doing, or what it would mean to the person I was doing it to, but with Nicky I hadn’t been innocent. I let him hold me, not just because it felt good for him to do it, but because I did feel bad about what I’d done to him. Yes, he’d been a very bad man, but no one deserved to be mind-fucked until there was nothing left, not even a sociopath.
“Anita,” Edward said.
“Are you seriously saying you want me to have sex with Olaf? You can’t be serious.”
Nicky tightened his arms around me, laying a kiss on the top of my head. I began to smooth my hand back and forth on his arm, outlining the muscles under the leather of his jacket.
“Do I want you to have sex with him? No.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
�
�You don’t know, what does that mean? You always know what you mean.”
Nicky kissed my hair again. He tucked his body in tighter against mine, and just the feel of his body so hard, so thick against my ass, caught my breath in my throat, made me shiver against him, which made him wrap himself tighter around me, which made all the sensations more intense, which . . . “Edward, sorry, just give me a minute.” I put the phone against my stomach and asked, “Nicky, room, I need a little room. It’s too distracting.”
“What’s too distracting?” He whispered it against my hair and pressed himself a little tighter against the back of my body, giving a slight flex of his hips that made me have to try to step away from his body. He tried to hold on to me, tried to keep himself pressed against me, but I said, “Let me go, Nicky.” And just like that he had to let me go, because I’d told him to do it.
I grabbed his hand in mine, and that small gesture earned me a smile that filled his face with such joy. It was so wrong that he reacted like that to me; you should only act like that around people you love. Nicky didn’t love me, not in a way that should have brightened his face like that from a simple hand holding.
I put the phone back to my ear and tried to ignore Nicky and his too-happy face. “I’m back, Edward.”
“You seem distracted, Anita. We have the . . . people that are killing the weretigers, and Olaf. You cannot be distracted and deal with either of them.”
“I’m on top of it, Edward.”
“Are you?”
Nicky pulled on my hand, drawing me a little closer. I moved my body to one side so that he couldn’t draw us completely together. I couldn’t afford to be distracted again so soon.
“Look, we’re on our way to get fresh clothes for Karlton. Once she’s suited up we’ll join you in the field.”
“No, there’s nothing out here. Your wererat trailed them to the edge of the woods and then nothing. We think they either flew or had a car waiting.”
“So the brilliant idea to use wereanimals to track the killers isn’t so brilliant.”
Nicky moved closer to me. I kept the side of my body to the front of his. He leaned over and laid his face against the top of my head, resting against my hair as if it were a pillow.
“It was a good idea, Anita, and when we get a fresher crime scene we’ll try again.”
“You’re right, they’ll kill again.”
“They will,” he agreed.
“I hate the idea of having to wait for another crime scene before we catch a break. It’s like we want someone else to be killed.”
Nicky moved his head to lay a kiss against my hair.
“We’ll meet you back at the motel while you’re getting Karlton’s clothes. You need to get rooms for the rest of your deputies.”
I leaned my forehead against Nicky’s chest. “How’s Bobby Lee doing?” I asked, because I knew he was the one who’d shapeshifted to try to scent out the bad guys.
“He’s passed out in the back of the car.”
“So he’s already shape shifted back to human form,” I said. Nicky put his arm across my back, trying to draw me in against his body again.
“Yes.”
I was out of hands to keep our bodies apart, so I turned my shoulder into his chest. His arm tried to turn me so that the fronts of our bodies would touch. I turned my body more firmly sideways to him. “He’ll be unconscious for at least four hours,” I said.
“Six to eight hours,” Edward said.
“Nope, Bobby Lee is a more powerful shapeshifter than that. He’ll be four hours or less and then he’ll wake.”
“Good to know.”
“Some of the other people with us don’t have to pass out at all when they change form.” I was cuddling with one of them right that minute.
“That makes them very strong shapeshifters.”
“Yep,” I said. I let myself put my arm around Nicky’s waist, and he tried to draw us into a complete hug, but I kept my body sideways, so that though we were hugging and the strong warmth of him wrapped around me, it wasn’t as distracting as it could have been.
“You travel with some very big dogs, Anita.”
“I’m a big-dog sort of person,” I said. I looked up into Nicky’s face. He kissed me on the forehead, lips so gentle.
“What are you doing, Anita?”
“Talking to you.”
“Your voice keeps changing, going soft.”
Nicky kissed my eyebrow, ever so gently. “I’m not whispering, Edward.”
“I didn’t say you were whispering. I said your voice keeps going soft, gentle. I didn’t think Lisandro or Nicky had that effect on you.”
“Lisandro doesn’t,” I said. Nicky kissed my eyelid, brushed his lips back and forth over my eyelashes. I raised my face up to him. He kissed my cheek, his breath hot against my skin.
“If Nicky distracts you this much, then you need to be careful, Anita.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said, and it was almost a whisper, because Nicky’s lips were just above mine.
“We’ll see you at the motel, Anita,” Edward said.
“See you,” I whispered and hit the button so that when Nicky’s lips touched mine I wasn’t on the phone anymore. He kissed me. He kissed me gently at first, and then his arm tightened around me and I turned in his arms, against his body. We stopped holding hands and I finally let myself melt into his arms, his body, and his kiss. He kissed me hard and thoroughly, with lips, tongue, and finally teeth. He bit my lower lip, lightly. It drew a small sound from me, so that he bit a little harder, drawing my lip out and away.
I had to say, “Enough.”
He let go of my lip, drawing back so he could see my face. He laughed when he looked down at me. “We forgot your lipstick.”
I blinked at him, and realized he had red lipstick across his lips, and his smile showed lipstick on his teeth. I shook my head smiling, and reached up to touch his lips, trying to rub the scarlet off his mouth.
He laughed a low chuckle. “Yours is worse.” He put his thumb under my lower lip and rubbed at the lipstick I couldn’t see.
“I don’t usually forget the lipstick,” I said, but I was laughing.
“You did miss me,” he said, and he looked entirely too pleased. Lisandro called out, “We can’t keep him back forever.”
Nicky and I looked back at the other men. Lisandro and Bernardo were both in front of Olaf. Bernardo had his hands on Olaf’s upper body, literally holding him back. Olaf wasn’t trying to get past him very hard, but Bernardo’s hands were definitely reminding Olaf to stay where he was, and Lisandro stood there like a sort of secondary defense in case Olaf really did try to get past Bernardo.
But it was the look on Olaf’s face that was frightening. Rage was plain on his face, so much rage. “He’s jealous,” Nicky said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“He’s more jealous of me.” I moved away from him, wondering if that would soften some of the emotion on Olaf’s face. Nicky reached out, took my hand. “Don’t let him bully you, Anita. He’ll take as much control of your life as you let him.”
I let Nicky keep my hand in his now, because he was right. I couldn’t let Olaf’s weird jealousy control me. What I didn’t understand was why he was reacting so badly to Nicky, or had Olaf just reached another level of obsession with me, so that any interaction I had with other men was going to drive him nuts? That would be bad, but if it was just Nicky, then that was a different kind of bad.
I had no idea how to talk Olaf down from what I saw as an insane and undeserved jealousy. He wasn’t my lover, wasn’t a boyfriend, wasn’t even my friend. He had no right to the anger on his face, no right to feel possessive of me, but how do you convince a seven-foot-tall psychopath serial killer that you’re not his love bunny without him trying to kill you, or you having to kill him? I had no idea.
33
BERNARDO SPLIT US up; he took Olaf, leaving Lisandro to drive Nicky and me. We managed to get into the cars and head to th
e motel without Olaf losing what was left of his control. In fact, he just suddenly went icily and completely calm. The total change in affect was more chilling than anything else he could have done, because the change of heart couldn’t be real. It was like he’d taken all that rage and just locked it away, but I knew it was still in there. It was still in there and it would find a way out, and that way would be frightening.
Lisandro drove. I started to get in back with Nicky, but Lisandro said, “Anita, sit up front with me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You and Nicky got pretty distracted back there. It’s part of what got the big guy so upset. He wanted to break you guys up.”
“Stop us from kissing, or hurt us?” I asked.
“I don’t think Bernardo was sure which he meant to do; that’s why he stopped him.”
“I appreciate you and Bernardo interceding for us,” I said.
“It was my job, and Bernardo is more afraid of Edward than he is of Olaf.”
“Thanks all the same,” I said.
“Just ride up front, that’s thanks enough,” he said.
“Anita can sit in back with me,” Nicky said.
“I’m not driving around while the two of you make out,” he said.
“We’re not getting in the back to make out, Lisandro.”
He just looked at me. “So why does it matter if you ride up front?”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it. Why did it matter? Nicky brushed his fingers against mine, and it just seemed natural to fold my hand around his. I felt better, steadier. Ah, that was why it mattered. Could I promise that we wouldn’t make out in the back seat? I thought I could. Could I promise we wouldn’t touch each other? No, and why would it matter? What was so wrong with us touching each other? I shook my head. “I’ll sit up front.”
Nicky squeezed my hand. “You’re the boss, not him.”
“Yeah, but I can’t promise him we won’t let the touching get out of hand, Nicky. He’s right about that.” I searched his face, and the only thing I saw there was need, almost hunger. This was the longest I’d ever been away from Nicky since he came to St. Louis. I thought about it; was this the longest I’d ever been away from home since Jean-Claude and I had been dating? I stood there holding Nicky’s hand and feeling it like an anchor in all this mess. If it had been Jean-Claude, or Micah, holding my hand, how much worse would the draw have been? Was I more than homesick? Was it more than just not feeding the ardeur that had caused the tree limb to hurt me so badly, and caused me to need sex to heal? Was it literally not being home with Jean-Claude and the other men that was affecting how well I healed?
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