Serpentine

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Ru laughed, enjoying the women's reaction. He'd been the quiet, shy one of the triplets. In Ireland when we needed to pretend to be a tourist couple, it had been Rodrigo who had smiled and flirted on my arm. Ru just didn't seem interested, and suddenly he was suave and debonair. "Hi, Anita. Your fiances seem to have missed each other." Even his tone of voice was deeper, richer. If I'd had my eyes closed, I wouldn't have known it was him.

  "Did you say they're both her fiances?" the redhead asked.

  "I did."

  "They are," I said, but I was looking at Ru, trying to figure out how to do this next part. I was terrible at undercover work.

  Rodina seemed to have figured out that I needed a push, because she came up to us and said, "Kiss her, brother dear, before her fiances are done with each other and a line starts to form."

  The Ru I thought I knew would have hesitated or been embarrassed, but this new person gave me a look from his dark eyes that was all male. "The invitation needs to be from the lady in question," he said in that deeper voice.

  "Sure, but you better be fast before they come up for air," I said.

  He managed to extract himself from the brunette who had finally let go of Nathaniel's arm. She looked lost and about four years younger than I'd have put her when she was all confident on their arms. I'd thought she was older because she was the tallest, at least five-eight, but the look on her face and the sudden awkwardness of her body language in the bright bikini made me wonder if she was even legal.

  The brunette on the other arm wasn't so easy to get rid of; she snuggled tighter to his side, putting both hands and some of her body into holding on. It was a definite possessive gesture. He'd only been flirting with her for less than two hours; how was that long enough for possessiveness? The brunette was short enough that she came in under his shoulder, which made her my height, or maybe an inch shorter. Her dark hair was somewhere between curly and wavy, which probably meant it was natural. Permanents always seem to pick one. She was tanned enough that the white bikini she was wearing made a nice contrast. Her eyes were hidden behind large round sunglasses. The glasses hid a lot of her face. What I could see was pretty, but her face was sort of round and unfinished, which made me deduct a few years off her age no matter how grown-up the body looked. She was college age, somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five, though I was betting much closer to the younger age. I think she was glaring at me through the sunglasses. I managed not to feel intimidated by the glare.

  When Ru realized he'd have to actually struggle to extract his arm from her, he stopped trying to get away and gave a small shrug. "Anita, this is Bettina. She and her friends are here for their best friend's wedding."

  "The blonde in the Bride shirt?"

  "How did you guess?" He grinned, but his eyes were watching me, trying to see what I'd do. If he'd been my real boyfriend instead of a pretend one, I'd have been more aggressive, but . . . "So how did Bettina and friends get the idea that you'd be more than just flirty?"

  He glanced down at the woman on his arm. "I'm not really sure."

  The redhead said, "You lying bastard, you've been flirting your asses off with us." She had hands on slender hips, small breasts pointed sort of aggressively. She had the beginnings of a sunburn on her pale, freckled face and shoulders.

  Micah and Nathaniel came up for air. "You're just too adorable for your own good, Wyatt," Nathaniel said with both arms around Micah, who usually didn't do that much public display of affection with Nathaniel. He loved us both, but he was still a little uncomfortable in public with his first-ever boyfriend, now fiance. It was fun to see him feel he had to mark territory like that, and it was probably the perfect way for him to say sorry to Nathaniel.

  "And now you're going to have to wait your turn, Wyatt, because here's my line," I said, motioning toward Micah and Nathaniel. They came toward me still holding hands.

  "Hey, Nathaniel, are we going to race or are you going to keep kissing on your boyfriend?" a strange man was yelling from the other end of the pool. He was tall, slender, but muscled enough to have his own six-pack. I was betting he was a college athlete of some kind.

  "Give me a minute to kiss on my girlfriend and then I'll be right there," Nathaniel called.

  "I don't care who you kiss--just let's do this, unless you want to admit that we're going to win and just concede."

  Nathaniel glanced at the redhead and the other brunette, and then back at the tall dude by the pool. "You don't care who I kiss, really?"

  The tall brunette held her hands up and shook her head as she backed up. "I'm sorry, but this all got too weird for me."

  The redhead looked defiant. "I'm still game if you mean it. The idiot yelling at us is my boyfriend, Randy, and I'd like to see if he really doesn't care."

  The redhead came over to Nathaniel and Micah. She was almost as tall as Nathaniel but still seemed delicate beside him. She truly was one of those people who had small bones and a small body frame, and even though not a rib showed on her, she had almost no breasts or ass; she was naturally thin--because of genetics, not a starvation diet. She also looked soft, as if there wasn't much muscle tone to her, so she thought she was in shape because she was thin, but it's not the same thing as being strong. Her big hazel eyes were her best feature to me, but I wasn't the one who had been flirting with her.

  Nathaniel smiled at her and said, "Just a minute, let me ask my girlfriend how she feels about it." He came to me then, still wet here and there from the pool, but his front was now surprisingly dry thanks to Micah. I glanced down and found that a lot of the front of Micah's clothes were now wet, as if he'd spilled something all over the front of him. They hadn't tried to keep any space between their bodies. Micah had made a lot of progress to be able to kiss him like that in public; maybe it was his version of makeup kissing.

  I turned to Nathaniel and we shared a smile, both of us proud of our shared man for being brave and owning his feelings. His smile was a real one now, without that edge of anger in it. We came together, wrapping our arms around each other effortlessly. We knew where our hands, arms, and finally our bodies went as we slid as close together as we could get with clothes still on, though the itty-bitty bathing suit he was wearing almost didn't count. He was already a little happier to be there from kissing Micah. If he and I kissed too much, the Speedo might not hold him comfortably. I told him so.

  "I'll risk it," he said and bent those few inches downward as I raised my face upward. And just like the rest of us, our lips knew exactly where to go. We kissed with lips, tongue, and finally, lightly, teeth. If he wasn't going to have to swim immediately afterward, I'd have used more teeth, but the Speedo had to hold.

  We ended the kiss slowly, reluctantly. For a moment we'd forgotten where we were and why we were putting on the show. We'd just got lost in each other. We stood there for a moment sort of trying to recover from it and get back to the reality around us.

  "Wow," one of the women said.

  "Randy has never kissed me like that," the redhead said. She was almost right beside us, as if it really was a line at a kissing booth.

  "I've never been kissed like that," Bettina said.

  The redhead actually touched Nathaniel's shoulder as if to turn him from me to her. She wanted a kiss. I don't think Nathaniel would have done it, but Edward stepped between them just in case. "No, we are not going to goad them into a fight. We are going to finish the race, win their money, and then we're done."

  "Hey," said the redhead, "it's not your call who he kisses unless you're his dad or something, and dads don't have abs like that." She'd managed to compliment and insult him in one sentence. It took me a moment to realize that Edward might actually be old enough to be Nathaniel's father. I never thought of him as that old, or Nathaniel as that young, but the math worked. Fuck, that sort of bothered me, though I wasn't sure why.

  "How do you know that you're going to win?" Bettina asked, still holding on to Ru.

  Edward gave her a look that was way mo
re him than Ted. It made her move a little back behind Ru, though she didn't let go of his arm. It made me think better of Bettina that she recognized the look as dangerous.

  "Wait, you guys have bet money on this? That doesn't sound like any of you," I said.

  "Some of the other men were talking trash, so Ted suggested a friendly wager," Ru said as he tried to get Bettina to let go of his arm without hurting her.

  "They implied that they were young stud muffins and some of us were more stud doughnuts now," said Sheriff Rufous Martinez as he walked back to the table with something tall and fruity-looking in a glass. He was a big guy, about six-three, and had played football in college, so I'd learned, but hadn't been fast enough for the pros, so he must have been in good shape once. Now . . . he patted the hard roundness of the belly that covered way too much of the front of his body if you were worried about heart attacks. "It was my fault. I'm the only one who likes doughnuts a little too much."

  "Sweets aren't your problem, Rufous," Edward said in his Ted accent. "Fatty meat and starches are."

  "You're starting to sound like my wife, there, Ted," he said, easing his bulk into a chair that almost didn't hold him. Apparently, he'd gained weight sort of all over; the belly just distracted you from the rest.

  "But why are Wyatt and Nathaniel swimming against each other if it's an us-versus-them thing?" I asked.

  "We both won our first matches," Nathaniel said.

  "Are we racing or not?" Randy called from the edge of the pool.

  Nathaniel smiled and said, "I'll be right back."

  "Does that mean he thinks he's going to win?" I asked.

  "Win or lose, it's quick," Rufous said.

  Micah leaned in to whisper, "I'll cheer on Nathaniel; you help Wyatt get rid of Bettina." He started to walk toward the rest of the group that was moving up to watch the race. I was left facing Wyatt, um, Ru, and the pretty girl on his arm. She was pretty, or would have been if she'd stopped frowning and clinging to Ru as if only violence would remove her.

  Rodina leaned in and whispered, "Please, Anita."

  I looked at Ru, at this new more confident exterior and the body that had been totally hidden under the baggy clothes he preferred. His eyes started to be a little less certain as I stared at him, and somehow, I didn't want to ruin his mood. He seemed happier than I'd ever seen him. Maybe it was an act, or maybe just pretending to be happy can help.

  I held my hand out to Ru, and he smiled. He gave me the hand she wasn't clinging to with both hands and some of her body weight. She pretty much had him pinned. I wondered if she was always this clingy or if it was something about Ru that made her so determined. I tried to draw him to me, but she held on as if it was going to be a tug-of-war with him in the middle. That was too ridiculous, so I moved to Ru's other side and touched his face. He slid his arm around my waist for the first time, and he felt as strong as he looked. He tightened his arm around my waist and drew me in against the side of his body. It was so much bolder than I'd thought he had in him, and for a second it reminded me of Rodrigo, who had been bold and dominant and domineering. I started to recoil from him. He felt it and the light started to fade from his eyes; that quiet, nearly beaten look was creeping back into his eyes, and I didn't want to see it back. I didn't want to be the cause of it. Rodina was right; they were in mourning, too. We'd all lost in Ireland. I stared up into his black eyes and for the first time I saw Ru, not Rodrigo, but the man standing in front of me instead of the ghosts behind me.

  I smiled up into his face, let my fingers play along the water drops on his skin. That light touch filled his eyes back up with something happier. I tried to put my arm around his waist but ran into Bettina's body.

  "Hey, I'm not into girls, okay?" she said.

  I hesitated for a minute with my arm pushed against her body as I tried to hug him; then I smiled up at him and did my best to let him see/feel/think what I was about to do. If it had been Nathaniel, I would have been able to just lower my shields and be sure he understood, but with Ru the connection only went one way: him sensing me. I went up on tiptoes, leaning against the line of his body and putting my lips against his; it wasn't even a kiss, just a touch. I felt his lips curl into a smile and I smiled back. I turned my arm to go around her waist, so I was hugging both of them. She made an unhappy "Hey!" I pulled harder and broke from Ru's lips to lean toward Bettina, as if I meant to kiss her. She gave an unhappy squeal and let him go, only my arm keeping her in place. If I'd been a little more perverse, I'd have gotten a kiss before I let her go, but I didn't like Bettina enough to even go that far. I moved my arm and she stumbled back as if she'd been fighting harder against my arm than I'd felt.

  She was calling me names now, lesbian being the nicest of them. I ignored her and was finally able to look up into Ru's ebony eyes without any distractions. He smiled, I smiled, and then I leaned in toward him as he leaned in toward me. We kissed, a light brush of lips, and then his hands tightened on the back of my body, pressing us together so that there was more body English to the kiss. I felt his body through the front of his small bathing suit. It made me push away from the kiss and turn my face in against his neck. His skin was slightly cool from the pool, but it must have been a saltwater pool, because there was no hint of chlorine. His skin smelled clean and good. I wrapped myself around him, burying my face in the bend of his neck where the pulse beat underneath his skin. He was suddenly so warm, and underneath the sweet scent of his skin was heat, a heat that I could warm myself with, if only I could reach it.

  I kissed his neck, pressing my lips over that warm, pulsing smoothness. I licked lightly over it and found his skin salty, and not from sweat, but from the salt water of the pool. I licked across his pulse, harder this time, licking as if I could touch that beating thing with my tongue if only I licked hard enough.

  Ru shivered in my arms. He said, "Anita," in a voice that was a little breathy.

  I opened my mouth enough to set teeth against his skin on either side of that pulsing, dancing point. I could feel it against my tongue like something alive and separate from him, like a tiny bird fluttering under his skin waiting for me to free it so it could fly high in a spill of crimson feathers and screams.

  A hand grabbed my hair hard enough that it hurt. Under other circumstances I might have enjoyed it, but not now. I set my teeth in the flesh. If they tore me away now, they'd take his neck with me. I heard a low growl and realized it was me.

  Micah's voice against my ear: "Anita, don't do this, not here in front of Edward and the wedding guests."

  He could have said a lot of things, but that was a good one to bring me back to myself and wonder what the hell I was doing. I relaxed in Ru's grip and stopped biting him, drawing first my teeth and then my mouth back from his skin.

  Ru's eyes were slightly unfocused, as if he'd gotten more from the partial bite than he should have. Rodina spoke low near my ear: "My queen, when is the last time you fed?"

  "I had food on the plane," I said.

  Micah kept his grip on my hair. He knew that the danger wasn't over yet. I almost told him, I'm okay, I'm safe, but I didn't know what had made me lose control, so I just let Micah draw me back from Ru. Bram stood a little ahead of Micah, closer to me than to his leopard king. If I lost control, he was going to defend his king. I was glad to know that Bram was there, because I wasn't sure what had just happened, or why. Stupid metaphysics.

  Nathaniel put an arm over Ru's shoulders and drew him away from me as Micah moved me. Ru said in a voice that was still lower than normal, "I am yours in whatever way you need me to be, my queen."

  I blinked and looked at Nathaniel's worried face as he stared at me. "Did you win?" I asked.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Did you win the race, the heat, the swimming thing?"

  He smiled then, and Micah said, "That's our girl."

  "I lost," Nathaniel said.

  I must have looked surprised, because he added, "The guy is going through college on a swim s
cholarship and he's nearly five inches taller than me. He touched the wall first."

  "So, did we lose the money?" I asked, as if I really cared. I didn't, but sometimes you support your people even when they do things you don't understand like bet money on winning a swim race with strangers, or try to tear the throat out of one of your friends. See, we all try to understand one another's little foibles.

  "Not yet," Edward said. He was standing near us with a towel in his hands. I was pretty sure there was a weapon of some kind in the towel. I was okay with that. He was only human, after all, and the rest of us standing there weren't. He was the most dangerous human being I'd ever met and one of the most dangerous people, human or superhuman, but still, a weapon was good to have when you were dealing with supernaturals, because sometimes the only difference between a preternatural human being and a monster was a little unsatisfied bloodlust.

  Bernardo was standing a little behind Edward. It wasn't that he wasn't going to help if he was needed, but he didn't have Edward's cold-blooded determination, meaning that he might hesitate if it came to killing me. I was their friend, after all. If Edward ever made the decision that I was too dangerous, he'd pull the trigger, because he trusted his judgment that completely, and so did I. Bernardo wasn't as self-contained as Edward, but then few people were.

  "We're going to take Anita to the room for a few minutes," Micah said, and he looked at Edward when he said it.

  Edward gave a minute nod. "Good idea," he said; his voice was tight, cold. I expected his eyes to be the pale of winter skies, which was the color that his eyes became when he was about to kill. I looked into a richer, friendlier blue than I'd expected and saw something in his eyes that I'd never expected to see: hesitation. He'd do it, but I'd crossed a line for Edward, just as he had for me. We'd pull the trigger on each other if we felt we had no choice and other people's safety was on the line, but it would cost us. Damn it.

  I looked past him and saw Rufous. He'd finally stood up, too, though he looked out of shape enough that it made me worry for him, and then I saw his face. His eyes had narrowed, and for lack of a better word he had that cop look, and it was aimed at me. I'd done something interesting and not in a good way. He didn't know what was going on, but he was a cop, and if the flags go up, cops run toward the action, never away from it. Physical fitness and age had nothing to do with it. Rufous was a police officer, period. That made me wonder, so I glanced behind me toward Frankie. He wasn't a cop and never had been, but he was a man who had spent a lot of his career settling violent problems with violent solutions. He was behind us, and I finally realized that both Nathaniel and Ru had given some of their attention to the tall, dark, and potentially dangerous man. I'd totally forgotten about him, which was worse than careless; it was stupid. Just as Edward wasn't my only dangerous friend, so I wasn't his either. If you had to pick a wedding to crash, this would not be the one to choose.