Flirt ab-18

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Bennington stopped right outside the door, looking at the two men. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” He was climbing back into his blank face, all that anger and disappointment shoved down behind the iron of his will.

  I wasn’t, actually. “Maybe they’re not mine to introduce,” I said.

  Bennington looked back at Nathaniel and Jason. “You’re dancers at Guilty Pleasures. The website says you’re a wereleopard and a werewolf. My wife went on a shapeshifter night. She said it was extraordinary watching you slip your skin and change shape.”

  I sighed and said, “Mr. Bennington, this is Brandon and Ripley.” I used their stage names automatically, because once someone recognizes someone from the club, it’s just safer to continue to be that persona. All the dancers had their share of overzealous fans. It was doubly problematic when they were one of the shapeshifters who danced. Hate crimes are alive and well. Hell, there are still some western states where varmint laws cover wereanimals, so you can kill one and all you have to say is they attacked you, and get a blood test prove that the dead human body was a lycanthrope of some kind. Nathaniel was also my leopard to call, and Jason my wolf to call. Through Jean-Claude’s vampire marks and my own necromancy, I’d become a sort of living vampire with some of the powers of a master. Jean-Claude was descended from Belle Morte’s line of vampires. They fed on love and lust as well as blood, and I’d inherited the need to feed through sex and love. If I didn’t feed periodically I began to die. I might have been stubborn enough and embarrassed enough to simply let it happen, but long before I died Nathaniel would die, drained to death by his “master,” and Damian, my vampire servant, would die, and then Jason. Suicide was selfish enough, but that would have been ridiculous. I was still making peace with the metaphysical mess my life had become.

  Once upon a time I’d have sensed their beasts through the office door, but I was getting more control and so were they, so it was like with normal folks. They could surprise me if they wanted to.

  Jason, aka Ripley, smiled, and it filled his face with that cheerful, hail-fellow-well-met that he could turn on and off. “I don’t remember seeing you at the club, Mr. Bennington.”

  “I haven’t been, but as I said my wife visited you once or twice.” He hesitated, then got his phone out of the inside pocket of his suit coat. It was one of those phones with the big screen so you could watch video on it, if you didn’t mind having the picture be the size of your palm. Bennington pushed some buttons and held the phone out to Jason. “Do you remember her?”

  Jason smiled, but shook his head. “It must have been on a night I wasn’t working. I’d have remembered her.”

  Bennington held it out to Nathaniel. He didn’t touch the phone, but looked at it, face solemn. He shook his head. “She’s very beautiful.”

  “Was, Brandon, was beautiful.” He held the phone out to me. The woman was blond, and beautiful in that Hollywood way, so that she was truly beautiful but there was nothing to make her stand out from a dozen other blond beauties. It was a type of attractiveness that always seemed artificial, as if they were all made at the same factory and sent out into the world to seduce and marry well.

  Nathaniel said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” he asked, and that flash of anger was back.

  “Anita said she was sorry for your loss; isn’t your wife who you lost?”

  Bennington nodded.

  “Then I am sorry.” I knew Nathaniel well enough to know that his emotion was a little stronger than just normal condolences, but I’d ask later when Tony Bennington was far away.

  I was still trying to usher him out, but I had one last boyfriend outside the door. Micah had been planning to join us for lunch, if he could, and there he was, joining us. He stepped in, my height with brown hair that curled past his shoulders, tied back in a ponytail that had too many curls to make his hair lie flat. His eyes were green and yellow, and not human. That beautiful face-and for Micah it truly was beauty, not handsome, more delicate jawline, more slender-was only just masculine. The leopard eyes in that lovely face just added to the impact. He wore sunglasses most of the time to hide the eyes. He started to get the glasses out automatically when he glimpsed the man behind me.

  “Don’t bother hiding the eyes,” Bennington said, “I saw the interview you did for the news. You’re the head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Humans and Lycanthropes, and I know you’re a wereleopard.”

  Micah stopped trying to fish his glasses out of his suit jacket pocket and just stepped in with a smile. “I believe if we keep hiding what we are, it just adds to the fear factor.” He didn’t offer his hand, because some humans didn’t want to touch any part of you once they knew you were a shapeshifter. Bennington put his hand out, and Micah took it.

  “Tony Bennington, this is Micah Callahan,” I said.

  They shook hands just like normal folks. It got Bennington a brownie point.

  “Again, Mr. Bennington, I am sorry that I can’t help you, but I urge you not to try to find someone else to raise your wife.”

  “It’s my money; I can find someone who will take it.”

  “Yes, but no one will be able to give you back your wife. Trust me; a zombie is not the same thing, Mr. Bennington.”

  He nodded, and there was that glimpse of pain again. “I’ve already asked around, Ms. Blake; everyone said that if anyone can raise my Ilsa so she looks like herself and doesn’t know she’s dead, you are the only one to go to, and you’ve turned me down.” He bit his lip again, that swell of muscle showing his control beginning to slip.

  Micah said, “I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Bennington, but Anita is the expert on the undead; if she says it would go badly, I’d trust her.”

  Bennington ’s gaze went straight to anger. He turned and put that gaze on Micah. “It’s a terrible thing to lose the one you love, Mr. Callahan.”

  “Yes, it is,” Micah said.

  The two men looked at each other, Micah exuding that calm that helped him talk new shapeshifters down when they were about to lose control, and Bennington giving off that tightly wound rage. He turned back to me. “Is that your final answer: you won’t help me bring her back?”

  “It’s the only answer I have, Mr. Bennington. I’m sorry that I can’t help you.”

  “Won’t help, you mean.”

  “I said what I meant-I can’t.”

  He shook his head, over and over; his face was bleak, as if some light had gone out of him. Maybe it was hope; maybe I’d been his last hope and now it was gone. I would have given him back his hope, if I could have, but I honestly couldn’t do what he wanted; no one could.

  He turned and looked at the three men, slowly, then back to me. “Do you love them?”

  I thought about telling him it was none of his business, but in the face of such pain, I told the truth. “Yes.”

  “All three of them?”

  I thought about quibbling, that I love-loved Micah and Nathaniel, but loved Jason as a friend. The fact that I had sex with all of them sort of muddied the waters for most people, but the four of us were clear on how we felt about each other, and all of us knew that Jason was my friend first and everything else second. We were secure, so I gave the short answer: “I do.”

  He looked at all of us again, nodded once, and then opened the door. “I’ve never been able to love more than one person at a time. It would be easier if I could.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t bother. I tried to put my sympathy into my face, and let it go at that.

  “Their being here with you proves that at least some of the tallest tales about you are true.”

  “You keep leaving me not knowing what to say, Mr. Bennington.”

  “I thought women always knew what to say.”

  “I don’t.”

  “My wife was a very different kind of woman than you, Ms. Blake.”

  “I hear that a lot,” I said.

  “Please, help me get her
back.”

  “I can’t give her back to you, Mr. Bennington. No human being could do what you truly want, no matter how psychically gifted they might be.”

  “And what do I truly want?”

  “You want resurrection of the body and mind and soul. I’m good, Mr. Bennington, maybe the best. But no one, not even me, is that good.”

  He left then without another word, closing the door carefully behind him. Micah hugged me. “That was unpleasant.”

  I raised my face for a kiss, which he gave, and hugged him back. “Unpleasant,” I said. “That’s one word for it.”

  Nathaniel hugged me from behind, and I was suddenly sandwiched between my two live-in sweeties. Nathaniel kissed the top of my head. “Come to lunch, and Jason and I will flirt outrageously, and make you smile.”

  “As long as I’m left out of the flirting,” Micah said.

  “It’s okay that you don’t flirt in public,” Nathaniel said, “you do fine at home.”

  Jason came to stand beside us. “If four’s a crowd I can take a hint.”

  It was Micah who opened his arm and brought Jason into the group hug, which let Nathaniel do the same. We snuggled together for a moment, and Jason put his face against mine. “I don’t know how you deal with clients all day, Anita.”

  “I could do without the grieving relatives, that’s for sure,” I said.

  “One of these days,” Mary said from behind us, “you have to tell me how you do that.”

  We broke from the hug enough for me to look at her. “Do what?”

  She waved her hands at us all. “Three of the sexiest men I’ve seen in weeks and they’re all here to take you to lunch. If you find one over thirty, throw him my way.” It made me laugh, which is what she meant it to do. Mary had worked here as long as I had, and she’d seen worse displays of grief than Tony Bennington’s.

  I smiled to let her know it worked, and tried to shake the depressing feeling that I’d failed Bennington. I had told him the truth, but sometimes the last thing you want when you’re grieving is truth.

  “I have a couple that are way over thirty, Mary, but I didn’t think you were into vampires.”

  She made a girlish squeal, which was a sound that should have been outlawed once you hit the other side of fifty, but Mary could still pull it off. I was under thirty and still couldn’t do the squeal without feeling like an idiot. It was never a voluntary sound for me.

  “See you after lunch, Mary.”

  “If I had all three of them with me, I would make it a long lunch.”

  I grinned, and then felt the blush start. I always had blushed easily, damn it.

  Mary laughed, until Jason walked over to her and kissed her cheek, and then it was her turn to blush. We left the office laughing, with Mary joining us. “Go on with you, cheeky kid,” she said to Jason, but was still bright-eyed with the attention.

  “Cheeky, hmm,” Jason said. I grabbed his arm and pulled him out the door before he could do whatever was behind that gleam in his eyes. I wasn’t sure if Mary would thank me later, or be disappointed.

  We got to a booth in a restaurant that was near enough to my work that we’d walked-Micah and I in our suits, and the other two looking like gym bunnies who’d escaped to be among us mere mor tals. They had put on summer-weight workout pants over the shorts, which they’d gotten out of Jason’s car. Nathaniel had even added a lightweight jacket. He knew that I wasn’t always comfy with a lot of attention, even if I wasn’t the one attracting it. Micah looked as cute in less clothes as they did, but he, like me, didn’t usually flash unless at home. We were shy, but it was a sliding scale. We were shy in comparison to Jason and Nathaniel, but then so were most people. I appreciated them putting on more clothes and told them so. I also asked them, “If you had more clothes, why did you wear less to pick me up at work?”

  “Mary likes it when we flirt with her,” Nathaniel said.

  “So if it had been nighttime and Craig was on duty, you’d have put on more clothes?” I asked.

  “Yes,” they said.

  I let it go at that, because I’d learned to.

  Micah and Jason were at either end of the circular booth, putting Nathaniel and me in the center, but it was easy for any of us who wanted to sit as close as we wanted until the food came, and then we’d need more elbow room. But until then, Micah and I held hands, but that’s too passive a word. We played our fingers up and down on each other’s. We made small circles on each other’s hands. I drew my nails lightly down the back of his hand, which made him close his eyes, lips parting. He returned the favor by drawing his nails down the inside of my wrist, and that made me have to fight off a visible shudder. “Okay, point taken, I’ll back down.” My voice was breathy.

  “You guys are so much fun,” Jason said.

  “Yes, they are,” Nathaniel said, and some tone in his voice made me look at him, and I was suddenly very aware that I was staring into his face from inches away. Micah and I were still holding hands, but I was left wondering if I’d somehow neglected Nathaniel. I opened my mouth to ask something that blunt, when he said, “You and Micah always have to touch each other more than just a hug and a kiss. Until you do there’s this tension between you; always.”

  “Do I apologize for that?” I asked, and my voice was still breathy.

  “No,” he said, voice low, “you’re the same way with me.” His hand found my skirt and began to slide down my thigh until his fingers touched hose. He slid his hand over my hose, to the inner thigh. My free hand grabbed his hand, and my other hand flexed in Micah’s, who grabbed back, and the pressure of his hand both helped me think and made me think about both of them, in a way that wasn’t helpful at all.

  My pulse was suddenly in my throat and it wasn’t because I was afraid. Mary had said she’d take a long lunch, and that suddenly didn’t seem like a bad idea. I frowned, and tried to think a little better than that.

  Nathaniel leaned in and whispered against my face, breath so warm, “Too much?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice.

  “I don’t think this is going to make her laugh,” Micah said.

  I shook my head.

  Nathaniel backed up enough so he wasn’t breathing his words directly on my skin. “I’m not jealous of you and Micah, because you still react as if me touching you is new.”

  I turned and looked at him, frowning at little. “Are you insinuating that other people have gotten tired of you touching them?”

  “Now you’ve gone and made her think,” Jason said. “Thinking will not make her smile.”

  I gave him an unfriendly look.

  He held his hands up, as if to say, Don’t shoot the messenger. “You know I’m right.”

  Nathaniel said, “I’m saying that other people have wanted me for a night, or a few days a week, or a month, but you never seem to grow tired of me.”

  I just looked at him. “They were crazy.”

  He smiled, not the sexy smile, but the big, bright, happy smile. The one I hadn’t even known he had in him until we’d been together for months. It made him look even younger than twenty-one, and I had the feeling that maybe that smile was what he might have been if he hadn’t lost his family and been on the streets before age ten.

  Jason leaned around Nathaniel and said, “I’m remembering why I don’t go to lunch with all of you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  He gave us all a look.

  “I think Jason feels left out,” Micah said.

  It was one of those moments that Miss Manners didn’t cover. I had sex with Jason, but he was my friend, not my boyfriend. There was a difference. So if your guy friend and sometimes lover feels left out when you’re cuddling your boyfriends at lunch, do you owe him a cuddle?

  “I’m closer,” Nathaniel said, “but I think he’d rather have the kiss from you.”

  Jason, being Jason, then put his arm around Nathaniel and said, “It’s nothing personal, dude, but she’s not a dude.” He did a drawling mov
ie-dude voice to go with the line.

  It made us all smile, and I leaned past Nathaniel to give Jason a quick kiss. It was almost as if now that we had the touching out of the way we could talk.

  We’d found out on the walk over that the dance class that they were taking was going well, but the routine that they were trying to teach some of the other dancers from Jean-Claude’s clubs had hit a snag.

  “You said you’d explain the problem you’re having teaching the dancers,” I said.

  “I can’t convince some of the women from the Circus and Danse Macabre that I’m their teacher, not just a cute guy,” Jason said.

  “They don’t respect you?” Micah asked.

  “They hit on me,” he said.

  Micah and I exchanged a glance, then both looked back at him. “And that’s a problem for you, how?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Okay, I love to flirt, but not when I’m teaching. I can’t play favorites, and I can’t use the class as a dating pool, because that would be playing favorites. I’m trying to get these women to work harder than they’re used to, and they’re trying to flirt in part to get out of the hard work.”

  Nathaniel explained, “Most of the human women come from a stripper background, and most strip clubs aren’t like Guilty Pleasures, Anita. They don’t really want you to dance at most clubs, just move a little and take your clothes off. Jason is asking them to dance, really dance.”

  “Dancing is hard work,” he said, “and some of these women have used their beauty to avoid hard work all their lives.”

  “You keep saying women,” Micah said. “I thought you were training up some of the male dancers, too.”

  “We are, but most of them came from Guilty Pleasures, and Jean-Claude always made us put on a real show there. The other wereanimals aren’t arguing about it, either.”

  “They know if they don’t do what they’re told, it will get back to the head of their animal group,” Micah said.

  Jason smiled at him. “Yeah, Caleb is sooo not happy that you made him move from waiter at Guilty Pleasures to dancer, O Leopard King.”