Finally, he was done. Micah signed for the food, and the guy left with a Have a nice day that actually sounded sincere.
Micah shut the door behind him, putting all the locks in place. I approved. Locks don't help you if you don't use them.
I was trying to decide whether to frown. "I like the caution—you know I do."
"But," he said, setting the sunglasses on the coffee table.
"But I thought I should compliment you before I complain about something else."
His smile slipped a little. "What now?"
"There's a salad here with grilled chicken on it and a butterflied chicken breast grilled with veggies. The salad better not be mine."
He grinned then, and it was that sudden grin that gave me a glimpse of what he might have looked like at fifteen.
"You get the chicken breast."
I frowned. "I would have preferred steak."
He nodded. "Yes, but if you eat that heavy then sometimes the food doesn't sit well if the sex is too, um, vigorous."
I tried not to smile and failed. "And is the sex going to be, um, vigorous?"
"I hope so," he said.
"And you got the salad, because…"
"I'll be doing most of the work," he said.
"Now, that's just not true," I said.
He wrapped his arms around me, and his being the same height made the eye contact very serious, very intimate.
"Who does the most work depends on who is doing what." His voice was low and deep. His face leaned closer as he said, "I know exactly what I want to do to you and with you, and it means that I will be doing"—and his mouth was just above mine—"most of the work."
I thought he'd kiss me, but he didn't. He drew back and left me breathless and a little shaky. When I could talk without sounding as wobbly as I felt, I asked, "How do you do that?"
"Do what?" he asked as he sat down on his side of the table, spreading his napkin in his lap.
I gave him a look.
He laughed. "I am your Nimir-Raj, Anita. You are my Nimir-Ra, my leopard queen. The moment we met, my beast and that part of you that calls and is called to the wereleopards were drawn to each other. You know that."
I blushed, because the memory of just how much we'd been drawn together from the moment we'd met always made me a little embarrassed. All right, more than a little.
Micah was the first man I'd ever had sex with within hours of meeting him. The only thing that had kept it from being a one-night stand was the fact that he stuck around, but I hadn't known he would when it first happened. Micah had been the first person I fed the ardeur off of, the first warm body that I slaked that awful thirst on. Was that the bond? Was that the foundation of it?
"You're frowning," he said.
"Thinking too hard," I said.
"And not about anything pleasant, from the look on your face."
I shrugged, which made the jacket rub on the gun. I took the jacket off and draped it across the back of the chair. Now the shoulder holster was bare and aggressive against the crimson shirt. My arms were exposed, which showed off most of my scars.
"You're angry," he said. "Why?"
I actually hung my head, because he was right. "Don't ask, okay? Just let my grumpy mood go, and I'll try to let it go, too."
He looked at me for a moment, then gave a small nod. But his face was back to being careful. His neutral, pleasant I'm managing her moods face. I hated that face because it meant I was being difficult, but I didn't know how to stop being difficult. I was tripping over issues I'd thought I'd worked out months ago. What the hell was the matter with me?
We ate in silence, but it wasn't companionable silence. It was strained, at least in my own head.
"Okay," Micah said, and his voice made me jump.
"What?" I asked, and my voice sounded strident, somewhere between breathy and a yell.
"I have no idea why you are this"—he made a waffling motion with his hand—"but we'll play it your way. How did you get the scars on your left arm?"
I looked down at my arm as if it had suddenly appeared there. I stared at the mound of scar tissue at the inside of the elbow, the cross-shaped burn scar just below it, the knife cut, and the newer bite marks between the two. Those bites were still sort of pink, not white and shiny like the rest. Okay, the burn wasn't white, darker actually, but… "Which one?" I asked, looking up at him.
He smiled then. "The cross-shaped burn scar."
I shrugged. "I got captured by some Renfields—humans with a few bites—who belonged to a master vampire. The Renfields chained me up as a sort of snack for when their master rose for the night, but while we were waiting they decided to have some fun. The fun was heating up a cross-shaped branding iron and marking me."
"You tell the story like it doesn't mean anything to you."
I shrugged again. "It doesn't. Not really. I mean it was scary and horrible, and hurt like hell. I try not to think about it. If I dwell too much on the things that could go wrong or have gone wrong in the past, I have trouble doing my job."
He looked at me, and he was angry. I didn't know why. "How would you feel if I told my story the same way?"
"Tell your story any way you want, or don't tell it, Micah. I'm not the one forcing us to play true confessions."
"Fine," he said. "I was eighteen, almost nineteen. It was the fall I went away to college. My cousin Richie had just gotten back from basic. We both came home so we could go hunting with our dads one last time. You know, one last boys' weekend out." His voice held anger, and I finally realized that he wasn't angry at me.
"At the last minute, Dad couldn't come with us. Some hunters had gone missing, and Dad thought one of his patrols had found them."
"Your dad was a cop?"
He nodded. "County sheriff. The body they found turned out to be a homeless guy who got lost in the woods and died of exposure. Some animals got to him, but they hadn't killed him."
His face had gone distant with remembering. I'd had a lot of people tell me awful truths, and he told it like most of them did, no hysterics. No anything, really. No effect, as the therapists and the profilers would say. He looked empty as he told his story. Not matter-of-fact the way I told my story, but empty, as if part of him wasn't really there. The only thing that showed the strain was that thread of anger in his voice.
"We were all armed, and Uncle Steve and Dad had taught Richie and me how to use a gun. I could shoot before I could ride a bike." He set his silverware down on the table, and his fingers found the salt shaker. It was real glass, smooth and elegant for a salt shaker. He turned it around and around in his fingers, giving it all his eye contact.
"We knew it might be the last time the four of us got to hunt together, you know? College for me, the army for Richie—it was all changing. Dad was really upset that he didn't get to come, and so was I. Uncle Steve offered to wait, but Dad told him to go ahead. We wouldn't all get our deer in one day. He was going to drive up and join us the next day."
He paused again, this time for so long that I thought he'd stopped for good. I gave him the silence to decide. Stop, or go; tell or not.
His voice when it came was emptier; no anger now, but the soft beginnings of something worse. "We'd gotten a doe. We always got two buck tags and two doe tags, so between the four of us, we could shoot what we found." He frowned, then looked at me. "You don't know what a deer tag is, do you?"
"The deer tag tells you what you can shoot, buck or doe. You don't get a choice some years, because some years there are more does than bucks, so they give out more doe tags. Though usually it's buck that's more plentiful."
He looked surprised. "You've been deer hunting."
I nodded. "My dad used to take me."
He smiled. "Beth, my sister, thought it was barbaric. We were killing Bambi. My brother, Jeremiah—Jerry—didn't like killing things. Dad didn't hold it against him, but it meant that Dad and I were closer than him and Jerry, you know?"
I nodded. "I know." And ju
st like that he'd told me more about his family than I'd ever known. I hadn't even known he'd had siblings.
He kept his eyes on my face now. He stared right at me as he said the next part, stared so hard that even under normal circumstances it would have been difficult to hold his gaze. Now, like this, it was like lifting some great weight just to meet the demand in his eyes. I did it, but it was hard work.
"We had a doe. We'd field dressed it and put it on a pole. Richie and I were carrying it. Uncle Steve was a little ahead of us. He was carrying Richie's gun and his. I had my rifle on a strap across my back. Dad always told me that if it was my gun, I needed to hold on to it. I had to control it at all times. Funny. I don't think Dad really liked guns."
His face started to break, not badly, but around the edges. All the emotions that he was trying not to have chased around the borders of his face. If you didn't know what you were looking at, you might not have understood it, but I'd had too many people tell me too many awful things not to see it.
"It was a beautiful day. The sun was warm, the sky was blue, the aspens were like gold. The wind was gusty that day. It kept blowing the leaves around in showers of gold. It was like standing inside a snow globe except instead of snow, it was golden, yellow leaves. God, it was beautiful. And that was when it came for us. It moved so fast, just a dark blur. It hit Uncle Steve and he just went down, never got back up." His eyes were a little wide, his pulse jumping enough in his throat that I could see it. But other than that his face was neutral. Control—such tight control.
"Richie and I dropped the deer, but Richie didn't have a gun. I got my rifle almost to my shoulder when it hit Richie. He went down screaming, but he drew his knife. He tried to fight back. I saw the knife sparkling in the sunlight."
He stopped again, and this time the pause was so long that I said, "You can stop, if you want to."
"Is it too horrible for you?"
I frowned and shook my head. "No, if you want to tell it, I'll listen."
"I made a big deal out of this, not you. My own fault." He said that last word with more feeling than it needed. Fault. I could taste the survivor's guilt on the air.
I wanted to go around the table and touch him but was afraid to. I wasn't sure he wanted to be touched while he told the story. Later, but not now.
"You know how time can freeze in the middle of a fight?"
I nodded, wasn't sure he saw it, and said, "Yes."
"I remember the face, its face, when it looked up at me from Richie's body. You've seen us in half-man form. The face is leopard, but not. Not human, but not animal either. I remember thinking, I should know what this is. But all I could think was Monster. It's a monster."
He licked his lips and drew a breath that shook when he let it out. "I had the rifle to my shoulder. I fired. I hit it. I hit it two or three times before it got me. It ripped me with its claws, and it wasn't a sharp pain. It was like being hit with a baseball bat—hard, thick. You know you're hurt, but it doesn't feel like you'd imagine claws would feel—do you know what I mean?"
I nodded. "Yeah, actually, I know exactly what you mean."
He looked at me, then down at my arm. "You do know what I mean, exactly what I mean, don't you?"
"More than most," I said, voice soft and as matter-of-fact as I could make it. He had so much emotion that I gave him none back. It was the best I could do.
He smiled at me. Again it was that sad, wistful, self-deprecating smile. "The rifle was gone. I don't remember losing it, but my arms wouldn't work anymore. I lay there on the ground, with that thing above me, and I wasn't afraid anymore. Nothing hurt, nothing scared me. It was almost peaceful. After that it's only snatches. I remember voices, being on a stretcher. I remember being put in a helicopter. I woke up in the hospital with Agent Fox on one side and my dad on the other."
I realized then what had sparked the trip down memory lane. "Seeing Fox today brought it back." Some days I'm just slow.
He nodded. "It scared me to see him, Anita. I know that sounds stupid, but it did."
"It doesn't sound stupid, and it didn't show. I mean, even I didn't pick up on it."
"I wasn't afraid in the front of my head, Anita. I was afraid in the back of my head. And then you didn't like the room, and—"
I went to him then. I wrapped my arms around him, pressed his face against my chest. He hugged me back, tight, so tight, as if he were holding on to the last solid thing in the universe.
"I love the room. I love you. I'm sorry I was shitty."
He spoke with his face still buried against my body, so his words were muffled. "I didn't survive the attack, Anita. The wereleopard that attacked us ate as much of my uncle and Richie as it could hold, and left. Some hunters found us, and they were both doctors. I was dead, Anita. No heartbeat, no pulse. The doctors got my heart started again, got me breathing again. They patched me up as best they could, and they got me to a clearing so a chopper could get me to a hospital. No one expected me to live."
I stroked his hair, still slick and tight in the braid. "But you did," I whispered.
He nodded, rubbing his head against the silk shirt and my breasts underneath. Not sexual, but comforting.
"The wereleopard was a serial killer. He hit only hunters, and only after they'd killed an animal. The FBI put out a warning to hunters after we were attacked. Fox said they put it together as a serial case only a few hours before we were attacked. The first attack had been on a reservation where he was assigned."
"He solved it," I said.
"He caught the… monster. He was there when they killed it."
He kept saying it and monster. You didn't hear that often from shapeshifters—not about other shifters. "I died, was brought back, survived, and healed. Healed so fast. Incredibly fast. Then a month later I was the monster." His voice was so sad when he said it, so unutterably sad.
"You're not a monster," I said.
He drew away enough to look up at me. "But a lot of us are, Anita. I joined Merle's pard, and he was a good leader, but Chimera came and took us over, and Chimera was crazy and cruel."
Chimera had been the leader I'd killed to save Micah and his people, and a lot of other people. Chimera had been the only panwere that I'd ever heard of, someone who could turn into a variety of animals. Before I'd seen him I'd have said it was impossible, but I'd seen him, and had to destroy him. He'd been real and powerful, and a very creative sexual sadist.
I held his face in my hands. "You are a good person, Micah. You are not a monster."
"I used you when we first met, Anita. I saw you as a way to save my leopards. To rescue us all."
"I know," I said. "We talked about it. You asked me what I would have done to save Nathaniel and all the leopards from Chimera. I agreed that I would have done anything, or at least what you did to get me involved. I couldn't fault you on it."
"From the moment you touched me, the plan changed. You changed it. You changed everything. You never looked at me like I was a monster. You were never afraid of me, not in any way."
"You make it sound like someone else was afraid of you."
He sighed again. "I had a high school sweetheart. We weren't exactly engaged, but we had an understanding that once we got our college degrees, we'd marry."
"Sounds good," I said.
He shook his head. "We waited for sex, a year of waiting. We both wanted to be out of high school first, be eighteen. Her older sister had gotten pregnant in high school, and it had wrecked her life, so Becky was careful. I was okay with that. I planned to spend the rest of my life with her, so what was a year or more?"
He spilled me down into his lap so I was sitting across his legs, very ladylike, thank you. "What happened?" I asked, because he seemed to want me to.
"What made her finally break up completely with me was me being a monster. She couldn't love an animal."
I couldn't keep the shock off my face. "Jesus, Micah, that's—"
He nodded. "It was rough, but me being a shapeshift
er was the last straw, not the first one."
I frowned a little. "What was the first straw?"
He looked down, and I realized he was embarrassed.
"What?" I asked.
"I was too big."
I opened my mouth and closed it. "You mean you were too well endowed for her?"
He nodded.
I looked at him and tried to decide what to say. Nothing good came to mind. "She didn't like having sex with you?"
"No."
"But—but you're, like, amazing in bed. You're—"
"But you weren't a virgin, and I wasn't eighteen and a virgin, too."
"Oh," I said, and thought about it. Micah was very well endowed. Not just long but wide, which I'd discovered could be a harder problem to deal with than length. There were positions you could do or modify for length. Width you just had to adjust to. I thought about having all that shoved inside for the first time, maybe without enough foreplay. "I guess I can see the problem."
"I hurt her. I didn't mean to, but I did. I got better at it. More foreplay, more—just better."
"There is a learning curve," I said.
He rested his forehead on my shoulder. "But Becky never really enjoyed me inside her. We had sex, but I always had to be so careful of her or she said it hurt."
"You know women have different sizes of vaginas, just like there are different sizes of penises. Maybe she was small inside, and you are not small."
He looked up at me, his cheek resting on my bare arm. "You think so?"
"I do."
He smiled. "You don't have a problem with me, any of me."
I smiled back. "No, and she was just one person. One negative doesn't make it a problem."
"It wasn't just one vote, Anita."
I raised my eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
"I've had dates in college where everything was fine until they saw me, all of me. Then they picked up their clothes and said no way."
I gave him a look. "You're serious."
He nodded.
Another man, I might have accused of bragging, but Micah wasn't bragging. I had a thought. It was almost insightful. "Becky said you hurt her because you were so big, and then you had girls in college who wouldn't even try it. That must have really messed with you."
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