“So much power,” he whispered.
I had a moment to wonder if this was just the ardeur feeding, or if I would accidentally bind him to me metaphysically. I didn’t need more men in my life, not permanently. The thought helped me push the ardeur away, just a little, so I could have another thought. Ethan didn’t deserve to be bound to me forever, not by accident. I didn’t want to take his free will. I didn’t want to trap him, or me.
I was able to climb back into the driver’s seat of my own head. Ethan stared down at me. “What’s wrong? The power’s fading.”
“Something is wrong with this feeding, Ethan. It’s different.”
“What?”
“There’s a chance that it won’t just be the ardeur. That I’ll bind you to me as my tiger to call.”
“Like Alex?” he asked.
I nodded, staring up at him, searching his face. He was handsome in a guy sort of way, cheekbones high, but thin-faced, so the shape was a soft rectangle. He had a dimple in his chin.
“Alex still has his life, his job; you haven’t hurt him.”
“I don’t always know how deep the binding will be, Ethan. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I can’t predict what will happen?”
He blinked down at me, trying to fight free of the pheromones on the air. He swallowed hard and then said, “You’re giving me a chance to back out.”
“Yes.”
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“You could be a bride, as in Dracula’s brides. No real will of your own.” I stopped holding him so tight and tried to give us a little physical space to think. Ethan’s arms tightened against my back. “You can’t want that for yourself.”
“The red clan breeds with other clans. If the child looks like the other clan, it’s sent to them to be raised; if it looks like red clan, it stays here with us. But if the baby doesn’t look like either clan, then it stays with the mother, not because she wants it, but because the other clan won’t take it.”
I kept one arm around his waist but raised the other so I could touch his hair. I touched the white and gray of it, and last I stroked the dark, rich streak of red in his bangs, pulling on it just a little. It made me smile up at him, and that made him smile at me.
“You’re beautiful, don’t let anyone tell you different,” I said.
His smile widened. “The clan females won’t have sex with me because they don’t want to bring an impure child into the world. I even had a vasectomy three years ago, so I couldn’t get anyone pregnant. I thought that would make me safe enough for the clan females to want me, but they still saw me as impure, as if just my touch would make them less pure-blooded.”
“I’m so sorry that they’ve been stupid, Ethan.”
He smiled, a little sad around the edges. “Me, too.”
Domino back home was a half-black and half-white tiger. He’d been security for the white clan, but just as alone as Ethan was; at least with Domino the white clan had found him in foster care and adopted him. They hadn’t bargained for his birth and then treated him badly. It seemed somehow worse.
I smiled at him. “Since I don’t want to get pregnant by anyone, it’s a plus for me. Your lycanthropy already protects you from any disease, so with me on the birth control, too, we’re about as safe as we can get.”
“Our lycanthropy,” Ethan said.
“What?”
“You’re a panwere, right? You just don’t change shape, so our lycanthropy protects us from any other disease but the lycanthropy.”
I frowned, because I hadn’t really thought about it like that. “I don’t know; since I can carry multiple strains of lycanthropy, I’m not a hundred percent sure I can’t catch other diseases.”
He nodded. “That’s true, so you still have to worry about STDs.”
“If I’m with humans,” I said.
“Are you ever with humans?”
“No, but I bet you do just fine with the human women,” I said.
He smiled, and it was almost shy. “I tried dating humans, but I can’t tell them what I am, and you can’t hide it forever.”
“No,” I said, “you can’t.”
“It’s like denying what I am, who I am. It’s almost lonelier than not having anyone in my arms.”
I nodded. “I had a boyfriend, a fiancé who wanted me to do the white picket fence—so not my gig.”
He grinned at me. “I can feel that you want me.” He leaned over me, sniffing against the side of my face. “I can still smell the scent of red, and white, and blue . . . and something else I’ve never smelled before. You smell sweet and . . . Why do I see gold in my head? A gold tiger.”
“Because part of you is gold.”
“That’s not possible,” he said.
“I can smell the truth on your skin.”
He drew in a deep breath.
“Gods, you smell like home.”
“I was told that gold tigers don’t look for home.”
He shook his head. “Then they must have already found it, because everyone looks for home in someone.” He whispered it as he turned his face against mine and put his lips on my cheek. It was almost a kiss, but not quite. His breath was warm against my skin.
My pulse was thick in my throat, my body tingling with his nearness. “Do you understand what could happen to you?” I tried to sound reasonable, but it came out as a hoarse whisper.
“I think so.”
“We just have to wait for Alex, and then we can think about it. You can have time to think about it.”
His hand cupped the side of my face, sliding his fingers into my hair. He kissed me, ever so softly on the other side of my face. “I don’t want to think.”
I closed my eyes as he rubbed his face against mine, like a cat scent-marking, his hand tightened in my hair enough that I made a small noise for him. “What do you want?”
“I want to go home,” he whispered.
I drew away enough to look into his eyes; they’d already gone soft, half-focused. His lips were parted, and his lower lip was wet as if he’d licked it. The ardeur pushed at me; the tigers slapped at me, raking their claws down the inside of my body so that I half-crumpled in his arms. He caught me, held me, his face all concern. “Are you all right?”
I nodded. I was, but I wouldn’t be if I fought too much longer. I thought about Alex, and I felt him, he was coming, but I felt his irritation with his mother; she’d delayed him. He was too far away, I couldn’t hold out . . . I smelled Ethan’s skin and was honest with myself: I didn’t want to hold out. Yes, it was the ardeur, yes, it was the tigers inside me, but it was also his loneliness. I’d been lonely for years; I knew what it was like to be different and have no one love you for it.
“Are you all right?” he asked again, his hands on my arms now, as if he were afraid I’d fall.
“I will be,” I said.
“What can I do?”
I drew back from the ardeur, shoved the tigers down, and knew it wouldn’t last. “I need you to understand that I can’t control all of this. I don’t know how much of your free will you’ll lose when we do this. I need you to really understand that, Ethan.”
His gray eyes were very serious as he looked down at me. “I understand.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“No, but for the look in your face just a few minutes ago, for the smell of your skin, for that taste of belonging . . . Don’t leave me here alone.”
I thought at Alex. I thought, too late, Stay away, and then I stopped fighting. Stopped fighting the ardeur, stopped fighting the tigers, and stopped fighting myself. I gave myself to the moment and the man in my arms.
13
IT TOOK TIME to disarm each of us. My concern for my weapons helped chase back the ardeur enough that other issues came up—like the fact that the small room Ethan had kicked open was the machinery room. It was bare and concrete floored. I was down to my bra and jeans with a pile of weapons at my feet when I laughed and said, “
Where can we have sex that we won’t lose skin doing it?”
Ethan peeled his shirt over his head and dropped it on his own pile of weapons. I would have tried to find someplace more comfortable to have sex, but seeing him shirtless distracted me. The fine muscles I’d seen in his arms hadn’t quite prepared me for how very nice he looked out of the shirt. There was always that moment when you got the clothes off for the very first time. It never grew old for me, that wonder of the first time, from the clothes coming off, to the first touch, the first kiss. Everyone kept telling me that with this many people in my life, and bed, I’d get jaded, but I never did. It was always fresh wonder, and Ethan standing there shirtless helped me chase back the ardeur even more, or maybe I just had more control of it now. But whatever the reason, I moved toward him, my hand outstretched so that I could run my fingers down the smooth, muscled grace of his chest. I had other men in my life who were more muscled, had more bulk, but Ethan’s level of muscle was just dandy. I ran my hand over the smooth swell of his chest, avoiding the nipples for now, because I actually wanted to caress him before we raised the ardeur too far again.
I ran my hand over the smooth ridges of his stomach. “Hmm, a six-pack, that takes work.”
His breath came out in a shuddering sigh, from just that innocent caress. “All I am to my clan is muscle, so I have to be the best muscle I can be.”
I curved my hands on either side of his waist, following along all that lean, hardworking muscle. Such a small touch, but it made him close his eyes and sigh. That reaction alone let me know just how long it had been since someone touched him. It made me sad for him. And then I felt something in the hallway, something hot and powerful, and angry . . . I turned back and went for my gun in its holster, but like Ethan’s gun it was under my shirt. I was on one knee, my shirt still in the air as I raised my gun up to aim at the door. Ethan was going for his gun, but he wouldn’t reach it in time.
14
MY FINGER WAS starting to pull the trigger as the door burst open, and I had a second to see that it was Alex in human form. If I’d been truly human I’d have shot him, but I had the reflexes to stop in time and aim the gun at the ceiling, though a moment later I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice.
I had a heartbeat to see him, a second to have that moment of frozen, crystal-hard vision, when adrenaline and violence slow everything down as if you have all the time in the world to do something, to see it coming. It’s an illusion—if you see the same moment later on film, it’s all so fast. But it let me see bits of things so clearly and the rest was lost. Alex’s dark red hair was shorter than last time I’d seen him, almost shaved. He flashed yellow tiger eyes at me, his human face set in a snarl of rage as he rushed in a blur of speed and power at Ethan, who had his gun in his hand, but no time to aim, and if he had, would he have shot his prince?
Alex’s body hit Ethan’s and sent the other man back against the machinery behind us. Metal snapped, and groaned, as it broke underneath them. A harsh, coughing roar came out of Alex’s human throat as he snarled into Ethan’s face.
I was yelling, “Alex! No! Alex! No! Stop!” I aimed the gun at him, and moved with it aimed so that I had a clear head shot while he snarled into Ethan’s face. I had the shot, but I couldn’t take it. I’d kill Alex at this distance, and he was my tiger to call, which meant when he died, I might die too, and so might everyone that I was metaphysically tied to. Fuck!
I holstered the gun and let it fall to the floor, and went to them. I had the angle now and could see that one of the metal pipes had pierced Ethan’s side. There was blood all over that nice upper body. Fuck! I couldn’t risk shooting Alex, but I wouldn’t stand there and watch him tear Ethan apart either. I went back to my pile of weapons for a blade. But I’d forgotten what Ethan was, all he was to his clan: muscle.
His fist moved in a pale blur and Alex staggered back, blood flying from his face. Alex fell to the floor, catching himself on one hand. Ethan began to drag himself down the pipe. The sight of it twisted my stomach; God, it had to hurt. His power rolled off him in waves, and three of my tigers loved the taste of it, the heat of it, the disaster of it, because just watching Ethan force his body down that pipe in his side, I knew that when he got off that pipe the fight would be on.
I stepped between them, which if I’d meant to fight either of them would have been stupid, but I wasn’t planning on slugging it out with either of them. I didn’t so much drop my metaphysical shields as just find the anger that always seemed to be bubbling right below the surface of me. Feeding on sex was Jean-Claude’s vampire line, the line that descended from Belle Morte, Beautiful Death, but anger, that was mine. The anger came to me as if it were a warm shower to touch and caress my skin. It felt so good to feed on it, to draw in all that rage. I had a moment of feeling that I had a choice whether to swallow it, or use it to be angry myself. That was new; usually it was just food. I “ate” the anger, letting it soak into me.
Alex stared up at me, still on the floor, on his knees, one arm braced. “What just happened?” he asked. His energy had completely changed; he felt normal, felt like himself.
“I ate your anger. Why are you so pissed?”
“I have no idea.”
Movement made me look back at Ethan. He shuddered with the pipe halfway out of his side. That one movement let me know how hurt he was. Yes, he’d heal if it wasn’t silver, but that didn’t stop having a pipe shoved through your side from hurting like hell. I couldn’t imagine trying to drag my body down it. I was thinking about it too hard, and my stomach clenched with nausea.
“What do you mean you have no idea, Alex?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. He looked up at me, and then called out, “George, come help us.” I turned and found another guard in the white T-shirt and khaki pants that passed as their uniform. His short, thick hair was the traditional deep, almost-black red, his eyes like orange and yellow pinwheels of fire. There was a slight gold tinge that just added to the exotic effect that some of the reds had.
“My prince,” he said, and literally dropped to one knee, his fist coming back to touch his chest. I raised an eyebrow at that, because I’d never seen anything that formal at any of the other clans. It was like medieval formal.
“Help Ethan.”
“As my prince wills,” George said, and stood.
I heard a gasp of pain behind me, and the sound of a body falling. I turned to find Ethan on the floor, on his knees, his hands catching him from falling. His skin was almost gray and beaded with sweat from the pain and shock. But even as I watched, the blood flow was lessening. His body was beginning to heal itself. A wave of relief that I hadn’t known I needed swept through me. It wasn’t that Ethan meant that much to me yet, but getting him killed for plain stupid jealousy would have just been so unfair.
George, the guard, was only partway to Ethan when the anger came back. One minute Alex was standing, wiping the blood off his face, his usual calm self, and the next he was snarling and hit the wounded man twice before Ethan could defend himself. They came up off the floor in a snarling, pounding mass.
I tried to eat the rage again, but it was as if I slid off it. I couldn’t reach the anger. Something was blocking me. The men began to beat on each other in a snarling, pounding mass.
I turned to the guard. “Stop them.”
“If my prince wishes to discipline him, it is not my place to interfere.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
George gave a little smile, shrugged, and said, “Seriously, I’m not crossing the Red Queen just for Ethan.”
“You are a useless piece of shit,” I said.
He frowned at me. “‘Off with your head’ isn’t just for Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen, Anita Blake.”
I had a second to think about the fact that this Red Queen beheaded her guards for disobedience, and then the fight took all our attention. If Ethan had been well, he’d have just kicked Alex’s ass; it showed in the fact that he was begi
nning to win even as hurt as he was. Alex was strong, fast, in good shape, but his day job was as a reporter. He had a chance to hit the gym and probably even took some kind of fighting class, but Ethan did nothing but train. He did nothing but make himself a better fighting machine, and as his body began to knit together, he began to hit back with more force, block more of Alex’s blows. It was the difference between an amateur and a professional in a fight; unless the amateur gets lucky early, he will lose.
Alex took another hit to the face and it spun him around. He tried to turn back, but Ethan kicked out and took his knee. I heard the meaty pop of it. Alex screamed and went down. Ethan kicked him in the face. Blood sprayed, and the screaming stopped. Alex fell to the floor unconscious. If he’d been human I’d have worried about a broken neck, but he wasn’t human; no one in the room was, not really. And yeah, I included myself on that list.
Ethan turned toward us, his breathing harsh. His chest rose and fell with it. The sick sweat had turned into just sweat. He wiped at the blood still on his side, and the wound was almost closed.
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