Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

“Drink your Powerade,” Nicky said.

  “I ate a big lunch.”

  “You haven’t eaten enough today, Anita.”

  “Stop fussing over me.”

  Ethan said, “Do you really want Nicky to stop fussing about your health and well-being?”

  I realized what I’d done. “I’m sorry, Nicky. I don’t mean that I want you to stop taking care of me. If that includes fussing, so be it.”

  “Thanks, Ethan,” Nicky said.

  “Would you truly have had to stop fussing over Anita if Ethan had not interceded?” Olaf asked.

  “It was a direct order, so yeah.”

  Olaf made a movement that in anyone else I’d have said was a shiver. I’d never seen the big guy that unsettled. “I cannot believe you are happy with being Anita’s Bride.”

  “If you had asked me ahead of time, I’d have said hell no, but now it’s just peaceful. Like I told you earlier, I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”

  Olaf shook his head. “I do not think I would be happier as someone’s slave.”

  “He’s not my slave,” I said.

  Olaf gave me the full weight of his cave-black eyes. “He must obey your every word. He has no free will of his own. Your happiness means more to him than his own. If he is not your slave, then I have no word for it.”

  “If you’re in love with someone, then sometimes their happiness is more important than yours,” Edward said.

  “Then love is just another kind of slavery.”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  “It’s really not,” Edward said.

  “It’s wonderful,” Ethan said.

  “It can be better than almost anything,” Milligan said from his piece of wall.

  “Better than being out in the field with your brothers-in-arms?” Olaf asked.

  Milligan smiled. “I said almost anything.”

  “If your wife was here, you’d say it different,” Custer said.

  Milligan shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t. She understands. That’s why we’ve been married for ten years.”

  “Congratulations,” Edward said.

  “Yeah, Millie here is the old married guy in our unit,” Custer said.

  “Ten years is a long time for one of the Team’s guys to be married,” Edward said.

  Milligan smiled and nodded at the compliment.

  “Olaf, if you see being in love as slavery, then why do we need to have this big talk?” I asked. I took a sip of my Powerade, too. I really did want to do better, but I’d still rather have had one of the soft drinks.

  “I am offering sex, not love. We’re having the big talk, as you put it, because you’re afraid to have sex with me.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  “No, but I am offering to have ordinary sex with you, not my normal way.”

  “What do you mean by ordinary sex?” I asked.

  “Plain vanilla sex.”

  “We’re going to have to define terms,” I said, “because one person’s plain vanilla can be someone else’s rocky road with sprinkles on top.”

  Olaf frowned and sipped his bottled water. “I do not know how to answer that.”

  Angel said, “Some men that say straight vanilla mean missionary position with no foreplay and doing it for God and making babies.”

  Olaf made a face as if the water tasted bad, but apparently it was more Angel’s words. “No, no, that is not what I mean by the phrase.”

  “That’s what I mean about needing to define terms,” I said, and leaned my butt against the edge of the window frame while I sipped my almost yummy sports drink.

  “If we can have such different definitions, then yes, we need to discuss what vanilla sex means.”

  “Why are you fixated on vanilla sex?” Angel asked.

  “Perhaps I am using the wrong words.”

  I glanced back at Edward. I raised eyebrows at him, hoping he’d understand that I needed a little help here.

  “Anita doesn’t really do vanilla sex,” he said.

  “What does she do?” Olaf asked.

  Normally I’d have told Olaf not to talk about me as if I weren’t sitting right there, but honestly, I didn’t want to answer the question. I did not want to talk about my sexual preferences with him, ever.

  “Multiple partners for starters,” Edward said.

  “I know that most of her men prefer a second man in the bed when they are with her. I would not need that.” Olaf’s voice held disapproval now, almost disdain.

  “You make it sound like it’s every man’s idea to have another man in the bed with us,” I said.

  “Are you saying that it is your idea?”

  “It depends on the man. Sometimes it’s Jean-Claude’s idea, and sometimes it’s mine. Sometimes it’s Nathaniel’s.”

  “Sometimes it’s mine,” Nicky said with a smile so fierce and happy that it was almost a snarl.

  “You are able to ask for things you want?” Olaf asked.

  “Yes.”

  Olaf looked at me. “How is that possible if he has no will of his own?”

  “I give Nicky as much free will as I can,” I said.

  “She feels guilty about trapping me forever,” Nicky said, “so she works really hard at letting me be myself.”

  “You are a sociopath and a mercenary that took money to torture and kill people,” Olaf said. “How can Anita let you be yourself?”

  “I don’t torture and kill people for money anymore.”

  “Don’t you miss it?” Olaf asked.

  “Not as much as I thought I would.”

  “What do you miss most?”

  “Being able to fight full-out, no-holds-barred, and beat the shit out of another guy.”

  “You train with the other guards at home,” I said.

  Nicky shook his head. “It’s not the same thing, Anita.”

  “When you say you want to beat the shit out of someone, you don’t mean like an MMA fight with rules and a referee, do you?” I said.

  He just shook his head.

  “He means fighting for his life, Anita,” Edward said.

  “He means beating people to death,” Olaf said.

  I glanced at Olaf, but Nicky spoke up and got me to look at him. “I mean fighting when it’s all on the line. When if I don’t win the fight, he kills me.”

  I stared at him, studying his face and trying to see if he was serious, and of course he was. “I’ve fought people to stay alive, knowing if I lost, they’d kill me. I didn’t enjoy it.”

  “I know you don’t, and if your life is at risk, or the lives of any of the people we care about, then it’s not fun.”

  “But you still miss it for yourself?” I asked.

  Nicky nodded.

  “I understand what he means,” Edward said.

  “Okay. Explain it to me,” I said.

  “It’s the same thing that makes me want to test myself against the biggest and baddest monster I can find.”

  “It’s a way of knowing who’s the best,” I said.

  Edward nodded.

  I looked from my best friend to one of the loves of my life and back again. Then I looked at Olaf. “And you understand what they’re talking about, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  I looked at Ethan. He raised his hands. “Don’t look at me. That’s not how I think.”

  I looked at the two SEALs still guarding their respective doors. “How about you guys?”

  Custer shook his head. “I like to test myself, but not like that, and I don’t want to ever fight Nicky for real.”

  Milligan laughed. “I’ll second that part, and I’m not one of your lovers. I’m not even trying out for the job, so I don’t have to answer the other question, or are there questions? Either way, I don’t hav
e to answer.”

  “You’re right. It’s pretty personal. Sorry. I have bad boundaries sometimes.”

  “You’re just used to dating almost everyone in a room,” Angel said.

  “You didn’t ask us the question,” Pierette said, voice quiet but firm enough to fill the room.

  “What question?” I asked.

  “What we miss by being bound to you.”

  “I don’t think Angel misses the kind of things that the guys do, but if I’m wrong, then say something.”

  “It was sexist of you to ask only the men,” Angel said, “but I don’t want to fight for my life with fists or weapons. I’ll fight if I have to, and you know I train, because we all train, but I don’t train like the rest of you do. It doesn’t interest me the way it does you.”

  “You’re a social worker and a counselor. You don’t usually have to resort to fisticuffs in your line of work,” I said.

  “You’d be surprised, but it’s not nearly as dangerous as your job.”

  “So, you don’t miss anything?”

  “I miss New York, even with the terrible rents and the terrible pay for jobs. I hated giving up my life there at first, but I really enjoy working with Micah and the Coalition. I think we do a lot of good work for a lot more people across the country than I could have reached as a standard social worker.”

  “I’m sorry that you had to give up your life in New York,” I said. “Do you want to go back there? I mean, I know you said you enjoy working with the Coalition, but I want you to be happy, so . . .”

  Angel slid off the bed and came to me, putting her fingers gently against my lips, so I had to stop talking. “And that is why we love you, because you really, truly want all of us to be as happy as humanly and superhumanly possible.” She took her fingers away and kissed me gently; it was barely a brush of lips.

  “She does not want us all to be happy if what makes us happy makes her uncomfortable,” Pierette said.

  Angel moved so I could see the other woman. Pierette wasn’t huddling over the pillow now. She was more just sitting with it in her lap.

  “I told you that you can start traveling out of the country soon.”

  “And I thank you and Jean-Claude for that, but I miss what we did when we traveled. You won’t let us do the things we need to do to make all the vampires and shapeshifters fear us again. Jean-Claude tries to be a good king, a fair ruler, and he won’t let us do what is necessary to keep our threat strong.”

  “Pierette,” Ethan said, and reached a hand toward her.

  “I know I am spoiling our plan, but it wasn’t working anyway. I look the part, but I played it too scared. He likes to break his victims down, not start with them broken.”

  “You were the wrong bait,” Olaf said, “and so was she.”

  “I’m serious when I say if we could find a way to guarantee my safety, I would totally fuck you—at least once,” Angel said.

  I looked at her. I think I looked shocked, or like I didn’t believe her.

  “Oh, come on, Anita, he’s hot. If you weren’t scared you’d end up on the menu, you’d have done him by now.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I have offered sex to Anita without her being on the menu, though menu is incorrect,” Olaf said. “I do not find cannibalism titillating.”

  “Good to know,” I said.

  “Should I be offended that you’re not making the offer to me?” Angel asked.

  “Anita is the Woman for me, the only one I want to be with more than once. The only one that makes me want to find ways to satisfy my desires without destroying her.”

  “She and the others tell us that you want her to hunt monsters with you so you can cut them up and kill them together as foreplay,” Pierette said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I miss hunting down vampires that have broken our laws. I miss tormenting them, making examples of them. I miss doing terrible things in the name of those I serve.”

  Pierette sat up straighter with every word. By the last one, her pillow had fallen to the floor, and she sat cool, confident, centered in herself in a way I hadn’t seen before. Was it real, or was it an act? Would the real Pierette please step the fuck forward?

  “This is much better bait for me, but I do not believe this lie any more than I did the other,” Olaf said.

  Pierette looked at him. “I’m not lying about this.”

  “You are good at hiding it. Your breath, your pulse, nothing changes, but your scent does. No matter how controlled you are, you can’t control that. Even one of the great fallen Harlequin cannot control the smell. Lies smell bitter on your skin.”

  “You are only guessing that I was one of the Harlequin.”

  “You keep almost calling Anita your queen. Only the bodyguards of the old queen of vampires would do that.”

  “And if I was one of them, then I would be a spy and assassin extraordinaire. I would hunt monsters with you, Olaf, and I would have far fewer morals about it than Anita does.”

  “I think if you got me alone, you would try to kill me. You would say later that I had attacked you, and you were forced to defend yourself. How brave of you, how tragic for me.”

  “I admit that was the original plan, but as Angel says, you are attractive and far more compelling than I expected.”

  “You seek to distract me, but I am not that easily put aside from my goals.” He turned back to Edward as if the women had ceased to exist. “Have you slept with Anita and any of her girlfriends?”

  “No.”

  “I will not ask the other. It is insulting.”

  “It’s not insulting. It’s just a question,” Edward said.

  “Are you saying you have shared her with another man at the same time?”

  “We usually have sex when we’re in the field away from home, which means it’s usually not an issue.”

  It was everything I could do to keep my face blank and not give away how big a lie he’d just told. I wished I still had my sunglasses on so my eyes wouldn’t give it away, but luckily for us, Olaf’s attention was all on Edward.

  “So she is your work wife?” Olaf asked.

  “She’s my partner. Donna is my wife.”

  “I meant no insult to either woman. I am just trying to understand.”

  “It’s not my relationship with Anita you need to understand. It’s her relationship to the others that’s important for you.”

  “Why is that more important?” Olaf asked.

  “Because you and I will never be comfortable sharing Anita in a bed together, but I think for her safety, you will need to find men that you would be willing to do that with.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “The only way I would trust you with Anita romantically is if there were men in the room that I thought could win against you or at least fight you long enough for Anita to escape.”

  “I still do not understand.”

  I was beginning to, and it was both brilliant and frightening, but then it was Edward, and that was how his mind worked. “He means that I would never feel safe one-on-one with you, but with some of my other lovers with us, I’d have a fighting chance if things went wrong.”

  Olaf was disgusted and didn’t try to hide his reaction. “The only thing I have ever enjoyed doing with other men is torturing them or winning against them. I enjoy causing anyone pain. It is simply better if it is a woman.”

  “The only other option I’ve come up with is if you allowed yourself to be chained down while Anita topped you,” Edward said.

  “No, I will not submit to anyone.”

  “Then how do we keep Anita safe?”

  “My word is not enough for you?”

  “Not on this, Olaf. I knew this day was coming, and I have been trying to think of ways that your needs can be met at lea
st partway without risking Anita’s life.”

  He was lying again, and Olaf didn’t call him on it. Either Edward’s body gave nothing away for the werelion to sense, or Olaf was so upset that he couldn’t sense it. It might have been a bit of both.

  “What of the ardeur? What of Anita’s ability to feed through lust?” Olaf asked.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “If she fed on me, would I be able to harm her while she did it?”

  “I thought you told me that you weren’t food, not for anyone,” I said.

  “It is merely a question, Anita. I am trying to understand what options are open to us.”

  “I can answer this one,” Nicky said. “Once the ardeur is released, then all inhibitions go. For Anita it means she can take even rougher sex than without it.”

  “I asked in the car when the three of us were alone if you and Anita did bondage together. You avoided answering the question.”

  “I was embarrassed, okay?” I said. “I’m still embarrassed, but if we’re really going to answer the question, then yes, we do bondage together.”

  “Do you dominate him?”

  “No, he’s my top.”

  “He is your dominant?”

  I shook my head. “I’m a switch, which means I like to go both ways in the dungeon. I can bottom, but I don’t do complete submission.”

  “She bottoms harder than most submissives I’ve ever been with,” Nicky said.

  I so wanted out of this conversation, but if we were going to have it, I’d be a grown-up about it. “I cannot imagine a set of circumstances where I would be willing to be tied up with Olaf in the room, let alone with him topping me. I have to trust someone completely to give myself to them like that, and I don’t know how I would ever be able to trust you like that, Olaf.”

  “Even if I let you release the ardeur on me?”

  I looked at Nicky. “You tell me. Does the ardeur make you safer as a lover for me?”

  “The ardeur is what turned me into your Bride, so yeah.”

  “She feeds the ardeur on the rest of us, and it hasn’t turned us into Brides,” Angel said.

  “And she has Brides that she has never had sex with,” Pierette said.

  “I think I make Brides when I’m desperate. It’s like a Hail Mary pass.”