Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 12)

"What makes you think a piece of sewing equipment would be in the kitchen?" I asked, and my voice held that first hint of amusement that I was trying to hide from Ronnie. It was kind of nice not to be the one who was embarrassed for a change.

Nathaniel moved from drawer to drawer, talking without turning around, his hair still up in its high, springy ponytail. "Zane borrowed it to fix his leather jacket and never put it back. You know how Zane is, he doesn't think. He's got to stop borrowing my stuff, if he can't put things back where they belong."

Zane was one of my wereleopards, and he tried to play dominant, but he really wasn't. And Nathaniel was right, Zane never seemed to put anything back where it was supposed to go. "I don't think you'll ever teach him to put things back," I said.

"You could wear it without these three straps," Gregory said. "Most people wouldn't notice." He touched one of the straps on Nathaniel's back, gave it a little flick. "I mean there must be over a dozen of them."

"I'll notice," Nathaniel said, and he kept opening drawers. "If you were Zane, where would you put a punch?" I think he was asking it of no one in particular.

Ronnie had managed to stop gaping. She'd closed her mouth and was trying to look like it was no big deal that two nudish wereleopards were wandering around my kitchen. She watched them covertly out of the corners of her eyes. I don't know if it was because she was embarrassed or because I'd called one of them my boyfriend. Girlfriend rule number one, you don't lust after your best bud's boyfriend.

I got up to help them look. Nathaniel had said it looked like a stapler. Even I could recognize a stapler, so I started opening drawers, too.

Nathaniel found it in the drawer that was supposed to hold only big spoons and oversized Cookware. "Why here?" he asked.

"It does look like a really big stapler, maybe that's why." I offered it up as the best idea I had.

Nathaniel was shaking his head, making his hair dance around his shoulders, in a way it never did except in that very high, tight ponytail. "Whatever the reason, he is not allowed in my stuff anymore."

"Sounds fair," I said. I was looking at all the straps. "You look pretty secured into that outfit, how do you strip out of it?"

He smiled at me. "Are you trying to get me out of my clothes?" He made it sound like teasing, but underneath was something that wasn't teasing at all. I wished I hadn't said it, because he wanted me to want him so badly. I didn't know how this game worked, and I'd never been good at flirting, not really.

I ended up blushing, which I hated. "No," I said, and it sounded whiny even to me.

He could have said a half-dozen things that would have made it worse, but he had mercy on me. "You get it off the same way you get it on." He slid his left arm through the front of all those straps, then raised his arm up his chest, along side his neck, and did something with his shoulder that I couldn't see from where I was standing. The straps just peeled down, and suddenly he was nude from the waist up, with the straps hanging around him like the petals of a black leather flower. "The straps come off completely, but it takes time to reattach them, so you'll have to come tonight if you want to see the whole show." He smiled gently, to take some of the sting out of my embarrassment. I wasn't sure why I was embarrassed, unless it was because Ronnie was there, or I was worried about having to come across soon. Who knew, pick one.

"Your shoulder," Ronnie said, in a strained voice, "didn't that hurt what you did to your shoulder?"

He shook his head, sending all that shining auburn hair flying. "No, I'm double-jointed."

Ronnie was having trouble with her face, like the expression that was wanting to come there wasn't one she was willing to have. "How double-jointed are you?"

"Ronnie," I said.

She shrugged and gave me a look like, Sue me, I couldn't help it. "Well, you won't tell me. You just told me today that he's moved from food to boyfriend."

"Ronnie," I said again, a little more urgently.

She made a face. "Sorry, sorry, I'm not myself today. I'm babbling more, like you usually do."

"Oh, thanks a lot," I said.

"You do babble when you're nervous or horny," Gregory said.

"Stop helping me, Gregory."

He shrugged, which looked odd on the leopardman shoulders, not bad, just odd. "Sorry."

"Do you want me to answer her question?" Nathaniel asked, in a careful voice.

"Answer the question, don't answer the question, I don't care."

He cocked his head to one side, the expression on his face clearly said that he knew that wasn't true. He was right, I'd have preferred him to not answer the question. He'd given me the opportunity to be his master and tell him not to answer, but I'd blown it. I'd abdicated the throne he seemed to want me to take, and if you're not in charge, you can't control what happens.

He walked over toward Ronnie, and he made sure he swayed that luscious ass at me as he moved. Sometimes I wondered if Nathaniel knew how beautiful he was, then he'd do something that let me know he knew exactly what he looked like. Like now.

Heat crept up my face just watching him walk, and I finally decided why the embarrassment. I'd promised to mark him, but what he wanted was intercourse, and watching him move across the room like an ad for a wet dream made me all squirmy and uncomfortable, like being a teenager again and having "those feelings" for the first time, and having no one to talk to about them, because good girls weren't supposed to have feelings like that.

He flicked his head and sent all that hair spilling over Ronnie, and away, like a curtain that she'd walked through, except she was sitting still. It looked as if he'd slapped her instead of teased. He stood up very straight, very tall, beside her chair and clasped his hands behind his back. "To answer your question, I," he began to raise his arms backward, "am," his arms went to the middle of his back, and kept on moving upward, "very," until his straining clasped fingers were even with his shoulder blades, "very," his arms rotated all the way up so they pointed at the ceiling, "double-jointed." Then he slowly put his arms back down, but it wasn't Ronnie he was looking at when he finished.

I didn't blush, I paled. I felt trapped. Trapped by what? That was the ten-thousand-dollar question. Even to myself, I wasn't sure I had an answer.

They left to repair Nathaniel's costume. The silence in the kitchen after they left was deep, long, and uncomfortable. At least for me. I didn't look at Ronnie, because I was trying to think of something to say. I shouldn't have worried, she found just the right thing to say. "Damn, Anita, I mean, damn."

I did look at her then. "What's that supposed to mean?" My voice was a little shaky to come off as indignation, but it was worth the effort.

Ronnie had a look in her eyes that I didn't like. It was way too discerning. We'd been best friends for years, just because we'd drifted apart didn't mean she still couldn't read me. "You haven't had sex with him yet." She sounded sure, and amazed.

"What makes you say that?"

"Oh, come, Anita, you're never quite this uncomfortable once that bridge has been crossed. For you, intercourse is permission to have a relationship, until that happens, you never really relax around them."

I was blushing again, arms crossed over my stomach, leaning against the island, using my hair to try to hide the blush, and failing. "So you've always known every time I made love to someone?"

"Most of the time, yeah, except with Jean-Claude. He messed up your radar and mine."

I glanced up then. "How so?"

"You stayed uncomfortable around him even after the two of you were having sex together. I think it's one of the reasons I didn't like him. I guess I thought if you were that conflicted, then it wouldn't last."

I shrugged. "I don't remember being uncomfortable around him afterward."

She just looked at me.

I had the decency to squirm. "Okay, maybe I was. But it's not true that I stop being uncomfortable after having sex just once. It takes a few sessions, a little 'monotonous monogamy' for me to truly relax."

She smiled. "Point taken. The best sex is after you've learned a few things about each other." She looked at me, very serious again. "You really haven't had sex with him, have you?"

I shook my head.

"Why not?" she asked.

I looked at her.

"Anita, after the little show he just put on, I'd do him."

I looked at her harder.

"You say he's been sleeping in your bed, with you and Micah, right?"

I nodded.

"For how long?"

"About four months," I said.

"Four months of climbing between your sheets, and you haven't fucked him?"

"Pick a different word, okay? If we're going to have this talk, pick a different word."

"Sorry, okay, you haven't made love to him, that better?"

I nodded.

"Why haven't you made love to him? He obviously wants you to."

I shrugged.

"No, I want an answer on this one. Has Jean-Claude decided to draw the line at sharing you with this many men?"

"No," I said.

"Micah has a problem with it?"

"No."

"Then why not?"

I sighed. "Because when I first let Nathaniel move in, he was like a wounded puppy, something to take care of and help heal. He was so submissive that he wanted someone to run his life and order him around. I've got enough to do to run my own life, so I sort of demanded he change, become more independent. He did it, he's doing really well."

"He's a lot more confident than the last time I saw him," Ronnie said. "I mean he's almost like a different person."

I shook my head. "He's a stripper, he has to have a certain level of confidence in himself."

She shook her head. "Nope, had a roommate in college that stripped her way through school on the weekends. She had a terrible self-image."

"Then why did she strip?"

"It made her feel like someone wanted her. Her childhood makes yours and mine read like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."

"Ouch," I said.

"Yeah, stripping made her feel good and bad all at the same time."

"What happened to her?" I asked.

"She graduated, found a job, found religion, and is now married with two kids and an attitude so holy that you can't have a conversation with her without her trying to convert you."

"They say that no one is as holy as a reformed sinner."

"Stripping isn't a sin, Anita. Being naked isn't a sin, it's the way God sends us into the world, how bad can it be?"

I shrugged.

"Sex isn't a sin either, Anita."

"Intellectually I know that, Ronnie, but part of me just can't shake my grandmother's voice. Sex was evil, men that wanted to touch you were evil, your body was dirty. It was all bad, and the nuns didn't help change that attitude."

"I guess once a Catholic always a Catholic," she said.

I sighed. "I guess." Truthfully, I thought a lot of the damage had been my grandmother's doing, and my stepmother, Judith, who made every touch some sort of favor. Physical touch was not a big thing in my family after my mother died.

"You feel guilty about Nathaniel, why?"

"I'm supposed to take care of him, Ronnie, not screw him."

"Anita, you can take care of someone and still have sex with them, married couples do it every day."

I sighed again. "I don't know why he weirds me out, but he does."

"You want him."

I covered my face with my hands and almost yelled, "Yes, yes, I want him." And just saying it out loud like that made me cringe inside. "He started life with me on the I'll-take-care-of-him list, not the future boyfriend list."

"Don't you and your boyfriends take care of each other?"

I thought about that. "I guess so. I mean, I hadn't thought about it."

"Why are you so busy trying to find reasons to talk yourself out of Nathaniel?"

I frowned at her. "Jason told me that it's because Nathaniel won't be aggressive enough. That if a man's just a little commanding, I feel like the choice isn't all mine, and the guilt isn't all mine either. Nathaniel's sort of forcing me to make the move, to be in charge, to be..."

"The one to blame," she offered.

"Maybe."

"Anita, I am terrified of spending the rest of my life with one man. I mean, what if a body like Nathaniel's comes walking up to me the day after I say yes to Louie? I'm going to turn it down?"

"Yeah," I said, "that's what being in love means, doesn't it?"

"Spoken by the girl who's sleeping with more men than I've dated in the last three years."

"I was raised that marriage would make everything that was dirty okay. Suddenly, all those feelings were legal, holy. Part of me has trouble letting that go."

"Letting what go?" she asked.

"That I'm never going to get married. That I'm never going to do anything to make how I feel about Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel, or Asher, or, hell, Damian, okay. That no matter what happens, I am going to be living in sin."

"You mean that you'd like to be in love with just one man and do the marriage thing?"

"I used to think so. Now..." I sat down at the table. "Oh, Ronnie, I don't know. I can't see being with just one person anymore. My life wouldn't work with just one of them in it."

"And that bothers you," she said.

"Yes, it does."

"Why?"

"Because this isn't the way it's supposed to be."

"Anita, 'supposed to be' is for children. Grown-ups know that it's what you make of it."

"My life is working, Ronnie. Nathaniel is like my wife, and Micah is the other husband. He works for the coalition and helps me take care of the leopards and all the other shapeshifters. It's partnership the way I always thought marriage could be, but never seems to be."

"And where does Jean-Claude fit into this little domestic scene?"

"Wherever he wants, I guess. He runs his business and polices his territory, and we date."

"You, him, and Asher date?"

"Sometimes."

She shook her head. "And Damian?"

"I don't know yet."

She looked down at her hands on the tabletop. "I guess we've both been having some interesting personal choices to make." She looked at me and frowned--a little frown. "Why is it that your choices seem so much more fun than mine?"

I smiled. "You have issues with commitment, marriage, and being tied to just one man. I have issues that anything short of that monogamous setup means you're a slut. We're both being set up to deal with our issues."

"You do sound like you've been to therapy."

"Glad to hear it shows," I said.

"So you're saying that we've fallen into the love lives we have so that we can face our demons and slay them?"

"Or realize that what we thought were monsters aren't that much different from us."

"You really did think that vampires were walking corpses once, didn't you?"

"Down to my toes."

"That must make it really hard to be in love with one of them."

I nodded. "Yes."

She took my hands in hers. "I'm sorry I've been pissy about Jean-Claude. I'll try to do better."

I smiled and squeezed her hands. "Apology accepted."

"I'm thirty, and I've never been this happy with anyone. I'll talk to Louie about giving me a little space and maybe finding a premarriage counselor."

"Can I say I'm happy to hear that, without you accusing me of wanting you to marry him?"

She smiled and had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah, and sorry about that, too."

"It's alright, Ronnie, we all have our hangups."

"Trust you to find a witch for a counselor, but if you can do therapy, I guess it's not too late for the rest of us."

"I was talking to Marianne for months before I realized what it was."

"You're saying that you went to therapy by accident."

I shrugged, squeezed her hands, and got up. Please, God, let some of the coffee still be warm.

"So you went to therapy by accident. You became the lover of the Master of the City, kicking and screaming that you wouldn't do it. Now you've fallen into one, or is it two m¨¦nage ¨¤ trois, when your goal in life was monogamous marriage."

The French press was cold, but the coffeemaker was not. Yeah. "That about sums it up," I said.

"And my goal was to never tie myself down to any one person and never to marry. Now here we are, each getting what the other one thought she wanted."

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I didn't try. I'd never gotten the impression that God had a sadistic sense of irony, but someone sure did. Was there an angel in charge of relationships? If so, that particular winged messenger of deity had a lot to answer for. I got that tiny pulse in my head that I sometimes got when I prayed. It was more feeling than words. Be happy, just be happy. Easy to say, so very hard to do.