Room service came with a knock and a polite voice. Micah got to the door before I did, but he didn't just open it. Some people in my life I've had to teach caution to, but Micah had come with it as part of the standard boyfriend package.
He checked the peephole, then looked at me. "Room service." But he didn't open the door. I watched him take a very deep breath, scenting the air. "Smells like room service."
My hand eased back from the gun under my arm. I hadn't even realized my hand was on it until that moment. His scenting at the door had made me think, just for a second, that something was wrong, not that he was simply scenting the air because it smelled good.
He put his sunglasses on before he opened the door. I made sure my jacket was covering the gun. Didn't want to weird anyone out, and definitely didn't want to give the staff a reason to talk. Hiding how far outside normal we were was standard practice. People tend to get nervous around guns and shapeshifters. Go figure.
The guy smiled and asked where we'd like the tray set up. We let him put a cloth on the table by the window.
It seemed to take a long time for him to get everything ready. He placed water glasses, real napkins, even a rose in a vase in the center of the table. I'd never seen anything this elaborate from room service.
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 just 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?"