Danse Macabre ab-14 Read online

  I was still angry, but I was puzzled, too, and that took a little of the edge off. "Shouldn't I be the one in tears here?" I asked, because I couldn't think of what else to say. I was mad at her and I'd be damned if I would comfort her right now.

  She spoke in that breathless, hiccuping voice that serious crying can give you. "I'm sorry, oh, God, Anita, I'm sorry. I'm just so jealous."

  I raised my eyebrows at her. "What are you talking about? Jealous of what?"

  "The men," she said in that shivering, uncertain voice. It was like she was someone else for a moment, or maybe this was just part of Ronnie that she didn't let people see. "All the damned men. I'm about to give up everybody. Everybody but Louie, and he's great, but damn it I've had lovers. I hit triple digits."

  I wasn't sure that being able to number your lovers at over a hundred was a good thing, but it was something that Ronnie and I had agreed to disagree over a long time ago. I did not say, Look who's the whore, or other hurtful re­marks I could have made. I let all the cheap shots I could have made go. She was the one crying.

  "And now I'm giving it all up, all of it, for just one man." She leaned her hands against the cabinet as if she needed the support.

  "You said sex with Louie was great. I think you've used words like fantas­ tic and mind-blowing."

  She nodded, her hair spilling around her face so that I couldn't see her eyes for a moment. "It is, he is, but he's just one man. What if I get bored, or he gets bored with me? How can just one be enough? The last time we were both cheating a month after the wedding." She looked up at that last remark, her gray eyes wide and frightened.

  I made a small helpless gesture, and said, "You're asking the wrong per­son, Ronnie. I'd planned on monogamy. It seemed like a good idea to me."

  "That's exactly what I mean." She wiped at the tears on her face in harsh, angry motions, as if the touch of them made her even more upset. "How is it that you, my girlfriend who had only three men in her entire life, ends up dating and fucking five men?"

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I tried to concentrate on the hard facts. "Six men," I said.

  She frowned at me, her eyes taking on that look that meant she was counting in her head. "I only count five."

  "You're leaving someone out, Ronnie."

  "No"—and she started counting on her fingers—"Jean-Claude, Asher, Damian, Nathaniel, and Micah. That's it."

  I shook my head, again. "I had unprotected sex with one more man last month." I could have said it differently, but maybe if we got back to my per­sonal disaster, we could stop talking about Ronnie's penis envy. She needed more therapy than I knew how to give lately.

  She frowned harder, then she got it. "Oh, no, no," she said.

  I nodded. Happy to see from her expression that she got the full awful-ness of it.

  "You just had sex with him once, right?"

  I shook my head no, over and over again. "Not just once."

  She was looking at me so hard that I couldn't hold her gaze. Even with the tear tracks drying on her face, she was suddenly Ronnie again. Ronnie had a good hard stare. I couldn't meet it, and was left looking at the cabinets. "How much more than 'not just once'?" she asked.

  I started to blush and couldn't stop it. Damn it.

  "You're blushing—that's not a good sign," she said.

  I stared down at the countertop, using my long hair to hide my face.

  Her voice was gentler when she said, "How many times, Anita? How many times in the month you've been back together?"

  "Seven," I said, still not looking up. I hated admitting it, because the number alone said louder than any words just how much I enjoyed being in Richard's bed.

  "Seven times in a month," she said. "Wow, that's..."

  I looked up, and the look was enough.

  "Sorry, sorry, just..." She looked as if she wasn't sure whether she was going to laugh, or be sad about it. She controlled herself, and finally sounded sad when she said, "Oh, my God, Richard."

  I nodded again.

  "Richard." She whispered his name, and looked suitably horrified. It was worth a little horror.

  Richard Zeeman and I had been off-again, on-again, for years. Mostly off. We'd been engaged briefly until I saw him eat someone. Richard was the leader—Ulfric—of the local werewolf pack. He was also a junior high sci­ence teacher, and an all-around Boy Scout. If Boy Scouts were six foot one, muscled, amazingly handsome, and had an amazing ability to be self-destructive. He hated being a monster, and he hated me for being more comfortable with the monsters than he was. He hated a lot of things, but we'd made up just enough to have fallen into bed in the last few weeks. But as my Grandma Blake told me, once was enough.

  Of all the men in my life, the worst possible choice to be the father would be Richard, because he of all of them would try for the white picket fence and a normal life. Normal wasn't possible for me, or him, but I knew that and he didn't, not really, not yet. Even if I was pregnant, even if I kept being pregnant, I wasn't going to marry anyone. I wasn't going to change my liv­ing arrangements. My life worked the way it was, and Richard's idea of do­mestic bliss was not mine.

  Ronnie gave an abrupt laugh, then swallowed it. I was glaring at her. "Come on, Anita, I'm allowed to be impressed that you've managed to have sex with him seven times in the space of a month. I mean, you don't even live together, and you're having more sex than some of our married friends."

  I kept giving her the look that makes bad guys run for cover, but Ronnie was my friend, and it's harder to impress your friends with the scary look. They know you won't really hurt them. The fight was dying under the weight of friendship, and of my problem being more immediate than her years of issues unresolved.

  Ronnie touched my arm. "Oh, it wouldn't be Richard's. You're having sex with Nathaniel at least every other day."

  "Sometimes twice a day," I said.

  She smiled. "Well, my, my ..." Then waved her hand as if to keep from distracting herself. "But the odds are that it's Nathaniel's, right?"

  I smiled at her. "You sound happy about that now."

  She shrugged. "Well, a choice of evils, ya know."

  "Thanks a lot, Ronnie."

  "You know what I meant," she said.

  "No, I don't think I do." I think I was ready to be angry about her think­ing the men in my life were a choice of evils, but I didn't get a chance to be angry, because two of the men in my life were coming through the front door.

  I heard them unlocking the door before it opened, and their voices came raised and a little breathless from the run. They'd been able to run faster, and farther, without me along. I was, after all, still human, and they were not.

  Standing between the island and the cabinets we couldn't see the door, but only heard them laughing as they came toward the doorway to the kitchen.

  "How can you do that?" Ronnie asked, voice soft.

  "What?" I asked, frowning.

  "You were smiling."

  I looked at her.

  "You smiled just at the sound of their voices, even with everything..."

  I stopped her with a hand on her arm. One way I knew I didn't want them to find out about the maybe-baby was by overhearing a conversation. Their hearing was a little too keen to risk it. And here they came, my two live-in sweeties.

  Micah was in front, looking back over his shoulder, still laughing, talking. He was my height, short, slender, and muscular in that swimmer sort of way. He had to have his suits tailored because he needed an extra-small athletic cut. You didn't get that off the rack. He'd come to me tanned, and stayed that way from jogging outside, mostly shirtless, all summer and autumn. He'd added a T-shirt to the short-shorts today. His hair was that deep, rich brown that some people get after starting life as very blond. His dark hair was tied back in a low ponytail that couldn't hide how curly it was, almost as curly as mine. He'd taken off his sunglasses, so when I moved into his arms I could look up into his chartreuse eyes. Yellow-green leopard eyes in his delic
ate face. A very bad man had once forced him to stay in leopard form until, when he came back to human, he couldn't come all the way back.

  We kissed and our arms just seemed to automatically glide around each other, to press our bodies as close together as we could with clothes on. He'd affected me this way almost from the moment we had seen each other. Lust at first sight. They say it doesn't last, but we were six months and counting.

  I melted against his body and kissed him fiercely, deeply. Partly it was what I always wanted to do when I saw him. Partly I was scared, and touch­ing and being touched made me feel better. Not long ago I'd have been more discreet in front of company, but my nerves just weren't good enough to pre­tend today.

  He didn't get embarrassed, or tell me, "Not in front of Ronnie," the way Richard would have done. He kissed me back with the same drowning in­tensity. His hands holding me like he'd never let me go. We drew back, breathless and laughing.

  "Was that for my benefit?" Ronnie asked, and her voice was not happy.

  I turned around, still half in Micah's arms. I looked at her angry eyes and suddenly was ready to be angry back. "Not everything is about you, Ronnie."

  "Are you telling me you kiss him like that every time he comes home?" The anger was back, and she used it. "He's been gone, what, an hour? I've seen you greet him after a day's work, and it was never like that."

  "Like what?" I asked, voice sliding down. If she wanted to fight, we could fight.

  "Like he was air and you couldn't breathe him in fast enough."

  Micah's voice was mild, placating, trying to talk us both down. "Did we interrupt something?"

  I turned to face Ronnie, squarely. "I'm allowed to kiss my boyfriend the way I want to kiss him without getting your permission, Ronnie."

  "Don't try and tell me you weren't rubbing my face in it, just now, with the show."

  "Go get some therapy, Ronnie, because I am fucking tired of your issues raining all over me."

  "I confided in you," she said, voice strangled with some emotion I didn't understand, "and you put on a show like that in front of me. How could you?"

  "Oh, that wasn't a show," Nathaniel said from just inside the doorway, "but if it's a show you want, we can do that, too." He glided into the kitchen on the balls of his feet, showing both the grace of his dance training and that otherworldly grace of the wereleopard. He pulled his tank top off in one smooth gesture and let it fall to the floor. I actually backed up a step before I caught myself. I hadn't realized until that moment that he was angry with Ronnie. What little cutting remarks had she been making to him, that I hadn't heard? When he told me she didn't see him as real, he'd been trying to tell me more than I had heard. That I'd missed something big was there in his angry eyes.

  He tore the tie from his ponytail and let his ankle-length auburn hair fall around his nearly naked body. The jogging short-shorts just didn't cover that much.

  I had time to say, "Nathaniel—" and he was in front of me. That other­worldly energy that all lycanthropes could give off shivered off his skin and along my body. He was five-six, just tall enough for me to have to look up to meet his eyes. His anger had turned them from lavender to the deeper color

  of lilacs, if flowers could burn with anger and force of personality. Nathaniel was in those eyes and with that one look he dared me, challenged me, to turn him down.

  I didn't want to turn him down. I wanted to wrap his body and that skin-crawling energy around me like a coat. Lately almost any stress seemed to feed into sex. Scared? Sex would make me feel better. Angry? Sex would calm me. Sad? Sex would make me happy. Was I addicted to sex? Maybe. But Nathaniel wasn't offering actual sex. He just wanted as much attention as I'd given Micah. Seemed fair to me.

  I closed the distance between us with my hands, my mouth, my body. The energy of his beast spilled around us like being plunged into a warm bath that had a mild electric charge. He'd been one of the least of my leop­ards until a metaphysical accident had taken him from pomme de sang to my animal to call. I was the first human servant to a vampire to gain the vam­pire ability to call an animal. All leopards were mine to call, but Nathaniel was my special pet. We'd both gained from the magical bonding, but he'd gained more.

  He lifted me up, using just his hands on my thighs. Even through my jeans he made sure I knew he was happy to be pressed against my body. So happy that it forced a small sound from me.

  Ronnie's voice came harsh, ugly, like she was choking on her anger. "And when the baby comes, are you going to fuck in front of it, too?"

  Nathaniel froze against me. Micah's voice came from behind us. "Baby?"

  2

  THAT ONE WORD fell into the room like a thunderbolt, except that after­ ward the room was quiet. So quiet that I could hear the blood pounding in my head. Nathaniel's body was so still against mine that if I hadn't felt his pulse against my hand, it would have been like he wasn't there. I was afraid to move, afraid to breathe. It was like a moment before a gunfight, when you know it's going to happen, that anything, any movement, will set it off, and you don't want to be the one that makes that happen.

  Nathaniel looked down at me, and the look was enough. It broke the unnat­ ural silence, and sound spilled around us. Micah said, "Did Ronnie say baby}"

  "Yeah, I said baby." Her voice was ugly with anger.

  Nathaniel let me slide to the floor, his hands going to my shoulders. His eyes were so serious that I had to fight to keep meeting them. I did it, though my eyes flinched as if the force of his questions were a light too bright to meet.

  "Are you pregnant?" he asked, voice soft.

  "I'm not sure," I said, and I gave Ronnie the glare she deserved. "I was going to wait until I was sure before I told any of you guys. But I had to tell someone. I thought, hey, I'll tell my best friend, but I guess I was wrong."

  "The kiss with Micah may not have been for my benefit," Ronnie said in that ugly voice that I didn't recognize as hers, "but your pet stripper and you, that was for my benefit."

  I turned so that I was facing her, Nathaniel at my back. "You're jealous of the men in my life, yeah, I get that now."

  She opened her mouth, closed it, and said, "I guess that's fair. I tell your secret, you tell mine."

  I shook my head. "Me telling Nathaniel and Micah that you are jealous of how many men are in my bed, that isn't the same as you telling them that I may be pregnant." I had a mean idea, so I said it. "But it might be close if I told Louie that you were jealous of my boyfriends. Does he know that you can number your old lovers in triple digits?" Yeah, it was mean, but she'd earned it. Only family can fight as dirty as best friends.

  She paled a little, and that was enough to answer the question. "He doesn't know," I said, and made it a statement.

  "I think he deserves to know," Nathaniel said, and again there was that tone in his anger that said it was more personal than it should have been be­tween them.

  "I'd planned on telling him," she said.

  "When?" he asked, and he moved around me, so that he was facing her.

  I glanced at Micah, and he shook his head, as if he didn't know what was going on either. Good to know we were both confused.

  "When you'd moved in together, married him, or never?"

  "We're not getting married," she said in a voice that was just a little des­perate, as if her fear was washing her anger away. She rallied then. "You did that little show with Anita to rub my face in the fact that I'm about to be­come monogamous. You're always doing shit like that."

  "And how many times have you said, 'Oh, it's Anita's little stripper,' or 'pet stripper,' or 'how's tricks,' or my personal favorite, 'you're damned cute for a walking, talking, beefsteak,' or is that 'beefcake'?"

  "Jesus, Nathaniel." I looked at Ronnie. "Did you say all that to him?"

  The anger faded around the edges as she finally looked uncomfortable. "Maybe, but not like he makes it sound."

  "Then why didn't you say it in front of me?" I asked. "If there was noth�
�ing wrong with saying it, why not in front of me?"

  "Or me," Micah said, "I would have told you if she'd been saying things like that to Nathaniel."

  "Why didn't you tell me, Nathaniel?" I asked.

  He gave me his angry eyes. "I told you she didn't see me as real, as a person."

  "But you didn't tell me what she'd said; I needed to know."

  He shrugged. "She's your best friend, and you'd just made up after a big fight. I didn't want to start another one."

  "I was just kidding around," Ronnie said, but the tone in her voice said she didn't believe it either.

  I looked at her. "How would you feel if I said stuff like that to Louie?"

  "You can't call him a stripper, or an ex-prostitute, because he's not." The moment she said it, her face showed me she knew she shouldn't have. "I didn't mean... ," she began, but it wasn't me that put her in her place, it was Nathaniel.

  "I know why you call me names," he said, and he moved in closer, not touching, but invading the hell out of her personal space. "I see the way you watch me. You want me, but not like Anita does. You just want me for a

  night, or a weekend, or a month, then you'd be done like you're always done with everybody. I know why you don't want to commit to Louie." I'd never seen him like this, relentless. I actually made a small move, as if I'd stop him, but Micah caught my eye, and shook his head. His face was serious, almost grim. I guess he was right. Nathaniel had earned this, and Ronnie had, too. But it wasn't going to end anywhere I wanted to be.

  He said again, "I know why you don't want to commit to Louie."

  She said in a small, weak voice, "Why?"

  "Because it torments you to know that you will never know how I am in bed."

  "Oh," she said in a voice that was almost her own, "so I'm not wanting Louie because you're such a stud?"

  "Not me, Ronnie, but the next me. The next guy you get obsessed about. Not love obsessed, but I-wonder-what-he'd-be-like-in-bed obsessed. And you've always been beautiful enough, hot enough, to get anyone you've ever wanted, right?"