Kiss the Dead (26 page)

I decided to try for honesty. I wasn’t sure it would help my chest and
throat loosen up, but it was all I had. I went closer, but not close enough to touch him. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t look at me as he said, “Sorry for what?”

“That there’s not enough of me for everyone.”

He turned to look at me then, frowning. “What does that even mean?”

I opened my mouth, closed it. I wasn’t sure how to put it into words.

“See, it’s not a real reason, Anita. You just want an excuse to say no.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that, damn it.”

He turned around, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “Then explain it.” He threw the words down like a gauntlet. It was my turn to pick it up and accept the challenge, or leave it lying there, sad and cowardly.

“I don’t know how to send you off to high school, hug you good-bye, attend parent-teacher conferences, and be having sex with you. It feels wrong, like I’m doing something wrong. No one else in my bed makes me feel like I’m doing something immoral.”

The frown was replaced by a puzzled look, and then a half-smile. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“I really am only a year younger than Nathaniel and Jason when you met them.”

“But I didn’t sleep with them at nineteen, and I was three years younger, too.”

“I’m only five years younger than Nathaniel,” he said.

I fought a serious urge to put my fingers in my ears and go
La-la-la-la
. I hadn’t really thought of it that way.

He gave a short, harsh laugh. “You hadn’t done the math, had you?”

I tried not to squirm uncomfortably, and said, “I hadn’t thought how close in age you two are, so no.”

“Does everything only work for you because you don’t think about it too hard?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and said so. “I don’t know.”

“You’re seven years older than Nathaniel, right?”

I nodded, and shrugged. I fought to not look away, because honestly, that had bothered me at one point, too.

“The age difference really does bother you, even just the seven years?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it did, and I was taking care of him, keeping him safe. I thought it was a conflict of interest trying to get him to stand on his own two feet, and sleep with him at the same time.”

“He was a pet when you met him, not just submissive but someone who had no ability to protect himself. He said, before you insisted on him getting therapy and being more independent, he was just a victim waiting for the right killer to come along and finish the job.”

I couldn’t keep the surprise off my face as I said, “He said that, really?”

Cynric nodded.

“I think if I hadn’t lost control of the
ardeur
around him, I’d have kept my distance, Cynric.”

“Sin.” He said it automatically, with a note of tired-of-saying-this in his voice.

I sighed. “Sin, fine; you know the nickname doesn’t help me get over this whole taboo thing, right?”

“What taboo?” he asked.

“You’re a kid that I’m supposed to be taking care of; I think it was the parent-teacher conferences that really capped it for me, Cynric—Sin.” I put my hands on my hips and finally had a solid glare on my face; it felt good, justified even. “You shouldn’t be going to parent conferences for someone
and
fucking them, Sin, okay? There, that’s the truth, that’s the problem. It’s just wrong.”

He laughed then and leaned against the glass of the door, arms still crossed. “Then stop coming to the parent-teacher conferences.”

“What?” I asked.

“Stop coming to the parent things; I don’t think of you as a parent, Anita. The closest thing I’ve had to a mother was Bibiana in Vegas, and she’s not exactly motherly to her own sons, but trust me, I have
never thought of you that way.” He frowned, unrolling his shoulders enough to put more of his back against the glass, his arms back against it, putting his hands flat against the sun-warmed glass, so that his upper body was suddenly framed against the light, and I realized that the pale blue silk of his shorts wasn’t exactly light proof.

I looked away, so that I wouldn’t keep looking harder to see how much I could see revealed in the sunlight. Wanting to see him silhouetted against the light made my whole protest about feeling parental toward him seem either stupid, like the lady was protesting too much, or incestuous. I felt myself begin to blush and wished, so wished, I could stop doing that.

“You don’t think of yourself as my mom.” His voice was a little lower as he said it.

I shook my head, because he was right. I didn’t, I just… “But by going to the parent conferences and things, it puts me in that… role. Don’t you understand? I can’t do stuff like that and still…” I waved a hand vaguely toward him. “This!”

“Jean-Claude is my legal guardian, and he enjoys going to the parent stuff. Nathaniel likes it, too. All big brother on me,” and there was real happiness in his voice when he said the last.

I looked at him then, and the happiness was there plain on his face. He leaned against the door in that fall of sunlight and was happy, relaxed, himself, more himself than when he came to us. I didn’t have to fight not to look lower on his body, because I liked seeing that look on his face. He’d done more than just grow taller and more muscled since he got to St. Louis. I enjoyed watching him grow into himself, become the person he could be. That part I liked, the same way I’d enjoyed it with Nathaniel, or Jason, or… or Micah. We’d all grown more ourselves.

“You’re right; Jean-Claude does enjoy the whole parent thing.”

Sin laughed. “He’s a little puzzled by the sports, but he enjoys coming.”

“He’s proud of you,” I said.

Sin grinned. “I think he is.”

“I know he is.”

Sin looked at me, his blue eyes going more serious. “That’s right, you can feel what he’s feeling if you’re not shielding tight enough, even more so than with one of your animals to call.”

“It’s harder to shield against Jean-Claude.”

“Than against Nathaniel, or Damian?”

“Damian, yes; Nathaniel is harder depending on what we’re doing.”

“You mean sex,” Sin said.

I smiled, and shook my head. “Sex with Jean-Claude is pretty full of abandon, too, but Nathaniel doesn’t control his emotions as well as the vampires do.”

“They’ve had centuries more practice,” Sin said.

I nodded. “True.”

“Just stop coming to the parent things, as my parent, Anita.” He held his hand out to me.

“Just like that,” I said, “and that’ll make it okay?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll certainly trade you sitting there all uncomfortable, and half-defensive, for being your lover.” He waggled the hand he was holding out in the air.

I went close enough to take his hand. We stood there holding hands. Neither of us tried for anything closer. We just stood there, him still leaning against the door, me fighting the urge to pull against his hand, and looked at each other.

The smile slipped a little, leaving a much more serious look behind. The happiness remained like the glow that lingers pushing against the dark when the sun has gone below the horizon, but you know that true night is only a thought away—night, when the monsters come out to play.

I didn’t want to be the monster to Cynric, the way I was to Larry. It wasn’t a fair analogy, but I was tired; not physically, I’d slept, but emotionally. I was just tired of the shit, everyone’s shit. I was also wondering where Brice was, not because I wanted a rescue from Cynric’s talk, but because we needed to get these bastards before nightfall.

Cynric squeezed my hand and shook it a little. “You’re thinking too hard, and it’s not about me.”

I had the grace to look embarrassed, but didn’t lie. “I’m wondering when the other cops will come and give me a ride to the party.”

“You know it scares me every time you leave for work with the police.”

I nodded. “I know.” We had another moment of just looking at each other, still holding hands from a little distance.

“Nothing I can do would make you not go,” he said.

I sighed. “No,” I said.

“Can I hug you?” he asked.

I looked at him, startled. The change in conversation was too fast for me. “Hug me, yeah. I mean, why not?”

“Because I think we’re fighting, and you’ve gone all work serious.”

“I don’t think we’re fighting.”

“We were both thinking about having a fight,” he said, smiling.

I smiled a little. “Yeah, we thought about it.”

“But we’re not going to,” he said, and made it a question with the uplilt of his voice.

“I don’t think so.”

He frowned and pulled on my hand, bringing me closer to him. “Don’t take this wrong, Anita, but why aren’t we fighting?”

I realized he’d stopped pulling me closer, leaving me a few inches of distance, so I could decide if I wanted to close the distance or not. Cynric had learned what not to do in the last year. It was figuring out what to do that was the problem with dating me, or so one of my ex-boyfriends had said.

I went to him, closing the distance between us. I was left standing almost the same as before, looking up at him, his arms around me, but my hands on his waist and upper hip, keeping that last bit of distance.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said.

“Me either,” he said.

I nodded. “Good.”

“You’ll stop coming to the parent-teacher stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And you’ll stop being weirded out by our age difference?”

I laughed then, and shook my head. “I’m twelve years older than you are, Sin.”

“I know.”

“But it’s not just the age difference; it’s the when of the age difference. You’re eighteen and I’m twelve years older than you are. I’m thirty, and you’re eighteen; that is a big age difference.”

“You said I could hug you,” he said.

“You can,” I said.

He glanced down at my hands where they held us apart. “Not without forcing the issue, and you don’t like that, at least not from me.”

I moved my hands around his waist, slowly, reluctantly, feeling the firmness of his body and the softness of his skin, so that I wasn’t sure whether to say his body was muscled and hard, or soft and tender. He was both, all of it.

His arms slid slowly tighter around me, drawing me in against his body. I let my fingers play up his back, tracing the edge of his spine, the muscles of his lats where they traced under his skin like the faint shape of wings, as if with more weight lifting the angel wing shape would spring out of the skin and rise like a white feathered dream above his back. One of my lovers, more a fuck buddy really, was the Swan King, the leader of the swanmanes. I knew what it was to have sex surrounded by feathers and the strength of wings, but Sin didn’t need wings to be special. I wrapped myself around his upper body, laying my cheek against his bare chest, so I could hold the warmth of his skin against me, and just like that it wasn’t enough. He was my tiger to call, my blue tiger, and it wasn’t just him that was tied to me; because of a lot of metaphysical things I could tie people to me only as tight as I was willing to be bound to them. My power was a double-edged sword, and I could cut someone only as deep as I was willing to be cut.

Sin wrapped his arms around me, curled me in against his body, and I let him do it. I let myself be small, and curl against the front of his
taller body, so that he could hold me tight, and enjoy the fact that no matter how in charge I was, in the end he was bigger than I was, and no amount of years would change that. One day he would be twenty, but I’d still be six inches shorter than he was, and I could admit, at least silently in my own head, that it wasn’t always bad to be smaller.

He held me tight, and laid his mouth against my hair, and asked, “Can I kiss you?”

“Why ask? Why not just try?”

“Because you’re in one of those moods where what you want changes every few minutes.”

“God, am I that hard to deal with?”

“Challenging,” he said.

“Oh, that was diplomatic,” I said.

“I want to kiss you.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes,” I said, and went up on my tiptoes, balancing against his chest. He took the hint, and leaned over to bring his face next to mine. We kissed, a soft touching of lips.

He drew back, studying my face. I started to ask what was wrong, but whatever he saw on my face must have pleased him, because he kissed me again, sliding one hand through my hair, so that he cupped the back of my neck and head, and the kiss grew from something chaste to a caressing of lips and tongues, and then a small sound escaped him, and his hands were suddenly eager against my body. He reminded me that he was more than human-strong, and there was a reason that lycanthropes weren’t allowed to play with humans. They were fragile. The fingers of one hand dug into my upper arm, bruising, and if I’d been human-fragile I might have been more than bruised, but I wasn’t human, and sometimes I liked it rough. The bruising, the pain, tore an eager sound from my throat and made me press myself against him. His body was hard, and it made me cry out again and press harder against him.

“Anita.” He growled it almost against my lips, and the first trickling
rise of his beast flared across my skin like a spill of something warm, almost hot, sliding everywhere along my skin.

“God,” I said, and got that first glimpse of tiger inside me, that great blue-and-black beast that rose to him.

There was a loud throat-clearing and a knock on the doorway. We both turned, startled, toward the sound. Nathaniel looked apologetic. “You guys are fun together.”

“How long have you been watching?” I asked.

“Not long, but the police just pulled up outside.”

“Shit,” I said. I looked back up at Cynric. “I have to go.”

“I know.” And then he smiled. “But I know you’re sorry to leave me now, and that helps.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I ignored it and went for the door, adjusting the weapons and straps as if the make-out session had mussed them, but I think it was more to get back into work headspace. I touched the weapons, made sure they were all where I could grab them if I needed them, and went for the door. I gave Nathaniel a quick kiss. Micah was at the door, standing with one of my equipment bags in his hand. I kissed him, too, but neither he nor Nathaniel tried to get more than a quick kiss. They knew my head was already moving ahead, already settling into the mind-set I needed to do my job. When you’re thinking about killing people, you don’t want to think about kissing your sweeties, or at least I didn’t. It was a way to separate that part of the job from the warm, happy part of my life.