Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

He looked up as if he’d only just heard the water and the male voices raised in good-natured shit giving. It was Claudia who said, “We are wereanimals, Anita, we don’t notice nudity.”

I looked up at her. “You all keep saying that and most of the time it’s true, but all it takes is one guard noticing the naked girl in the room and suddenly it’s awkward as hell.”

“Who noticed and made you uncomfortable?” she asked, and her voice was back to that drill-sergeant/boss-from-hell/parent you’re-in-deep-shit tone again.

“The werewolf, Ricky,” I said.

“Which is why we fired him,” she said.

“He was also not good enough to be part of our guard,” I said.

“He did not train hard enough to get better,” she said.

“No, he whined almost as much as Kane,” I said.

“If this Ricky is gone, why are you so apprehensive?” Rafael asked.

“I could just shower with the other people in there, and I have, but you and I were going to get each other out of our clothes and have at least foreplay in the shower. I don’t like an audience.”

“Nor I, but we can use one of the closed showers with curtains,” he said.

“Like Claudia said, you’re wereanimals, so it’s not just sight that’s the problem. To most of you smell and hearing are as intimate as a visual.”

I liked the curtained shower stalls, and I wasn’t the only one. It hadn’t been just me among the women that didn’t like showering with the men. I’d even come in more than once to find men in the curtained stalls. Men like more privacy than you think, or at least some do. It’s not only women who are modest; another double standard bites the dust.

He took the step back to me and used our still-clasped hands to draw me into a hug. “That is true, but I want as much of you as I can have today, Anita. I am willing to use the showers with curtains.”

I put my free hand on his chest where it showed above the tank top. The skin was smooth and warm, the sweat already drying. “The other thing is that having sex while the other guards are in the room might make them all wonder if it’s okay for them, too.”

“They would not dare approach you,” Rafael said.

“Probably not, but the other female guards might have a harder time in the showers.”

“I won’t have any problems,” Claudia said.

“They’re afraid of you and me for different reasons, but they’re not afraid of most of the other female guards. Also do we want to encourage everyone to have sex in the public showers here?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time for you and one of your . . . people,” Claudia said, and then looked almost embarrassed, which didn’t happen often. She was like most bodyguards—nothing their clients did fazed them.

“Yeah, but that time you made sure it was just Nicky and me, and I almost drained him to death,” I said, frowning.

Rafael hugged me closer. “I am not your Bride of Dracula to be drained of life by the ardeur , Anita.”

“And I have better control over the ardeur than I did back then,” I said.

“We can kick everyone else out,” Benito said.

“They’re in the middle of showering,” I protested.

“I’ll go in and tell them all to hurry up and finish.”

Claudia nodded. “Yes, do that.”

“Wait, no,” I said, as Benito started to move past us. He turned and looked at me.

“What is wrong, Anita?” Rafael asked.

“It just seems, I don’t know, high-handed to kick them out of the group showers.”

Rafael laughed and kissed me on the forehead. “It is adorable that you keep forgetting that you are both their employer and a queen.”

I frowned up at him. Most short people hate to be called adorable; even cute can be problematic. “I’m their boss, but technically Jean-Claude pays their salaries so he’s their employer, and I’m not a queen yet, not until I marry Jean-Claude.”

“You are the queen of tigers,” he said.

“That’s only because I didn’t like being called the mother of all tigers,” I said.

“Most of the ex-Harlequin guard call you their dark queen,” Benito said.

“They’re used to following a queen, as in thousands of years of being the elite guard for the Queen of All Darkness.” I shuddered when I said her name. I’d killed the vampire queen of the old council, if you could kill something that didn’t have a body. I’d killed her as dead as humanly and inhumanly possible.

“Anita did try to break them of calling her their dark queen,” Claudia said.

I sighed and leaned in against Rafael’s body a little, resting my cheek against his tank top and the solidness underneath it. “I did break most of them from calling me their evil queen.”

He hugged me close, kissing the top of my head. “I am sorry, Anita, I did not mean to bring up something that makes you uneasy.”

“That’s a good word for it,” I said, still with my head on his chest. I didn’t say out loud that afraid was a better one. I’d killed the Mother of All Darkness by absorbing her essence while she tried to take over my body and use it for herself. It had been sort of the immovable object meeting the unstoppable force, and most people had been betting on her. She had been the very first vampire, maybe, so old that her original body had been lost and the last body she’d had had been one that she’d successfully possessed. That body had been blown up by a group of mercenaries hired to assassinate her, but all they’d done was destroy the body that had trapped her for a thousand years. They had freed her from her prison to wander like a nightmare to try and find a new body. She’d wanted mine.

Rafael stroked my hair and murmured, “She is dead and gone, Anita. You do not need to fear her.”

I moved out of the circle of his arms. “You never had her try to take over your dreams, or your body.”

“You are quite right,” he said; his face was closed down, reasonable, and blank, hiding what he was feeling and thinking.

“I feel like I should apologize to you, but I don’t know what for,” I said.

He gave a very small smile, but it left his eyes sad. “If I were truly a gentleman, we would shower separately and I would prepare for tonight’s battle, but I want to be with you too much to play such games.”

“I want you, too, Rafael,” I said, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone declares that kind of attraction. It’s like when someone says I love you ; you’re supposed to say it back if it’s even remotely true, unless you’re willing to have that most awkward of modern dating talks, the one where you try to explain that it’s not about love.

“I can only take your words at face value, search your face to see if it matches them, because I cannot read your mind, feel your emotions.”

“You can smell my emotions on my skin, all shapeshifters can,” I said.

“In this moment I know you are not feeling lust, because you are right, I would smell it on you.”

I fought not to look embarrassed or even uncomfortable. I looked at the floor and then forced myself to look up and meet his gaze. “I can’t smell your emotions, but I can read your face and you’re not feeling very lustful either.”

“I cannot disagree, and if this were any other day, I would let you go to shower in the room where you shower with your other men, or perhaps that huge bathtub that Jean-Claude has in his rooms, but it is not any other day. I want you as a man wants a woman, but I also want you to feed the ardeur on me.”

“Won’t that weaken you for the fight tonight?”

“If you fed off only me, perhaps, but you will feed off the strength of all who call me king. If it is to be the last time, I want you to take as much power from us as possible for Jean-Claude to share among your people.”