Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

I touched his arm, studying his face, trying to read him. “I asked if you thought you would win tonight, and you said yes. Am I missing something? Am I not asking the right questions?”

“He is me thirty years ago, Anita. He has less to lose and more to gain. I have far more to lose and nothing to gain except his death, which I do not want. I think he believes that you will enslave us all, you and Jean-Claude. He is righteous in his goal to tear me from the throne. I am defending what is mine, and I am decades too late for that righteous surety of youth.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

He smiled down at me, putting his bigger hand along the side of my face so that I could rub my face against the weight and warmth of his hand. “Of course you don’t, you still have that righteous surety.”

I moved away from his hand, frowning. “Not as much as I used to have.”

“You are starting to grow into the next stage of your life, Anita. Your job as a vampire executioner and now as a marshal has aged your attitude faster. Hector knows nothing but his clan. He has risen as high as he can within the local clan, so he sets his sight on the highest seat among my kind.”

“You said he’s you thirty years ago.”

“Very much so.”

“So how old is he?”

“Are you asking how old I am?”

I stared up at his raven-black hair, the unlined face. If I hadn’t looked into the wisdom and patience in his eyes, I’d have put him at no more than thirty, but his eyes gave it away almost like some of the vampires’ did. They were ageless, but their eyes could show an echo of the great weight of all those years, as if there were ways to grow old that had nothing to do with the body.

“I know that shapeshifters age slower than humans,” I said.

He smiled. “I am over fifty.”

I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because he laughed. “Sorry, it’s just . . . I’d have never guessed.”

He drew me into another hug, still laughing.

“We’ll clear the showers for you,” Claudia said, and she and Benito started toward the entrance, but there was a small crowd of guards hastily dressed coming out. They mumbled, “Anita, Rafael, Claudia,” and a few mentioned Benito but he wasn’t their boss, or one of the people who trained them, or a king of any kind. He didn’t take offense, like all good bodyguards, he knew being invisible until needed was part of the job.

“I think they heard us,” I said, not sure how I felt about the fact that Rafael and I just suggesting we might want them to give us the showers was enough to get them to do it, or maybe it was Claudia and Benito starting to clear them out? I knew that Claudia intimidated a lot of them, and if Benito wasn’t as scary as he looked, then he wouldn’t be Rafael’s main bodyguard.

When the exodus of tall, athletic men clutching clothes and weapons trickled to a stop, Rafael offered me his hand. “Shall we?”

What else could I say but “Yes”?

Claudia insisted on going through the doorway first, even though we were supposed to be safe as houses down here. There were bodyguards I might have argued with; she wasn’t one of them. Benito trailed behind his king and incidentally me, but I had no illusions about whom he’d protect if the flags went up, but then I had Claudia, so I was good.

4

THE SHOWERS WEREN’T completely empty, though; Pierette was still in there with her dark hair still damp and her only clothing one of the supersize towels that we kept in there for everyone. The towels were designed to cover people close to seven feet tall, like Claudia, so for Pierette, who was only a few inches taller than me, the towel covered her to the ankles like a formal evening gown. On me I had to fold the top of the towels down, so I didn’t trip over them. One size does not fit all.

Pierette dropped to one knee and managed to make the movement look graceful, as if the towel were a real dress. I’d have knelt on it wrong and ended up flashing if I’d tried it, but then I hadn’t had hundreds of years to practice being graceful and she had.

“My queen, King Rafael, how may I serve you?” She looked at the floor as she said it, so I couldn’t even see her expression, which might have helped me know what the hell was going on.

“Pierette, I told you I didn’t like the whole bowing and scraping thing,” I said.

She raised her face up to look at me then, and without any makeup at all she was still pretty. Her eyes dominated her face even without eye makeup, but without eyeliner or shadow the brown of them seemed paler, lighter than mine or Rafael’s. Her face was a delicate triangle with her lips pale but still kissable without the red lipstick that she usually wore to match mine, but then I wasn’t wearing any right now either. I thought about leaning over and giving her a kiss, but I wanted to know why she was kneeling before I did anything. She was my lover and I liked having her in our poly group, but sometimes she puzzled me.

“You did, my queen, but I was not certain how to approach both you and King Rafael, so on my knees seemed to be a good place to start.” She looked up at me as if that made perfect sense.

“Approach us about what, Pierette?” I asked.

“For joining the two of you in the shower.” Again, she said it as if I should know what she was talking about, and I was getting a clue, but I wasn’t happy about it.

I felt Rafael’s stare on the side of my face before I turned and met it with my own. He raised eyebrows at me and said, “What is going on, Anita?”

“Give me a minute, okay?”

He nodded but let go of my hand, as if I might need both to handle the woman kneeling at our feet. “First, get up off the floor,” I said, and offered her my hand. She took it and even let me take some of her weight as she stood, though she didn’t need a hand up any more than I would have.

She stood with us still holding hands, and again I had that urge to kiss her. If Rafael hadn’t been standing right there, I might have, or if she’d been one of my primary partners, or . . . oh hell. “I want to kiss you, Pierette.”

She smiled and started to lean in toward me, but I stopped her, using my hand in hers to sort of stiff-arm her. “But first I want to know why you think you’re joining us in the shower.”

She stopped trying to lean into me and looked puzzled. “I thought those of us that wished to sleep with King Rafael were supposed to make that known to him.”

“What did she just say?” Rafael asked from behind me.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and tried to think of a good way to say the next part; nothing came to mind. I let go of Pierette’s hand and turned and faced him. “So, I was wondering why you don’t date more.”

“Are you trying to say that you’re tired of me?” he asked, face blank, but I knew the tension in his shoulders well enough to see it.

“No, not at all; God, this sounded way less awkward in my head. I love being with you, the sex is great, the friendship is, as it has always been, wonderful. I know that you have not just my back, but all of our backs, as we have yours.”

“This sounds like a ‘let’s be friends’ speech.”

I made an exasperated sound and tried again. “It’s not, I swear, but you’re great and I sort of assumed that you were dating other women in a more serious way, but that you were just very private about it.”

“You thought I was sleeping around on you?” he asked, frowning, clearly puzzled.

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. Fine, I talked to my poly group about the fact that you were only having sex with me and I couldn’t give you more time because I’m already sort of overcommitted relationship-wise, so I asked the group if they’d be okay with you maybe sleeping with any women in our group that were interested in you that way.”