Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

“Now you’re mad,” Nicky said. I shook my head. “I’m not.”

“I can feel it.”

“I’m trying not to be mad, because it’s not logical or fair.”

“Feelings aren’t fair, Anita,” Nathaniel said. “They’re just how we feel.”

“True, but I’m trying to be less bitchy about mine.”

He smiled. “You’re grumpy, not bitchy.”

I gave him a raised eyebrow. “And the difference between the two is?”

He laughed. “If you were bitchy you wouldn’t be trying to do better.”

I smiled, then laughed just a little. “Fine, okay, but I am trying.”

“We appreciate that.”

“We love you,” Nicky said.

“We do,” Nathaniel said.

“But you’d like a chance to love a few more people,” I said.

“If more of the other men were bisexual it wouldn’t be an issue for me.”

“Another woman would be nice, but she’s not going to enjoy sex the way I like it,” Nicky said.

“You don’t do super-rough all the time,” I said.

“No, but even my mild is too much for most women.”

“You had to have vanilla sex with some of the women you pretended to date when you were undercover,” Nathaniel said.

“Yeah, and it’s better than masturbating, but it’s still holding back.”

“When sex is supposed to be about letting go,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“So, you don’t think another woman will do you any good.”

“Not really, but that’s okay.”

“Is it really okay?” I asked, as I turned into the back entrance to the employee parking lot at the Circus of the Damned. I had a reserved spot near the door, because after dark the lot filled up with all the people it took to run the permanent carnival midway, the one-ring circus in its tent, the freak show, and all the things that made it into the Circus of the Damned. Here you could have that summertime traveling carnival experience under one roof, regardless of the weather, if you were willing to wait until nightfall. But then all carnivals are at their best after dark.

Nicky leaned on the back of my seat, his face resting against my hair. “Yeah, it’s really okay.”

“Why is it okay? Why are you content with only me?”

“I’m not content, I’m happy, and sociopaths don’t get to say that very often.”

That made me smile. I reached up and touched the side of his face. He rubbed his face between my hand and my hair and said, “Your touching me like this means more to me than more sex with anyone else.”

I kept touching him, but I was puzzled and said so.

“I get it,” Nathaniel said.

I moved my head so I could look at him, my hand sliding further around Nicky’s face, so I could curl my fingers in his hair. “Explain it to me, then.”

“That small touch says love, not just lust. We’ve both had a lot of lust aimed at us, but not so much love.”

“Yeah,” Nicky said, tracing his fingers down my arm.

“The fact that you worried about Sin and his feelings, even though I know you’ve got this weird conflict about his age, says just how caring you are. Nicky and I haven’t had a lot of people in our life that cared for us, not in the way you do, or the way Micah does.”

“Micah doesn’t really like me,” Nicky said.

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Do you really like him?” Nathaniel asked.

“I think he’s a good leader. He’s a better Nimir-Raj for the wereleopards than I am a Rex for the lions.”

“That didn’t answer the question.”

“No, not really. I mean I like him as a leader and a person, but he and I have less of a connection in the poly group.”

“You and Jean-Claude don’t have much connection either,” Nathaniel said.

“No, but I could donate blood to him, if I wanted to, and that would make me more important to him in the poly group. Micah and I don’t have anything to bargain with, or offer each other, that will deepen our relationship. He doesn’t even like rough sex or bondage much, so we can’t even play.”

“We should be working on the group we have, not adding to it,” I said.

“Don’t back out now,” Nathaniel said.

“Another girl would be nice for the other guys.”

I turned in the circle of his arm and looked at Nicky. “But not for you?”

“I told you my reasoning, Anita.”

“There are women in town who like sex as rough as or rougher than Anita does,” Nathaniel said.

Nicky gave him a look like, Prove it .

Nathaniel looked at me. “If you really wanted another play partner for Nicky, I could find him someone.”

I looked at Nicky. “Do you want another woman to dominate?”

“It depends on how much work it is. I like to do rough sex; I don’t want to do the whole dominant with you all day twenty-four seven. Once we leave the bedroom, or the dungeon, I don’t want to be in charge of your ass, or any other part of you.”

I smiled. “Good to know.”

Nathaniel frowned. “I know some women you could play with for a night, but you couldn’t do a relationship with them because they would want more domination than just rough sex.”

“And that is why I’m happy with Anita; she bottoms hard, but once we’re done she doesn’t need the upkeep. True submissives are fucking exhausting.”

“To the right dominant they’re energizing,” Nathaniel said.

“I’m not the dominant they’re looking for.”

“Me, either,” I said.

Nathaniel grinned at me. “That’s right, Nicky missed all that time I was trying to get you to be my dominant in every way.”

“It was exhausting,” I said.

“See?” Nicky said.

Nathaniel laughed. “And I found out that I’m not that kind of submissive, I’d just been trained up that way.”

“Let’s take our happy dominant, submissive, and switches asses inside and shop for weretigers,” I said.

“Girl weretigers?” Nathaniel said.

I smiled at the look on his face; I couldn’t help it. “Yes, some girl weretigers, too. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet the woman of all our dreams.”

“Not possible,” Nicky said.

“Why not?” I asked.

He leaned over and kissed me. “Because we’ve already found her.”

It took me a minute to realize he meant me, and then I wanted to protest, but in the end I just took the compliment like I was supposed to. I wasn’t sure I’d ever believe I was the woman of anyone’s dreams. I was good, and I tried, but dream women/men were perfect and I would never be that.

DINO HAD PARKED the truck and trailer, then waited near the back door for us, far enough away to give us some privacy, but not so far away he couldn’t still do his job as bodyguard, so the four of us walked through the back door into what had been a storage room. Now it was more like a mini–guard post complete with a coffeemaker and a mini-fridge. There were almost always two guards in the room to keep track of the back door, the door that led out into the public area of the Circus, and the door to the underground that had the living quarters.

It was usually newer guards here, so we did a quick greeting and kept moving. If they’d been slacking on duty then it would have taken longer, but since it was either Claudia or Fredo who interviewed people for the job we didn’t get a lot of that. We went through the far door and were on the stairs leading down. There was no elevator to the underground; you had to physically take a half-mile of stone steps leading up and down. It was like the best glute workout ever, and it meant that if you were bad guys you had to come down a very long expanse of steps, which took time, and only had one turn the whole way, so we could sit at the angle and shoot up at you, and at the door and shoot down at you. Guards at top and bottom could take turns firing volleys into anyone we didn’t want coming down the stairs. It was the first defense for the Master of St. Louis’s lair, and a damned fine one.