I STEPPED OUT INTO the soft night air and could breathe a little better. It wasn’t any of the people I left behind bothering me, it was the wedding clothes, my family, the wedding. I had started to associate the stress of the big day with Until Death and Beyond Bridal, so every time I walked out the door I felt better. Of course, conversely, every time I walked in I felt worse. Edward trying on clothes had made it fun again, and seeing Peter be a better adult than some of the immortals I knew, and Asher trying, and Kane getting his ass kicked by Peter. Everything fun was associated with the people, none of it with the bridal shop and clothes. It was my dress that was taking so long because I hated every design they came up with, but Jean-Claude had finally helped me pick one. I was a semi-formal-dress-on-the-beach kind of girl, or maybe a small church wedding with close friends and family that you actually liked, so how was I getting married to someone who thought a wedding started at opulent and went up from there?
“Because you love him,” said a man’s voice from the alley beside the shop.
I turned with a smile. “Hey, Damian.”
He stepped out of the shadows into the pool of the streetlight. He was six feet of Danish Viking glory but to say he was red-haired, green-eyed, and pale didn’t really cover it. He was what happens to a redhead when they can’t be in the sunlight for over a thousand years. Hair the bright red of fresh blood, skin that was truly milk white, paler even than Jean-Claude’s Snow White coloring, or my own pasty whiteness.
We stood there smiling at each other in that way that lovers do. Two women walked past us giggling and snapped a picture of Damian. He was dressed for his job as manager of Danse Macabre, the first supernatural dance club in the country, which meant tonight he was wearing a bolo jacket in black satin with a forest-green shirt under it that gleamed in the light so that I knew it was silk. Dating Jean-Claude had taught me what silk looked like under every kind of lighting. The skintight leather pants tucked into knee-high boots were also very Jean-Claude, but then he owned the club, so it was his taste from the decor to the dress code.
The women asked if they could have a picture with him, and he agreed, smiling. They did selfies with all three of them, then both of the women alone, while Damian smiled and looked amazing, but then that was part of his job.
I stood in the doorway of the bridal shop watching and happy to be ignored in tactical pants, an oversized zippered sweatshirt, and cross-trainers. The sweatshirt hid all my weapons easily, the Springfield EMP at my waist with my badge tucked beside it, and a Sig Sauer P238 on the other side for a cross draw along with two ammo carriers on the other side of my belt. Behind the ammo carriers was a fixed-blade Spyderco. I’d skipped the big knife in its spine sheath that I usually wore so I could slump in all the chairs like a teenage boy, or that was what my stepmother had told me when I did it. I had put on the two wrist sheaths with their matching knives. I’d worn them so many years that the feel of them around my forearms was reassuring. In most dressier women’s clothes, I could never have conceal-carried all of it, or at least not easily. I was beginning to remember why I’d dressed like this for years, besides having no fashion sense. Luckily Jean-Claude had enough fashion sense for both of us.
I was debating on rescuing Damian from his fans, or just waving as I went for my car and the crime scene, when they finally moved on, giggling again. I’d never been the kind of woman who giggled much, and it was usually done in private if it had to be done at all.
I started walking toward Damian but spotted another group of women dressed for the club heading this way. I didn’t have time for him to pose with a group that large, or the two couples just behind them. Damian grabbed my arm and pulled me into the alley out of sight from the sidewalk.
I was laughing by the time he had us tucked back into a well of deeper shadows. It was not a giggle, but the laugh was a little higher than normal. I wrapped my arms around his waist, my fingers caressing the silk and the body underneath as I hugged him. He put his arms higher up my back to avoid my weapons. We ended up pressed against each other as close as we could get.
He smiled down at me. “I really appreciate you carrying your guns farther back so I can hug you without risking injury.”
I snuggled harder against the front of him, so that I could feel that his body wasn’t happy to see me yet. “You haven’t fed yet, or you’d be happier to see me.”
He stroked his fingertips down the side of my face. “I’m always happy to see you,” he said.
“I’ve got a crime scene to go to,” I said.
His grip loosened around me. “Are people in danger?”
“No, the victim is already dead. I’m just giving my expertise.”
He tightened his hug again, smiling. “How much time do you have?”
“Not that much, and in the alley, really?” I laughed again, and this one was definitely not a giggle, but the kind of laugh that makes men turn their heads in bars to locate the woman who made it. Boy, would they be disappointed to see me dressed like this.
“I did not mean intercourse,” he said, laughing, “and it’s your date night with Jean-Claude. I was thinking a kiss.”
“A kiss I can do.”
He leaned down and I went up on tiptoe to meet him, sliding my body up the length of his as I did it, which would have been a lot more exciting if he’d taken blood tonight. Until he did that his body couldn’t react to anything.
We kissed with his body quiet against mine, at least below the waist. Above the waist his hands slid over my body, and he moved me back just enough so he could touch my breasts. It made me wish I’d worn a lower-necked T-shirt, or an untucked one. My hands roamed the silk of his shirt and searched for an opening.
He kissed his way down my throat until his lips rested just over the big pulse in my neck. He hesitated and I felt his need roll through me like it was my own. He was my vampire servant as I was Jean-Claude’s human servant, but I didn’t have hundreds of years of experience controlling the metaphysics. So sometimes who was in control of whom got a little fuzzy.
I spoke low and carefully, afraid if I lost control of my voice we’d lose control of more. “Why haven’t you fed?”
“I’d planned to feed at the club tonight.” And just the feel of his words against my throat sped my pulse.
“Like usual,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said, and then licked across my pulse, just a flick of his tongue, but it drew a small involuntary sound from me.
“The police are waiting for me.” I said it out loud like a competent adult who had a badge that said U.S. Marshal on it, but I stayed pressed to his body.
Damian drew back from my neck enough to speak without his lips brushing against my skin. “I’m supposed to be inside trying on wedding clothes,” he said. His eyes were solid green; his power had spread and swallowed his pupils so his eyes glowed. If I hadn’t been his master he could have bespelled me with those eyes. I could have dropped my control and let him roll me, let him take blood, let us have sex, let us . . . I pushed away from him, so I was standing rather than clinging to him.
“You need to try on clothes and get to work at Danse Macabre,” I said, but I dropped my gaze so I wasn’t staring into those eyes. It wasn’t his magic but mine that made us want each other.
“And you need to go do police things,” he said.
“We need to be grown-ups,” I said.
“Yes, we do, but I love that you want me as much as I want you.”
That made me look up; his eyes had faded back to as ordinary as they got, which wasn’t very ordinary. He still had the greenest eyes of any person I’d ever met. True green like a cat’s eyes can be, not the gray-green, or blue-green, or the hazel that most people call green. It wasn’t vampire powers that made his eyes beautiful; they’d always been this color even before he died.
“We’ve got our date night scheduled,” I said, smiling.
He smiled wide enough to flash a gleam of fang even in the dim light of the alley. “You, Nathaniel, and me.”
I grinned back. “Yep, though Angel keeps asking about a foursome.”
“I didn’t say no, just not this date night.”
“You’re going to make Angel feel insecure if you keep putting it off,” I said.
He laughed. “Nothing makes Angel insecure, she’s beautiful and she knows it.”
“You’re right, but like all really secure women she won’t keep sex on the table forever if you keep saying no.”
“I didn’t say no. I said I wanted it to be a foursome with you and Nathaniel, which means we’re working around all our schedules.”
“The cry of real polyamory is ‘Let me check my calendar,’ ” I said.
We both laughed. Then we were left looking at each other.
“I would like to kiss you good-bye,” he said.
“I want to kiss you good-bye, too, but I think we both need to get to work.”
“No, you need to get ready for your date night with Jean-Claude.”
“You’re right, so I’m going now to do what I need to do, and you’re going to do what you need to do,” I said.
“Then go,” he said, looking at me. He didn’t want me to go, and I didn’t want to go with the desire hanging in the air between us. If we could have shared blood or had sex, then it would have been sated, until the next time. The three of us were still working out the power dynamics. Nathaniel was my leopard to call; he shouldn’t have been in charge of how things worked, but he wasn’t conflicted about what he wanted from our threesome. He had helped Damian get over his conflicts, and then me, so now I had another vampire in my life that I craved. I wasn’t in love with Damian, though, not yet.
“I’m going,” I said.
“Go,” he said, and he looked so pleased with himself, pleased that I was having such a hard time walking away from him.
I rolled my eyes at him and walked away down the alley toward the sidewalk and the growing crowd. I had to find my SUV and go to the crime scene, so I could get changed and have my date night with Jean-Claude.
“I love that you want me, Anita.”
I was tempted to say I know, but Damian was not as secure as Angel, so I said, “I love that I want you, too, Damian.” I meant it, but I was careful to keep walking forward and not look back just in case.