“Yeah, I’m here, I mean, it’s me. What’s up?”
“Is everything all right on your end?”
“Yes, yes, what’s up?”
“Did you run into Jefferies at the emergency room?” he asked.
“Olaf has a wrist cast, but its not really him that’s causing the problem.” I walked away from the other men. Nicky trailed me. I started to tell him not to, but I wasn’t sure if he and the other guards had decided I wasn’t allowed to be alone, and I didn’t want to argue, I just wanted to talk to Edward.
When the only person who could hear was Nicky, I spoke to Edward. “Olaf was flirting with a nurse at the hospital. She’s petite, long, dark hair, just his type.”
“She looks like you,” Nicky said. He moved closer to me, his broad shoulders probably hiding me from the view of the others.
I glanced up at him, and he was actually too close, so I had to step back a touch to focus on his face. “No, she didn’t,” I said.
“No, she didn’t what?” Edward asked.
“Nicky says the nurse looked like me. I disagree.”
“Did Bernardo think she looked like you?” Edward asked.
“I don’t know.”
Nicky moved close again, putting his hand on my shoulder. I started to move away from him, but two things stopped me. First, he seemed to need to touch me. Second, I’d almost totally ignored him when he got to town. Third, it felt good for his hand to be on my shoulder. It was like that with almost everyone who was tied to me metaphysically; it felt good to touch and be touched.
“If Bernardo says she looks like you, then she does.”
“I don’t know what Bernardo thinks about it, but we already knew I fit his victim profile,” I said.
“You fit it, but not absolutely; if he was flirting with a nurse that looks a lot like you, Anita, that could mean things. Bad things.”
“It isn’t good that he’s looking to date a woman at all, Edward.” Nicky put his hand on my other shoulder. I stayed stiff for a moment, and then let myself sink in against the front of his body. The moment he felt me relax in against him, he relaxed even more, folding his big arms across my shoulders, going all the way across the front of my body. He could have wrapped me around a second time with all that muscle. I put my free hand over one of his arms, sliding it over the swell of his muscles.
“I don’t give a damn about some stranger, Anita. Either he’s flirting with this woman to see if it bothers you, or he’s trying to find a substitute because you won’t date him.”
“We can’t let him date anyone, Edward. He doesn’t date, he tortures and kills.” I rested my face against Nicky’s arm, wishing that his jacket weren’t in the way. It was leather, and a new jacket that I’d bought him to fit over the extra inches of muscles he’d put on since moving in with us, but even the soft leather wasn’t as good as bare flesh would have been to me in that moment. Now that I’d given in to touching him, I wanted more skin contact; it was part of the problem with giving in to touching him at all, that once I started I didn’t want to stop. Touching Domino would have been the same; almost anyone I had a metaphysical tie to would have been the same. I wondered if Ethan would affect me like that eventually, and I him.
“He says he’s willing to date you,” Edward said.
“I know he wants to hurt me, Edward.”
“I don’t mean date you like that.”
“You mean a date-date like dinner and a movie?” I asked.
“I don’t know about dinner and a movie, but he would try something more normal than his usual.”
“He said that to you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see you and Olaf sitting around and talking about girls.”
“I made sure he and I were clear on what he meant by dating you before I’d let him come as backup for me, Anita.”
“So what did he tell you?”
“He’d be willing to have vanilla sex with you.”
I tried to stand away from Nicky, but he curved his taller body over me, so I could stand more upright but he could still wrap himself around me. It felt warm and safe to have his arms around me, so good to have my body against the front of his, held so close. Close enough that I could feel the front of his body begin to swell. Sex had been part of the “magic” that I’d used to bind Nicky to me, to steal his free will. He and his lion pride of mercenaries had kidnapped me and had been threatening to kill three of the men I loved. They’d almost killed me, and in the end they’d stripped me of every power I had except for one. I’d used that one power to make Nicky betray everyone and everything, so he’d help me save myself and the men I loved. Until Nicky I hadn’t understood what I was doing, or what it would mean to the person I was doing it to, but with Nicky I hadn’t been innocent. I let him hold me, not just because it felt good for him to do it, but because I did feel bad about what I’d done to him. Yes, he’d been a very bad man, but no one deserved to be mind-fucked until there was nothing left, not even a sociopath.
“Anita,” Edward said.
“Are you seriously saying you want me to have sex with Olaf? You can’t be serious.”
Nicky tightened his arms around me, laying a kiss on the top of my head. I began to smooth my hand back and forth on his arm, outlining the muscles under the leather of his jacket.
“Do I want you to have sex with him? No.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, what does that mean? You always know what you mean.”
Nicky kissed my hair again. He tucked his body in tighter against mine, and just the feel of his body so hard, so thick against my ass, caught my breath in my throat, made me shiver against him, which made him wrap himself tighter around me, which made all the sensations more intense, which . . . “Edward, sorry, just give me a minute.” I put the phone against my stomach and asked, “Nicky, room, I need a little room. It’s too distracting.”
“What’s too distracting?” He whispered it against my hair and pressed himself a little tighter against the back of my body, giving a slight flex of his hips that made me have to try to step away from his body. He tried to hold on to me, tried to keep himself pressed against me, but I said, “Let me go, Nicky.” And just like that he had to let me go, because I’d told him to do it.
I grabbed his hand in mine, and that small gesture earned me a smile that filled his face with such joy. It was so wrong that he reacted like that to me; you should only act like that around people you love. Nicky didn’t love me, not in a way that should have brightened his face like that from a simple hand holding.
I put the phone back to my ear and tried to ignore Nicky and his too-happy face. “I’m back, Edward.”
“You seem distracted, Anita. We have the . . . people that are killing the weretigers, and Olaf. You cannot be distracted and deal with either of them.”
“I’m on top of it, Edward.”
“Are you?”
Nicky pulled on my hand, drawing me a little closer. I moved my body to one side so that he couldn’t draw us completely together. I couldn’t afford to be distracted again so soon.
“Look, we’re on our way to get fresh clothes for Karlton. Once she’s suited up we’ll join you in the field.”
“No, there’s nothing out here. Your wererat trailed them to the edge of the woods and then nothing. We think they either flew or had a car waiting.”
“So the brilliant idea to use wereanimals to track the killers isn’t so brilliant.”
Nicky moved closer to me. I kept the side of my body to the front of his. He leaned over and laid his face against the top of my head, resting against my hair as if it were a pillow.
“It was a good idea, Anita, and when we get a fresher crime scene we’ll try again.”
“You’re right, they’ll kill again.”
“They will,” he agreed.
“I hate the idea of having to wait for another crime scene before we catch a break. It’s like we want someone else to be killed.”
Nicky moved his head to lay a kiss against my hair.
