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The rest of the afternoon appoint compared to the Browns Thank God Nathaniel sat, quietly, in a corner of h all of theue now I&039;d had two appointed material They&039;d objected to Nathaniel, but I&039;d told theed, so why did they care Legally, I was right, and lawyers hate for a non-lawyer to be right Or at least the ones I et cranky about it So then, they&039;d wanted to knoho he was and why he got to sit in on their s
I told the first one, do you want this o The second one didn&039;t let it go My fingers hurt where I&039;d torn off the nails My face hurt even if it was healing My pride was hurt fro sex in the office I was not happy, so I told the truth
"He&039;s here in case I have to have sex" I smiled when I said it, and knew that it didn&039;t reach my eyes, but I didn&039;t care
Nathaniel had laughed and done his best to turn it into a cough
The lawyer, of course, didn&039;t believe itiht to protect my client and his interests You don&039;t have to insult us with ridiculous lies"
So I stopped insulting hiot down to business
Every client, or group of clients, had to ask about Nathaniel I told the from domestic help, to lover, to office boy, to personal assistant Nobody liked any ofclients I actually started telling the truth again, and the t groups that I told it to got insulted Insulting lies, they called it Try to tell the truth, and no one believes you
What I&039;d wanted to talk about all afternoon had been ht there, and we didn&039;t get five in the discussion I had so many questions, and no tirurumpy Even I wasn&039;t sure sometimes
It was seven o&039;clock by the time we climbed into the Jeep Bert had passedto ask He even apologized for overbooking ized before I think the realization that I could call a vote and get his ass kicked out had made him a better boy Or maybe it was just the realization that I knew that any one of us could call a vote and kick hi that those of us without a business degree didn&039;t understand business A little fear isn&039;t always a bad thing In fact, it can be downright therapeutic for some people I didn&039;t expect for the nicer version of Bert to last, but I&039;d enjoy it while I had it
I&039;d actually turned off onto Olive in the direction of the city I had just enough time to drop Nathaniel off at Guilty Pleasures and be only about fifteen minutes late for as now
"Where are you going?" Nathaniel asked
"Guilty Pleasures," I said
"You need to eat first"
I glanced at hiht "I don&039;t have time to eat"
"You knohen you don&039;t feed one hunger the other hungers get worse?" His voice was so gentle when he asked, but I&039;d begun to entle tone It usually ht, and if I&039;d only accept it, I&039;d see that he was right, too It usually un But I never considered defeat a reason not to put up a fight
"Yeah, I know If I deny the ardeur the beast wants meat more, or the vampire wants blood I know all that"
"So what happens if you don&039;t feed your huht changed, and I eased forward Saturday night traffic on Olive was always fun "Yeah," I said I was looking for the trick, and didn&039;t see it
"So if your body gets hungry for norers worse?"
I al at hi, and, if it hadn&039;t been so dark, I&039;estures "What did you say?"
"You heardbetter attention to the traffic But inside I was kicking myself, because it was so siularly when I&039; hoht"
"Soht," he said "How hts? Real food, I mean"
I tried to think, and finally had to say, "So if you kept a food diary to see if there was a correlation between starving your hu"
"You talk like you know this already," I said
"Haven&039;t you noticed that lycanthropes cook and eat?"
I shrugged "I don&039;t know" I thought about it Richard cooked, and had always been either takingto cook for h Nathaniel did more of it We usually had a house full of wereleopards for at least one meal a day
"You mean there&039;s a reason that all the lycanthrope men I&039;ve dated have been domestically talented?"
He nodded "We need to eat a nice balanced diet, heavy on protein It helps keep the beast at bay"
I glanced at hihts, he wasabout him "Why didn&039;t someone mention this toyou like you&039;re mostly hu for words Finally he said, "If I didn&039;t know that you were human and couldn&039;t slip your skin and be a leopard for real, I&039;d think you were one of us The way you felt, the way you fought, the way you s was shapeshifter You did not co lot here," he said
"Why?" I asked
"Because we need to talk"
I did not like the sound of that, but I turned in to the strip mall that had Culpeppers at one end I parked in the first space I found, which was far away from any restaurant Most of the stores were dark and closed When I turned off the engine, the world was suddenly very quiet The traffic on Olive was still snarling by, and in the distance was music from one of the restaurants, but inside the Jeep it was quiet That silence that you get inside cars after dark With one switch of a key, the space inside a car becomes private, intiainst the seat belt, but I wasn&039;t coet out of a car "So, talk," I said, and my voice sounded almost normal
He turned in his seat as far as his seat belt would allow He knewone knee up to prop hi you like you&039;re huht"
"Youto shift because I&039;m in a new triu braid slid across his lap like a heavy pet "Maybe what happened with that has made it worse, but I think one of the reasons you haven&039;t been able to get a handle on the ardeur is because you&039;ve been taking almost all your advice from a vampire He doesn&039;t need to eat, Anita There is only blood lust and the ardeur for Jean-Claude, that&039;s it A lycanthrope doesn&039;t stop being human You still have to eat like a person, you just add the hunger of the beast, but you don&039;t lose a hunger, you just add on to it"
I thought about it "So you er pangs, that it ht the ardeur?"
He nodded, and his hair slid across his lap again, as if the braid were ht about it, and it seeht, what do I do? I&039; late"
"Tonight we go through a drive-up You get soet a salad"
I frowned at him "A salad, why? Most drive-up salads suck"
"I have to eat before I go on tonight"
"So you&039;ll be able to control your beast better," I said
"Yes"
"But why a salad? I thought you needed protein"
"If you were going to take off all your clothes in front of strangers, you&039;d get a salad, too"
"One burger a few hours before you go on won&039;t ht irls did that"
"Nope"
"So you&039;re eating a salad so you&039;ll look good tonight," I said
He nodded, and his hair slithered over the edge of his leg and across the gear shift I had this horrible urge to touch that heavy band of hair A little voice in my head said, Why not? After e&039;d done this afternoon, what&039;s a little hair touching Logical, but logic didn&039;t have much to do with how I acted around Nathaniel
I claspedhi anymore? I reached out to that heavy curl of hair and pet it, like it was more intimate to him than it was The hair was soft and warm I petted his hair while I talked "The beast isn&039;t conflicted about anything, is it?"
"No," he said, and his voice was both loud and soft in the quiet dark
I began to pull his braid, gently up from around his body where the end had slid "It&039;s not just the hunger for flesh and blood that you fight, is it?"
"No," he said
I got to the end of his braid and spilled it into er was the beast That desire to chase and feed; I thought that was all of it"
"And now?" he asked
I stroked the tip of his braid across my palm, and just that made me shiver My voice was shaky when I said, "Richard always talked about his beast like it was all his baser impulses, you know, lust, sloth, the traditional sins, but to sin iood or evil, there was nothing like norhts are based on things I&039; affects another The consequences of your actions" I lifteda snake, a soft, thick serpent I gathered his hair into ainst my body I was about at the limit for the seat belt, and I wanted to be closer to hied an ar about the Browns&039; grief, their dead son It wasn&039;t that I chose to ignore it I wasn&039;t being callous, it just never entered ot mad, but mad translated directly to food If I killed them and ate thery" I met his eyes on that last word
Soht made his eyes shine for a ht&039;s beaone, his eyes lost in shadow again The turn of his head tugged on his hair, and I had a second to decide whether I would let it go, or keep it I kept it, and it put a strain down the line of his hair, a strain like pulling on a rope, and knowing it was tied tight
His voice was a little breathy when he said, "You&039;re always hungry when you first change shape, especially if you&039;re new at it"
"How do you keep fro into the crowd at the club?" I asked, and my voice was a little shaky, too
He leaned back away frohter, harder "By channeling the hunger into sex instead of food You don&039;t eat your mate If you can fuck it, it&039;s not food" His voice was lower, not deeper exactly, but lower
"So how did I not eat anybody? I wasn&039;t thinking about sex with the Browns"
"At first you are just the hunger, but after a few full moons, you can think, but you don&039;t think like a person You think like your animal A few more full moons after that and you can choose to think like yourself in anian to pull hi his braid like a rope, but this rope was attached to his skull, and he didn&039;t coainst me, and I knew that it had to hurt just a little
His voice was low and soft "Some people enjoy the purity of the aniles Just decide what you want and do it"
"Undo your seat belt," I said
He undid his seat belt
I pulled hiled around hts "Does anyone use the animal for a patsy, you know, criood is their conscience The beast doesn&039;t have one of those"
He was close enough to kiss, his face lower thanhim just a little to one side "The animal is very practical," he whispered "It&039;s why so few people use their animal form when they commit murder I don&039;t mean accidental kills, because they don&039;t have the control, but deliberate murder"
I leaned over him "Example"
"Say, your uncle will leave you a fortune but he needs to be dead so you can inherit it Unless your beast is hungry, it won&039;t kill your uncle for money, because the beast doesn&039;t understand h to almost kiss him "What does the beast understand?"
He spoke with his lips alainst mine "It will kill someone you truly fear, or someone who&039;s hurt you, especially physically The beast understands being hit, being injured"
I almost asked if he&039;d hunted down the man who beat him and his brother, but I didn&039;t I&039;d seen his memories If sos, most likely And I didn&039;t want to fill the car with hurt and bad h of those
I laid a kiss on his ainstseat-belted, I couldn&039;t led in his braid so that it felt like I was being bound I had a moment of panic, then I relaxed into it Nathaniel would not hurtwhere it was He hadn&039;t wrapped me up, I&039;d done that
He drew back just enough to talk, his lips brushing mine "What about your clients?"
I drew my head back as far as I could, which wasn&039;t far, and said, "I&039; to fuck you here and now"
"You&039;re not?"
That h I wasn&039;t exactly sure why "No, I&039;le myself from his hair
He drew back with a shts "I want to encourage you to touch me God knows I do, but if you do too much with the ardeur not fed, and neither of us fed, then the night is over You&039;ll be pissed with yourself, and ot most of ht on the back of the Browning If it hadn&039;t been a gun, I&039;d have jerked, but even with the safety on, I didn&039;t trust it enough Stupider accidents have gotten people shot Neither Zerbrowski nor Edould ever let me live it down So I took a deep breath and forced un
Nathaniel had buckled himself back into his seat "I would love to repeat this some time and place where we didn&039;t have to stop"
I was still trying to get his hair off un The fact that he was in his seat but his hair wasn&039;t told you just how long his braid was "You had your chance," I said, and I sounded rumpy at me," he said, "I wasn&039;t the one who pulled you into un I started to fling the end of his braid back at hiht about who started it Right about how ot ht, you shouldn&039;t get pissed at theo through a drive-up I&039;ll eat a burger, you can have your salad Will thatout of the parking space
"No, but it&039;ll get us both to work tonight" He sounded sad
I glanced at hih the parked cars "Don&039;t be sad"
"I&039;m not sad," he said, but he sounded it
"What&039;s wrong?"
"It&039;s just that you reached for ency The ardeur hadn&039;t risen, yet The beast was nowhere in sight Blood lust wasn&039;t anywhere, and I had to say, stop But the ardeur will rise tonight, Anita, and having sex with it not being fed yet is just inviting trouble" He leaned his head against theHis shoulders were rounded, as if he&039;d hunched in upon hiht about the schedule and the ardeur and needing to eat, Nathaniel I don&039;t knohat came over me just now"
He turned to look at hts of the street, so I could see his face clearly He looked almost in pain "Couldn&039;t it just have been that you wanted to touch hed and concentrated on the road, because I had to But also, it gave me time to think I turned us back the e&039;d started, but this tih the drive-up at McDonald&039;s Honest
I finally did the only thing I could think of to take that h, because it was the only part of him I could reach easily He&039;d pulled so far away in his seat that I couldn&039;t reach anything else without straining I was driving, and that had to take priority over offering cos I touched his leg, gently, tentatively I wasn&039;t always good at touching when sex wasn&039;t involved I was trying to get better at it, but the learning curve see on my mood, or someone else&039;s
He touched ers I held my hand up to him, eyes still on the road He laid his hand in mine
"I&039;m sorry, Nathaniel I&039;m sorry that I&039;m such an ass solanced at hi atto ht," he said
"I notice you don&039;t disagree that I&039;hed "You don&039;t like it when I lie"
I stared at hi at traffic "I can&039;t believe you said that"
He was laughing so hard that our hands jiggled up and down on his leg "Neither can I," he said
But I didn&039;t get mad When you&039;ve been an ass to someone you care about, you should just adain
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There is al The streets are narrow, and most of them are cobblestoned It&039;s very quaint, but the streets were originally planned for horses, not cars, and it shows There is no e at Guilty Pleasures, because there isn&039;t rooot to walk, but Nathaniel touched n and the front entrance He took me down an alley that I hadn&039;t even knoas there I mean, I kneas there, but not where it went I&039;d never really thought that there must be a performers&039; entrance just like for Circus of the Damned
The alley was an alley, which meant it was narrow, cramped, not as clean as you&039;d like, not as well lit as you&039;d prefer, and h to let me know that any alley that I could touch both sides of was too damn narrow for comfort
I&039;d meant to simply drop Nathaniel at the club and run to my next appointst out of ht, now my first, had to cancel Mary said that the lawyer had told her that he had to tend to the needs of another client unexpectedly Translation: He needed to bail someone out It didn&039;t have to be that, but it probably was I&039;d gotten better at translating lawyer over the years, though no better at legal jargon Jargon is ood at its job