even more so than with one of your animals to call."
"It's harder to shield against Jean-Claude."
"Than against Nathaniel, or Damian?"
"Damian, yes; Nathaniel is harder depending on what we're doing."
"You mean sex," Sin said.
I smiled, and shook my head. "Sex with Jean-Claude is pretty full of abandon, too, but Nathaniel doesn't control his emotions as well as the vampires do."
"They've had centuries more practice," Sin said.
I nodded. "True."
"Just stop coming to the parent things, as my parent, Anita." He held his hand out to me.
"Just like that," I said, "and that'll make it okay?"
"I don't know, but I'll certainly trade you sitting there all uncomfortable, and half-defensive, for being your lover." He waggled the hand he was holding out in the air.
I went close enough to take his hand. We stood there holding hands. Neither of us tried for anything closer. We just stood there, him still leaning against the door, me fighting the urge to pull against his hand, and looked at each other.
The smile slipped a little, leaving a much more serious look behind. The happiness remained like the glow that lingers pushing against the dark when the sun has gone below the horizon, but you know that true night is only a thought away - night, when the monsters come out to play.
I didn't want to be the monster to Cynric, the way I was to Larry. It wasn't a fair analogy, but I was tired; not physically, I'd slept, but emotionally. I was just tired of the shit, everyone's shit. I was also wondering where Brice was, not because I wanted a rescue from Cynric's talk, but because we needed to get these bastards before nightfall.
Cynric squeezed my hand and shook it a little. "You're thinking too hard, and it's not about me."
I had the grace to look embarrassed, but didn't lie. "I'm wondering when the other cops will come and give me a ride to the party."
"You know it scares me every time you leave for work with the police."
I nodded. "I know." We had another moment of just looking at each other, still holding hands from a little distance.
"Nothing I can do would make you not go," he said.
I sighed. "No," I said.
"Can I hug you?" he asked.
I looked at him, startled. The change in conversation was too fast for me. "Hug me, yeah. I mean, why not?"
"Because I think we're fighting, and you've gone all work serious."
"I don't think we're fighting."
"We were both thinking about having a fight," he said, smiling.
I smiled a little. "Yeah, we thought about it."
"But we're not going to," he said, and made it a question with the uplilt of his voice.
"I don't think so."
He frowned and pulled on my hand, bringing me closer to him. "Don't take this wrong, Anita, but why aren't we fighting?"
I realized he'd stopped pulling me closer, leaving me a few inches of distance, so I could decide if I wanted to close the distance or not. Cynric had learned what not to do in the last year. It was figuring out what to do that was the problem with dating me, or so one of my ex-boyfriends had said.
I went to him, closing the distance between us. I was left standing almost the same as before, looking up at him, his arms around me, but my hands on his waist and upper hip, keeping that last bit of distance.
"I don't want to fight," I said.
"Me either," he said.
I nodded. "Good."
"You'll stop coming to the parent-teacher stuff."
"Yeah," I said.
"And you'll stop being weirded out by our age difference?"
I laughed then, and shook my head. "I'm twelve years older than you are, Sin."
"I know."
"But it's not just the age difference; it's the when of the age difference. You're eighteen and I'm twelve years older than you are. I'm thirty, and you're eighteen; that is a big age difference."
"You said I could hug you," he said.
"You can," I said.
He glanced down at my hands where they held us apart. "Not without forcing the issue, and you don't like that, at least not from me."
I moved my hands around his waist, slowly, reluctantly, feeling the firmness of his body and the softness of his skin, so that I wasn't sure whether to say his body was muscled and hard, or soft and tender. He was both, all of it.
His arms slid slowly tighter around me, drawing me in against his body. I let my fingers play up his back, tracing the edge of his spine, the muscles of