make it harder for you to sleep with him.”
I grabbed his arm and made him look at me. “Win the fight tonight and I sleep with only you.”
He looked past me to Micah and Nathaniel. “Never just me, Anita.”
I wanted to shake him so badly that I had to let go and step back. “You know what I meant, Rafael. Hector’s mom is screwing with your head before the fight, and you’re letting her do it.”
“You may be right, but I cannot ignore that he could be mine, that I could have more than one son.”
“You asked me to come watch you fight tonight; well, I won’t come just to watch you give up and die.”
“I am not giving up,” he said.
“It sure sounds like it.”
“You and I have fought together too long to lie to each other, Rafael,” Micah said.
“What does that mean?” Rafael sounded angry now.
“We both know that if you don’t believe you can win, then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go in there tonight thinking that you don’t want to hurt Hector, while he’s trying to kill you, then you have lost before the fight begins.”
“You don’t have children; you don’t understand what it’s like to have one and never be allowed to see him. To think I might have had a child that I watched grow up, that means something to me.”
“Suelita knows how much it would mean to you,” Claudia said.
“She has never forgiven you for not marrying her all those years ago,” Benito said.
“She was not in love with me.”
“She wanted to be queen, Rafael. She loves power and status,” Benito said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I keep track of the women that I think may be a problem.”
“What did you think she would do?”
“You are right on the timing; I thought she would claim her baby was yours years ago, but then she married someone else, so I figured the baby must be his.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you thought Hector was mine?”
“If Suelita could have proven Hector was yours, she’d have offered a paternity test when he was a baby, but she didn’t, because she knew the test would come back with a different father.”
“She said she didn’t want to trap me into a loveless marriage.”
“That sounds like bullshit,” Benito said.
“How dare you?”
“You pay me to keep you safe; well, part of that is looking at the women you date.”
“Suelita never hurt me.”
“Well, she’s trying to kill you now,” Claudia said.
“Enough!” Rafael yelled it, and both Benito and Claudia stopped arguing with him. He turned to me. “First I remind you of the Master of Beasts and his tortures and now this. If I were not walking the sands tonight, I would not try for sex with you, but time is running out, Gatito Negra.” It was Spanish for black kitten and the honor name the local wererats had given me, acknowledging that I was small, but a predator that might eat them. For Rafael and me it had become his nickname for me. It rolled off his tongue sounding sexy and endearing like a lover’s pet name should be. Just that sped my pulse, caught my breath in my throat and turned it shallow. I hadn’t realized that he’d conditioned me so that just him saying the name a certain way was a turn-on. You never know what seemingly innocent things will become foreplay.
Micah hugged me and it was almost startingly, as if I’d been paying too much attention to Rafael. I hugged him back and don’t know what I would have said, because he spoke first. “You can use our room.”
I held him tighter, memorizing the feel of him in my arms; the delicate strength of him always felt so right. I touched his curls with one hand and hugged him tighter with the other. “No, we’ll use a guest room.”
He drew back enough to meet my eyes. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. I didn’t say out loud that I didn’t want the scent of anyone on our sheets but the three of us. If Rafael had been someone that any of us was in love with, that would be different, but he wasn’t one of our sweeties, so no.
I kissed him, and Nathaniel was there hugging both of us. Micah extracted himself and let us have a moment alone. Nathaniel smiled down at me, mischief shining in his lavender eyes. I knew that he was about to say something we might regret, or I might, but he didn’t