Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,122

call and that you drained energy from him to heal yourself.’

I tried not to look surprised.

‘There is a reason they assigned a vampire as doctor on this floor. Sometimes it takes a preternatural citizen to understand another one.’

I nodded. ‘So you knew what was wrong the whole time?’

‘Not at first, but I’m absolutely serious that the elevation sickness contributed to both of you being hospitalized. It puts extra strain on your bodies.’

‘They’ll drink the water,’ Nicky said.

I scowled up at him.

‘I want both of you well,’ he said.

And just like that, Nicky won. ‘All right,’ I said.

‘I’ll go sign your paperwork. You can shower and get dressed,’ Dr Cross said.

‘I’m not sure I have time to shower,’ I said.

Edward said on the phone, ‘You have time and it will probably be your best bet to get your protein needs met.’

‘I told you I had two bars.’

‘I think you need some beefcake to go with those protein bars.’

‘Are you hinting that I need to feed the ardeur before I get there?’

‘I didn’t think I was hinting, but yes.’ He lowered his voice again and said, ‘I have now made Hatfield walk off in disgust. I believe she thinks the beefcake comment was us flirting.’

‘That would be bad flirting,’ I said.

‘Yep.’

‘You’re much smoother than that,’ I said.

‘Thanks, but feed, Anita. You don’t want to lose your shit here.’

‘Agreed,’ I said, but sighed as I said it.

‘Are Nicky and Dev still with you?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘You know there are a lot of women who wouldn’t see either of them as a hardship.’

‘It’s not that; it’s the fact that I have to have sex before I can go fight crime.’

‘And you healed a broken pelvis and a bullet wound in a little over twenty-four hours, so you have to have sex more often than most for that kind of healing ability. It’s not a bad trade.’

I thought about that and then said, ‘Good point.’

‘You’d be out of this investigation for good if you didn’t heal better than anyone I know.’

‘I’ll feed,’ I said.

‘But make it a quickie; you do need to question the vampires before dawn.’

‘First you damn near order me to have sex, and now you’re putting limits on how much time I have to do it. Geez.’

He laughed. ‘Just do what you need to do and get over here before dawn.’ He hung up, his voice already talking to someone at his end of the world.

‘Well, you heard the man; I need to feed and then we go question the vampires.’

‘Which one of us?’ Nicky asked.

‘Me,’ Dev said.

We both looked at him.

He smiled and held up his hands as if to say, Unarmed. ‘The last time you did a major feed on Nicky you almost killed him, remember?’

‘I know not to have sex with him twice in a row,’ I said.

‘He’s your Bride, which means he can’t shut off his energy when you feed the ardeur. We don’t want his heart stopping again because of that, right?’

We both agreed.

Then a look came over Dev’s face that I couldn’t quite read. I just knew it wasn’t a happy look. ‘Is it such a hardship to have sex with me instead of Nicky?’

I realized what the look was now. He was feeling bad about himself, worried that I preferred Nicky to him. I did, actually, but it wasn’t because Dev wasn’t wonderful on his own; he’d just gotten to me too late. I was full up for main men by the time our Devil arrived. When he’d first come to us, he’d been so confident he was cocky. It made me sad that I’d made him doubt himself, though I knew that Asher had done a lot to undermine the Devil’s confidence in himself, too.

I went to Dev, touched his arm, and studied his face. ‘You are handsome and yummy, and I’ve never said otherwise.’

‘You mean that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’d rather fuck Nicky than me.’

‘You’re prettier than me,’ Nicky said.

Dev grinned. ‘Thanks, but Anita has a lot of pretty in her life.’ His face sobered. ‘She needs more than just a pretty face and great sex.’

‘I may need more than that, but it’s not a bad place to start,’ I said. I went up on tiptoe to try and kiss him, but at six foot three, if he didn’t bend down to me I wasn’t reaching his mouth.

He bent down and let me kiss him, but his blue-brown eyes stayed serious. ‘It’s not a bad place to start, but I