the lukoi than the word said. I stood there, covered in a light dew of sweat, barely breathing hard, and knew that something had happened that hadn't before. Richard and I had tried to jog together before, and it hadn't worked. He was two inches shy of being an entire foot taller than me. A lot of that was leg. His speed for jogging was running to me, and even then, I couldn't keep up with him. Add the fact that he was a lycanthrope, and, well, he was too fast for me. The only other time I'd kept up with him had been with him holding my hand, with him pulling me along with the marks and his power.
I turned to look at Shang-Da. There must have been something on my face, some soft astonishment, because his expression softened to something almost like pity.
Richard moved away from us, and we both turned back to follow his progress. As my pulse slowed, I could hear what they had heard ages ago: crying -- though that was too soft a word for it. Someone was sobbing as if their heart were breaking.
Richard moved toward the sound, and we followed him. There was a huge sycamore in the middle of a clearing. On the other side of the tree's large, (patchy) trunk, a woman huddled. She had squeezed herself down into a small, tight ball, her arms hugging her knees. Her face was thrown up to the sparkling sunlight, eyes squeezed shut, blind.
She had brunette hair so dark it could have passed for black, cut very short. She was white with a fringe of dark lashes pasted to her pale cheeks. Her face was small and triangular, but beyond that I couldn't describe it. Her face was ravished with tears, eyes swollen, skin reddened. She was small, dressed in heavy khaki shorts, thick socks, hiking boots, and a T-shirt.
Richard knelt in the leaves beside her. He touched her arm before he said anything, and she screamed, eyes flying wide. There was a moment of utter panic on her face, then she threw herself against his chest, wrapped her arms around him, and fell into a fresh bout of sobbing.
He stroked her hair, murmuring, "Carrie, Carrie, it's all right. It's all right."
Carrie. Could it be Dr. Carrie Onslow? It seemed likely. But what was the head biologist on the troll project doing having hysterics in the woods?
Richard had slid completely down into the leaves. He'd pulled her into his lap like she was a child. It was hard to judge, but she seemed tiny, smaller than I was.
The crying eased. She lay cuddled in his lap, held in his arms. They'd dated. I tried to feel jealous, but I couldn't manage it. Her distress was too extreme.
Richard stroked the side of her face. "What's wrong, Carrie? What's happened?"
She took a deep breath that shuddered as it escaped her lips, then she nodded and blinked up at Shang-Da and me.
"Shang-Da." Her eyes turned to me. She seemed embarrassed that we'd seen her lose control. "I don't know you."
"Anita Blake," I said.
Her cheek rested against Richard's chest, so all she had to do was roll her eyes upward to look at him. "You're his Anita?" She made it a question.
He looked up at me. "When we're not mad at each other, yes."
I watched her rebuild herself, gathering her personality back around her like layering clothes against winter weather. Her eyes filled while I watched until her face burned with intelligence, with a force, commitment, a determination that shone so fiercely it seemed to thrum through her skin. I watched her and knew instantly why Richard had dated her. Staring down at her, I was glad she was human, glad he wouldn't be having sex with her. Because just a few moments in her presence, and I knew that this one, this one could be trouble. That was the real danger with not being monogamous. It wasn't really the sex, though that bugged me a lot. It was the fact that it meant the other person wasn't satisfied, that they were still looking. If you're still looking, sometimes you find it, whatever it is.
I didn't like staring down at this woman who was obviously in pain and thinking about my own problems. I didn't like the fact that I was a little afraid of her. I mean, I was human, and he'd had sex with me. I hated that this was what I was thinking before