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afraid of him. Why? Then I had a thought.

I stopped pulling against his hand and just stood up. He moved back half a step as if he hadn’t expected it. “I can’t stop you doing what? You don’t want just my body, Haven. You want me. You want me to want and love you. You can’t win that by rape.”

“Why can’t I just want your body?” he asked.

I took a deep breath and let it out slow. “You’re the one who keeps pushing for more of a relationship, not me.”

I watched his lion eyes slide back to blue. “You’ve turned me into the girl.” He let go of my wrist and stepped back. “Get out, get out, Anita, before I change my mind.”

I backed up until I felt the door under my hands. I had to glance back to find the doorknob, and suddenly he was standing in front of me. He pressed his body against mine, pinning me against the door, his hand on one arm, and only my moving fast kept him from grabbing the other arm.

My pulse was in my throat, and I couldn’t hide that he’d scared me. He leaned his face in over my hair and sniffed the air. “You smell like fear and sex and food. You smell good.”

My voice was a little shaky as I said, “You smell like sweat and other people’s sex.”

He pulled me to him, pinning my arm between us. He let me keep the other arm as if it didn’t matter. “Then you should feel right at home.” His body pressed me close. My physical options were vanishing, but there were other options.

“Do you know why I haven’t rolled you the way I did Nicky?” I asked.

I felt his whole body hesitate. I’d surprised him. Good. “You like Nicky better,” he said.

“No, I like you better. I stole Nicky’s free will. He lives to please me. I think that’s kind of creepy actually. Auggie told me I should roll you, but I liked you too much to steal you away from yourself.”

“Why tell me this now?” He whispered it against my hair, and I could feel that his body wasn’t entirely unhappy to be pressed up against me.

“Don’t make what I did to Nicky my only option, Haven.”

“I’m a Rex. You couldn’t roll me like that,” he said.

“Are you sure? Are you sure enough to bet everything you are that I can’t make you into my bride?”

He went very still against me, and then he was halfway across the room in a blur of speed that was breathtaking. I leaned against the door for a heartbeat and then groped for the doorknob without looking away from him. I opened it and stepped through, still keeping my gaze on him as if that would keep him from coming for me again.

The cool air of the hallway seemed to help chase some of that hot energy back. “I’m going to clean up,” he said, and he didn’t look at me.

“You do that,” I said, and I closed the door slowly but firmly between us.

21

I WAS SEARCHING through the debris for my weapons and cell phone. I’d found a lot of guns, none of them mine. Haven barging in on me had really, really made me want my weapons back. But I wasn’t the only one who had lost weapons in the rush to strip, and I was finding a lot of dangerous toys. Nathaniel helped me look, his hair freshly washed and trailing down his body in a dark wet mass. He’d put on a pair of cutoffs that looked like they’d begun life as a pair of jeans. Micah was in the shower now. We were cleaning up in order of who woke up. The six of us in triumvirates had woken first, and then it seemed to go by dominance and power level. I wondered what order Haven had woken in, but hadn’t asked anyone. He hadn’t hurt me, so I hadn’t mentioned our encounter to anyone yet. We had to do something about Haven, but I wasn’t sure exactly what.

Jean-Claude was making phone calls to find out which Masters of the City were alive and how early they were up. Just by leaving messages this early in the day, Jean-Claude was letting them know that he had woken first. It was a subtle type of one-upmanship among vampires. The earlier you woke, the more powerful you were, as a general rule. Though today in St. Louis there were