Dead Ice (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,200

finding other men who were the real deal so that no one could ever hurt us like that again.” His eyes looked haunted, and angry, and things I couldn’t understand. He’d been captured and used as a hostage to get the rest of the werehyenas to do what Chimera wanted. I still remembered the torture room where he’d hung some of the werehyenas after he cut limbs off them, because they’d grow a new one eventually, so he’d made a forest of them to hang from the ceiling of the room. I’d hidden in the dark among the bleeding and the few that hadn’t survived the torture.

Narcissus touched my face, brought me out of my memories and looking at him again. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for killing him and saving my hyenas from that evil piece of shit.”

I smiled, but I knew my eyes were still as haunted as his. I took his hand from my face and held it over the covers like we were five and one of us had had a bad dream. “It was my pleasure to put him out of his misery.”

“You know that I enjoyed what he did to me at first.”

“I know you are a serious pain slut.”

He grinned. “Yes, yes I am.” His eyes went bleak again. “He didn’t like how much pain I could enjoy, because that meant he wasn’t really hurting me. He wanted to hurt me, wanted to find things that even I didn’t enjoy. He was an almost pure sadist; causing pain was his aphrodisiac. Until Chimera I thought I enjoyed causing pain, but I have limits that I don’t want to cross outside of fantasy. I don’t want to destroy my lovers until they are useless and broken, but that was exactly what Chimera wanted.”

I squeezed his hand. “But he didn’t break you; you’re still here, still Oba of the clan, and he’s dead.”

He smiled, but his eyes stayed sad. “He didn’t break me, but he put a few new cracks in where I thought I was safe.”

“I’m sorry, Narcissus.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“That I didn’t kill him sooner.”

He smiled. “I am grateful, but not grateful enough to let this insult go.”

“You can’t let it go; it makes you look weak in front of your hyenas.”

“You understand,” he said, studying my face.

“Hyenas and lions are both very much about the strongest, most powerful wins, more even than most wereanimal groups.”

“Yes,” he said, softly, but not like it made him happy.

I looked at this delicate-seeming man and knew there was more to him physically than I had ever seen, because he had fought his way to the top of one of the most violent animal groups. Hyena society wasn’t for sissies, but that was exactly what Narcissus was; he was as likely to wear a nice evening dress to his club as a well-tailored suit. He usually wore more eye makeup than I did, and he was cheerfully gay, but he was still Oba, still king. It had hurt my head a little the first time I’d met him.

“I demanded Asher’s head, and when Jean-Claude said no, I said I’d kill Kane and if the death of Asher’s animal to call killed him, too, so be it.”

“Jean-Claude talked you out of it.”

“He did, now ask me how, or rather what he said to me that made me willing to spare the two idiots.”

“I think I can ballpark it. He offered you a closer connection to the throne.”

“Yes.” He looked surprised. “I didn’t expect you to be this calm about it.”

I frowned a little. “Okay, I thought you sleeping in here was part of it, I mean literally closer to me, to him, but now I think you should just tell me. I feel like I’m missing something.”

“You have no hyena to call, yet. There is no more fitting match for a queen than a king.”

I frowned harder. “Last I talked to you, you told me to stay away from your hyenas because I’m a girl and hyenas are instinctively matriarchal. You were worried I’d take over your clan.”

“I’ve had to let women in just to keep all the new straights happy.” He rolled his eyes.

“So you’ve got women in the clan now, but you’re still king.”

“I’m not just king, I’m truly queen, and apparently I’m girl enough for everyone’s inner beast.”

Narcissus looked like a man, but apparently he had girl parts, too. In fact, both functioned well enough that he’d gotten pregnant from Chimera raping