Dead Ice (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,78

it that way, then we don’t want you here.”

“I’ll try not to flirt, but it’s . . . it’s sort of what I do.”

“Work on doing something else,” I said.

“I’ll try, I mean that, but I can’t guarantee I won’t forget sometimes. I’m not making an excuse, I’m just saying tell me to stop fucking around and I’ll listen from now on, don’t just kill me.”

I looked into her face and saw the first real sincerity I’d seen in her. “Okay, but make sure that me just saying something is enough; don’t ever make me have to put a gun to your head again, Lita.”

“I won’t, Anita, I swear.”

“Good.” I wanted to turn and see Jean-Claude, not just feel the presence of him, but there was something on the face of the younger woman that made me keep looking at her.

“The wererats call you Gatito Negro. I thought they were making fun of you, like you were a kitten they had to take care of, but that’s not what it means at all, is it?”

“No,” I said, “it isn’t.”

Dino said, “She’s small, but she eats rats, our Gatito Negro.”

Lita nodded. “Yeah, and I don’t want to be eaten.”

“Do your job, stop trying to fuck everyone, hit the gym harder, and I’ll see you in practice.”

“Gracias, Anita.”

“De nada,” I said.

“Ma petite, you are having an interesting night.”

“You have no idea,” I said, and turned around to find that he’d changed clothes for the banquet already, and I was going to have to work hard if I was going to hold my own on his arm tonight.

18

HE WAS STANDING next to Nicky and I was almost startled to realize that Jean-Claude was inches taller. I knew that Nicky wasn’t six feet tall, so Jean-Claude’s six feet, one inch had to be taller, but Nicky was just so much bulkier that he seemed bigger when I stood next to him. Jean-Claude never made me feel small when I was near him; he was just tall. Seeing them side by side, I realized some of why Jean-Claude was well built; he even lifted enough weights to give definition to his muscles, but he lifted to be beautiful onstage, not to bulk, so that he looked almost willowy next to the other man.

He’d replaced the white shirt we’d stained earlier with one so red it was scarlet. It looked fabulous with the short black velvet jacket, leather pants, and boots. I loved him in red, maybe because he wore it so seldom. It made his skin seem translucently pale, like alabaster if it could blush with life, and his black curls gleam, and it strangely brought out the blue in his eyes so they were less midnight sky and more cobalt.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and found that the red shirt was silk, cool and caressing against my hands. The cloth was mounded as if it were one of his more typical white shirts with the mounded lace and collar, but silk was softer than any lace. I pressed my chin into it and found that he was wearing a platinum stickpin through the cloth to hold it in place. A diamond almost as big as the engagement ring he’d given me on the video rode in the tip of it with a circle of rubies as red as the silk, which meant they were probably antique. Pigeon-blood red was the old name for rubies that color and they were damned rare now, or they stayed in countries that weren’t exporting to America. He hadn’t put that on to get onstage at Guilty Pleasures. Apparently the meet and greet with the weretigers was going to be more formal than I’d thought. I’d have been less worried about what I’d have to wear if he hadn’t looked so spiffy in his clothes.

I went up on tiptoes to meet his kiss. It was soft, but thorough; he knew how to kiss without smearing my lipstick over both of us, and I knew how to kiss a vampire without cutting my mouth. French kissing was harder, but we could manage that, too.

“Shit,” Lita said.

It made me turn and look at her, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t a friendly look.

“I didn’t mean to get that look from you again, Anita, it’s just”—she motioned at us—“you guys are like some romance movie. It’s just not real, it can’t be real.”

“Oh, it’s real, all right,” Kelly said. “Now let’s call for our replacements, before you say something