I let go of her, and stepped back. She looked up at me, and I think for a moment let herself see me, really see me. She was angry, and for just a moment I knew that she didn't like me any more than I liked her, not really. Then I watched a different look cross her face, one that most men would have thought was a good look, but a woman knows when another woman is about to drive the blade home.
"Funny how it's never your fault when you have to have sex with all these men, Anita," and with that she walked away. She walked away with the proverbial knife stuck deep and hard right through my heart. Nothing cuts deeper than when another person says exactly what you're afraid to say out loud. Hell, Matthew had said it, too, in his way. All the big boys kiss you, 'Nita.
I fled the laughing costumed children and Monica's knowing eyes. I waved at Matthew as he called my name, all lined up with the little girls in his class. I wanted to be in my seat so I could see him; he'd go on second. Yeah, that was it, I hurried to my seat to make sure I'd see his performance, but I knew that wasn't the truth. I ran toward my seat and the men waiting for me, because part of me believed that Monica was right and all my words were just a case of the lady protesting too much.
Chapter Two
I GOT BACK to the foot of the stairs and the still-crowded lobby. I scanned the crowd for Micah, but since he was my size neither of us could see the other over the crowd. The people parted and I could see him about halfway across the room, talking with a family I didn't recognize. He was smiling, face alight with good humor. He laughed, head back, soundless to me over the murmur of the crowd. The crowd closed again and just like that I couldn't see him. I started easing my way toward him. The crush cleared and I could see him again. He was one of those rare men who could look delicate, until you took in the wide shoulders tapering down to a slender waist. He was built like a swimmer, though his sports were jogging and weight lifting like most of the wereanimals I knew. His suits all had to be tailored-down athletic cuts. Italian suits seemed to fit best. American suits were mostly shaped like boxes and looked terrible on short men with muscles. Though Micah went for strength, not bulk. Micah's suit fit him perfectly, and I caught several women giving him covert glances as they hurried past with their families. I had to smile because I knew he looked even better out of the suit than in it. A man looked at his ass as he went past. Micah got that a lot, too. I think it was being short and pretty, because I could call him handsome if he wanted, but he was too pretty for words like handsome. It was also the nearly waist-length hair. Curly, and that rich, deep brown that said it might have been paler when he was little. His hair was almost as curly as mine and spilled down his back to the envy of many a woman. My own hair was almost to my waist, because he wanted to cut his hair and I didn't want him to. I wanted to take a few inches off my hair and he didn't want me to. So he'd made me a deal. If I cut my hair, he got to cut his. We had a stalemate, and my hair hadn't been this long since junior high.
He turned his face toward me as if he'd felt me looking, and I could finally see all that delicate line of face, maybe a little long through the jaw for perfection, but that one line was all that saved him from looking like a beautiful woman instead of a man. Elementary school must have been hell, because short and pretty men don't usually fare well. He told me that his eyes had originally been brown, but I'd never seen those eyes, the ones he was born with. He'd come to me with leopard eyes trapped forever in those dark lashes, chartreuse eyes green and yellow depending on what color he wore near his face or how the light caught them. Most of the time he wore sunglasses to hide the eyes, but wearing them after dark sometimes attracted more attention than what they hid, and it amazed him how many people could look him in the eyes and only remark, "What beautiful eyes." Or, "What a great shade of green," and never make the connection.
Nathaniel would say, "People see what they want to see, or what their minds tell them they should see most of the time."
Micah gave me the smile that was all for me. It was made up of love, lust, and just that connection we had had from almost the moment we'd met. He was my Nimir-Raj, my leopard king, and I was his Nimir-Ra, leopard queen. Though I didn't shapeshift to anything, I still somehow held a piece of leopard inside me, and that piece had seemed to know him. Micah had never questioned it, and I had done something unprecedented: I'd let him move in with me. We were two years and still counting; two years and still happy with each other. It was a record for me.
Usually by now I'd wrecked it somehow, or the man had done something I could point at and go See, see I knew it wouldn't work. Micah had managed to walk the maze that was my heart and not get caught in any of the traps. He said his good-byes to the people and came to me.
He smiled, the edge of his mouth quirking up like it did sometimes, his eyes shining as if laughter were just a thought away. "What are you looking at?" he asked, voice low.
I smiled back because I couldn't help it. "You."
Our hands reached for each other at the same time, our fingers just finding each other, entwining, playing along the touch and feel of each other. I'd had one friend say that we could get more out of just holding hands than some couples got out of kissing. But we did that, too, leaning in and being careful of the lipstick. Micah went through most nights with a touch of my lipstick on his mouth. He didn't seem to mind.
"Who was that?" I asked as we turned and began to make our way hand in hand with the last of the crowd toward the auditorium.
"One of the families in our support group," he said.
Micah was the head/spokesperson for the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Human and Lycanthrope Communities. It was affectionately known as the Furry Coalition. The Coalition helped new shapeshifters adjust to the change in lifestyle, and kept them from shifting early outside safe houses. A new shifter was unpredictable. It could take months of full moons before they were in control enough to be trustworthy without older, more experienced shifters riding herd on them. And yes, unpredictable meant they were consumed by a craving for flesh, and fresh was better. They also blacked out and had few memories of what they'd done. Most newbies passed out after shifting back to human form, so they needed to be either in a safe place or where someone could get them under some literal cover.
Micah and some of the other local leaders had come up with an idea for a family support group, where the members of the families that weren't shapeshifters could talk freely about their parents, siblings, or even grand-parents. It was legal to be a shapeshifter in the United States now, but discrimination still occurred. There were entire professions where failing one blood test would get you excluded forever. Military, police, food industry, medical care - it was hard to keep a job if you were a teacher of children and the parents found out you turned into the big bad wolf once a month. That kind of discrimination was illegal, but hard to prove. It was one of the reasons that Richard Zeeman, junior high science teacher and local Ulfric, wolf king, wouldn't be here tonight sitting on the other side of Jean-Claude. Richard was technically Jean-Claude's wolf to call, as I was his human servant. We were a triumvirate of power and should both have been here at his side, but Richard wouldn't risk being outed and losing his job. That, and Richard really hated being a werewolf, but that was a problem for later. For right this moment, nobody who had come with Jean-Claude had a problem being exactly who and what they were.
Most of the seats were already full, and it was Asher's hair that I spotted first, gleaming golden under the lights. I wasn't kidding about the gold. He wasn't blond; his hair was as close to true gold and still a natural color as any person I'd ever met. Of course, once I'd found Asher, Jean-Claude was at his side. Jean-Claude's black hair curled over the seat back, inches longer than Asher's, which was just past shoulder length. Jean-Claude had grown his hair out because I seemed to like more hair on my men. Asher had informed me, "It takes energy for a vampire to grow his hair longer than it was when he died. I don't have that kind of energy to spare." Which implied that Jean-Claude did, and that had been interesting to know.
There was another blond on his other side. J.J., Jason's current girlfriend, had traveled from New York so she could watch him onstage. They'd gone to school together and known each other a little during college. They'd met again at a friend's bachelorette party, and now here she was coming to see him onstage. He'd traveled to see her onstage with the New York City Ballet three times. This would be her third trip to St. Louis in as many months. It was as serious as I'd ever seen Jason over anyone.
He'd been almost embarrassed when J.J. said she'd come out for the recital. He'd said, "It's just amateur stuff. You do the real deal." I don't know what she'd said, because I'd left him to finish the phone conversation in private, but whatever she'd said, there she sat looking pale and beautiful, her long, straight blond hair in a neat braid down the graceful curve of neck and shoulders. Her dress was a pink that was almost white, with thin spaghetti straps. She was like most ballet dancers, honed down to muscle and grace so she could wear the filmy dress with nothing much under it and have it look great. I'd have looked like I was in desperate need of a bra. My curves only honed down so far.
Jean-Claude and Asher stood before we'd actually come up to the aisle. They turned without looking around, as if they'd sensed us, and maybe they had. Or at least Jean-Claude had.
Another man stood up in the row in back of them, and only then did I realize it was Truth. He'd combed his shoulder-length hair back in a tight, neat ponytail, and he was completely clean-shaven. Truth's face was trapped in that not-quite-beard stubble because that's how he'd looked when he died. Shaving meant that he might not be able to grow it back even if he wanted to. He was wearing a nice suit, too. If his hair hadn't still been its usual brown I might have thought it was his brother, Wicked.
I stood there staring up into his face, stunned. I wanted to ask, Where are your boots? Where's your leather? But that seemed the wrong thing to say.
Micah leaned in and said, "Say something to him."
"Um, you look nice," I said, and it was hopelessly inadequate. I tried again. "I guess I've just never seen you cleaned up like this. You look great."
He tugged on the front of the suit jacket. "I borrowed it from Wicked. He's in the row ahead of them."
Micah mercifully turned me away, so I moved up to Asher and Jean-Claude, who were still standing. Truth always looked like a mix between an outlaw biker and a medieval forest ranger. He was here as security. Had Jean-Claude insisted he get neatened up?
Wicked gave a small nod and a smile from the row in front of them. He looked, more than ever, like his brother's twin, though I knew they had been born a year apart as humans. His hair was straight and blond, thicker-textured than his brother's slight wave of brown. They both had the same blue-gray eyes, and now that Truth's chin was bare, the same deep dimple in their chin was very clear.
Asher took my hand in his and I was suddenly looking up at someone who made both Wicked and Truth look too manly, too modern-day handsome in comparison. Asher was almost as broad of shoulder as the brothers, but that face. The mass of wavy gold hair, the eyes so pale a blue, like ice given life and color, in a rim of darker lashes and brow. But it was the face that was always breathtaking. It was a beauty to make angels weep, or want to trade sides. He was just simply one of the most gorgeous people I'd ever seen. He thought his face was ruined because holy-water scars traced the right side of all that beauty. But they only went about halfway up, and the perfect curve of mouth was untouched. It was almost as if the inquisitioner who had tried to burn the devil out of him had flinched at the ruin of that face.
I knew the scars continued down the right side of his chest to trace the edge of his hip and thigh. He managed the Circus of the Damned and was the masked ringmaster, so he could be beautiful and mysterious and not show everyone the scars. For him to come out in public like this was a good sign. Though he was a master at using shadow, darkness, his hair, so that people around him would probably never see the scars if he didn't wish them to. He was wearing a soft blue silk shirt with a high, soft collar pierced by a stickpin that held a pale blue diamond almost the color of his eyes. Jean-Claude and I had bought it for him just this year. Admittedly, most of the money for the stone had come from Jean-Claude. I made good money, but the diamond was almost as big as my thumbnail.
Seeing him wearing it so that it attracted attention to his face made me feel that every penny had been well spent. I smiled up at him and went on tiptoe so his six foot one didn't have to bend down too far.