I found my voice first. "You said you wanted to talk, so talk." I sounded breathless. It was like I could feel Richard's heart, his chest rising and falling, like it was my own. I'd had moments of this with Jean-Claude, but never with Richard. If we'd still been seeing each other, it would have been intriguing. Now, it was just confusing.
He relaxed his hands, flexing them, fighting not to make fists. "Jean-Claude said he was protecting us from each other. Keeping us from getting too close until we were ready. I didn't believe him, until now."
I nodded. "It's awkward."
He smiled, and shook his head, but the smile never took the anger out of his eyes. "Awkward? Is that all it is to you, Anita? Just awkward?"
"You can feel what I'm feeling, right now, Richard. Answer your own damn question."
He closed his eyes and pressed his hands together in front of his chest. He pressed his palms together until his arms trembled with the effort and the muscles corded, straining against his skin all the way up to his shoulders.
I felt him withdraw from me. Though that doesn't cover how it felt. It was like he built a wall between us. He was raising mental shields between us. Someone had to. I hadn't thought to try. The sight and feel of him in my mind had turned me into a pulsing hormone. It was too embarrassing for words.
I watched his body relax, a muscle at a time, until he opened his eyes, slowly, almost sleepily, his body quiet, at peace. I'd never been that good at meditation.
He lowered his arms and looked at me. "Better?"
I nodded. "Yes, thank you."
He shook his head. "Don't thank me. It was either control it or run screaming."
We stood there, staring at each other. The silence was uncomfortably thick. "What do you want, Richard?"
He gave a choking laugh that brought heat in a rush up my face. "You know what I meant," I said.
"Yes," he said, "I know what you meant. You invoked your status as lupa while I was out of town."
"You mean protecting Stephen?"
He nodded. "You had no right to go against Sylvie's express orders. She was the one I left in charge, not you."
"She'd removed pack protection from him. Do you know what that means?"
"Better than you do," he said. "Without protection of a dominant you're anybody's meat that wants you, like the wereleopards after you killed Gabriel."
I pushed away from the wall. "If you had told me what was happening to them, Richard, I'd have helped them."
"Would you?" he asked. He motioned to the gun in my hand. "Or would you just have killed them?"
"No, that's what Sylvie wanted to do, not me." But I stood there with the gun in my hand and didn't know a graceful way to put it down.
"I know how much you hate shapeshifters, Anita. I didn't think you'd give a damn, and no one else did either or they'd have told you. They all thought you wouldn't care. I mean if you could reject someone you supposedly loved because they turned into a monster once a month, what chance did strangers have?"
He was being deliberately cruel. I'd never seen him do anything just to hurt, just to try and dig the knife in a little deeper. It was petty, and that was one thing Richard was not.
"You know me better than that," I said.
"Do I?" he said. He sat down on the bed, grabbing two handfuls of sheet. He raised the cloth to his face and took a long deep breath. He watched me with angry eyes while he did it. "The smell of you still moves me like some kind of drug, and I hate you for it."
"I just spent a few minutes inside your head, remember. You don't hate me, Richard. It'd be less painful if you did."
He crumpled the sheet in his lap, hands balling the cloth into tight fists. "Love doesn't conquer all, does it?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No, it doesn't."
He stood in an almost violent movement, pacing the room in a tight circle. He came to stand in front of me. There was no "magic" now, just two people. But it was still hard to stand so close to him. Still hard to know I wasn't allowed to touch him anymore. Dammit, it shouldn't have been this hard. I'd made my choice.
"You were never my lover, now you're not even my girlfriend. You are not a shapeshifter. You cannot be my lupa."