“Did it help clear the women out?”
“Most of them.”
“So why fetch me?”
“Because Katie said to fetch you. She seems to feel that Nathaniel needs some reassurance.”
There were still too many women in the kitchen. There usually were, at parties like this, because they got tired of the boys club outside, but the energy was different from that. Katie and Nathaniel moved around the kitchen, but the five extra women in the room were in the way.
Katie said, “Elise, can you please move. I need to get something from that cabinet.”
Elise was a tall woman. She had let her hair go salt and pepper, but her makeup was flawless, and the bones of her face would make her beautiful when she was eighty, which she so wasn’t. She was either a young forty, or a very well-preserved fiftysomething. She moved out of Katie’s way, but only just enough, because two other women were also leaning against the cabinet and there wasn’t room to move without losing her view of Nathaniel washing dishes in the sink. Katie liked to clean as she cooked, and so he was helping do that, too.
I glanced from the three to the last two women who were near the door. What had Nathaniel done to get this reaction? Yes, he was gorgeous, but this was excessive. He saw me and the relief on his face was clear, at least to me. Something had happened; I didn’t know what, but something.
I went to him, and he wrapped himself around me, hugging me very tight, and just held on for a few seconds. It reminded me of my reaction outside with the crowd and the questions, when I’d clung to Micah, but Nathaniel was far more social than either of us. He raised back enough for us to kiss. I expected a good but chaste kiss, considering the audience we had. I was wrong.
He kissed me completely and thoroughly, his fingers digging and kneading into my back, the way a cat will treat a cushion just before the claws come out and it gets shredded. Micah could have brought just his claws out like that, but Nathaniel would have had to lose human form to do it, and I knew his control was better than that. For him to do anything this catlike here meant he was very nervous, the kiss meant nerves, and maybe a need to prove he belonged to me so the other women would back off.
I was a little stiff at first with the kiss, because it was way too much for me around the other police, or their wives, but his need and his nervousness made me force myself to relax into him. He’d explain later, and it would make sense. I believed that. I believed in him, and knew he’d have a reason for it.
He drew back and said, softly, “Missed you.” His eyes were uncertain.
“I noticed,” I said, and smiled at him.
Whatever he saw in my smile, my face, took the uncertainty out of his eyes, and replaced it with warmth, happiness, and that look we all get when we look at someone we’re in love with, as if a weight that we carried all our lives lifted when we looked into the face of our beloved.
“Wow, wish my husband greeted me at the door like that,” a woman with brown hair in two pigtails, halter top, and shorts said.
I glanced up to find several of the women looking appreciative, but the energy in the room had changed to something softer. I realized that the energy had been almost predatory, the way it can get at Guilty Pleasures sometimes. Women are more sexually aggressive at strip clubs than men, and their energy can be much angrier. I suddenly realized that one or more of the wives must have recognized Nathaniel from the club. It’s hard for most people to treat you like a real human being once they’ve seen you take your clothes off on stage. The wife, or wives, hadn’t been able to resist telling some of the other women and they’d wanted to see for themselves.
If it had been a female stripper recognized by men it would have been much more covert, because a bunch of men standing there gazing at a woman gets creepy pretty fast, but doing it in reverse the women didn’t see themselves as predatory. It never occurred to them that Nathaniel might be just as uncomfortable as a female dancer would be with the treatment. He was a man, men liked attention from women, or that was the thought. Actually, men can get just as embarrassed as women, and be made to feel just as bad about themselves, they’re just not allowed to admit it.
“He’s your . . .” the elegant Elise said, and she let the sentence trail off as if she wanted me to fill in the blank.
“Boyfriend,” I said. “We’ve been living together for three years.” I added that last part to make it clear it wasn’t just hot sex and breathtaking kisses. Duration in a relationship counts for most people, and makes them take it more seriously.
“A hello kiss like that after three years together, that’s impressive,” Elise said. Her tone held a certain disdain, nothing I could call her on, but it was there.
“How long have you been with your husband?” I asked.
“Five years.”
“Congratulations,” I said, though I wondered why only five years. She had to be over forty and the hair made me want to say fifty, but some people turn gray early, the face certainly didn’t look fifty.
She gave a small smile. “Thank you, Anita; it is Anita Blake, correct?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you, after hearing so much about you.”
“I hope it was all good things,” I said, smiling, because I was almost sure it wouldn’t be. My reputation for being the bad girl, or even the cop that shot first and asked questions later, didn’t endear me to everyone with a badge.
“What else would it be?” she said.
“Food’s up,” Katie said, voice too bright.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Elise said and glided out of the kitchen, tall and graceful. The other women trailed behind her.