Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,111

and me, but that had been much closer to the surface. If he could feel it now, he was even more sensitive to it than I thought.

“You need any more help, Marshals?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “but thanks for offering. We’ve got this.” I was looking straight at Olaf when I said the last part.

“Do we?” Olaf asked, and his voice was a little lower, too.

“We do,” I said.

My lioness stalked up that long path inside me, each footfall carefully placed like she was creeping up on a gazelle at a watering hole. We would not be able to sneak up on him, I thought. My lioness stared at me with those golden amber eyes, and I suddenly knew just what she meant: Olaf would not expect us to fight him. We were sneaking up on him in plain sight.

“If you both say so,” Livingston said, and then, to the other men, he added, “Duke, Newman, why don’t you step outside and see us off?”

“You go ahead,” Newman said. “I just want to double-check something with my fellow marshals.”

Duke started to protest, but Livingston took his shoulder and started talking about something to do with this year’s chances for the local sport’s team. It was enough to distract Duke and get him through the door.

“You should go with them, Newman,” Olaf said.

“I’m good right here.”

I had a moment of hesitation. On one hand, I didn’t want to be alone with Olaf more than I had to be; on the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted Newman at ground zero. The lioness gazed up at me with golden amber eyes, and thought/asked/translated my feelings that Newman was our cub, a big grown male cub, but still one we wanted to protect. She was right. I was treating Newman like a child, and he wasn’t one. My confusion puzzled her, and she began to fade into that darkness inside me, but she left me with one thought: She wanted a mate but not one that would kill the cubs. No, it wasn’t a word-for-word translation, but that was the gist of it.

I stood there, just me, the scent and the feel of her fading around me. But even with her gone, I still had the message. “Go out with the others, Newman.”

“Blake, are you sure?”

“Yes,” I said. I was strangely calm as I stared at Olaf.

He was still sitting down; even with my lioness thick on the air, he hadn’t thought either she or I was danger enough to stand for. “You heard her,” Olaf said.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Newman said.

“Go, Newman,” I said. “We just need the room for a few minutes. It won’t take long.”

“It’d better not. I can’t distract Duke for long.”

I felt him move and heard the door shut behind him, but I kept my attention on Olaf.

“Where has your lioness gone, Anita?”

“She’s still in there, here, and she has a message for you. We both do.”

He smiled so arrogantly. He’d been the biggest kid on the playground for most of his life, and now he was a werelion. There’s a certain arrogance that runs in them, too, because they’re usually the biggest, baddest animals on the playground. I wondered if his attitude would have been better if he’d been turned into a wolf, or a leopard, but now we’d never know. The die was cast. Lion it was.

His smile was fading around the edges. I think I stared at him too long. He wasn’t sure what I was doing, and he cared what I did now. It was a chink in his armor, just like my fear of him had been for me.

“What is the message, Anita?”

“She likes you. She thinks you would be strong enough to be my lion to call, and her mate.”

The arrogant smile flared back. “Your inner lion is wise.”

“She didn’t understand why I didn’t just jump at the chance to have you in Florida, but she understands why I hesitated now. We can’t have a male that kills all the cubs. We’ll be alone before we let that happen.”

“Cubs? You have no children.”

“Kaitlin is a cub, or a fellow lioness, and we are not okay with you playing cat and mouse with her.”

“I was teasing. You know I do not like blondes.”

“You did the same kind of teasing with me once.”

“Are you jealous?”

I sighed and tried to think how to explain this to him. “Look, Moriarty. If I really am your Adler, then you know that I’m not okay with you