to calm me down. I was going to hold on to my anger at this whole situation. I’d invited the Coalition to town to make things better; this wasn’t better.
“Don’t make her promise, Anita, please,” Ethan said.
I looked at him, surprised. I’d thought it was just Angel being Angel, but if Ethan was asking, then it was a plan, a plot. What the fuck was going on?
“They are playing both of us, Adler,” Olaf said.
“I’m beginning to think you’re right, Moriarty.”
“They aren’t playing you, Anita,” Nicky said.
“I don’t care what’s going on. I gave my word. I expect anyone that’s mine to honor that and not make me into a fucking liar.” I looked at Angel.
“You’re ruining my fun,” she said, but there was no teasing look to go with the words.
“You keep saying that she is yours,” Olaf said. “How is she yours? Is she one of your lovers?” He rolled the last word off his tongue in a way that would have pissed me off a few minutes ago, but I had the taste of Nicky’s mouth lingering on mine, and Olaf always fucked with me. I wasn’t used to my own people doing it.
“I told Leduc that Milligan and Custer were my people, too. You didn’t ask if they were my lovers.”
The lust-killer look slid into angry killer; it wasn’t really an improvement. “Are they your lovers?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He stayed angry, the tension trailing down his hands so they curled into fists. He wasn’t getting ready to fight; he was just so angry, it had to come out physically. I was the same way sometimes. “Tell me which of them are your lovers, Anita.”
I’d have liked to tell him to go to hell because it wasn’t any of his business, but there was something in the way he held himself that told me not to play games. If we were going to pull the pin on this particular grenade, I wanted it to be over something important.
“You know about Nicky, and you were on the same warrant with me in Washington State when I met Ethan, so you know we’re intimate.” So there wasn’t confusion later, I added, “Though Ethan has a serious girlfriend now, so he’s emergency food for the ardeur, not on the main list.”
“That is why you kissed Nicky hello and not Ethan?”
“Yeah.”
“So, the women are not your lovers either?”
I sighed and so wanted out of this conversation, but truth was truth. I wasn’t ashamed of my female lovers, but these were not the women in my life I was the most comfortable with. They were two of the newest, and we hadn’t worked out all the kinks in things yet. Angel slept with Jean-Claude and Richard, Ulfric of the local werewolves, more than me. She and I had sex with the men in my life together more than sex with just each other. She was cheerfully bisexual, just like her brother. The only other person I knew who was as truly bisexual as the twins, without a strong preference for either sex, was Nathaniel.
“It’s okay, Anita. You don’t have to stake a claim you don’t feel,” Angel said, and there was no teasing or smiling now. Some of the light had dimmed in her blue-gold tiger eyes, because they were the eyes of a tiger caught in her human face. All the pure-blooded clan tigers were born with animal eyes, though most people just thought her eyes were exotic human eyes. People see what they expect to see.
I looked at her unhappy face, and I didn’t want her unhappy. I closed the distance between us and slid my arms around her waist, which was surprisingly slender for someone so much taller than I was. I was still more accustomed to touching men. She smiled down at me and put her arms around my shoulders.
“The kiss has to be gentle,” I said, “or your lipstick will be all over me.”
She wrapped herself more securely around me, pressing her breasts into my face so I had to turn my chin up more not to touch my mouth to any of her. That mischievous smile was back on her face, and it made me happy to see it. She gave a little wiggle through the hips, which was usually an invitation to move my hands from waist to her ass, but I moved them up her back instead. Her back was strong and firm under my hands. I fought not to dig my fingers