"Thanks, Micah," I said.
"For what?" he asked.
"For being you, for being there, for being my sweetie, for being in my life."
"You're welcome, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, or with anyone else."
"Even with the danger and the preternatural politics?" I asked.
"I dragged you into the preternatural politics the first time we met."
"I was already pretty deep into them before you came along," I said.
"Maybe, but I'm good at the politics, and you help me be better."
"I could argue that you help me be better at them, but okay."
"Hurry home," he said.
"I am," I said.
"I love you," he said.
"I love you, too," I said. We did that couple thing where neither of you wants to hang up, but it finally felt silly and I hung up first. I loved Micah and Nathaniel. I loved us as a "couple." We worked. We worked better than any relationship I'd ever tried. Hell, the two of them helped my other relationships work better. Micah donated blood to Jean-Claude, and let him be on his short list of men he was willing to be na**d with, and in bed with, though only Nathaniel was allowed to cross certain barriers. Nathaniel was Micah's exception as Jade had become mine. My life had become something that I could never have planned even a year before, but as Micah said, just because you didn't plan something didn't make it a bad thing. It was just a thing, and one of the unintended things in my life was an eighteen-year-old weretiger who was having his first how-could-you-risk-your-life-and-scare-the-hell-out-of-me moment about my job. I was not looking forward to trying to reassure him, because Micah was right, I had serious issues about Cynric, Sin, God, what a nickname. It just drove home everything that bothered me about the kid, and that was the problem. I still saw him as a kid, and yet he was my lover, so I guess I didn't really see him as a kid, but he was so young. Not just young in years, but sheltered, inexperienced... young in that wet-behind-the-ears, haven't-seen-enough-or-done-enough way. I'd been his first lover, and yes, we'd all been mind-raped by the biggest, baddest vampire of them all. It had been done in a cold bid to keep me busy while nefarious plotting went on, but whatever or whoever had done it, I'd still taken Cynric's virginity as part of a metaphysical orgy. It still embarrassed me to think about it, what little I could remember of it. It had been like being blackout drunk, with only glimpses remembered even now.
I'd been his first, and I hated it. No, I felt guilty, because I didn't love him. Even after almost a year of him being with us, I still didn't love him. I liked him, and I had sex with him often enough, so I guess I like-liked him, but I didn't love him. I didn't come close to caring for him the way I cared for others in my life; a long list of others in my life were ahead of him in my affections, and that was why I felt guilty. I'd been the white knight riding in to rescue him and give him all his firsts, which meant I was supposed to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after with him, but I'd done that once with Nathaniel, and that had worked out really well. Come to think of it, I'd worked really hard to not love Nathaniel, too. He'd made me feel guilty for other reasons, but still I'd fought long and hard against loving him. Hadn't I fought against loving Jean-Claude, too?
I was almost at the driveway to the house. Crap, did I always fight before I loved someone? No, not always. I'd tried to love Richard from almost the beginning, and I had loved Micah from the beginning. Two men out of how many? Too many. Crap, I wished I hadn't thought of it that way, because now I felt guilty and stupid. Was Cynric just one more guy that I'd fight against caring for and eventually I'd feel for him what I felt for Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude? Crap, crap, crap, crap! I soooo wished I hadn't thought of it like that.
Chapter Twenty
I GOT OUT of the Jeep, which was second in the line of cars behind the already filled garage. When we were all home, and the bodyguards had their own cars, it was a lot of cars. The guards tried to keep the cars down, and changing, so no one watching could figure out how many, and who was guarding us at any given time, but it was still a lot of vehicles.
I had a sense of movement to the side of the house and made eye contact with Bram for a second; his skin was dark and almost truly black, but in leopard form he was spotted. Since others with paler skin were black leopards, I'd asked, and learned that your animal's coloring had nothing to do with your genetics as a person, but everything to do with the genetics of the line of beasts you descend from, so if you come from a line of leopards that run high to spotted yellow leopards, that's what you'll be, no matter how pale or dark your human form may be. I didn't nod at that brief glimpse of him, as he melted back out of sight; there was just the "seeing" of each other. If someone was watching us, it was unlikely that my acknowledging him any more than what I'd just done would give him away. Bram was ex-military and had been a combat vet before a wereleopard attack had ended his military career for "health" reasons. He and his usual guard partner, Ares, a werehyena and ex-military sniper, had broken all of us of nodding, waving, or acknowledging the guards on duty in any way. They'd pissed and moaned about it, until we all learned better. I wouldn't have waved, but once I would have given the smallest nod.
I tried the door handle before trying the key, because not everyone locked the door. It opened and I stepped into my house. The living room was dim, curtains still pulled, but laughter, talking, and bright morning light spilled through the open archway that led to the kitchen. It was a happy murmur of voices, not that fake murmur you get at a party sometimes where people are struggling to have a good time, trying to find things to talk about; no, this was a group of people who knew and liked each other and had things to share. I put my equipment bags down by the door. The smell of baking bread and bacon filled the air.
Micah stood in our bedroom door across the living room. He was on the phone. He waved, smiling, his green-gold leopard eyes shining in the dimness, catching what light there was and magnifying it. He was my height, built so delicate that almost any clothes hid that there was muscle underneath, and only the athletic set of shoulder to slender waist and h*ps hinted how much he worked out. He was wearing a T-shirt that fit us both; we even had a few pairs of jeans that we could share. I'd never dated anyone as tiny as I was; I sort of liked it.
I started to go to him, for a kiss, but what he said into the phone stopped me. He was going to need to concentrate on the call. "Stephen, you are not your father. You will not abuse like he did." Micah pushed his dark brown curls back over his shoulder, frowning. Stephen was a werewolf, so he should have been making this comfort call to his Ulfric, wolf king, but Micah had become de facto leader for almost the entire furry community, because he actually led, and wasn't pretending to be anything but who and what he was; the Ulfric, Richard Zeeman, was still trying to have a Clark Kent life and hide that he was also Superman, um, wolf, so he was at school teaching college students about biology. At least he wasn't at the junior high anymore, where being outed as a werewolf would have certainly cost him his job. The college would have a harder time with it.
Stephen and his twin brother had been horribly abused by their father, so he was terrified that his fiancee wanted to have a baby. Stephen was convinced that he would abuse a child, as his own father had done. Therapy can get you only so far with exorcising your childhood nightmares; after that it's willpower, and you, and people you can trust to hold your hand along the way. "I have faith in you, Stephen," Micah said. "If you don't want to have a child, that's your choice..." He listened for a minute, and then said, "Vanessa is set on children, I know that. I'm sorry she's given you the ultimatum, Stephen, but that's her choice, too." You think being leopard king and queen, Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra, would give you power to rule, and it does, but you also end up being part parent, part therapist, part carrot, part stick, part cheerleader, and part disciplinarian. I did my best, but Micah was really good at it.
I blew him a kiss; he pantomimed one back and went into the bedroom and closed the door. He'd be talking Stephen down for a while. I was honestly beginning to believe that Stephen wasn't going to work through his issues in time to save his relationship with Vanessa, and that was sad, because they loved each other to pieces, but anyone who ever said love conquers all was a f**king liar. Love is a good place to start, but it's a start, not an end.