Dev tensed against me and raised that big upper body off the couch, behind me. "My arm is completely asleep; f**k."
"Nothing's wrong," Micah said, "everyone's safe."
I sat up and felt the dried stickiness between our bodies give way. Dev yelled, "Ah, holy shit!"
I froze in midmovement. "What?"
"Condom... glued... to body... and you," he said in a tight, pain-filled voice.
"That's why you clean up afterward," Micah said, but he was laughing.
"Sorry," I said, "I won't move."
"It's okay... damage done. Damn!"
"I didn't move," I said.
"I did."
"I thought you said, damage done."
"You're unglued, but I'm stuck to myself."
Micah was laughing full out now. He stood up and offered me a hand. I took it, but I was already looking at my weapons all the way across the room. Technically we were safe, and there were always bodyguards around, but... guns are useless if they're out of reach.
He pulled my hand so that I was standing in front of him. He wrapped his arms around me, but kept them a little higher on my back than usual. He was still laughing, his face alight with it, those green-gold eyes sparkling. It made me wonder if a natural leopard would look like that if it laughed like a person.
"Everything is okay, Anita, you don't need the guns."
I wrapped my arms around him and looked into his eyes. Flat-footed we were even, eye to eye. "Am I that easy to read?"
"For me," he said, smiling.
Dev got up carefully from the couch. "I'm going to clean up."
"Anita needs to rinse off, but only rinse off, no shower sex."
I looked at him, and Dev said, "I think I lost skin off my bits, so she's safe; ow."
"Zerbrowski called," Micah said.
I tensed all over again. He hugged me tighter and repeated, "They need you at the station, that's all."
"Why? What's happened?" I couldn't relax into his arms this time. Zerbrowski wouldn't have called if there wasn't something wrong.
"They've got a man who claims to be the human servant to a master vampire named Benjamin. He won't speak to anyone but you."
I started to say I didn't know a master vampire by that name, and then the light dawned. Barney the vampire, Barney Wilcox, our first suspect in the abduction of the girl, had said that the leader of their rebel movement was named Benjamin. Barney had said Benjamin was old school and had a human servant. I hadn't believed him, or I'd thought his "leader" was pretending to be that powerful so the others would follow him. I hadn't believed that any vampire powerful enough to have a servant would buy into such modern ideals as vampires being independent of any master, just good little citizens. I'd assumed any master vampire would know better.
"Is he really a human servant?" I asked.
"They can't tell. You know that one of the points of having a human servant is that they can be the vampire's human presence. If he seemed like anything else, he'd be a bad human servant, right?"
I thought about it, then nodded. "Though by that definition I suck as a human servant, since I so don't hit the radar as human."
"You're a special case," he said.
I nodded. "Sure."
"Were you expecting Benjamin or his representative to show up?" he asked.
"No, I thought the other vampire was lying, or being fooled. I'll get dressed and check him out."
"Clean up first, trust me," he said, smiling.
"The police or the would-be human servant aren't wereanimals; they won't be able to smell anything."
He smiled a little wider. "Anita, rinse off, make it fast, but the police are sitting on your visitor. He'll be waiting when you're ready."
"I didn't hear my phone, did I?" I asked.
"Apparently not," he said.
"So Zerbrowski called you to get me."
"It's daylight, he can't call Jean-Claude."
"True."
"What's wrong? You look way too serious. What are you thinking?"
"That the first time Benjamin's name was mentioned it was a trap to kill me, and now his servant just walks into the police station to talk to me; why? Why not try to contact us in the old vampire tradition of meeting under a white flag to negotiate?"
"Maybe he thought he'd stand a better chance of living through it with the police watching you."
I looked at Micah. "Are you saying that he felt safer with the cops than with us?"
"He's human; that means a lawyer, and a trial if he turns himself in, but if he meets you on a hunt you can kill him. He might wonder what you'd do in private with all your shapeshifter guards around you."
"Good point."
"Clean up, get dressed, get armed, and someone will drive you to talk to him."
"I can drive myself."
"You said the first time was a trap to kill you. They know you're on your way, why not ambush you en route?"
I opened my mouth and then closed it. "Okay, I'll take guards, but they can only go so far into the police station; beyond that they just have to sit and twiddle their thumbs."
"Thank you for just saying okay, and not arguing." He smiled and kissed me, then licked his lips.
I frowned. "You tasted Dev on my lips, didn't you?"
His eyes rolled upward, as if he were thinking, and then I realized he was tasting. "Mm-hm," he said.
"You know, if you weren't a wereleopard that would probably bother you."
He shook his head. "It's not being a wereleopard that makes sharing you okay with me, but I probably wouldn't let you know I could taste another man on your lips if I weren't a wereleopard. If I were just human, I'd pretend more."
Once I would have had to ask questions to understand what he meant, but I totally got it now. Sometimes I thought a little bit more "animal" would help a lot of people be more real and honest in their lives.
"I'll rinse off in the showers. I'll be quick."
"Dev will be there; resist temptation."
I frowned at him. "I have bad guys to catch, I won't get distracted."
He raised an eyebrow.
I grinned, and blushed, then rolled my eyes. "Okay, I won't get distracted today."
He smiled, and kissed me again. "That's my girl."
And I was.
Chapter Forty-Four
WHEN TAKING BODYGUARDS to a police station, you have to make sure that none of them have outstanding warrants. The wererats especially recruited from some rough places. Bram, tall, very dark, and handsome, with the military haircut that he just kept getting redone, waited with the car. He'd been army, rangers, and then a wereleopard had attacked him in some jungle somewhere, and he'd had a medical discharge. The army's loss, our gain.
I purposefully didn't bring anyone that I was dating. I didn't want any more problems with the women at work, or the men for that matter. The multiple gorgeous boyfriends seemed to piss both groups off, just for different reasons. The men got all insecure, and the women got all jealous. So, Godofredo's tall, dark, and very solid muscle stayed at the car with Bram. I took Claudia and Pride in with me.
Claudia was partially to amuse myself. I loved watching the male cops react to such a large, beautiful, and physically imposing woman. It just giggled me, and I was starting to own the things that made me happy, not because it made sense, or was horribly important, but it was just a happy.
Claudia had thrown a black windbreaker over her arsenal, and her arms, so that she didn't frighten the other police too badly. I loved that she was another woman, and she looked as dangerous as she was; I was always too small to scare people just by showing up. Pride stood beside her like a gold shadow to her dark beauty. He was six-one to Mephistopheles' six-three. Pride's hair was short, falling in curls about an inch below his ears. His face was a little more triangular than Dev's, and his eyes were a pale gold that wasn't quite a brown and wasn't dark enough to be wolf or lion amber. I'd asked Pride what he put on his driver's license and he'd said brown, but it was a lie, just like Nathaniel was forced to put blue on his license, because lavender wasn't an option. Standard answers rarely covered the men in my life, or even the ones who worked for me.
Pride was handsome, broad shouldered, athletic, and good enough armed and unarmed that Claudia didn't have a problem with him being her backup. She had no higher praise. But honestly, Pride's two greatest assets for today were that he wasn't my lover, or anyone else's permanent sweetie, and he was gorgeous. I was hoping I could sort of wave him in the direction of Detective Arnet, Millie, and all the women at work, and distract them from my actual boyfriends. Maybe I could even take some pressure off Brice, though honestly my main interest was me. Brice was new, and one of the loves of his life hadn't been threatened by Arnet. She was beginning to spook me, and I wasn't easy to spook.