Danse Macabre(167)

Auggie looked at him, and the look was pained. He saw Jean-Claude, understood the potential in that body, and knew now that having had it once didn't mean you'd get it again. Jean-Claude played hard to get when he thought it would gain him an advantage. The look on Auggie's face said it was a really big advantage right now.

If it was real love, true love, then shouldn't it have made me feel bad to see Auggie wanting, hurting with doubt? Maybe, but it didn't. It made me happy, in that small, petty, vindictive way that always promises a really bad relationship. There are different kinds of love, I'd learned that — not less real, or more real, just different. Maybe what Auggie could cause a person to feel wasn't true love, after all. Maybe it was that kind of love that seems to come quick, and leave slow, but in the middle it's just fights, and pain, punctuated by great sex, until one of you has the courage to end it, and walk away.

Auggie turned that pained expression my way. "You would both turn me down." He sounded genuinely surprised. He glanced back at Jean-Claude. "I understand Jean-Claude, he's maneuvering for power, though my pride is hurt. I must not be as good with other men as I thought I was."

Jean-Claude answered with his head still poised on his arm. "If I feed your ego now, then I may lose the advantage I have gained."

Auggie nodded. "I understand that." He looked at me. "But her, I don't get her. I know I'm good with women. Hell, I'm an amazing lover."

I laughed, I couldn't help it.

He gave me a dirty look. "Do you disagree?"

I shook my head. "No, you're great." I didn't sound like I meant it, but I did. "Maybe I just like my men a little more modest, that's all."

He stabbed a thumb at Jean-Claude. "If he's ever been modest about his prowess in bed, it was false modesty."

"Why, thank you," Jean-Claude said.

Auggie shook his head. "That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?" I asked.

"That he doesn't have a modest bone in his body."

I actually didn't agree with that, but Auggie didn't deserve the explanation that went with it, so I let it lie. "You're entitled to your opinion."

"Which means you don't agree with me," Auggie said.

"It means what I said."

Auggie shifted his gaze to Micah. He looked at him, looked at him the way that men usually reserve for women. Like he was wondering what Micah would look like without his clothes.

"Here I stand all naked, and you're not even looking at me," Nathaniel said. "Should I be insulted?" He moved a few steps ahead of Micah, tossing all that heavy auburn hair over his shoulders, so his body was framed by it. He stood there and gazed at the vampire. He gazed at him from those lavender eyes, with that beautiful body.

"Maybe I like a little modesty, too," Auggie said.

Nathaniel moved his muscular arms to cover himself, let the hair spill over one shoulder, so that more of him was hidden. He peeked coyly around his own body and hair, gave innocent eyes, let his face be as young as it was in years. I was never sure how he did it, but he could play the innocent down to his toes. He could hide those jaded eyes, and play the ingénue.

Auggie laughed, that bright, happy laugh. "He's good." He turned to Jean-Claude. "Where did you find so many beautiful men?"

"I didn't," he said.

He looked past Nathaniel to me. "Anita, you have a true eye for talent."

"They aren't talent to me. They're people I care about, and I don't like games."

He motioned to Nathaniel. "This one plays games, and very well, I think."

I nodded. "Nathaniel likes games better than I do, better than Micah does, but he doesn't play them with us."

Auggie gave me a look that seemed to imply I was being naive. "Once a hustler, always a hustler, Anita."

"Was that meant to be mean?" I asked.

"I thought you liked honesty," he said.

"It was meant to be mean," Micah said.

"I know whore when I see it, because I was one. So was Jean-Claude, and Asher, and Requiem, and London. Mustn't leave out the ladies: Elinore, Cardinal, anyone who was ever Belle's line was a whore. We're created to be whores."

"Nathaniel is not a whore," I said, and reached for him. He pulled away from the touch, and gave me eyes full of loss. "I was."

"You researched us, before you came here," Micah said.

"You bet," Auggie said.

I touched Nathaniel's face, and tried to put into my eyes how much he meant to me. Whatever he saw in my face made him smile, a little. He pressed his hand over mine, pressing my hand against the curve of his jaw.

Micah stepped in front of us both. "You knew looking at me like that would be an insult. Nathaniel stepped up, took the attention, because it wouldn't bother him. Something about him protecting me bothered you. Why?"