Flirt(7)

My pulse was suddenly in my throat and it wasn’t because I was afraid. Mary had said she’d take a long lunch, and that suddenly didn’t seem like a bad idea. I frowned, and tried to think a little better than that.

Nathaniel leaned in and whispered against my face, breath so warm, “Too much?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“I don’t think this is going to make her laugh,” Micah said.

I shook my head.

Nathaniel backed up enough so he wasn’t breathing his words directly on my skin. “I’m not jealous of you and Micah, because you still react as if me touching you is new.”

I turned and looked at him, frowning at little. “Are you insinuating that other people have gotten tired of you touching them?”

“Now you’ve gone and made her think,” Jason said. “Thinking will not make her smile.”

I gave him an unfriendly look.

He held his hands up, as if to say, Don’t shoot the messenger . “You know I’m right.”

Nathaniel said, “I’m saying that other people have wanted me for a night, or a few days a week, or a month, but you never seem to grow tired of me.”

I just looked at him. “They were crazy.”

He smiled, not the sexy smile, but the big, bright, happy smile. The one I hadn’t even known he had in him until we’d been together for months. It made him look even younger than twenty-one, and I had the feeling that maybe that smile was what he might have been if he hadn’t lost his family and been on the streets before age ten.

Jason leaned around Nathaniel and said, “I’m remembering why I don’t go to lunch with all of you.”

“Why?” I asked.

He gave us all a look.

“I think Jason feels left out,” Micah said.

It was one of those moments that Miss Manners didn’t cover. I had sex with Jason, but he was my friend, not my boyfriend. There was a difference. So if your guy friend and sometimes lover feels left out when you’re cuddling your boyfriends at lunch, do you owe him a cuddle?

“I’m closer,” Nathaniel said, “but I think he’d rather have the kiss from you.”

Jason, being Jason, then put his arm around Nathaniel and said, “It’s nothing personal, dude, but she’s not a dude.” He did a drawling movie-dude voice to go with the line.

It made us all smile, and I leaned past Nathaniel to give Jason a quick kiss. It was almost as if now that we had the touching out of the way we could talk.

We’d found out on the walk over that the dance class that they were taking was going well, but the routine that they were trying to teach some of the other dancers from Jean-Claude’s clubs had hit a snag.

“You said you’d explain the problem you’re having teaching the dancers,” I said.

“I can’t convince some of the women from the Circus and Danse Macabre that I’m their teacher, not just a cute guy,” Jason said.

“They don’t respect you?” Micah asked.

“They hit on me,” he said.

Micah and I exchanged a glance, then both looked back at him. “And that’s a problem for you, how?” I asked.

He grinned. “Okay, I love to flirt, but not when I’m teaching. I can’t play favorites, and I can’t use the class as a dating pool, because that would be playing favorites. I’m trying to get these women to work harder than they’re used to, and they’re trying to flirt in part to get out of the hard work.”

Nathaniel explained, “Most of the human women come from a stripper background, and most strip clubs aren’t like Guilty Pleasures, Anita. They don’t really want you to dance at most clubs, just move a little and take your clothes off. Jason is asking them to dance, really dance.”

“Dancing is hard work,” he said, “and some of these women have used their beauty to avoid hard work all their lives.”

“You keep saying women ,” Micah said. “I thought you were training up some of the male dancers, too.”

“We are, but most of them came from Guilty Pleasures, and Jean-Claude always made us put on a real show there. The other wereanimals aren’t arguing about it, either.”

“They know if they don’t do what they’re told, it will get back to the head of their animal group,” Micah said.

Jason smiled at him. “Yeah, Caleb is sooo not happy that you made him move from waiter at Guilty Pleasures to dancer, O Leopard King.”

Micah gave a small frown. “I didn’t make him change jobs; I gave him a choice of jobs that would make him more money, because he was complaining he needed more money. I’m his Nimir-Raj; I helped him brainstorm some alternate jobs. He thought stripping was the lesser evil.”