“I’m just not good at casual sex. I’m sorry.”
“No, you are not,” and the anger was a little more.
I didn’t know what to do with his anger, or this fight, so I ignored it. Men will let you do that sometimes in a relationship because they’re not girls. “I may need something not feline that is one of the beasts I carry inside me. I don’t carry swan.”
“I tell you that I am tired of sharing you with other men, and that you collect them, and you ask for more?”
He was going to be the girl. Great. Fucking great. “I promise when I get back to St. Louis, we can have this fight. I swear. But right now, help me survive this case.”
“And how may I do that?”
“The weretigers are a little too much sometimes because of how many different flavors I’ve got inside me.” I’d been attacked by one tiger, but carried five different metaphysical colors of them. No one had been able to explain how that had happened. “Did you happen to find any wolves I could borrow while I’m here?”
“No wolves; the local pack seems to fear that you will be a disrupting influence on them, ma petite.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the news has gotten out that sex with you can be like a vampire’s bite. One taste and they belong to you.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but my pulse had sped.
“You lie to yourself, ma petite.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“You have not asked me to give up your pet name in many years.”
“It’s the way you’re saying it, like you’re angry and trying not to show it.”
“I am angry, because I am afraid for you. Vittorio was vicious in St. Louis, and it has been all over the news that three of their SWAT have been killed. They are not easily killed, your SWAT.”
What did I say to that? He was right. “I’m sorry I had to leave without talking to you first.”
“I hear true regret in that phrase. What would you have told me, if I had said it was too dangerous? What would you have done if I had said, do not go?”
I thought about that, then finally said, “I would have come anyway.”
“You see, you are not my servant. You will never be a servant.”
“I thought the idea was to make the vampire community think I was a good little human servant. I didn’t know you still thought I’d toe the line for you.” I had a little heat in my words, again. It was a trickle of anger to warm me. Of course, it was warm enough that anger might not be what I needed.
“That is not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
He made a soft, exasperated sound. “Perhaps I am still fool enough to believe that you will truly be mine.”
“And what the hell does that mean?”
He was quiet for so long that it was unnerving. Vampires didn’t have to breathe on the phone, and only years of practice made me sure he was still there. I waited, and finally he spoke. “You need some of our people with you. You need your own leopard, and wolf, or lion.”
“I don’t have a lion of my own, yet.”
“Our local Rex would be yours if you would allow it.”
“Yeah, and his Regina would hunt me down and kill me. I’ve met her. She’s pissed I’m sleeping with him. If I make him my lion to call, she’ll see that as a challenge. I’m good, Jean-Claude, but I’m not good enough to win a fair fight with a werelion of her power.”
“Then do not fight fair,” he said.
“If I cheat, then by lion law others can gang up on me and kill me for that. I’ve studied up on it since I met the new Regina of the St. Louis clan. Trust me, Jean-Claude, I have thought about this.”
“Do you truly believe she would kill you if you had a stronger claim on her king?”
“Yep,” I said, “because she told me that she would share him. That I could be his mistress but not his wife. She was his wife.”
“You did not mention this to me.”
“It’s lions, not wolves. My animal, not yours.”
He sighed, and it wasn’t his teasing sigh, just tired. “Ma petite, ma petite, when will you learn that what is yours is mine. Any danger to you, I need to know.”
“I’ll tell you all my secrets when you tell me all yours,” I said.
“Touché, ma petite, a fine deep cut that one.” He was back to being angry.
“Why are you angry with me?” I asked.
“You are right, I am being childish, but I don’t know how to help you. I don’t know how to keep you safe in Vegas. Do you understand that, ma petite? I do not know how to keep you safe from Max and his queen. I cannot help you from hundreds of miles away. I cannot send you our guards because you have a badge, and the police will not let our guards guard you. What do you want me to do, ma petite? What the hell do you want me to do?” He was yelling now. He almost never yelled. His losing his temper helped me keep mine. I’d never heard him use the word hell before. In fact, hearing him that out of control let me know just how scared he was for me. That scared me.