I reached past Monica and touched Vivian’s arm. She startled and turned wide eyes to me. She was a wereleopard—you didn’t sneak up on them—but I’d genuinely startled her. What was she thinking about so hard?
Asher said something to Jean-Claude. I caught enough of it to know it was French and that was all, but whatever he said, Jean-Claude looked less happy than I did about Monica. I watched Asher’s face as he looked at the other man, and I knew that look. It was the same look he’d had when he tried to kiss Micah tonight. What the hell was wrong with Asher tonight? He could be pushy and a pain in the ass, but he usually had a reason that I could figure out. Tonight I was lost.
The next senior girl was Stephen’s ballerina. I wondered how they’d top or even come close to what Nathaniel and his had done. But lucky for everyone concerned, it was a jazzy tap dance to some older Broadway musical number. The girl and Stephen were both in fedoras, white dress shirts with rolled-up sleeves, loose collars, unbuttoned vests, and belted dress slacks. Both of them had hair past their shoulders; his was curly and blond, hers was curly and brown. His suit pieces were black and hers were thin navy pinstripes.
The number was funny, with sliding pratfalls across the stage. They slid from one corner of the stage to the other, passing each other by inches. It was athletic, fun, and so different from the other two numbers that it worked.
They ended with her jumping into Stephen’s arms and him carrying her offstage. The applause was immediate this time with laughter mixed in; we’d needed something light after the sadness of the last number.
“Very Gene Kelly,” Micah said.
I said, “I didn’t even know Stephen could tap-dance.”
Vivian said, “He learned for the show.”
“Wow,” I said, “that’s quick.”
Vivian smiled and a look of quiet pride crossed her face, the most positive emotion I’d seen on her face all night. Stephen and the senior girl were taking their bows, and he had a handful of roses from her bouquet. Vivian beamed up at him and you didn’t have to know a thing about them to see that she loved him.
The stage cleared, the music changed, and this was the one that had made Jason nervous. He and the last senior were about to dance a number that he’d choreographed for them. He did a lot of the choreography at Guilty Pleasures, but he’d said, “It’s not the same, Anita. Customers don’t really care if we dance, not really, they want to see skin. This is different.” I’d never seen him nervous like that about performing in public before. It had been both endearing and a little nervous-making.
I CAUGHT J.J. smiling and running her finger over his name where it was written in the program. It was a wistful smile, as if she were thinking of things that might have been.
She and Jason were both only twenty-three, but that smile was sad like doors had been closed, choices made, and no turning back. Or maybe I was being overly romantic. Nah, not me, not romantic. Every man in my life would say that wasn’t my gig.
The ballerina entered to a dim stage at a run. She was dressed in a silky white nightgown, and her face, her body, everything telegraphed fear. But like in any good horror movie the scary thing is never behind you if that’s where you’re looking.
Jason jumped from the ceiling. I knew he had to have been on the catwalk, but it looked like he simply jumped from the sky and landed on feet and hands in front of her. Her scream as she turned and saw him cut through the sudden silence of the audience. There was still no music, as he stood, slowly, dressed in only close-fitting tights so that the muscles in his upper body writhed and molded as he came to his feet. His hair was loose, a fall of yellow around his shoulders, half hiding his face. He stood there muscled, beautiful, feral, and as she radiated fear, he gave off waves of predator.
The girl turned and ran. Jason was a blur of movement and was just suddenly in front of her. She gave another scream, but it was almost drowned by the gasp from the audience.
Music came up slowly, as she began to run around the stage and he was always there, always ahead of her. I knew he was a werewolf. I knew he could move faster than any human, but I’d never seen him do it, not Jason.
He always seemed more human than most, but on that stage, in this moment, he stopped pretending. He was a muscled blur, hair flying around him as he moved.
The girl fell to the middle of the stage at last. Her thin chest was rising and falling so hard I could see it. She held an arm out as if to ward him off, as he stalked around her.
I heard J.J.’s breath go out in a long shudder. I looked away from the stage to her for a moment. Her face was intent and raw with some emotion that I couldn’t define.
Micah touched my hand and I looked back to find that Jason and the girl were dancing. It was as if he’d watched a cat play with a mouse and choreographed it, except that this cat was thinking more sex than food.
The girl played the virgin victim, slender arms rising and falling, hiding her face, her body leaning away, only to find his arm, his chest, his body there to catch and hold her, and then as the music grew she melded into his body and they danced. They danced, they moved, and he showed what his body was capable of and she held her own. There weren’t many human dancers that could have kept up, and fewer still who were seniors in high school. I didn’t have to know more about dance than I did to realize I was seeing something special, someone special. Hell, two someones. It was almost hard for me to watch and think,
That’s Jason, that’s our Jason
.
The music changed, subtly at first, and then it was Jason who was pulling away, the girl who was reaching out to him. I thought it was a seduction finished until I realized that Jason was running now and the girl was just suddenly there. It wasn’t superhuman speed that put her always in front of him, but him looking back, him reluctant. They turned the seducer into the victim and gradually it was Jason who projected fear, and the girl who began to stalk him.
The music built and built as they danced around each other on the stage, and then he fell. It was one of those graceful falls where he caught himself, his hair trailing down so his face was completely hidden, and his strong muscled arm reached outward as if to ward off a blow, as she crept closer.
Her hand closed on his, and it was as if the world narrowed down to their fingers interlacing. He collapsed onto the stage, his arm at a harsh angle as she held his hand and turned to look out at the audience. Her face was clear and clean, eyes defiant, so straight, so tall, so in control with him crouched at her feet. She jerked on his arm as if pulling it behind his back, and he was on his knees, spine bowed as if in pain. She let go of his hand abruptly so that he half fell, and then she began to walk offstage. Two spotlights held on them as she moved away, the lights growing dimmer as she moved proud and brave. Jason collapsed in the light and began to weep, great, silent racking sobs that made his whole body rise and fall with it as her breath had at the beginning of the dance.
The lights were almost gray, almost out, as she stopped at the very edge of the stage to look back, and he came to his knees, one leg outstretched, one arm reaching out to her, the other arm across his face as if to hide his tears. There was a moment where they froze like that and the music stopped. The girl turned and left the stage, and Jason fell into a heap in the middle of it, and the light left.
The silence this time was longer, and I swear I heard several people inhale as if they’d been holding their breaths. Jason and the girl came to the center of the stage and took each other’s hands still in silence, and it was only as they moved toward the front of the stage that the audience reacted. The crowd rose in a thunderous mass, calling “Bravo,” and just screaming as if they were at a rock concert instead of a dance recital.
We clapped until our hands were sore. Micah hugged J.J. and I realized she was crying. I hugged her, too. Jean-Claude’s arm went around my shoulders and I turned to find a kiss waiting for me. He spoke above the dying rumble of the crowd. “They are all growing up, our young men.”
I could only nod. I’d known Jason and Nathaniel since they were nineteen, and the boys I’d met were not the men I’d seen tonight. I wasn’t sure if
growing up
was the right term, maybe more growing into themselves.
Asher was already sitting down. I looked at him and saw the shine of pinkish tears on his face. I moved past Jean-Claude to lean over him. He wiped at the tears as if he didn’t want me to see, but he took the kiss I offered, though his heart wasn’t in it. I asked, “Are you all right?”
“I didn’t know our little wolf could be that beautiful,” he said.
“Me either,” I said. But looking into his face I wasn’t sure I meant the same thing he had meant. It was one of those moments when the same words can mean so many things. I knew I was missing something, but I was so puzzled I couldn’t even figure out what questions to ask to get past Asher’s mood. Something was up, something serious and emotional, and I didn’t know what that something was.
The audience started moving toward the stage. The parents of the smallest dancers apparently could get their children directly from the stage. Monica came back to us with Matthew in her arms.
J.J. had found Jason and was being introduced to his dance partner. The girl was obviously excited to meet J.J., who had done what the girl dreamed of doing. J.J. was a professional dancer in one of the top dance companies in the United States and maybe the world. Most dancers would never make that cut.
Micah and I moved forward hand in hand to find Nathaniel. Vivian was just suddenly behind us as if nervous to be in the crowd by herself. I offered her my other hand and she took it with a grateful little smile. Vivian was usually pretty nervous, but I hadn’t realized she didn’t like crowds. Had she never liked crowds, or was it new? She was one of our wereleopards. I should know these things.
Wicked was suddenly with us. “You shouldn’t make us split the security, Anita.”
I glanced back but was too short to see Truth with Jean-Claude and Asher. “Sorry,” I said.
Micah held a hand up and I knew he’d seen Nathaniel, or Stephen. Wicked helped us get through the crowd and there they were. Stephen came off the stage to hug and kiss Vivian. He was as downright happy as I’d ever seen him. Then Nathaniel was there and it was my turn to be hugged. He lifted me off my feet and spun me. It made me laugh out loud. He was just so full of himself, and he should have been.
He kissed me while he was still holding me above him, so that I slid down his body still locked in the kiss, held in his arms. He got me to my feet, breathless from his attentions.
Micah clapped him on the shoulder and was suddenly getting a full-body hug. There was a moment when Micah hesitated and then he just went with it. You saw hugs like it on every sports field in the world, but when the hug broke Nathaniel kissed him, and that you didn’t see so much in sports. In private, they had kissed, but never in public. There was a moment when Nathaniel looked startled, and I think he was going to apologize, but Micah shook his head and put a hand on the back of the other man’s neck and leaned in and kissed him back, softly and thoroughly. Micah pulled back smiling and Nathaniel looked a little dazed, and then that smile came back, the one he’d leapt off the stage with, so happy that it just beamed off him.
I put my arms around them both and held them. Something behind me made me turn. I found Jean-Claude and Asher standing with Truth beside them. Jean-Claude’s face was beautiful and unreadable, the face he used when he was hiding what he was thinking, but Asher’s face made up for it. Anger, no, rage. Something had made Asher absolutely furious.
I went back to hugging my men and enjoying this moment, but I knew now the moment would pass and I’d have to deal with that look on Asher’s face. Some moments are perfect, and then someone comes along and fucks it up. Ain’t it always the way.
JEAN-CLAUDE AND ASHER took the limo with Wicked and Truth and went ahead to Circus of the Damned. Why didn’t we keep security? One, our car wouldn’t hold that many people. Two, I was armed and had three wereanimals with me. I felt pretty secure.
Jean-Claude said he’d have a light repast prepared. He actually said that. He only talked like that when he was trying to hide emotions, thoughts, whatever. Was it cowardly to let him drive away with Asher, knowing they’d be fighting all the way home? Maybe, but I was hoping it wasn’t my fight. One of the serious downsides to sleeping with this many men was the emotional upkeep.
J.J., Micah, Vivian, and I waited for the men to change. Stephen could have gone home in his outfit, but Nathaniel and Jason weren’t really street safe. We’d gotten away with a guy-on-guy kiss and not gotten any negative reactions, but I think we all felt that wearing nothing but tights home would be pushing it in the buckle of the Bible Belt.
All three of them went to find the showers, and the rest of us wandered into the lobby to wait for them. We found the only bench and there was only room for three of us, and none of us were large people. Small bench. Micah insisted on standing, and I let him since I was still in three-inch heels from work. When he wore heels I’d let him sit.
J.J. and Vivian looked even more delicate and lovely in their gauzy dresses. J.J.’s looked almost like she could have worn it onstage in some of the numbers we’d seen tonight. Vivian’s was a little heavier with the shiny beading on it, but they both looked like the fair maidens ready to greet their knights who had fought the good fight. I looked like what I was, someone who had hurried out of work to make the event.
Micah leaned against the wall beside me. I took his hand in mine, and just that made me feel better. He was in his work clothes, too, after all, and I thought he looked great.
J.J. didn’t sit long before she had to get up and begin to pace. It wasn’t really pacing, it was more like she was humming in her head, but her idea of humming needed physical movement. She almost danced as she moved, tracing some shape with her flat slippers and her pink dress. She wasn’t that much taller than me, but she seemed much taller, longer, leaner, all graceful lines, like someone should have been painting her.
Vivian moved a little closer to me on the bench. She was a wereanimal, and our leopard, and when wereanimals feel low they like touch. It’s comforting. I took the hint and held my other hand out to her. She accepted my hand with a little smile and took it as an invitation to sidle close enough for our hips to touch. There was a time when that would have weirded me out, but I knew Vivian didn’t mean to encroach on my personal space. She just needed touch.
I raised my arm and let her cuddle under it so that my arm was across her slender shoulders. Sitting down I was taller through the torso than she was, so I could actually keep my arm around her and have her tucked underneath. I felt very guy all of a sudden, but the fact that she cuddled in against me in public meant that for Vivian, something was wrong.
Micah’s hand squeezed mine and I looked up to meet his gaze. I knew that look. I sighed and hugged Vivian, putting my cheek against her hair. “What’s wrong, Vivian?”
She straightened up and started to pull away. I tightened my arm around her and made it another hug. “Its okay, Vivian, just talk to us.”
Micah said, “We are your Nimir-Raj and your Nimir-Ra, and your friends. Tell us.”
She took a breath that made her shoulders shake. She huddled around herself, and I just drew her in against me. Her arms slid around my waist, hesitating at the feeling of the gun holster, but she finished the gesture and laid her head in the hollow of my shoulder. Whatever it was had to be bad for this level of public display, because Vivian was a very private person.
“The weretigers got Gina through three full moons without her shifting. She’s still pregnant.”
I frowned and looked up at Micah. He raised eyebrows as if to say he didn’t understand, either.
“Yes, Crispin and Domino are helping Gina control her beast so she doesn’t shapeshift and lose the baby,” I said.
Vivian clung tighter to me. Her body started to tremble, just a fine shaking. I let go of Micah’s hand and put both arms around her. Her voice was small and squeezed tight as she said, “Shapeshifters can get pregnant, but we can’t keep a baby to term. The shift is too violent and we miscarry.”
“That’s why the weretigers are trying to teach some of us how to do what they’ve done for centuries, so we can help the women in our animal groups have children.” When Crispin and Domino had come to live in St. Louis, we thought we’d just gained some new willing blood donors, a new dancer for Guilty Pleasures in Crispin, and a new security person in Domino, but the tigers had spilled one of their clan’s big secrets. The weretigers were the only animal group that could breed true. They had what they called purebloods, who were born with hair and eyes the color they would be when they took tiger shape, but they didn’t shapeshift until they hit puberty. These purebloods themselves didn’t shift into a normal orange and black tiger, but their victims did, usually. I hadn’t even known that the tigers bred true until I had to go meet with them in Vegas, but no one outside the tigers had known that they could calm a woman’s beast. The men were trained from childhood to work with their mates and help them get through an entire pregnancy without shapeshifting, so they didn’t miscarry. Crispin had quieted Gina’s beast the first time without realizing that it was a big surprise to the rest of us. We were now at three months and counting; if we made one more month it would be longer than any lycanthrope female on record outside of the weretigers. The tigers were freaked out that their psychic ability worked on any other wereanimal. One of the reasons a group of them was visiting us tomorrow was to discuss the implications of Gina’s pregnancy and what her potential breeding success could do to the entire weretiger culture.
Vivian buried her head tighter against me, so her voice was muffled. “I’d accepted that Stephen and I would never have children, that we couldn’t, that I couldn’t have children.”
“We are going to get Gina through this with her baby,” Micah said, and he sounded so sure. I wasn’t that sure, because not only did Crispin or Domino have to be with her every full moon, but someone had to be able to run to her side if she called for help. It wasn’t just a full moon that could make your beast rise; strong emotion, pain, lots of things could trigger that response.
I was one of the people trying to learn how to do what Crispin and Domino did so effortlessly. I wasn’t making much progress, maybe because my beasts were trapped in my human body and I couldn’t give them animal shape. Micah was learning, though, and he was good at it. Crispin thought he’d have it down cold in a few more days. All of us who were learning how to calm Gina’s beast were on speed dial for her, so that if she felt herself starting to lose control we could come running. The two tigers were really hoping some of the other dominants of the animal groups learned the skill soon, so they’d have more backup.
The shaking got worse as Vivian clung to me. “If Gina has her baby, I want one, too.”
I laid my cheek against her hair. “Then you can be next.”
She shook her head. “Stephen doesn’t want to.”
“What?” I asked.
She raised her face from my shoulder. Her lipstick and eye shadow were smeared across that perfect skin. “He says with his background he doesn’t want children. He’s afraid he’ll be like his father.”
“Stephen could never be like his father,” I said. Stephen and his twin, Gregory, had been sexually abused by their father for most of their lives until they left home. The father kept trying to apologize to them as part of his twelve-step program. They wanted nothing to do with him, and his insistence on trying to make amends for their nightmare childhood just seemed to me to be another way of putting his need for the apology above their need to be left the fuck alone.
“I told him that, but he’s afraid. He worked with Matthew some on his dance and it brought back horrible memories. Stephen’s been having the worst nightmares. His therapist says its a good sign, that things get worse so they can get better.”
It sounded like something a therapist would say, but out loud I tried to be more helpful. “Stephen is not his father.”
“That’s what his therapist says, but he’s scared.” She swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. It sounded painful, as if she were trying to swallow something that hurt. “I want children, Anita. I want them, and if Stephen doesn’t then I’d have to lose him to have children. I don’t want to lose him. I love him, and I know he loves me.”
I didn’t know what to say, but luckily Micah did. He came and crouched in front of her, putting a hand on her knee. “We’ve got six more months before Gina has her baby. That’s a long time in therapy. Six months can change everything if Stephen works on his issues.”
“But what if he doesn’t work it out?”
Micah gave her that patient it-will-be-all-right look. I put my face back against her hair as she looked at him. I had no comforting face to give her, so I’d just cuddle.
“It’ll work out,” he said, patting her knee in a sort of fatherly way. As Nimir-Raj he was supposed to be a combination of father figure, big brother, and boyfriend, but without the sex.
“How can you be so sure?” But I heard the note in her voice; she wanted to believe his surety, his face, his touch.
Micah smiled at her and there was that certainty in him that I’d seen almost from the beginning. He projected utter confidence that what he said, would be. “I know Stephen, and I know you, and I know you love each other. You’ve gone through a lot together; you’ll make it through this, too.”
“You sound so certain.” Her voice was still breathy, but hopeful now, too.
He smiled wider. “I am.”
I could not have said that, because I was always willing to believe someone would screw up. And because I couldn’t add my certainty to his, I kissed the top of her head where she’d cuddled into the bend of my shoulder.
Monica was suddenly in front of us. I looked up and my face was already set to warn her off, and Micah stood up I think ready for the same thing, but the look on her face wasn’t mean. I’d never seen her look kind before.
She called to J.J. “Can you keep Matthew occupied for a few minutes?”
J.J. glided over to us and got the little boy chasing her. I must have looked surprised, because Monica said, “I was married to a century-old vampire. I know what it’s like to want a baby and believe you’ll never have one. You know how rare it is for one of the older vampires to father a child.”
I did know. I could only nod.
Micah moved out of the way as Monica took his place kneeling in front of Vivian. “Let me take you to the ladies’ room so we can fix your makeup before Stephen gets back.”
Vivian blinked at her and then nodded wordlessly. “I don’t want Stephen to know I told anyone.”
“I won’t tell him,” she said, and she held out her hand. Vivian looked at Micah, who nodded, then at me, and I nodded, too. She went with Monica, and we trusted Monica not to fuck this up. It was a little like sending your daughter off with the mean girl from school and trusting her not to be mean, but strangely, I did.
Micah sat down beside me, and his hand found mine. We sat there and watched J.J. dart around the lobby while Matthew chased her. He was squealing and happy about it, but something about the game reminded me of Jason and his ballerina’s last number. Was I looking for similarities, or was the little boy really imitating Uncle Jason?
As he often did, Micah spoke as if he’d read my mind. “When I was Matthew’s age I begged for a little holster and gun set with plastic badge.”
“Because your dad was a sheriff ?”
He nodded. “He wasn’t sheriff when I was three, but he was in law enforcement and I wanted to be just like him.”
“It’s not just me, then; Matthew is trying to imitate some of the dancing he saw tonight.”
Micah watched the toddler chase the lithe, graceful dancer. “He’s started trying to figure out what it means to be a boy. He’s imitating the men he sees.”
I told him what Matthew had said about how all the big boys kissed me. Micah hugged me, and I realized it was the same way I’d hugged Vivian. It made me sit up straighter and even pull away a little.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m just wondering what Matthew’s learning and how it will affect him later.”
“But why did you pull away?”
I took in a deep breath and said, “Because I won’t let myself huddle like Vivian.”
He smiled and drew me in so he could kiss me on the forehead. “You will never huddle like Vivian, Anita.”
I hugged him, pulled him close, and wasn’t so sure. I wanted to ask him, did he want children. He’d had a vasectomy years ago so that a very evil shapeshifter couldn’t use him to get the women of their animal group pregnant. The bad guy had liked them pregnant and liked the pain and sorrow of the miscarriages. He had been one of the most twisted people I’d ever met, and I never regretted killing him.
I couldn’t have Micah’s biological child, but we’d been sharing a bed and a home with Nathaniel for two years. Did they want children? If I’d really been as brave as everyone thought I was, I would have asked, but I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want to know. I was afraid I already knew the answer.