“You’re really worried,” I said, studying his face.
“Let me go into battle with the feel of your body like a shield. Let my challenger smell you on my skin. Let him be as intoxicated by the mere breath of you on my lips.” He touched my face, raised it up for a kiss. What could I do? I went up on tiptoe to meet him partway.
I moved back from the kiss to say, “That’s still the plan, but we were going to all work out, clean up, and then have our . . . date before the fight.” It wasn’t really a date, but I just couldn’t make myself call it a hookup, or a fuck date, at least not in front of Benito and Claudia.
“We could be very efficient and use the shower together. We could clean up and start our date early.”
I knew that Micah and Nathaniel were having their own “date” currently, and Jean-Claude was in the sword class he’d started with some of the older vampires and shapeshifters. In fact, everyone I might have spent time with was either exercising, working, or otherwise occupied.
“Unless you are expected elsewhere by one of your other lovers,” Rafael said. He managed to be almost neutral as he said it.
“No, nothing scheduled but cleaning up, and you’re right, sharing the shower would be efficient and it would conserve water.” I tried to be serious as I said it, but a smile crept in at the end.
The smile he gave in return was worth saying yes. It chased all the gloom and doom away and left him looking happy. We started walking hand in hand toward the showers, and this time we didn’t stop to debate anything.
3
RAFAEL AND I were holding hands and all romantic until we got close enough to the showers to hear the rumble of male voices and realize that the four of us weren’t the only people showering. If I’d been by myself, I’d have used the shower in the room I shared with Nathaniel and Micah, but it seemed a little awkward to use their shower when I was planning on getting a different man out of his clothes. Also, I wasn’t sure where they were on their date, and since Micah was still working out his issues about it being just the two of them without a girl in sight, I didn’t want to crash their rendezvous. Nathaniel was for Micah what Kane kept trying to make me for Asher—the one person who had changed his sexual orientation, except in this case Micah had been heterosexual until he fell in love with Nathaniel.
“What’s wrong?” Rafael asked.
I realized that I’d stopped moving forward, so he was a little ahead of me with our arms stretched between us. “Showers are a little crowded for romance.”
He looked up as if he’d only just heard the water and the male voices raised in good-natured shit giving. It was Claudia who said, “We are wereanimals, Anita, we don’t notice nudity.”
I looked up at her. “You all keep saying that and most of the time it’s true, but all it takes is one guard noticing the naked girl in the room and suddenly it’s awkward as hell.”
“Who noticed and made you uncomfortable?” she asked, and her voice was back to that drill-sergeant/boss-from-hell/parent you’re-in-deep-shit tone again.
“The werewolf, Ricky,” I said.
“Which is why we fired him,” she said.
“He was also not good enough to be part of our guard,” I said.
“He did not train hard enough to get better,” she said.
“No, he whined almost as much as Kane,” I said.
“If this Ricky is gone, why are you so apprehensive?” Rafael asked.
“I could just shower with the other people in there, and I have, but you and I were going to get each other out of our clothes and have at least foreplay in the shower. I don’t like an audience.”
“Nor I, but we can use one of the closed showers with curtains,” he said.
“Like Claudia said, you’re wereanimals, so it’s not just sight that’s the problem. To most of you smell and hearing are as intimate as a visual.”
I liked the curtained shower stalls, and I wasn’t the only one. It hadn’t been just me among the women that didn’t like showering with the men. I’d even come in more than once to find men in the curtained stalls. Men like more privacy than you think, or at least some do. It’s not only women who are modest; another double standard bites the dust.
He took the step back to me and used our still-clasped hands to draw me into a hug. “That is true, but I want as much of you as I can have today, Anita. I am willing to use the showers with curtains.”
I put my free hand on his chest where it showed above the tank top. The skin was smooth and warm, the sweat already drying. “The other thing is that having sex while the other guards are in the room might make them all wonder if it’s okay for them, too.”
“They would not dare approach you,” Rafael said.
“Probably not, but the other female guards might have a harder time in the showers.”
“I won’t have any problems,” Claudia said.
“They’re afraid of you and me for different reasons, but they’re not afraid of most of the other female guards. Also do we want to encourage everyone to have sex in the public showers here?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time for you and one of your . . . people,” Claudia said, and then looked almost embarrassed, which didn’t happen often. She was like most bodyguards—nothing their clients did fazed them.
“Yeah, but that time you made sure it was just Nicky and me, and I almost drained him to death,” I said, frowning.
Rafael hugged me closer. “I am not your Bride of Dracula to be drained of life by the ardeur, Anita.”
“And I have better control over the ardeur than I did back then,” I said.
“We can kick everyone else out,” Benito said.
“They’re in the middle of showering,” I protested.
“I’ll go in and tell them all to hurry up and finish.”
Claudia nodded. “Yes, do that.”
“Wait, no,” I said, as Benito started to move past us. He turned and looked at me.
“What is wrong, Anita?” Rafael asked.
“It just seems, I don’t know, high-handed to kick them out of the group showers.”
Rafael laughed and kissed me on the forehead. “It is adorable that you keep forgetting that you are both their employer and a queen.”
I frowned up at him. Most short people hate to be called adorable; even cute can be problematic. “I’m their boss, but technically Jean-Claude pays their salaries so he’s their employer, and I’m not a queen yet, not until I marry Jean-Claude.”