Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (5 page)

“The lone guy in a room full of girls,” I said.

He nodded, grinning. “I was the only one who could do the lifts, and tote and fetch the girls. It was fun. I was the male lead in most of the musicals in school.”

“I didn’t know you could sing.”

He laughed. “I dance better than I sing, but I can act, and I can sing, and I can dance. The combination is sort of rare in a small private high school, especially among the guys.”

This was a side of Jason I hadn’t known anything about. “I thought you were going to college for a business degree when I met you, not theatre.”

“My parents wouldn’t pay for a theatre degree. They would pay for a business degree.”

“If you didn’t have to pay for college, why get a job as a stripper?”

“Bugging the hell out of my parents was some of the charm. But it was a way of performing that I could do on the weekends, which meant I could go to college full time.”

“Does the rest of your family think you’re gay?” I asked.

“My oldest sister does. I don’t know about the rest. Probably. I’m a stripper and I live with JeanClaude.”

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“Yeah,” Jason said.

I stroked my hand along Jason’s stomach—not sexual, just trying to be comforting. “Her issues must have reminded you of your family.”

“Yeah, bad fucking timing, huh?”

Nathaniel went up on his elbow, his hand resting on my hip. “What can you do?”

“Short of getting the kind of job that my dad thinks is a manly job, getting married, and starting a family, not a damn thing.” He cuddled down in the pillows, putting his arm across my stomach, his face against my shoulder. “You’ll never believe what my mother wanted me to do.”

“What?” Nathaniel and I asked at the same time.

I felt Jason smile against my shoulder. “She wanted me to bring my girlfriend home to prove to my dad I’m straight. So he can die in peace.”

“Bad timing for you and Perdy to break up,” I said.

“I couldn’t have taken her home, Anita. You have no idea how bad the jealousy had gotten. She’d flip out when the first old girlfriend said hi on the street.”

“Like crazy jealous,” I said.

He nodded, snuggling closer, as if I were his life-size teddy bear. “I told her that Perdy and I broke up. She said, ‘Pick a friend, I know you have other friends. Bring a girl home and make your father happy.’”

“What did she mean about the ‘I know you have other friends’ comment?” I asked.

“I was a slut in high school and college. I slept with any girl that would have me. The entire town thought my best friend and I were a couple. At best, they thought I was bisexual, and to most people there ain’t no such thing.”

“You’re either gay or straight,” Nathaniel said, and something in the way he said it made me look at him.

“You have trouble with people thinking otherwise?” I asked.

Nathaniel shrugged. “I did; now I know what and who I am, and I’m okay with it. But when you’re young, it’s harder.”

“You’re twenty-one, that’s not exactly ancient.”

He smiled and kissed me. “I had a long, hard childhood; it makes me older.”

He’d been out on the streets before he was ten. He’d been a child prostitute not long after. By thirteen he’d been addicted to drugs. He’d been clean since he was seventeen, but saying Nathaniel had had a hard childhood always sounded like calling the
Titanic
a boating accident. I touched his face, drew him down for a more thorough kiss. He drew back, laughing. “Even I need more recoup time than this, Anita.”

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I blushed, I couldn’t help it. “I didn’t mean that.”

Jason looked up with his body still tight against mine. “Blushing, that’s so cute.”

“Stop it, both of you.”

“Sorry,” Jason said.

Nathaniel just smiled at me. “Do you want to take a girl home to meet your dad?”

Jason frowned at him. “I’d love to rub my dad’s face in the fact that I like girls. I wouldn’t mind if I were gay, but having him not believe me is just…” He laid his head facedown on the pillow.

“Frustrating,” Nathaniel said.

“Infuriating,” I said.

Jason rose up enough to say, “Both, more. We never got along, him and me. I’m his only son after two daughters. I was his only chance for someone to be a chip off the ol’ block. He went through college on a football scholarship.”

“I take it he’s taller than you are,” I said.

“He’s over six feet. I’m closer to my mother’s height.”

“Bad luck,” I said.

“I don’t mind being short, but my dad hated it. If he hadn’t pushed so much I might have tried harder at sports, but it really wasn’t my thing.”

“Why don’t you take Anita?” Nathaniel said.

“Take Anita where?” Jason asked.

“Home to meet your dad.”

We both stared at him. We stared long enough and hard enough for him to look uncomfortable.

“What?” he asked.

“What do you mean, what?” I asked.

“I’m with Anita on this one, Nathaniel. I mean that would be too sitcom. Taking home a girl who happens to be a friend, but isn’t my girlfriend, to prove to my dad I’m not gay. That’s just too sweeps week.”

Nathaniel sat up, the sheet pooling in his lap, barely covering. “You and Anita are friends, right?”

Jason and I looked at each other. “Yeah,” I said.

“Yes,” Jason said.

“You and she are lovers, right?”

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We both said a slow yes.

“You hang out with us. We watch movie marathons, and go out to eat. You aren’t with us the way Micah is, but you spend a lot of time with us, right?”

“Yeah, but…,” Jason said.

“Why
but
?” Nathaniel said. “She’s your friend, she’s a girl, you really are lovers. It’s not a lie.”

Jason and I looked at each other. He shrugged. I turned back to Nathaniel. “I don’t think a fuck buddy is what his mom had in mind, Nathaniel.”

“You’re more than fuck buddies, Anita, even I know that.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I was speechless, not out of distraction, but because I just couldn’t think my way past it all. I knew there was a reason not to do this, a good one; I’d think of it in a second.

“I can’t take Anita home to meet my family; it would imply things that aren’t true,” Jason said. There, he’d said it. “Yeah,” I said.

“But you aren’t going to say you’re engaged or anything. Your mom wants you to bring home a girlfriend, so bring one home. If you don’t care what your dad thinks, then screw it, but if it matters to you, then why not take Anita with you?”

Jason looked at me, and I did not like the look on his face. “Oh, no,” I said.

“You don’t have to do this, Anita; it’s too big a favor to ask of anyone.”

“You really think taking me home would help ease your father’s passing?” I tried not to sound sarcastic or too harsh, but probably failed.

“He’s a cruel bastard. He wouldn’t even let my mom tell me he was sick. He said if I didn’t care enough to see him when he was well, he didn’t want pity.”

“But…,” I said.

“But the doctors say he has only weeks. He won’t make another Christmas.”

“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

“Three years.”

I looked at Nathaniel. “I can’t feed the
ardeur
off just Jason for long.”

“You know you have more control over it now. Jean-Claude can divide the
ardeur
up among us. I know last time it worked because you’d fed off the crowd at Guilty Pleasures—but we can try to feed you for a few days, just like we do when you’re in the middle of a police investigation.”

Jason looked at me. “You’re not seriously thinking about saying yes to this, are you?”

“Are you seriously thinking it’s a good idea?”

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He grinned. “Probably a really bad one, but watching you and my father go head-to-head might be worth it.”

“He’s dying, I would think you’d want me to be nice to him.”

“Be nice to him if he’s nice to you, but don’t let him push you around. He’s a bully.”

“You really don’t like him, do you?”

Jason shook his head. “No.”

“Did he abuse you physically?” Nathaniel asked.

Jason looked at him, with a strange, almost empty expression on his face. “He was always hurting me ‘by accident,’ trying to toughen me up. He’d try to teach me a sport and I’d come home bruised and bloody. He broke my arm finally trying to teach me football, and Mom wouldn’t let him take me out by ourselves again. He was always careful that it wasn’t abuse. Nothing you could call him on, but he was always too rough, too harsh for my age, my size. I started therapy in my teens because the school counselor encouraged it. Therapy taught me that my dad was abusing me. He wanted to hurt me.”

I touched his face. “Jason, I’m sorry.”

His face was very solemn. “Me, too.”

“You don’t want to go home by yourself, do you?” Nathaniel asked.

“No. I’d ask you to go with me, but if I show up with you it’ll just confirm what my dad and most of the town thinks.” He grinned suddenly. “Well, anyone who didn’t have a teenage girl about my age. The fathers hated me.”

“I would think that your being promiscuous with the girls would make your dad happy,” I said.

“You’d think, but he seemed to hate me for that, too.”

“If someone wants to hate you, you can’t stop them,” Nathaniel said. Jason nodded. “Yeah, my dad has hated me for as long as I can remember.”

“You’re my best friend; if you want me to go with you for moral support, I’ll go,” Nathaniel said.

Jason smiled, then shook his head. “Nothing personal, Nathaniel, but you are not going to help me convince my dad I’m straight.”

“Nathaniel’s straight,” I said.

“But he doesn’t look like my dad’s idea of a straight guy. And it’s all about appearances with him.”

I took a deep breath, let it out. “How long would you need to be there?”

“I don’t know, a couple of days at least.”

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“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll go, if you want me to.”

Jason looked at me, startled. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“No,” he said, and he sat up, kneeling in the bed. The sheet was behind him, so he was very not clothed. Even though we’d just finished having sex, I found myself fighting to give him eye contact. Sometimes my hang-ups puzzle even me. “This is like the biggest favor ever.”

“You would owe me for the rest of your life, that’s true.”

A look passed over his face that I couldn’t read. He looked down at me with so much emotion in his eyes that it was uncomfortable to see. I fought to look into those eyes.

“You’d really do this for me? Something this stupid and this sitcom? You’d really do it?”

I finally had to look away from the intensity of his eyes. “Yes, Jason, I’d really do it.”

“You realize we’ll have to fly.”

“Shit,” I said, “you will like owe me extra for getting me on a plane.”

“But you’ll still do it, even though you’re terrified of flying?”

I crossed my arms underneath my breasts and sulked, but said, “I said I’d do it, didn’t I? How long is the flight?”

He bounced down beside me, and the look of joy on his face made it all seem far less stupid. “I know you don’t love me the way you love Nathaniel or anyone else. But you really do care for me, don’t you?”

I looked into that face. A face that had been my friend for years and more than just a friend for about a year. I said the only thing I could say: “Yes.”

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6

WE CALLED JEAN-CLAUDE
while it was still night, so we could tell him what his
pomme de
sang
, Jason, and his human servant, me, had planned. I thought he might tell me it was a stupid thing to do, and tell us no. He was Jason’s boss and master, and technically he was my master. Though honestly, I didn’t let him pull the master card on me very often. Jason told him, then handed the bedside phone to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

Jason got up and padded toward the bathroom. Nathaniel stayed where he was beside me. “Hey, Jean-Claude.”

“
Ma petite
, I am surprised that you would agree to this.”

“Me, too.”

He laughed, that wonderful, touchable laugh. It made me shiver and not from fear. Nathaniel cuddled closer to me, as if he’d gotten a taste of it.

“Thank you for taking care of Jason in a way that I could not.”

“So you’re not going to talk us out of it?”

“Do you wish me to?”

I realized that yes, I did. Now that I’d said yes, I was feeling awkward about it, and even more foolish. “It’s going to be sort of awkward.”

“It will be difficult for you. You will be his only emotional support in a very traumatic situation.”

“You sound like therapy-speak, Jean-Claude.”

“What would you have me say?”

“What you’re actually thinking?”

He gave that laugh again, and my shields dropped enough so that I knew he was sitting in his bed wearing nothing but the silk sheets. I got a glimpse of that curling black hair over the perfect white of shoulders. I closed the shields down before I could literally see the midnight blue of his eyes. I took a deep breath in, and let it out slow and counted as I did it. If I wasn’t careful the tie between him and me could distract me, a lot.