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He drew back with a smile that showed for an instant in the lights. “I want to encourage you to touch me. God knows I do, but if you do too much with the ardeur not fed, and neither of us fed, then the night is over. You’ll be pissed with yourself, and me, and I don’t want that.”

I got most of me free from his braid, except for the part that was caught on the back of the Browning. If it hadn’t been a gun, I’d have jerked, but even with the safety on, I didn’t trust it enough. Stupider accidents have gotten people shot. Neither Zerbrowski nor Edward would ever let me live it down. So I took a deep breath and forced myself to carefully untwine Nathaniel’s hair from my gun.

Nathaniel had buckled himself back into his seat. “I would love to repeat this some time and place where we didn’t have to stop.”

I was still trying to get his hair off my gun. The fact that he was in his seat but his hair wasn’t told you just how long his braid was. “You had your chance,” I said, and I sounded mad.

“Don’t be grumpy at me,” he said, “I wasn’t the one who pulled you into my lap.”

I had the last of his hair free of my gun. I started to fling the end of his braid back at him, but stopped myself. He was right. Right about who started it. Right about how mad I would have been if the ardeur had risen before I got my work done. He was right. When people are right, you shouldn’t get pissed at them. Or that was the new theory.

“Fine, I’ll go through a drive-up. I’ll eat a burger, you can have your salad. Will that make you happy?” I turned on the engine and started pulling out of the parking space.

“No, but it’ll get us both to work tonight.” He sounded sad.

I glanced at him as I maneuvered may way through the parked cars. “Don’t be sad.”

“I’m not sad,” he said, but he sounded it.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just that you reached for me. There wasn’t a metaphysical emergency. The ardeur hadn’t risen, yet. The beast was nowhere in sight. Blood lust wasn’t anywhere, and I had to say, stop. But the ardeur will rise tonight, Anita, and having sex with it not being fed yet is just inviting trouble.” He leaned his head against the window. His shoulders were rounded, as if he’d hunched in upon himself.

“You’re right about the schedule and the ardeur and needing to eat, Nathaniel. I don’t know what came over me just now.”

He turned to look at me, and we were in the bright halogen lights of the street, so I could see his face clearly. He looked almost in pain. “Couldn’t it just have been that you wanted to touch me, is that so wrong?”

I sighed and concentrated on the road, because I had to. But also, it gave me time to think. I turned us back the way we’d started, but this time I knew we’d go through the drive-up at McDonald’s. Honest.

I finally did the only thing I could think of to take that miserable look off his face. I touched his thigh, because it was the only part of him I could reach easily. He’d pulled so far away in his seat that I couldn’t reach anything else without straining. I was driving, and that had to take priority over offering comfort, even when it was my fault for saying stupid things. I touched his leg, gently, tentatively. I wasn’t always good at touching when sex wasn’t involved. I was trying to get better at it, but the learning curve seemed to rise and fall depending on my mood, or someone else’s.

He touched my hand with his fingers. I held my hand up to him, eyes still on the road. He laid his hand in mine.

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel. I’m sorry that I’m such an ass sometimes.”

He squeezed my hand, and when I glanced at him, he was smiling at me. That one smile was worth a lot more than hand-holding to me. “It’s alright,” he said.

“I notice you don’t disagree that I’m being an ass.”

He laughed. “You don’t like it when I lie.”

I stared at him for a second, mouth open, then I went back to staring at traffic. “I can’t believe you said that.”

He was laughing so hard that our hands jiggled up and down on his leg. “Neither