Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [972]
“Power,” Clay said. “Everyone wants a closer tie to Jean-Claude now that he’s his own vampire bloodline. And Narcissus is seriously freaked that Asher’s new animal to call is hyena.”
“Freaked how?” I asked. I tucked the arm with the gun tight on the towel and tugged on the door of the armoire. It stuck.
“We’re wolves, not hyenas, so this is all secondhand,” Clay said. “Narcissus wants guarantees that Asher won’t try to run his clan.”
I finally got the door opened; yea for me. “Asher isn’t powerful enough to do that.”
“Maybe,” Clay said, “but Narcissus is worried about it. He wants to negotiate now before it’s an issue.”
I had black jeans in hand, but I really needed the second hand to get the other clothes.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Graham said. He stalked toward me. He was angry enough that as he got closer I got little bits of it, like embers from a fire hitting my skin. He grabbed the edge of the jeans in my hand. I held on. We glared at each other. “I’ll just hold the clothes for you, Anita. That’s it, okay?”
It was a reasonable idea. It was helpful. So why didn’t I want to do it? Because Graham seriously bugged me. His persistent pursuit of sex with me, with no pretense of emotion, let alone love, really hit my buttons wrong. Of course, if he’d lied about me being the love of his life, that would have pissed me off more. God. I let go of the jeans. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Thank you.”
Graham blinked down at me as if I’d never said thank you to him before. Maybe I hadn’t. Shame on me then. He put his life on the line to keep me safe. So he was a lech; at least he was an honest lech.
I looked up at him. This close I could see the slight uptilt of his brown eyes. His mother was Japanese, which got him the hair and eyes. The rest of him looked like his blond and blue-eyed father had cloned himself. Meeting his parents by accident one night hadn’t made me like him better. In fact it had made it worse. His parents seemed like good people. Would they be ashamed to know how much of a horndog their only child was? It seemed likely.
I shook my head and turned back to the armoire. I’d concentrate on getting dressed. That would help me feel better. I always felt better with clothes on. Grandma Blake’s influence. There was a woman who thought naked meant bad.
I was getting low on shirts here. My choices were black or red. Black made me look like one of the bodyguards, and red, well, red looked like all the red shirts were my people, like a special Anita Blake uniform. I picked up one of the black shirts, put it back, picked up a red shirt, put it back.
“Anita, just pick a shirt,” Graham said.
“I hadn’t realized until this moment that my normal off-duty clothes are the same as the uniform for you guys.”
“Why is that a problem?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, and that was the truth.
“Then pick red. I promise that just because we’re dressed like we match, it’s not a date, okay?” He finally sounded angry.
I sighed. “I’m sorry that it bugs me that the red shirts mean that people want to fuck me. It does bug me. It really does.”
“The color of my shirt didn’t change anything about how I interact with you,” Graham said. “I’ve been honest from the beginning about what I’d like to do.”
I nodded. “You know, Graham, I was just thinking that. You’ve been honest. I say I like honest, but I guess I don’t like honest past a certain point.” I grabbed the red shirt. I needed to grow up about this issue and buy some different-colored clothes. I added jogging socks and black jogging shoes to the pile in Graham’s arms. I did the mental list and finally realized I didn’t have any underwear in the pile. I opened the bottom drawer in the armoire. Strangely, there was plenty of lingerie. Jean-Claude had gotten me to the point where I didn’t own any simple underwear. Everything