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And there, there it was, the sad fact that once a woman lets more than one man touch her, some men think less of her. More than that, they think they should get a shot, too. A woman who will sleep with more than one man will do anything, right? Wrong, but he’d touched me out of anger, and frustration, and a confusion that had less to do with his job and more to do with him not understanding me.

It seemed a stupid reason to get shot, but I’d seen stupider. “You didn’t touch me to keep me safe, Rowe. You touched me because there was a naked stripper in my room, and I was naked, and he helped me put on yet another man’s coat to come out into the hallway, to meet even more men. You touched me in anger, and I reacted to that anger. Don’t ever touch me in anger again, or we’ll finish this talk—” I dropped his arm and fell on him at the same time, pinning his upper arms under my hands, with the gun still in one. He probably could have wriggled away, but his eyes were wide and startled. I had his gun arm pinned. I leaned over his face, and spoke low and soft; with each word I moved my face lower, until with the last few syllables I was just above his mouth. “And-you-will-not-like-the-end-of-the-conversation.”

Richard’s voice behind me said, “Anita, don’t.”

I moved back enough to see Rowe’s eyes. He was afraid, I could taste that on the air above his skin, but underneath that, he wanted me to kiss him. He wanted me to finish what I’d started. He’d have let me do it, at least a kiss. That made me stop. That Rowe, with a gun still in one hand, would have let me press him to the floor and kiss the hell out of him, and not have fought back.

Something had gone horribly wrong with the ardeur. I backed off from Rowe and stood up, carefully. He’d let his gun fall from his hand. He stared up at me more like a child caught in the dark. He whispered, “Please.”

I shook my head, and said the only thing I could think of. “I’m sorry.” I went for the door to our room. The werewolves followed me, and this time neither Shadwell nor Rowe tried to stop them.

44

ONCE THE DOOR shut behind us, I wanted to run to Richard and be held. I wanted to demand to know what was wrong with Jean-Claude. But we had a stranger in the room. A stranger whom I really couldn’t afford to kick out, not until I knew what the weretiger inside me was going to do. That much I remembered from last night.

I looked at Richard. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. His hair was piled up under the hat so he looked like he had short hair. He was wearing a bulky jacket. He had come, but he was still hiding. His day job was as a junior high science teacher. Parents don’t like the monsters around their children. Too many fairy tales about the big bad wolf, maybe. So he hid to keep the job he loved, but it was like Clark Kent trying not to be Superman. In real life it’s harder to pull off.

“This is Crispin,” I said. “He’s one of the Las Vegas tigers.”

“What are you doing in town, Crispin?” Richard said, and his voice wasn’t quite as friendly as it had been in the hallway.

“I was flown in for a bachelorette party upstairs. Then I felt the little queen call, and I had to answer.”

Richard lowered his glasses enough so I could see the dark, perfect brown of his eyes. The look in them was not friendly either. “He’s already calling you pet names.”

“Ulfric,” Jamil said, “business, please.”

Richard sighed, deep enough that it made his broad shoulders rise and fall. He took off the jacket, revealing a plain white T-shirt. It set off his summer tan nicely.

“You’re right, Jamil. Business first.” He looked at the weretiger. “We need to talk in private and there is no place in this room far enough away that you won’t hear us.”

“I’m not sure it’s safe for him to leave, Richard. The weretiger went very, very strange last night. I don’t know what would have happened if Crispin hadn’t been nearby.”

“Who’s this?” Shang-Da asked. He was looking down at the now-naked man on the floor at the foot of the bed. Apparently,