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I looked at him. “You might want to find the charm, too.”

“I’ll do that.”

He helped me, carefully, to my feet. “We want to fly you home, but the other tiger queens can’t seem to agree whether your fleeing and not being here when the tigers arrive is a greater insult to them. You made the call; you need to be where they can find you.”

“Find me, what does that mean?”

“It means what it means, Anita.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, but that was a mistake because even standing this close to Richard I couldn’t smell his skin. All I could smell was strangers, and mixed in with that was Jason. I knew the scent of his skin, but it wasn’t enough. I smelled tigers.

I licked dry lips, eyes still closed. “Find the charm, Richard, please. I need to get clean now.”

He kissed my hand again, and let me go. I opened my eyes to him walking to the door, then out. Something about watching him leave made the tears start again, but at least they were quieter.

46

I’D FORGOTTEN HOW much it hurt to have a shower with fresh claw marks. Or maybe I’d just never had this many of them all at the same time. I’d gotten cut up when someone was trying to kill me, but I’d never had this many shallow ones done in the heat of the moment. They weren’t deep enough to kill or meant to maim, but they fucking hurt when the water hit them. I tried to see in the mirror what my back looked like, but it kept fogging up. What I could see was an impressive amount of damage, even for me. My back almost looked like someone had taken a whip to it. I had more marks on my arms, and a puncture wound on my ass. A memory came with that one. Crispin inside me in tiger form, his hands lifting my ass off the bed for a deeper angle. His claws sliding into my flesh at the moment of his release, and mine.

The memory jerked things low in my body, and made me stumble against the wall. God, what was wrong with me? The only one who could usually make sexual memories this potent was Asher. One of his gifts was that he could make you have total recall of orgasm with him. Think too hard and it was dangerous to drive. But it wasn’t supposed to work that way with anyone else.

There were more marks on my hips, the inside of my thighs. It was like I ignored them the best I could until the water hit them. Then they hurt and I couldn’t pretend anymore. I was marked up enough that I could have gone into any hospital or police station in the country and they would have believed rape.

Trouble was that rape like this by lycanthropes was a potential killing offense. I didn’t want anyone dead; I just wanted a morning-after pill as quick as I could get one. I’d already taken the pill I missed. It was what they recommended if you missed one. If I wasn’t pregnant, then I was safe again, at least from babies.

I knew the shampoo running down my body was going to hurt worse, and don’t even talk about soap, but I had to get the smell of them off my skin. I had to not smell like strange men and sex. Even if it hurt, I needed it off me.

I ended up sitting in the bottom of the tub with the shower still running. I was clean, or as clean as I was going to get. I knew that my skin smelled like soap and me again, but I kept thinking I smelled them on my skin. I was pretty sure it was imaginary, but I still ended up sitting in the water, waiting to feel clean and safe and knowing I wasn’t going to. I didn’t blame the men, exactly; I blamed the Mother of All Darkness. She’d raped us all. It was even a killable offense in this country to use vampire mind powers to force sex. Magical rape could get a human witch or wizard in jail, and potentially on death row.

There was a soft knock on the door. I didn’t say anything. The knock came again, with a voice. “Anita, it’s Jason, are you all right?”

I said the only thing I could think to say. “No.”

“Can I come in?”

I thought about that, too. I thought about Jason. He was my friend. He hadn’t meant to hurt me. He hadn’t meant to maybe get me