Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [114]
Something about the lack of lamps in the hotel room had put his eyes in shadow so they looked even darker than the brown I knew they were. The shadows took the gold from his hair and made it seem simply chestnut brown.
Shang-Da was standing beside him. He was the only person in the room taller than Richard. Shang-Da glanced at Richard, then back to the room. There was a moment when Shang-Da’s eyes met mine. Was it just shock, or had he, for a split second, felt sorry for me? Surely not.
Richard repeated, “I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what, Ulfric?” Jamil asked.
“I can’t watch her take another man to her bed. I can’t do it.” His voice was calm, no anger, not even any of that otherworldly energy coming off him. Only the tensing and untensing of his muscles in his upper body showed the emotional turmoil under all that calm.
“I’m not planning to do anything with either of them again,” I said, and there was the tiniest hint of some emotion in my voice.
“You never plan it, Anita. I know that. It’s weirdly never your fault. If you just cheated on me and couldn’t keep it in your pants, I think I could deal with it, or walk away, but you, honestly, don’t do it on purpose.” He pushed himself away from the wall. Shang-Da took up his post just behind him.
“What do you want me to say, Richard?” There, a little more emotion. I knew the emotion now: anger. I should have fought it. Anger is bad when you carry beasts inside you. But I didn’t fight it, I welcomed it. I fed it sweet words and coaxed it hotter. Anger was so much better than the other emotions running through me—emotions so awful I didn’t want to look at them, let alone feel them.
“I want to see you recoil from his touch, but you didn’t.”
“He was mind-fucked, too, Richard, you know that.”
He nodded. His big hands were in plain sight now, flexing and unflexing. You could see the muscles work all the way from his hands to his upper chest now. “I know. I can’t even hate him. I want to, but you’re right. He didn’t mean to…have sex with you for two days. He didn’t mean to make you forget to take your pill. He seems as horrified as the rest of us.” He took another step into the room, and the first warm prickle of energy tiptoed through the room.
“Don’t you understand, Anita? You steal my self-righteousness away. You make me have to swallow so much, because if I react like a guy, I’m a bastard. But I am not saint enough for this. I’m just not. I’m sorry, but I’m not.” His energy swirled out through the room like being too close to an oven.
Something stirred inside me, in that dark place. No, not this soon, not again. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. I let it out slow, counting as I went.
Jamil’s voice came. “Ulfric, please, you’ll bring her beast again.”
“I’ll bring her wolf, you mean. I can’t bring all her beasts, just like I can’t be all she needs anywhere else in her life.” For a moment the pain on his face was so raw, it hurt my heart to see it. Then he mastered himself, but the effort was visible. That made me feel bad, too.
“Richard, I—”
He waved a hand at me. “Don’t, Anita, don’t even try. It’s not good, or bad, it’s just the truth.” He looked at me then, gave me the full force of those perfectly brown eyes. Only they showed the pain that had a moment ago decorated his entire face. Only his eyes showed how much he hurt. How much I had hurt him. I never meant to cut him up like that, just as he never meant to hurt me. We just seemed to keep doing it, by accident.
“I came here to check on you. I’ve done that. Our master sent me on one more task.” He held out his hand to me. “But we need privacy for it.”
I hesitated staring at that offered hand. “If it has anything to do with sex, Richard…”
He let his hand fall away. “You’re rejecting me?” His power slapped against my skin like the opening of an oven door, set far too high to do anything but burn.