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“You saying I can use it?”

“No, but I’m saying it’s not legalities, but perceptions that I’m hiding from.”

“Okay, I’ll write up the article saying how misguided my fellow reporters are, and then we’ll start with Jason’s article. Then yours, and then we’ll see who else wants to talk; my editor is going to love it.”

“How about your girlfriend?”

“I’ll talk to her when I get off the phone. She’ll be okay. She’s in the business.”

“Okay.”

“You sound tired,” he said.

I leaned my head against the wall behind the headboard. “Maybe.”

“I’ll go hunt up my editor and get this started. You guys be careful.”

“I’m always careful, Irving.”

He laughed then. “If this is your version of careful, then be reckless; it’s gotta work better.”

We hung up, both laughing. I put the phone in its cradle and went back to leaning against the wall. I even closed my eyes. I was tired. I couldn’t even decide why I was this tired.

I felt the bed move and opened my eyes to find Jason kneeling in front of me. His eyes were very close to mine. He was also still nude, because other than the pillow in my lap, neither of us had thought to get robes.

“We’ve done the best we can, Anita,” he said.

I gave him a smile to match how I felt, which wasn’t all that much of a smile. “Sometimes it would be nice not to have to do my best. Sometimes it would just be nice not to have a crisis to deal with.”

He grinned. “I know what you mean.” The grin went from his normal to his I’ve-thought-of-something-naughty-to-do grin.

“What?” I said, and the one word held a wealth of suspicion.

He laughed, and it made his face look even younger than he was, like a glimpse into a Jason I had never met. Jason before Raina nearly killed him, making him a werewolf. Jason before he became Jean-Claude’s morning snack. Jason before life rubbed all his edges away.

The laughter leaked away and his eyes were serious as he gazed down at me. “The look on your face, what are you thinking?”

I shook my head. A dozen thoughts ran through my mind; that I was tired, that he’d given a story to the media that would spoil our cover story with his family, that he was being very brave, that I knew he must be hurting, that he was my good friend and I wanted him to know that. What I finally said was, “Kiss me.”

He had a moment of looking startled, and then he smiled, and the smile was worth the careful choice of words. That smile that said I had asked first; without the ardeur loose, I had asked for a kiss from him.

24

THE KISS GREW until he pressed me back to the bed, and his body grew eager against the front of me. Eager enough that I wrapped my legs around him, and the most intimate part of him was suddenly pressed tight against the most intimate part of me. He drew back with a shaky laugh.

“We need a condom.”

I closed my eyes and had a moment of embarrassment. “Of course, we do, I’m sorry I got carried away.”

He leaned down and kissed me quick and hard, and let me see the delight on his face that I had forgotten myself that much with him. “Jean-Claude gave me very few restrictions, but this was one. No unprotected sex.” He kissed me again, then slid off the bed to hunt for condoms in the luggage.

I lay there thinking about the fact that I might have forgotten enough to have unprotected sex with Jason. I was on the pill, so technically, it wasn’t exactly unprotected. I’d been so careful since the pregnancy scare a few months back. How could I have been so careless? Irving’s words came back to me, about how my caution hadn’t worked, so maybe it was time to be reckless. Was that it? Was I just tired of my best efforts going so wrong, so why try? No, no, just carried away with a handsome man in my bed. Jesus, that didn’t sound any better.

Jason came back with a little string of unopened condoms in his hand. I counted at least four. “Aren’t we being ambitious.”

He glanced down at the condoms, then laughed again. “In case one gets put on inside out, or has a hole.