Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [142]
“Don’t be grumpy at me,” he said, “I wasn’t the one who pulled you into my lap.”
I had the last of his hair free of my gun. I started to fling the end of his braid back at him, but stopped myself. He was right. Right about who started it. Right about how mad I would have been if the ardeur had risen before I got my work done. He was right. When people are right, you shouldn’t get pissed at them. Or that was the new theory.
“Fine, I’ll go through a drive-up. I’ll eat a burger, you can have your salad. Will that make you happy?” I turned on the engine and started pulling out of the parking space.
“No, but it’ll get us both to work tonight.” He sounded sad.
I glanced at him as I maneuvered may way through the parked cars. “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not sad,” he said, but he sounded it.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s just that you reached for me. There wasn’t a metaphysical emergency. The ardeur hadn’t risen, yet. The beast was nowhere in sight. Blood lust wasn’t anywhere, and I had to say, stop. But the ardeur will rise tonight, Anita, and having sex with it not being fed yet is just inviting trouble.” He leaned his head against the window. His shoulders were rounded, as if he’d hunched in upon himself.
“You’re right about the schedule and the ardeur and needing to eat, Nathaniel. I don’t know what came over me just now.”
He turned to look at me, and we were in the bright halogen lights of the street, so I could see his face clearly. He looked almost in pain. “Couldn’t it just have been that you wanted to touch me, is that so wrong?”
I sighed and concentrated on the road, because I had to. But also, it gave me time to think. I turned us back the way we’d started, but this time I knew we’d go through the drive-up at McDonald’s. Honest.
I finally did the only thing I could think of to take that miserable look off his face. I touched his thigh, because it was the only part of him I could reach easily. He’d pulled so far away in his seat that I couldn’t reach anything else without straining. I was driving, and that had to take priority over offering comfort, even when it was my fault for saying stupid things. I touched his leg, gently, tentatively. I wasn’t always good at touching when sex wasn’t involved. I was trying to get better at it, but the learning curve seemed to rise and fall depending on my mood, or someone else’s.
He touched my hand with his fingers. I held my hand up to him, eyes still on the road. He laid his hand in mine.
“I’m sorry, Nathaniel. I’m sorry that I’m such an ass sometimes.”
He squeezed my hand, and when I glanced at him, he was smiling at me. That one smile was worth a lot more than hand-holding to me. “It’s alright,” he said.
“I notice you don’t disagree that I’m being an ass.”
He laughed. “You don’t like it when I lie.”
I stared at him for a second, mouth open, then I went back to staring at traffic. “I can’t believe you said that.”
He was laughing so hard that our hands jiggled up and down on his leg. “Neither can I,” he said.
But I didn’t get mad. When you’ve been an ass to someone you care about, you should just admit it, move on, and try not to do it again.
33
THERE IS ALMOST no parking on The Landing. The streets are narrow, and most of them are cobblestoned. It’s very quaint, but the streets were originally planned for horses, not cars, and it shows. There is no employee parking at Guilty Pleasures, because there isn’t room. So I had to park the Jeep down a ways, and we got to walk, but Nathaniel touched my arm before I got too close to the bloodred neon sign and the front entrance. He took me down an alley that I hadn’t even known was there. I mean, I knew it was there, but not where it went. I’d never really thought that there must be a performers’ entrance just like for Circus of the Damned.
The alley was an alley, which meant it was narrow, cramped, not as clean as you’d like, not as well lit as you’d prefer, and made my claustrophobia complain.