Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [214]
My eyes burned. “No, it won’t. If you go bad, I’ll do my duty.” I closed my eyes, and shook my head. “You Machiavellian bastard, I would have killed your ass without being in love with you.”
“I did not want you to love me because you would be my fail-safe, as you put it. I wanted you to love me, because I was in love with you.” His voice was close, and when I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me. “It is only lately that I have worried that you were so besotted with me that you might forgive me crimes in this lifetime, now.”
I shook my head. “No, no.”
“I had to know, ma petite.”
“Don’t call me that, not right now.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “Anita, I am sorry. I would not cause you pain, not deliberately.”
“Then couldn’t this conversation have waited until the afterglow faded?”
“No,” he said, “I had to know if you loved me more than your sense of justice.”
I swallowed hard. I would not cry, I would not fucking cry. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.”
He took my hands, and I almost jerked away, but I made myself stand there and let him touch me. I was so angry, so pissed, so . . .
“Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,” he said, “That from the nunnery, Of they chaste breast and quiet mind.”
I looked up at him, and said the next line, “To war and arms I fly.”
“True, a new mistress now I chase,” he said.
“The first foe in the field,” I said, and let him draw me closer.
“And with a stronger faith embrace,” he said.
“A sword, a horse, a shield.” And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.
“Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore,” he whispered against my hair.
I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.”
“To Lucasta, on going to the Wars,” Jean-Claude said. His arms were around me, holding me close.
I eased my arms around him, slowly. “Richard Lovelace,” I said, “always liked his stuff in college.” I kept moving my arms until they were around his waist, and we just stood there holding each other. “I don’t think I would have remembered the whole poem if you hadn’t helped.”
“Together we are more than we are apart, Anita, that is what love is.”
I held him, and the tears started down my face, hard and hot, and choking. “Not Anita.”
I didn’t have to see his face, to know the smile was there, I could hear in his voice, “ma petite, ma petite, ma petite.”
There comes a point where you just love someone. Not because they’re good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever. It doesn’t mean you won’t hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.
46
THE SAPPHIRE CLUB is a low, wide building and doesn’t look that nice from the outside. It doesn’t look that different from many of the rest of the bars and clubs in the area, so why is it a gentlemen’s club and the others are just titty bars? Security, decore, and a dress code for the dancers, for starters. Tonight the VIP parking area was so full of official and semiofficial vehicles that you could barely see the front of the club through the flashing lights and milling people. There was even a big fire truck and a rescue truck alongside the regular ambulance. I had no idea why we needed the big truck, but murder scenes always attract more people than you really need, more cops, and more civies, more everything.
There was a crowd pressed against the police tape and sawhorse barriers. Some of the women looked barely dressed for the October cold, so it had to be people from the nearby clubs. Most of the dancers arrived at work in street clothes then changed there. So at least some of the women shivering in the cold