Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [79]
Damian would have been the perfect excuse to hang out in a darker part of the house. Unfortunately, almost as much as I didn’t want to see Richard, I didn’t want to be alone with Damian. Men can be sort of funny after you’ve had sex with them, some get downright possessive, others get emotional, and still others just want a chance to do it again. None of that sounded like something I wanted to deal with right that minute. Sure he felt calm against my skin, but that didn’t mean that once we were alone he’d be able to stop himself from being male. After all he was one. I just wasn’t willing to risk it.
“If you have to look at it that way, yes.”
“It’s not that I have to look at it that way, Micah, it’s the way it is. It would be hiding out.”
“She won’t hide,” Nathaniel said, voice soft and full of sorrow that I couldn’t understand, and just the sound in his voice made me glad at that moment that we weren’t touching. Whatever he was feeling didn’t sound fun in the least.
“Isn’t discretion ever the better part of valor with you?” Micah asked, and there was a look in his eyes that was close to pain. But strangely, of all the men in my life, he was one of the few whose mind and emotions I couldn’t read. I could read his face, his eyes, his body, but his mind and internal emotions were his own.
“No,” I said, “never. Well, almost never.” I patted his hands and stepped back just enough so that he had to let me go, or hold on when he knew I didn’t want him to.
He let his hands fall away from me, and the first hint of anger trickled into his eyes. “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”
“I don’t like seeing me hurt either,” I said.
That almost made him smile. “Trying to make jokes, I guess that’s a good sign.”
“Trying, only trying? I thought it was funny.”
“No,” Nathaniel said, “no, it wasn’t.” He squeezed my arm as he walked by. “I’ll get the coffee started.”
“You’re not going to wait for us?” I asked.
He turned back just short of the kitchen doorway. He was smiling. “I know you’ll get in here, eventually, because you couldn’t stand yourself if you chickened out. But, by the time you talk yourself into it, I could already have coffee made.”
I frowned at him, and just a tiny thread of anger came with it.
Damian grabbed for my hand again, and I didn’t fight it.
“Don’t get mad at me,” Nathaniel said, “I’m about to grind fresh coffee beans for you and use the new French press Jean-Claude got you.”
I frowned harder.
“I know how much you hate to admit that you like the French press, but you do like it.”
“It doesn’t make enough coffee at one time,” I said. Even to me it sounded churlish.
“I’ll tell Jean-Claude that you would like a really, really big French press.” He said it completely deadpan, and only the faintest of smiles and the tiniest gleam in his eyes let me know he was going to add something. “Size queen,” then he was through the door, before I could close my mouth and decide whether to yell at him, or laugh.
23
NATHANIEL’S ATTEMPT TO make me laugh accomplished one thing; it made me feel better, though I have to admit the smell of freshly ground coffee helped lure me through the door. I couldn’t let one ex-fiancé stand between me and my coffee, could I? Not and keep my self-respect, so in we went.
Richard was sitting at the kitchen table on the side nearest the door. Dr. Lillian was standing over him finishing the bandaging of his entire right shoulder and arm. She glanced at us as we came through the door, but most of her attention stayed on her patient. The first time I’d met her she’d been gray and furry, but now she was a woman of about fifty, slender, with hair as gray and white as her fur was when she was in rat form. There was always something neat about Dr. Lillian, as if her clothes never got too dirty and