Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [94]
“I want some,” Fredo said.
“Homemade biscuits?” Doc Lillian asked.
“From scratch,” Nathaniel said with a smile.
“In that case, yes, please.”
Nathaniel looked at Richard and Clair. “Do you want some? I know Gregory will.”
“We’re only staying until we’re sure Damian is safe,” Richard said.
He turned his lavender gaze to Clair. “Do you want a biscuit?”
She looked at Richard, sort of nervously, then nodded. “Yes, please.” She patted his shoulder. “We didn’t get breakfast.”
Richard scowled.
I was willing to let the fight go. Nathaniel was right, without saying a word he was right, it hadn’t been much of a fight. Of course, just as it takes two people to fight, it takes two sides to call a cease-fire.
“Why do you care what I say about him? He’s nothing to you.”
I sipped the last of my coffee, put the mug down carefully on the cabinet, and smiled. I knew without a mirror that it wasn’t a good smile. It was the smile I got when I finally got to do something violent, when people had been making me behave. If I’d had any doubts about the smile, Fredo pushing himself upright, hands loose at his sides, clinched it. He knew it was trouble. The look on Micah’s face said he knew it was trouble, too. Even Clair looked worried. Nathaniel had gone back to smoothing out biscuit dough. No matter what happened, we’d need breakfast, so he was going to make breakfast. In his own way, Nathaniel could be as practical as I was.
Richard scowled up at me, and I knew in that moment that he wanted to fight. And strangely, I didn’t.
“Even if he was only my pomme de sang he wouldn’t be nothing to me, Richard.”
Micah had moved around to stand beside me. I don’t think he was sure what I’d do, but, for once, I was okay. I took his hand, partly to reassure him, and partly because he was close enough to touch.
“If he’s more than just food to you, why . . .” Again he seemed at a loss for words.
“Why aren’t I fucking him?”
Micah moved me in against his body, so that he was spooning me and had his arms around me. Almost as if he thought he’d have to restrain me and give Richard time to get to a door. My temper wasn’t that bad, honest. Well, most of the time. Well, some of the time. Oh, hell, I guess I couldn’t blame him for being nervous.
I leaned in against Micah, let his body hold me like it was a favorite chair. I could feel tension I hadn’t even known I was carrying seep out of my muscles.
“I thought you were screwing them both,” Richard said.
“Such a nice turn of phrase,” I said, and the tension just seeped right back in.
“You won’t let me say sleep. I’m trying to avoid saying fuck.”
“How about sex, or intercourse, those are nice technical terms.”
“Alright,” he said, “I thought you were having intercourse with both of them.”
“Now you know different,” I said.
“Yes,” he said it, and his voice was softer, less angry.
I felt like I was missing something here. “What difference does it make whether I was having sex with one, or both?”
He looked down then, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Could everybody leave us alone for a few minutes? Please.”
Clair got up a little uncertainly. Dr. Lillian got up, and Fredo moved to follow her. Nathaniel had rolled out the dough enough that he was shaping the individual biscuits. The oven dinged, indicating it was preheated. He looked a question at me.
I wrapped my arms around Micah’s arms, pulling him around me like a coat. “You can’t kick Nathaniel out of his own kitchen, Richard, and I don’t want Micah to go either.”
“It’s not his kitchen,” Richard said, and he was angry again.
“Yes,” I said, “it is.”
Nathaniel turned back to his baking with a small smile on his lips. He’d already greased up the pans, so he began to arrange the thick doughy circles on them, ignoring us again.
Richard stood, and even though he had one arm bandaged up, I was suddenly aware of how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were. He was one of those men that never seemed as big as they are, until they got angry. “No, it isn’t. It isn’t even Micah’s house. It’s yours.”
“They live with me,