Page 12 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

“In this moment I know you are not feeling lust, because you are right, I would smell it on you.”

I fought not to look embarrassed or even uncomfortable. I looked at the floor and then forced myself to look up and meet his gaze. “I can’t smell your emotions, but I can read your face and you’re not feeling very lustful either.”

“I cannot disagree, and if this were any other day, Iwould let you go to shower in the room where you shower with your other men, or perhaps that huge bathtub that Jean-Claude has in his rooms, but it is not any other day. I want you as a man wants a woman, but I also want you to feed theardeuron me.”

“Won’t that weaken you for the fight tonight?”

“If you fed off only me, perhaps, but you will feed off the strength of all who call me king. If it is to be the last time, I want you to take as much power from us as possible for Jean-Claude to share among your people.”

I touched his arm, studying his face, trying to read him. “I asked if you thought you would win tonight, and you said yes. Am I missing something? Am I not asking the right questions?”

“He is me thirty years ago, Anita. He has less to lose and more to gain. I have far more to lose and nothing to gain except his death, which I do not want. I think he believes that you will enslave us all, you and Jean-Claude. He is righteous in his goal to tear me from the throne. I am defending what is mine, and I am decades too late for that righteous surety of youth.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

He smiled down at me, putting his bigger hand along the side of my face so that I could rub my face against the weight and warmth of his hand. “Of course you don’t, you still have that righteous surety.”

I moved away from his hand, frowning. “Not as much as I used to have.”

“You are starting to grow into the next stage of your life, Anita. Your job as a vampire executioner and now as a marshal has aged your attitude faster. Hector knows nothing but his clan. He has risen as high as he can within the local clan, so he sets his sight on the highest seat among my kind.”

“You said he’s you thirty years ago.”

“Very much so.”

“So how old is he?”

“Are you asking how old I am?”

I stared up at his raven-black hair, the unlined face. If I hadn’t looked into the wisdom and patience in his eyes, I’d have put him at no more than thirty, but his eyes gave it away almost like some of the vampires’ did. They were ageless, but their eyes could show an echo of the great weight of all those years, as if there were ways to grow old that had nothing to do with the body.

“I know that shapeshifters age slower than humans,” I said.

He smiled. “I am over fifty.”

I must have looked as shocked as I felt, because he laughed. “Sorry, it’s just... I’d have never guessed.”

He drew me into another hug, still laughing.

“We’ll clear the showers for you,” Claudia said, and she and Benito started toward the entrance, but there was a small crowd of guards hastily dressed coming out. They mumbled, “Anita, Rafael, Claudia,” and a few mentioned Benito but he wasn’t their boss, or one of the people who trained them, or a king of any kind. He didn’t take offense, like all good bodyguards, he knew being invisible until needed was part of the job.

“I think they heard us,” I said, not sure how I felt about the fact that Rafael and I just suggesting we might want them to give us the showers was enough to get them to do it, or maybe it was Claudia and Benito starting to clear them out? I knew that Claudia intimidated a lot of them, and if Benito wasn’t as scary as he looked, then he wouldn’t be Rafael’s main bodyguard.

When the exodus of tall, athletic men clutching clothes and weapons trickled to a stop, Rafael offered me his hand. “Shall we?”

What else could I say but “Yes”?

Claudia insisted on going through the doorway first, even though we were supposed to be safe as houses downhere. There were bodyguards I might have argued with; she wasn’t one of them. Benito trailed behind his king and incidentally me, but I had no illusions about whom he’d protect if the flags went up, but then I had Claudia, so I was good.

4

THE SHOWERS WEREN’Tcompletely empty, though; Pierette was still in there with her dark hair still damp and her only clothing one of the supersize towels that we kept in there for everyone. The towels were designed to cover people close to seven feet tall, like Claudia, so for Pierette, who was only a few inches taller than me, the towel covered her to the ankles like a formal evening gown. On me I had to fold the top of the towels down, so I didn’t trip over them. One size does not fit all.

Pierette dropped to one knee and managed to make the movement look graceful, as if the towel were a real dress. I’d have knelt on it wrong and ended up flashing if I’d tried it, but then I hadn’t had hundreds of years to practice being graceful and she had.

“My queen, King Rafael, how may I serve you?” She looked at the floor as she said it, so I couldn’t even see her expression, which might have helped me know what the hell was going on.

“Pierette, I told you I didn’t like the whole bowing and scraping thing,” I said.

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