Page 30 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

“A little game of hide-and-seek.”

I frowned at him. “You’re a wererat; even in human form you’d smell me or hear my heartbeat from yards away. I can’t hide from you.”

“If I truly wanted you to hide, no, but I want to find you.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean?”

“Hide under a bed and I will pull you out and ravish you.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

I shook my head. “Nope, sorry, I’ve had too many real bad guys drag me out of hiding. It would be more trigger for me than foreplay.”

He stopped so abruptly that it almost made me stumble with his hand in mine, pulling me up short. “I am so sorry, Anita, I forget for you some of the bondage games are too close to your reality.”

“It’s okay, you asked, I said no, we move on to a new idea.”

He looked away and his face was serious again. If this kept up and short of releasing theardeur, we weren’t having sex today. I touched his face lightly and turned him back to look at me.

“Tell me what you want, Rafael. If it’s a chase and takedown, we can figure it out.”

“I feel the press of time, Anita. We are running out of it if we are to plan something elaborate between us.”

“Then maybe we should go simple instead of elaborate,” I said.

“What did you have in mind?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s like I can almost see a question in your eyes, Rafael.”

“What question,” he said.

“Ask it, and I’ll know.”

He took in a big breath of air and it shook on the way out. He looked a little to the side as if he didn’t want towatch my face while he asked. “I want to make love to you, Anita.”

“I’ve already said yes to sex, Rafael.”

He shook his head, and now he gave me the full weight of his dark brown eyes. “Let me make love to you tonight.”

I fought not to frown at him. “Okay, I mean haven’t I already agreed to that?”

“For this once, I don’t want to tie you up, or play the bedroom games we usually do. I would like to simply have sex with you.”

“I’m not really a straight missionary kind of girl,” I said, still not understanding what he was asking.

“That is what I thought, we come up with something that will make us both happy.” His voice was okay, but he looked away while he said it, hiding his eyes.

I squeezed his hand, trying to draw him into a hug, but he stayed turned away. I grabbed his suit jacket and pulled him around so that he had to look at me or over my head. There was pain in his eyes, as if I’d said something that hurt him, and I had no idea what had just happened to add to the weight of sorrow on him today.

“I feel like we’re having two different conversations here, Rafael. Please, just talk clearly with me. We were friends years before we added the benefits, so please just for a few minutes talk to me like I’m your friend that you have sex with, not just another crazy woman that you date.”

He smiled and then laughed. “You are not crazy, Anita, maybe you are not crazy enough for me to be comfortable.”

“Hey, I offered to set some of your belongings on fire if you needed me to be crazy for you.”

He hugged me. “No, please don’t.”

I hugged him back, my face pressed against his chest.“Then talk to me, just talk to me, not around me, or about what you think is in my head, but just treat me like you used to treat me before we started having sex. Talk to me like I’m your friend and we’ll go from there.”

He rubbed his face against my hair. “If you were my friend, I would say I am dating a woman who is into hot bondage sex and at first that was amazing and exactly what I wanted, but now I would like to make love to her. I would like to have sex with her that didn’t include tying her up, or chasing her, or even the delight of tearing her clothes off, though I would like to do that later.”

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