«You. They recognized you.»
«Fine, they recognized me.» He was back to being mad again.
«I'm sorry, Nathaniel, I'm really sorry. That wasn't fair.»
«No, you're right. If we hadn't been out together they probably wouldn't have spotted you.»
«I am not embarrassed to be seen with you in public.»
«You hate it when fans recognize me.»
«I thought I was pretty cool when that woman passed you her phone number at dinner, when you were out with Micah and me.»
«She waited until you went to the bathroom.»
«And that's supposed to make me feel better?» I turned onto 44 and headed toward the city.
«She didn't want to intrude on our date.»
«She thought you and Micah were escorts, and that I was paying you for the evening.»
«The last time she saw me that's what I was doing for a living, Anita.»
«I know, I know. She passed you her number because she wanted to see you again, and the old number wasn't working. You're right, she was polite about it.»
«I told her I was on a date-date, and she was embarrassed.»
I still remembered the woman. She'd been slender and elegant and old enough to be Nathaniel's mother. Thanks to Jean-Claude I knew clothes, and she'd been wearing expensive ones. The jewelry had been understated, but very nice. She was one of those women who headed charity balls and sat on committees for the art museum, and she'd been hiring male prostitutes young enough to be her son.
«I think what bothered me about her was that she didn't look like someone who would…»
«Hire an escort,» he finished for me.
«Yeah.»
«I had a lot of different kinds of customers, Anita.»
«I figured that.»
«Did you, or did you try never to think about it?»
«Okay, the latter.»
«I can't change my past, Anita.»
«I didn't ask you to.»
«But you want me to quit stripping.»
«I never said that.»
«You're embarrassed by it, though.»
«For God's sake, Nathaniel, let it go. I'm embarrassed about being up on stage myself. I'm embarrassed that I fed on you in public.» I gripped the steering wheel so tight it hurt. «When I fed the ardeur off you that night, I fed off the entire audience. I didn't mean to, but I fed on their lust. I felt how much they enjoyed the show, and I fed on it.»
«And you didn't have to feed again for twenty-four hours.»
«Jean-Claude took my ardeur and shared it around among you guys.»
«Yes, but he thinks that one of the reasons he was able to do that is that you fed off the crowd, and me. I loved that you marked me in front of the crowd. You know how much I loved it.»
«Are you saying that if I hadn't gone up on stage and accidentally fed from the crowd, the ardeur would have gotten out of control in the middle of that serial killer case?»
«Maybe.»
I thought about that for a second as I drove. I thought about the ardeur going out of control in a van full of cops, Mobile Reserve cops, our answer to SWAT. I thought about the ardeur getting out of control while I was in a nest of vampires that had killed over ten people.
«If that's true, then why didn't Jean-Claude try to get me down to the club again?»
«He's offered.»
«I've refused.»
«Yeah,» Nathaniel said.
«Why tell me now?»
«Because I'm mad at you,» he said. He lowered his head on top of the box in his lap. «Because I'm mad that our date is ruined. I'm mad that some metaphysical crap is going to ruin our almost-anniversary.»
«I didn't plan this,» I said.
«No, but your life is always like this. Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a normal date with you?»
«If you don't like it, you don't have to stay in it.» The moment I said it, I wished I hadn't, but I didn't take it back.
«Do you mean that?» he asked, in a low, careful voice.
«No,» I said, «no, I don't mean it. I'm just not used to you picking at me. That's usually Richard's job.»
«Don't compare me with him. I don't deserve that.»
«No, you don't.» Richard Zeeman had once been my fiancé, but it hadn't lasted. I'd broken up with him when I saw him eat someone. He was the head of the local werewolf pack. He'd broken up with me when he couldn't handle that I was more comfortable with the monsters than he was. At the moment, we were lovers, and he was finally letting me feed the ardeur off him. I was his girlfriend in the preternatural community, lupa to his Ulfric, and he wasn't shopping to replace me in that part of his life. He was shopping for a completely human woman to replace me in the part of his life where he was a mild-mannered junior high science teacher. He wanted kids and a life that didn't include full moons and killer zombies. I didn't blame him completely. If I'd had an option for a normal life, I might have taken it. Of course, Richard really didn't have the option either. There was no cure for lycanthropy. But he was going to divide his life into pieces and try to keep all the pieces from finding out about the other parts. Sounded hard, hell, sounded like a recipe for disaster. But it wasn't my life, and so far he was just dating people. If he got serious about someone else, then we'd see how I felt about being the other woman.
«You missed the turn, Anita,» Nathaniel said.
I cursed and braked too hard in the thin snow. I got the Jeep under control, then let us coast past our exit. I'd turn around. You could always turn around. «Sorry,» I said.
«Thinking about Richard?» He tried for neutral and failed.
«Yeah.»
«My fault, I guess; I brought him up.»
«What's with the tone?» I asked. I turned into a section of town that was in the middle of being gentrified but hadn't quite made it yet. But we were headed back toward the riverfront.
«If Richard were a stripper, would you be embarrassed by him, too?»
«Drop this, Nathaniel, I mean it.»
«Or what?» There was that first prickling run of energy over my skin. He was angry enough that it was making his beast peek out.
«You're picking on me tonight, Nathaniel. I don't need that.»
«I believe that you love me, Anita, but you love me by hiding from what I am. I need you to accept who I am.»
«I do.»
«You tell Arnet that I'm not your victim, but you won't tie me up during sex. You won't abuse me.»
«Don't start this again,» I said.
«Anita, the bondage is part of who I am. It makes me feel safe and good.»
This was one of the reasons I'd fought so long and hard to stay out of Nathaniel's love life. I did some stuff, nails, teeth, and I enjoyed it, but there were limits to my comfort level, and he'd been trying to push me past those limits in the last few weeks. I'd worried from the beginning that he wouldn't be happy with someone who was less into the bondage scene than he was, and that was exactly what was happening.
«In some ways you make me feel better about myself than anyone ever has, Anita, but you also make me feel bad about myself. You make me feel like an evil freak, because of what I want.»
I found a parking spot just down the street from Guilty Pleasures's glowing neon sign. It was unusual to find parking this close to the club on a weekend. Parallel parking is not my best thing, so I concentrated on that, while part of me thought furiously about what to say to him.
I finally got us parked and turned off the car. The silence was thicker than I wanted it to be. I turned as far as the seat belt would allow and looked at him. He stared out the window away from me.
«I don't want to make you feel bad about yourself, Nathaniel. I love you, damn it.»
He nodded, then turned and looked at me. The streetlight glittered on tears. «I'm terrified that I'm going to drive you away. My therapist says that I'm either a full partner in the relationship, or I'm not. Full partners ask for their needs to be met.»
Truthfully, I'd thought his therapist would be on my side, but BDSM was no longer considered an illness. It was just another alternative lifestyle. Damn it.
«I want you to get what you need out of our… out of us.»
«I'm not asking for that much, Anita. Just tie me up while we have sex. Then do what we would have done anyway. Nothing else.»