Dead Ice
Page 28

“You said yourself, I do most of the cooking and cleaning, grocery shopping, and you won’t get pregnant for me, so is it too much to ask for a little romance?”
“I am a U.S. Marshal with the Preternatural Branch; I can’t do my job pregnant, and I don’t want to be pregnant. I can’t see my life working with a baby in it.”
“We could adopt.”
“You’re only twenty-three; why do you want a child now?”
“But you’re thirty, and I want to have a child with you.”
“I’ve got a few good years left in me,” I said, and didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Thirty isn’t old, Anita, I know that, but for a woman to have babies, early thirties is decision time.”
“Women have babies into their forties, or even fifties,” I said.
“That’s with medical technology helping out.”
“My aunt had her last baby at fifty and it was a total surprise, no medical miracles involved.”
He glanced at me. “Really?”
I nodded. “Really, her doctor told her she was past having babies so she didn’t have to take precautions, and he was wrong.”
“Okay, I take it back, maybe we do have more time. Fifty, really, wow, that is good genetics.”
“Only if you want to keep popping out babies into your fifties,” I said.
“I’d settle for one a little sooner,” he said.
“Let it go tonight, Nathaniel; I’m feeling pressured enough from the weretigers wanting to be involved with the commitment ceremony.”
“I ask for a big proposal and now it’s all about you feeling pressured to add more people to the ceremony? You realize that it’s not just you being pressured. They want to put a ring on Micah and me, too.”
I thought about it for a second or two. “Micah didn’t make it sound that way back at the Circus.”
“He wouldn’t, would he?”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’m bisexual; Micah isn’t except for me, and so if another man ‘marries’ us it won’t matter to him as much as it does to me.”
“Well, crap, I’m sorry, Nathaniel, you’re absolutely right. This could be another lover for you, and Micah won’t look at another man that way. So really it’s your virtue and mine on the line, in a manner of speaking.”
“Virtue isn’t what’s on the line, Anita, it’s our domestic happiness on the line, and that’s way more important to me.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, counting to ten. When that didn’t do it, I tried twenty, but the fluttery feeling in my stomach didn’t get any better, so I just said it. “Micah told me his choice for the tiger to marry us. What’s yours?”
He glanced at me, then back at the road. “Thank you for asking. I know you didn’t want to.”
“Your point about the sex is fair. Who do you want in our bed?”
“It depends on how you mean ‘in our bed,’” he said.
“Don’t be coy, after you made me ask, Nathaniel.”
He smiled then. “That’s fair. Okay, Cynric shares you with me and Micah better than anyone except Nicky, and Micah doesn’t share the bed with Nicky at all, but I don’t have sex with either of them. They’re more like brother-husbands, or something.”
“So if you were picking for romance, who would it be?”
“Domestic bliss is either Cynric or Nicky; they live with us already.”
“But Nicky isn’t a weretiger, so it doesn’t help us,” I said.
“That’s true.”
“Come on, you have someone in mind, I can tell.”
“Two someones in mind, sort of.”
“Spill it,” I said.
“Dev, he’s truly bisexual and he’s a golden tiger.”
“But he’s all domestic-blissed-out with Asher and Kane.”
“Kane is starting to be bitchy about sharing Asher with so many people, and Dev doesn’t meet any of Asher’s BDSM needs. He’s just another male lover when Kane is that, too.”
“So you think Dev will be up for grabs soon?”
“Not exactly, but he’s fun and he’s as bi as I am.”
“You said two people, who’s the second?”
“No specific person, but the only female weretiger you’ve tried to sleep with is Jade, and we all agree that she’s got too many issues, but what’s wrong with looking at some of the other female weretigers as a possible addition? It would be another lover for all three of us, not just two of us.”
I frowned at him. “Jade has been a disaster.”
“But it’s not because she’s a woman.”
“Maybe not, but I like men, Nathaniel, sorry.”
“You and I have a really good time when J.J. comes to visit Jason, and she is very much a girl.”
J.J. had been a lesbian most of her adult life until she and Jason found each other again. They’d dated in high school until she felt she had to pick one sex to date, and he’d respected her choice and gone on to date other women. But he was the one man she never forgot, and she was THE woman for him, though they’d both agreed that they didn’t want to be monogamous. Polyamory is about honesty and loving more, and they’d started with Nathaniel, me, and Jade.
J.J. was tall, slender, her body honed down to a work of art by years of being a professional ballerina. She was with one of the most prestigious dance companies in the country, which happened to be all the way in New York. Jason, Nathaniel’s best friend and my werewolf to call, had started spending more and more time with her there; he was there this week, visiting. There was serious talk about him getting a tryout with her dance company someday. If he made it, then he would be the first shapeshifter to ever become a member of a human company. There were all-shapeshifter dance troupes, all-vampire ones, and even mixed ones that were just all preternaturals, but humans didn’t like trying to compete with people who were faster, stronger, and just physically better by virtue of a disease they’d caught like lycanthropy, that no amount of human practice or gym work could compete with. Jean-Claude and I weren’t sure we could do without him since he was the assistant manager at Guilty Pleasures and one of the headline dancers, but we both wanted him to be happy. He and J.J. were stupid happy with each other. She was also my second-ever female lover, and I liked her better than the one who was pushing me to put a ring on her finger.
“I can’t argue that, and if J.J. were a weretiger I’d consider it, but she’s human; awesome, but it doesn’t help us find a tiger that we all like well enough to commit to.”
“We all like Cynric enough.”
Unless Micah had told him, Nathaniel didn’t know about my revelation about my feelings for Cynric, so I wasn’t sure what to say. Either he knew and was pushing, or he didn’t know and it was just an honest remark. I couldn’t ask without having to share the trauma, and I wasn’t ready to talk about it, not so soon, not even with Nathaniel. I agreed to look at more tigers, because it would stop him from asking about Cynric; probably not one of my smarter ideas, but sometimes you do the stupid thing to avoid the traumatic one.