I pointed at the half-ruined building. “That looks nice and shadowy.”
He parked behind the ruin and shut off the engine, killing the constant noise that had provided background to our conversation. We sat steeped in the sudden quiet.
I faced him. “We keep coming back to this again and again, so let’s just do this once and for all, because I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s say the Bouda House got attacked and set on fire, and then some knight of the Order called asking for my help. Your mother forbids you to leave, because she needs you here. Your clan house is in ruins. I want you to come with me to help the Order. Would you?”
“This is exactly what you don’t understand.” Raphael’s face was resolute. “If my mother put that sort of condition on me, I would’ve told her to fuck herself. Anyone who gives you an ultimatum of ‘pick me’ or ‘save your friend’ isn’t worth your loyalty.”
He had a point. “You’re right. But my question stands. The Order was everything to me, Raphael. It was my pack, my family. Every day I got up and went to work, I took pride in being me, because I was a knight. I helped people. I wasn’t a pathetic little freak creature that everyone kicked and punched whenever they felt like it. I didn’t want to be that creature. Maybe it was cowardly to reject being a shapeshifter and pretend I was a human. I don’t know. I do know that as long as I was a knight, I wasn’t a victim. I mattered, do you understand that?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you think it was easy for me? Because it wasn’t. Sometimes no matter what I did, I had shitty choices to make, and I made mine the best I could. So tell me, Raphael, would you have walked away from your mother and your clan to help the Order?”
“No,” he said. His tone told me he finally understood. He didn’t like it, but he got it. The Order had been my family. It mistreated me, but you don’t abandon your family just because they do something you don’t like. We had finally reached an understanding. Sadly, it was too late for both of us.
“Then I consider this matter closed.” I opened my car door and stepped out into the cooling air. A moment later he joined me. We walked down the street toward the mansion.
“I’m sorry about the way things went down in the office,” Raphael said. “I shouldn’t have brought Rebecca. It was petty.”
“Water under the bridge.” I waved my hand at him and gave him a sweet smile. “But if you do it again, I’ll kill you both.”
He laughed under his breath. It was the delicious seductive laugh I remembered. “Be careful, someone might mistake you for a filthy bouda.”
“I like boudas. They’re fun in bed.”
“They?” A sudden edge crept into Raphael’s voice.
“They. Since you are now officially a taken man, you won’t mind if I test-drive someone else from the clan.”
“Like who?”
We strolled through the gates. The guard in the booth checked out my dress and stared. I gave him a friendly smile.
Raphael held up his invitation. The guard examined it and waved us on.
“Enjoy the party.”
“We will,” Raphael answered in a voice that suggested hell would freeze over before he would enjoy anything.
We strolled up the sidewalk.
“Who?” Raphael demanded.
For a man a hair away from mating to another woman, he was very interested in my sexual adventures.
“I haven’t decided yet. I always wanted to have a three-some.”
Raphael stopped.
“Two guys or maybe a guy and a girl. Since you’re more experienced than me, you must’ve had both? Which one was more fun?”
“Why stop at two partners?” Raphael said, enunciating the words very clearly. “Why not have half a dozen? You could hand out numbers to keep order. Get a little cute sign that says, ‘Now serving.’”
Oh, the spoiled bouda didn’t like that. Not one bit. “Don’t be silly. That would be tacky.” I paused by the glass and wrought-iron door, waiting for him to open it.
“Tacky?”
“Yes.”
Raphael swung the door open. Inside, a tiled lobby waited for us, bathed in the bright glow of electric lamps made to look like old gaslight lanterns. I stepped through and nodded to an older woman standing by the door. She wore a dress the color of red wine and her makeup was flawless. Two men stood near her. Both looked like they chewed up bricks and spat out gravel for a living.
“Your invitation,” the woman said.
Raphael handed her the invitation and unleashed a smile. Wow. Ascanio didn’t know it, but he had a long way to go.
The woman’s face softened. She brushed the invitation with her manicured fingers and smiled back. “Welcome to the party.”
Sixteen or sixty, it didn’t matter. Raphael smiled and they sighed. And he wondered why I thought he was spoiled.
Raphael put his hand on my back, gently escorting me to the next room. A spacious chamber stretched in front of us. Its cream walls rose high, supporting a twenty-foot ceiling. The granite floor was polished to an almost mirror gleam. Enormous, twelve-foot-tall windows, framed with gauzy white curtains and thicker golden draperies, spilled the weak evening light into the room. Matching accents ran along the molding. To our right a curved white staircase led upstairs. The entire place felt like a palace, graceful and somehow timeless.
The air smelled of wine, cinnamon, and another odd, but familiar aroma…oregano…no, marjoram, mixing with the lush, smoky sweetness of myrrh. “Interesting choice for potpourri.”
“Spicy.” Raphael leaned to me, that dashing smile still on his face. “I can’t tell if he’s covering up the scent of something bad with this perfume or not.”
We stood for a long second, our nostrils fluttering, taking shallow breaths and trying to break the fragrance down to individual scents.
“I’m a bust,” I said. If there were any hidden odors under that amalgam of herbs and resins, I couldn’t find them.
Raphael furrowed his eyebrows. “Me too.”
All around us people glided across the floor, men in tuxedos and tailored suits, women in expensive dresses and shiny rocks, looking like attendants to some ancient tyrant. Music emanated from somewhere above, gentle, exotic, and unobtrusive, like a hint of an intriguing perfume.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m at court?” I murmured.
“And there’s the king himself,” Raphael said.
The guests parted and I saw a man. Of average height, he had a wealth of wavy hair the color of pale amber. An expensive suit of light gray sketched his lean figure. He turned.
Huh. Anapa was beautiful.
He was in his late thirties, closing in on forty. His narrow face, with pronounced cheekbones and a strong chin, was masculine but it was a civilized masculinity, refined, aristocratic, and very carefully groomed. Some wealthy men carried grooming too far, trimming their eyebrows and shaving their chins until they looked slightly feminine. Anapa stopped on the right side of that. His hair was perfectly cut but slightly tousled. His eyebrows still retained some shagginess. His lips were full and crisply drawn, but his cheeks and chin suggested the future possibility of stubble. His large blue eyes, with hooded eyelashes, betrayed a lively intellect and a spark of humor. His skin, sun-painted and dark for a blond, spoke of the South, bright sun, and blue water. He didn’t seem Nordic in the least. More like Mediterranean.
He saw us and smiled, making laugh lines at the corners of his eyes stand out. It was a warm, friendly smile, as if he found something about us incredibly amusing and couldn’t wait to share.
“We’ve been seen,” Raphael said, starting toward Anapa.
We strolled through the crowd toward our host. “How are we playing this?” I asked.
“I’m a businessman and you are my brainless delicious arm candy.”
Delicious arm candy? “It’s good Rebecca isn’t here or she’d think I was poaching.”
“She wouldn’t know the meaning of the word,” Raphael said, his face flat.
“Oh, she isn’t a jealous type?”
“No, she actually wouldn’t know what the word meant.”
Ha!
The woman in the blue dress in front of us stepped aside and Anapa approached us.
“Mr. Medrano.” Anapa offered his hand.
Raphael shook it. “Happy birthday.”
I batted my eyelashes and did my best to appear dumb as a board.
“Thank you, thank you.” Anapa looked at me, still smiling, an appreciation in his eyes. There was nothing at all sexual in his gaze. He examined me more the way one would examine a rare good-looking dog. Or a horse. “And you would be his lovely companion.”
I slipped into my Texas twang and offered him my hand. “Good evenin’. Such a pleasure to meet you.”
Anapa took my fingers into his. He raised my hand, as if to kiss it, and paused, inhaling the scent instead, savoring it. “Mmm.” He chuckled softly. “You have the most intriguing body.”
Okay, that was freaky.
Raphael moved, subtly inserting himself between me and Anapa. His hand covered mine and the other man let go. “Dear, say good-bye to Mr. Anapa. He has other guests to meet.”
“Bye.” I wiggled my fingers at him.
Anapa grinned at us again. “For now.”
Raphael steered me into the crowd.
“What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” he growled. “He seemed normal before.”
Apparently I had a special gift for bringing out the crazy in men.
We moved to the refreshments table and turned, scanning the room. A man on the staircase to our right. Two guys by the exit, a woman by the balcony, but no guards in the hallways radiating from the main room. I plucked a small piece of toast with pine nuts and mushrooms heaped on it from the appetizer tray and took a bite. Hmm. Yummy.
“Second floor,” I murmured.
“Mhm,” Raphael agreed.