Cravings (5 page)

"No, we're friends, and I was sort of a friend in need. But you're a grown-up
and you understood what it was. I'm not sure Nathaniel is enough of a grown-up
to understand that. Hell, he can't even say no to women who are almost
strangers."

"He turned down at least three dance offers while we were talking, and I know
for a fact that he turned down the beautiful Jessica Arnet for a date."

"He did, really?"

Jason nodded. "Yep."

"I didn't think he'd be able to say no."

"He's been practicing."

"Practicing?"

"He tells you no sometimes, doesn't he?"

I thought about it. "Sometimes he won't repeat conversations to me, or tell
me things. He says I'll get mad at him, and so I should ask the other person."

"You wanted, no, demanded, that Nathaniel be more responsible for himself.
You made him get his driver's license. You've forced him to be less dependent,
right?"

"Yeah."

"But you didn't think what it would mean, did you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You wanted him to be independent, to think for himself, to decide what he
wanted out of life, right?"

"Yeah, in fact, I said almost exactly that to him. I wanted him to decide
what he wanted to do with his life. I mean he's only twenty for God's sake."

"And what he's decided he wants to do is be with you," Jason said, and his
voice was softer, gentle.

"That is not a life decision. I meant like a career choice, maybe go back to
college."

"He's got a job, Anita, and he makes better money as a stripper than most
college graduates do."

"You can't strip forever," I said.

"And most marriages don't last forever either."

My eyes must have gotten too wide, because he hurried with his next words.
"What I mean is, that you treat everything like it's a forever question. Like
you can't change your mind later. I don't mean to imply that Nathaniel wants you
to make a honest man of him. That never came up, honest."

"Well, that's a relief, at least."

"You'll need
a pomme de sang
for years, Anita. Years."

"Jean-Claude said maybe in a few months I'd be able to feed from a distance,
and not need the up close and personal stuff."

"You've made progress on going longer between feedings, Anita. But you
haven't made much progress on truly controlling the ardeur."

"I controlled it on the dance floor," I said.

He sighed. "You shut it down on the dance floor. That's not control, not
really. It's like you have a gun, and you can lock it in the gun safe, but that
doesn't teach you how to shoot it."

"A gun analogy? You've been thinking on this for awhile, haven't you?"

"Ever since Nathaniel told me that you hadn't been allowing him release
during the feedings."

"Allow? He didn't ask, and how was I supposed to know he wasn't even doing
himself in private? I mean, I didn't tell him not to."

"You can play with yourself, and it feels good, but it doesn't meet the real
need."

I pushed my back tight into the tree, as if the solid wood could catch me,
because I felt like I was falling. Falling into a chasm so deep that I'd never
get out. "I don't know if I can do Nathaniel, and still look myself in the
mirror in the morning."

"Why does doing Nathaniel bother you that much?"

"Because he confuses my radar. I have friends, I have boyfriends, I have
people who are dependent on me, people I take care of. I do not fuck the people
I take care of. It would be like taking advantage of your position."

"And Nathaniel falls into the taking care of category?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You think by having sex that you're taking advantage?"

"Yes."

"That's not how Nathaniel sees it."

"I know that, Jason, now." I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against
the roughness of the bark. "Damnit, I want the ardeur under control so I don't
have to keep making these kinds of decisions."

"And if I could wave a magic wand over you and you instantly could control
the ardeur, what then? What would you do with Nathaniel?"

"I'd help him find a place of his own."

"He does most of the housework around your place. He buys your groceries. He
and Micah do most of the cooking. Nathaniel taking care of the domestic stuff is
what allows Micah and you both to work all those hours. Without Nathaniel, how
would you organize it?"

"I don't want to keep Nathaniel just to make my life easier. That's like
evil."

Jason let out a big sigh. "Are you really this slow, or just driving me crazy
on purpose?"

"What?" I said.

He shook his head. "Anita, what I'm trying to say is that Nathaniel doesn't
feel used. He feels useful. He doesn't need a girlfriend, because he thinks he
already has one. He doesn't want to date because he's already living with
someone. He doesn't need to look for a place of his own, because he already has
one. Micah knows that, Nathaniel knows that, the only person who doesn't know
that seems to be you."

"Jason…"

He stopped me with a raised hand. "Anita, you have two men who live with you.
They both love you. They both want you. They both support your career. Between
the two of them, they're like your wife. There are people in this world who
would kill to have what you have. And you'd just throw it away."

I just looked at him, because I didn't know what to say.

"The only thing that keeps this little domestic arrangement from being
perfect for all concerned is that Nathaniel is not getting his needs met." He
stepped in close to me, but the look on his face was so serious, that it never
occurred to me that kissing was coming, because it wasn't. "You've set up the
dynamics so that you wear the pants in this trio, and that's fine, it works for
Micah and Nathaniel. But here's the hard part about wearing the pants, Anita, it
means you get to make the tough decisions. Your life is working better than it's
worked since I met you. You've been happier, longer, than I've ever seen you.
Micah, I don't know that well, but Nathaniel has never been this happy in all
the years I've known him. Everything is working, Anita. Everybody is making it
work. Everybody but…"

"Me," I said.

"You," he said.

"You know, Jason, I can't say you're wrong about any of it, but I hate you
right this second."

"Hate me, if you want to, but I'm tired of watching people have everything
their heart's desire and throw it away."

"This isn't what my heart desired," I said.

"Maybe not, but it's what you needed. You needed a wife in that old 1950s
sort of way."

"Doesn't everybody," I said.

He grinned at me. "No, some people would like to be the wife, but I just
can't find a woman who's man enough to keep me in the style to which I have not
yet become accustomed."

It made me smile. Damnit. "You are the only one who can say shit like this to
me, and not have me pissed at them for days, or longer. How do you get away with
it?"

He planted a quick kiss on my my lips, more brotherly than anything. "I don't
know how I get away with it, but if I could bottle it, Jean-Claude would pay a
fortune for it."

"Maybe not just Jean-Claude."

"Maybe not." He stepped back, smiling, but his eyes had that serious look
again. "Please, Anita, go home, and don't freak. Just go home, and be happy. Be
happy, and let everyone around you be happy. Is that so hard?"

When Jason said it like that, it didn't seem hard. In fact, it seemed to make
a lot of sense, but inside, it felt hard. Inside it felt like the hardest thing
in the world. To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go
and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you
miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So
simple. So difficult. So terrifying. I turned away from him then, and walked
back to the car.

 

NATHANIEL was leaning against the side of the Jeep watching us walk towards
him. He was leaning with his hands behind him so that his weight trapped his
hands behind him, pinned between his hips and the Jeep. It wasn't just
intercourse that Nathaniel hadn't been getting with me. Nathaniel had other
"needs" that I was, if possible, even less comfortable with. It made him feel
peaceful to be tied up. Peaceful to be abused. Peaceful. I'd asked him why he
enjoyed it once, and he'd told me that it made him feel peaceful. It made him
feel safe.

How could being tied up make you feel safe? How could letting someone hurt
you, even a little, make you feel good? I didn't get it. I just didn't get it.
Maybe if I'd understood it better, I'd have been less afraid to go that last
mile with him. What if we had intercourse and it wasn't enough? What if he just
kept pushing, pushing me to do things that I found… frightening? He was supposed
to be the submissive, and I was his dominant. Didn't that mean that I was in
charge? Didn't that mean he did what I said? No. I'd had to learn enough to
understand Nathaniel and some of the other wereleopards, because he wasn't the
only one with interesting hobbies. The submissive had a safe word, and once they
said that word, all the play stopped. So in the end, the dominant had an
illusion of power, but really the submissive got to say how far things went, and
when they stopped. I'd thought I could control Nathaniel because he was so
submissive, but it was tonight that I realized the truth. I wasn't in control
anymore. I didn't know what was going to happen with Nathaniel, or me, or Micah.
The thought terrified me, so I thought about it, really thought about it. What
if I found Nathaniel a new place to live? What if I found him a new place to be?
A new life?

I rolled it over in my mind as we walked across the pavement. I thought about
sending him home with someone else, letting him weep on someone else's shoulder.
But more than that, I thought about getting under the covers with only Micah on
one side, and no one on the other side. Nathaniel had his side of the bed now. I
hadn't realized it until that second, hadn't let myself realize it. The three of
us enjoyed reading to each other. For Micah and me it was a revisiting of
childhood favorites, for the most part, but for Nathaniel most of the books were
new to him. He'd never had anyone read to him before bedtime. Never had anyone
share their books with him. What kind of childhood is it without books, stories
to share? I knew that he'd had an older brother, who died, and a father who
died, and a mother who died. That they'd died, I knew, but not how, or when,
except that he'd been young when it happened. He didn't like talking about it,
and I didn't like seeing the look in his eyes when he did, so I didn't push. I
didn't have a right to push if I wasn't his girlfriend. I didn't have a right to
push if I wasn't his lover. As his Nimir-Ra, he didn't owe me his life story.

I thought about not having Nathaniel in the bed, not for feeding, but not
having him there to hear the rest of the book we were reading. The thought of
him not being there was painful, a wrenching kind of pain, as if my stomach and
my heart both hurt at the same time.

He opened the door and held it for me, because this close to the ardeur, it
wasn't always good that I was driving. He held the door and was as neutral as he
could be, as I moved past him. I didn't know what to do, so I let him be neutral
and I was neutral, too. But as I buckled my seat belt in place and he closed the
door, I realized that I would miss him. Not miss him because my life ran
smoother with him than without him, but I would simply miss him. Miss the
vanilla scent of him on my pillow; the warmth of his body on his side of the
bed; the spill of his hair like some tangled, living blanket. If I could have
stopped my list there, I'd have sent Nathaniel to his room for the night; he did
still have a room where all his stuff stayed, all his stuff but him. But I
couldn't stop the list there, not and be honest.

He'd cried when Charlotte died in
Charlotte's Web
. I wouldn't have
missed seeing him cry over that for anything. It had been Nathaniel's idea that
we could have a movie marathon of old monster movies. You have not lived until
you've sat through
The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Curse of the
Werewolf
, and
Face of the Screaming Werewolf
with a bunch of
shapeshifters. They had heckled the screen and thrown popcorn, and howled,
sometimes literally, at the movie version of what they knew all too well. The
wereleopards had all complained that at least werewolves had some movies, that
once you'd named
Cat People
, the leopards didn't have any movies. Most
of the werewolves had known about the 1980 version, but almost no one had known
about the original in 1950. We had another movie night planned where we were
going to watch both versions. I was sure we'd spend the night complaining,
cheerfully, at how far off both films were, and get eerily silent when it hit
close to home. Alright, they'd be eerily silent and I'd watch them watching the
screen.

I was looking forward to it. I tried picturing the night without Nathaniel.
No Nathaniel coming and going out of the kitchen with popcorn and soda making
people use coasters. No Nathaniel sitting on the floor, next to my legs, half
the night spent with his head on my knee, and the other half playing his hand up
and down my calf. It wasn't sexual, he just felt better touching me. The entire
pard, and pack, felt better touching each other. It was possible to be up close
and personal without it being sexual. It really was, just not usually for me.

Which brought me back to the problem at hand. Funny how the thinking led back
to it. Tonight when the ardeur finally surfaced, what was I going to do? I could
exile Nathaniel to his room, legitimately, because I'd need to feed tomorrow,
too. I could save him like for dessert. But we'd both know that that wasn't it.
I wasn't saving him, I was saving myself. Saving myself from what, I wasn't
sure, but it was definitely about saving me, and had nothing to do with saving
Nathaniel.