"You didn't go," I said, and started peeling off the hose. It gave me something useful to do instead of meet his eyes.

"You're mad because I didn't go?"

"I'm mad because if you'd gone we'd have that barrier crossed, and now we don't."

"And?" he said.

I sighed. "And, if we'd crossed it, it would be easier to cross it again. But doing it this way, makes it more..."

"Important," he said.

I nodded. "Yes."

He came around the desk and went to his knees at my feet. "I want it to be important to you, Anita. I don't just want to be someone you take because you have to take someone, anyone. I want you to want me."

"You said that before."

He touched my hands where they held the new hose, and he moved them gently out of my hands and laid them on the desk. He took both my hands in his, and there was such a serious look in his eyes that I was afraid. Afraid of what he'd say. "You loved me before today. You loved me without sex. No one's ever loved me, or even wanted me, without fucking me first. No one since my mother died and... Nicholas..." He bowed his head for a second, and I squeezed his hands. I'd seen that memory, and I didn't want him thinking about it. So horrible, and he'd been so little. I wanted to protect him from things like that. I wanted to keep him safe.

He smiled up at me. "Gabriel and Raina taught me that I could be worth something, but that worth was all about my body, the way I looked, and how good I could fuck." He squeezed my hands tighter. "You taught me that I was worth more than just fucking. You taught me that I was worth more than just being used."

I started to say something, but he put his fingertips against my lips. "I know what you're going to say. You think you use me with the ardeur , because I'm your pomme de sang. You don't know what using somebody is, Anita. You just don't know."

There was that look in his eyes that he got sometimes that made his eyes look so much older than he was. A look of murdered hopes and more pain than anyone his age should have had to experience.

I kissed his fingers, then rested my face against his hand. "Someday I want you to stop getting that look in your eyes. I want there to be enough good in your life to balance that out."

He smiled, and there was a tenderness in his eyes that made me have to look away. "See, Anita, you think you're hard, and that you use people, but you aren't, and you don't."

I pulled away a little. "I can be hard when I need to be."

"But not to me, and not to Micah. Not to anyone that will let you be nice to them. If they're shitty, you're shitty back, but you give them the chance first."

I shook my head. "I'm not that good a person, Nathaniel."

He smiled and touched my face where Barbara Brown had scratched me. I winced.

"Yes, you are, you just don't like admitting it."

"We better get dressed and out there before someone calls the cops."

"Bert won't call the police, he's too afraid of bad publicity."

I laughed. "You haven't met Bert often enough to know him that well."

"I've known a lot of people like Bert. He's not as bad as they were, but it's the same... kind of thinking. He wants his moneymaker to keep on making money more than he wants anyone to be safe or happy."

I looked into that terribly young face, and there was no one young looking back at me. As much as I'd seen of life, Nathaniel had seen things that would have broken me. Or at least bent me all to hell. I cupped his face in my hands, and said, "What am I going to do with you?"

"I want you to make love to me," his voice was soft, but oh, so serious.

I tried to make a joke of it. "Not right now, I hope."

He gave me his gentle smile, the one that said he wasn't going to let me get away with it. "No, not right now, but soon."

I drew back from him, and I was almost afraid of him, afraid in a way that guns can't help with. "Why are you making this so hard?"

"Love should be hard, Anita, or what is it worth? You taught me that all these months in your bed, with your body against mine and no release. You taught me how hard love can be."

"I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't understand until yesterday."

He leaned up on his knees and got close enough to kiss my mouth. "Don't be sorry, make love to me."

My voice was shaky as I said, "Not right now."

"No," and he breathed against my lips, "but soon." He kissed me, one chaste touch of lips, then he stood and moved away to give me some room.

I watched him move across the room toward the door. "I'll tell them we're alright."

I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice. He'd given me room, physically, but emotionally, emotionally, he was giving me no room at all. I waited for the panic to set in, but it didn't. What came was the memory of him inside my body and the thought of what it might be like to have him spill himself inside me.

31

I'd been loud enough, and it had taken long enough, that part of me wished there was a back door to my office. But there wasn't, so I couldn't slink off even if I'd been willing to do it. Besides, if Bert ever suspected that I was that bothered by it, he'd use it against me. Try for some kind of leverage in the ongoing game of one-upmanship that Bert and I had played for years. The only cure for it was a bold face. Sigh.

I ran my fingers through my hair, which is all you're supposed to do when your hair is as curly as mine. Brushing just makes it frizz. I checked my makeup in the little mirror that I'd started having to keep in the desk. The problem with dressing more like a girl was that it forced you to have to care. Once you put on the lipstick, you had to look at it periodically to make sure it hadn't smeared like clown makeup. I liked the way lipstick looked on me, but I hated having to think about it.

The eye shadow had survived pretty well, but the lipstick was pretty much smeared all over my mouth. Again, I was grateful that the carpet was dark. Red lipstick on a pale carpet would have looked awkward. On the deep brown, you couldn't see it.

I used some makeup remover that was supposed to be used to take off eye makeup, but I'd found it worked dandy on lipstick. I used a moist wipe to get everything off and then had to reapply the lipstick. See, so much trouble. I was just happy that I almost never wore base makeup. That would have been a bitch to get off the carpet.

When my mouth was as red as when I started, I put everything back into the desk drawer, got up, straightened my skirt, took a deep breath, and went for the door. With everything that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, having to face Bert down still took more courage than was pretty. You do not fuck at work. You just don't. It's déclassé to say the least. Shit.

When I stepped out into the reception area, I got a surprise. No one assumed we'd been having sex. The screams had been violent enough that everyone assumed it had been a bloody battle, a near thing. The fact that both Nathaniel and I came out bloodier than when we started helped. Mary had sat him down in her very own office chair. She was laying out bandages, while Nathaniel cleaned the wounds on his hand. They were deep, bloody nail marks. Once I would have said that it looked like a leopard ripped him up, but I'd seen the damage that real leopards could do, and I knew better now. I was sort of amazed that I'd done that much damage, though.