'Farther down the hall,' Dev said.

Nicky hugged me tighter, which made me look at him. 'He's fed you enough; you need fresh meat.'

'I wasn't thinking about feeding on Nathaniel, just seeing him.'

'You have to clean up, so start, and Dev will send someone in.'

I frowned at him. 'I'd like a choice.'

'We won't send in anyone who you haven't already fed on and had sex with, so does it really matter?' Nicky said.

'Yeah,' I said.

He gave me a look, like I was being silly.

'How about it's a surprise,' Dev said, 'you in the shower and your lover strips off and joins you. It's romantic and spontaneous.'

I frowned at him.

Nicky turned me around to face the bathroom door. 'Your soap, shampoo, razors, everything is in there. Go get cleaned up, and before you're finished you'll have food.'

I frowned at him, too.

He gave me a little push toward the door. 'Go, Anita, go so you can question the vampires before dawn.'

'I'd forgotten,' I said.

'When you're really low on ardeur feeds, you forget important things. Clean up, we'll bring you takeout, and then we'll go catch bad guys.'

I didn't point out the irony of Nicky calling someone else a bad guy, with his background. I just went into the bathroom and started cleaning up. The fact that I'd gotten this distracted when we were on a time limit for questioning witnesses said just how low my reserves were. I needed a fast shower, fast food, and some fast answers from our vampire prisoners. It was all about quickies tonight.

CHAPTER 37

The shower was basically a raised lip in the floor with a curtain that went around the two sides that weren't walls. Nicky was right, someone had put all my stuff on the little built-in shelves ready to go. I'd soaped, scrubbed, done both rounds of hair conditioner, and actually had time to do both legs just above the knees, and I was still showering alone. When I knew I was going to be interrupted I'd started shaving in zones, so at least if I had to stop I'd be even. You can shave or not shave, but one leg completely done and the other not shaved at all just didn't work. So instead of doing one leg from ankle to hip, I did both legs to just above the knee, and then if I had time did the rest of the legs. What was taking the guys this long to decide who was getting in the shower with me?

I actually pulled the curtain back to check the time on my phone, and it had only been fifteen minutes. I'd gotten fast at showers; I guess it was having to get blood off me after most night's work lots of practice. Fifteen minutes wasn't long to decide who would be feeding me and maybe not be able to do their bodyguard job until they'd slept, or eaten, or both. After this kind of major healing, it would be a drain on whoever I fed upon. We'd be down one guard. I'd give them twenty minutes and then I was calling someone.

I stepped back into the shower and started on my thighs. I might as well accomplish something while I was waiting. Patience was never my best virtue. I didn't so much hear the door open as feel the line of cooler air invading the foggy warmth of the bathroom.

I couldn't see anything through the curtain. I turned to face where the curtain opened, razor still in my hand. My pulse had sped up, my body already tightening, and that was without knowing who was about to come through the curtain. Maybe Dev had something on the whole surprise thing?

The curtain parted and Jean-Claude was standing there, pale and perfectly nude, his dark hair falling past his shoulders, loose and free and covering nothing. Of all the men I'd expected it to be, he hadn't been on my list. I should have chastised him that he was risking himself traveling to another territory. That he was safer at home. That he was basically the vampire president of the country, and he had other responsibilities besides love. I should have said a lot of things, but I didn't. I stepped out of the water and into his arms with a sound that was suspiciously like a sob. I let his arms and body wrap me close and raised my face for a kiss from those lips, that face. I had a moment to gaze into the darkest blue eyes I'd ever seen, as if the midnight sky could be blue, and then he was kissing me and I closed my eyes and gave myself to his lips, his mouth, and his hands gliding over the wet slickness of my body. It was as if that kiss were air and water and everything I'd been needing.

He picked me up, my feet leaving the ground, and I wrapped my legs around him as he shut the curtain behind us with one hand and walked us into the pounding water of the shower.

CHAPTER 38

The water poured over our faces as we kissed, so that it was as if the water were part of the kiss: pounding, hot, streaming down our skin, beating against my upturned face as the kiss grew more eager. I could feel him pressed between us, his body growing eager with the kiss. It was wonderful and romantic until I needed to breathe and my vampire lover didn't; then it was like drowning as I tried to hold my breath and kiss him past the point where my body wanted air. I finally had to turn my head to the side and take a breath with the water streaming all around us. My body wanted a gasping, big breath, but I knew it had to be a shallow, careful breath, or I'd swallow water, and there was nothing romantic about choking in the shower, even naked.

Jean-Claude stood there with his face shrouded by the silvering fall of water, like a shining, moving veil. He knew to lower his head enough so the water didn't actually run into his eyes, so he could keep them open and let me see his blue, blue eyes framed by the wet black lace of his eyelashes, and the silvered water, so that it was like looking at dark blue pools through silver mist, while being held by the strength of his body. It was a one-two punch of romance and sex.

He lowered his face, and I raised mine so we could kiss again under the pounding, hot water. When I had to turn away to breathe a second time, he moved us out from under the water to the corner near the faucet, so that only the back of his body was still in the water. He set me on my feet in the corner, my back against the strangely cool tiles, and then he knelt in front of me.

The water had soaked into his hair so that the curl was gone, and all that long, black hair spilled more than halfway down his back, perilously close to his waist. My hair had grown heavy and straight with the water just like his so that it fell to my waist, instead of curling to midback. His hair clung in dark strands to his face; it made his eyes look even bluer than normal, like the sky at sunset when the blue gives one last flash of blue, before the sky drowns in orange and red, and darkness falls. Water beaded on his face, clung to the kissable curves of his mouth, as he leaned in toward my body.

I put a hand on his face and stopped him. My voice was shaky as I half-laughed and said, 'I can't believe I'm saying this, but we don't have time for that much foreplay. I've got to question some vampire suspects before dawn.'

'You will not be able to question them tonight,' he said.

'Why not?'

'Fredrico, their Master of the City, contacted me. He regrets, but when he learned that they had been bespelled, he interceded on their behalf and they have, what is the term, lawyered up. If their testimony is valuable it could save them.'

'Every hour that we waste gives the vampire that's doing this a chance to escape, and spread this sickness to more people.'

He put his hands on either side of my hips. 'That is true, ma petite, but dawn will come and trap him as it traps us all. No vampire will be harming anyone once the sun rises.'

'Damn it,' I said.

He smiled. 'You helped make the law that gives the vampires rights to lawyers.'

I gave a small smile. 'I guess I didn't think it would be used against me.'

'We often do not foresee the outcome of our actions, ma petite. We strive to do good things, but often there is a bit of bad in with it all.'

I could only nod.

'But there is good with the news; it means we have time for me to lick the water off your body, until we can drown the sorrow from your eyes.'

'There's no sorrow in my eyes. I need to get to work.'

He looked at me, just looked at me. It wasn't vampire powers or his beauty that made me look away. It was the knowledge in his eyes. He knew me too well for me to lie to him, and if I couldn't lie to him, I couldn't lie to myself. Damn it, that's what happens when you let people get too close. You can't hide anymore, not even from yourself.

'I'm trying to concentrate on work,' and even to me it sounded lame and like wishful thinking.

'Work can be a balm for such things,' he said, softly.

I made myself look at him, as he knelt half in the water, his graceful hands resting on either side of my hips. His face was neutral as only the older vampires could be, so that he gave me nothing to judge, or react to, just this patient waiting for me to decide if I was going to lash out in my anger or let him comfort me.