Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(79)

“I get that,” he said, “but I look at you, Anita, and I see . . .”

“Just say it, I promise not to get pissed.”

“I see the princess that I want to hold and love and keep safe. I know you can take care of yourself, but . . .”

“Mon lupe, how do you see me?”

“Well, not as the princess, but a fellow prince to stand beside and fight and build a kingdom with, to keep with the metaphor.”

“That is how you need to see ma petite, as a fellow prince to fight side by side with and save the kingdom.”

“How can you say that when even your nickname for her means ‘my little one’?”

“Physically, she is petite, but I do not see her as small. She is and always has been larger than life to me.”

Richard frowned so hard it looked painful. “She’s accomplished great things, amazing things, she’s incredible at everything she does.”

“But you still see me as the pretty, pretty princess to be protected and taken care of?”

“I was raised to protect the woman I loved.”

“I’ve met your mother, she’s got a temper almost as hot as mine, and she takes no prisoners when she’s defending her family. Your dad, on the other hand, is this laid-back, easygoing guy.”

“They balance each other,” he said.

“With a mother like that, how can you still want to put me in the princess box?”

“What’s wrong with the princess box?”

“You climb into it for a while and see how it feels, then get back to me.”

He got that guy look, that I’m-the-big-strong-man-and-you’re-being-silly look. The fact that Richard had that look in him anywhere was an issue for me, but that he directed it at me ever was the real problem.

“I don’t fit into the princess box,” he said, all smug at being over six feet tall and big and athletic and male.

“Neither do I,” I said, “and never aim that look at me again.”

“What look?”

“The guy look, the smug, big, dominant, athletic, guy look, that says with a glance that I’m just a little girl and I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I never think that about you, Anita, ever. I may not get the dynamics the way I need to between us, but I never treat you as less just because you’re a woman. My mother and sister would both kick my ass if they caught me doing that.”

“Shit, maybe I’m projecting, I don’t know anymore.”

“You’re not projecting,” Nathaniel said.

“But Richard is correct as well,” Jean-Claude said. “He did not think as badly of her as she projected, but his attitude toward her is not what she wishes it to be.”

“You could hear us both thinking,” I said.

“Oui.”

“So, we’re both right and both wrong?” Richard asked.

“Oui.”

And that about summed up Richard and me when we tried to date. I was just suddenly exhausted, as everything caught up with me all at once.

Wicked leaned in and said, “If you want to lean against me I would be honored to guard your rest.”

“I won’t sleep, I never sleep in cars.”

“I’m just offering a place to rest.”

“You could lean against me if you’re tired,” Richard said.

“No,” I said, “I can’t, because you see it as weakness, and I can’t be weak right now. We have a dragon, a real dragon to fight. A dragon vampire, which is a new category for me. How do we fight him?”

“You defeated him tonight with the ardeur,” Jake said.

“We chased him away with that most tender of magics,” Jean-Claude said, “but we cannot slay him with it.”

“His brother was killed by a large stone smashing his head.”

“Like a beheading with blunt-force trauma,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Who was his mother?” I asked.

“What?”

“If Ares is his father, and I’ll just accept that is possible and keep moving, then who was his mom?”

“Some say it was Telphusia, a lesser-known goddess, or some say a nereid, but I believe his mother was Tisiphone, one of the Erinyes.”

“The Greek Furies,” I said.

“Yes, attendants of Nemesis, goddess of righteous anger.”

“The Furies hunted people down for punishment, didn’t they?” Richard asked.

“Yes, but it was more than that. They could cause terror in any who saw them; they were nightmares given form. Tisiphone was the avenger of murder. You had to do something evil or outside the law to attract the Furies, but once that happened you were doomed, or so they say. I knew people who did terrible things but the Furies never came.”

“Drakon caused fear like a night hag, so he could feed on it; maybe he gets that from his mom,” I said.

“He is not the only vampire we have met that shares that power, ma petite.”

“Yeah, but just saying, it could come from more than one source.”

“I did not know he could feed upon terror. Calling himself Deimos was not an idle choice, then,”

Jake said.

“The dread before battle that can take a man’s heart and courage,” I said.