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9
Ethan had tochange from tactical to a suit before he accompanied us to the restaurant; all Nicky needed was to replace the leather jacket with the jacket that matched the pants. We started down the steps, but Jean-Claude caught me around the waist and lifted me to the step he was standing on. “I know the shoes are not as comfortable as some,” he said, leaning over me so that he could whisper, “but I would very much like to undress you until those shoes are all that remain.” He pressed his mouth against my hair and breathed the last few words. “And we make love with them wrapped around my waist, and over my shoulders, and…”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Ethan said, “but if Anita isn’t coming downstairs to change the shoes we have to stay up here to guard her and you.”
Jean-Claude raised his face enough to gaze down at them. “We are in our inner sanctuary; surely here we are safe.”
Nicky and Ethan shook their heads in unison. Ethan said, “We’re already breaking the rules by having just Nicky and me on guard duty for both of you. It’s supposed to be a minimum of two guards per protectee.”
“And our inner sanctum is down the stairs behind the big door,” Nicky said, “not here, where we have two doors that are easilyaccessible from the public areas. I’m honestly surprised that the Wicked Truth let you out of their sight this close to the exits.”
“We had little choice when he ordered us to wait out of sight,” Wicked said, as he turned the bend in the stairs to start walking up toward us. I thought he was wearing a black suit with a deep blue shirt until the light showed that it was navy. It reminded me of Jean-Claude’s eyes, though it was an even darker shade of blue. The colors made his shoulder-length blond hair look more yellow than usual, as the blue shirt brought out the blue in his blue-gray eyes, so that his eyes were the most vibrant blue I’d ever seen him have. It must have been the shirt color. Wicked was always beautiful with a face formed of very masculine angles, but there was a deep dimple in his chin, a line here and there that made his face beautiful but almost painfully masculine. It matched the wide shoulders and the athletic way he moved up the steps. He was so male, not at all the androgynous beauty that I preferred in my men, but just because it wasn’t my preferred look didn’t mean I couldn’t admire the view.
“Why would you order them out of sight when you’re this close to the exits?” Nicky asked.
“I wanted to make an entrance,” Jean-Claude said in that neutral voice he used when he wasn’t lying but he wasn’t telling the whole truth either.
There was a knock on the door that led out into the public area of the Circus. It got Ethan and Nicky up the stairs in double time. Wicked called out, “It’s Truth; we refused to both hide on the stairs. It was too far away in case something went wrong.”
Nicky and Ethan kept coming until they stood beside us as the door opened and Truth stepped through. His suit looked almost identical to his brother’s—hell, it might have been his brother’s suit, because left to his own devices Truth was a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of guy. Truth had suits of his own for when he needed to dress up for work, but since they were the same size in every way, they couldtrade clothes. They were brothers; they’d been sharing clothes and life in general for centuries.
Truth’s shirt was a soft gray with a silver tie; as he got closer to us the suit stayed black, no play of color, so his eyes looked solid gray with all the blue drained out of them. His face was almost a mirror of his brother’s: a little narrower through the cheeks, a shade less square through the jaw, but you had to know their faces intimately to see it. Truth’s hair was brown, not blond, and it had a little bit of wave to it, unlike Wicked’s board-straight hair. It was also maybe a couple of inches longer.
They were so handsome that men and some women didn’t like standing next to them, because they took too much attention away. That Jean-Claude stood between them as his bodyguards almost nightly said just how secure he was in his own beauty. The only reason you’d look at anyone else with Jean-Claude standing there was if you wanted your men utterly masculine with not a drop of androgyny; then you might prefer the brothers.
They were my security with benefits, but my plate was overflowing with emotional dating relationships. I didn’t have time or energy to devote to them and they deserved that from someone, so I’d been low-key trying to fix them up with other people. Wicked had taken up the chance to date—read “sleep with”—more women, but Truth had refused. He was like some knight of old, devoted to my service. For all I knew he’d been a knight for real at some point, but whatever the reason, he had asked me to stop matchmaking, so I had. The women that Wicked had dated had gotten the word around that if you just wanted good sex, he was great, but if you wanted more, date someone else. So to save the women’s feelings, I’d stopped matchmaking for Wicked, too.
“Looking snazzy there, Truth,” I said, and got the expected frown when he wasn’t in jeans.
“Don’t tease him, Anita, I had a hard enough time getting himto wear the new suit,” Wicked said as he came up into the storeroom with us.
“Sorry, Wicked,” I said, turning to look at his brother again. “You look very handsome tonight, Truth.”
“No offense to Jean-Claude’s preference for dressing up, but when is the next casual date going to be so I can wear my jeans while I’m on duty?” Truth looked so uncomfortable that we all laughed, except for Nicky.
Nicky said, “You can always pair up with me on Anita’s detail if you want more casual clothes on the job.”
Truth shook his head. “Wicked and I are a team, always.”
“You just offered that to irritate me,” Wicked said.
Nicky grinned. “A little bit, but Truth’s style is closer to Anita’s, just like your designer suits match Jean-Claude’s vibe more.”
“Did you just say ‘vibe’?” Ethan asked.
Nicky said, “Yeah, what about it?” He gave Ethan a look.
Ethan held up his hands like he’d meant no offense. “Perfectly good word.”
I smiled at them both. Jean-Claude turned me in his arms, so I was looking up into his face. “Damn, you are gorgeous,” I said, still smiling, but it was a different smile. Until the last few years, I hadn’t understood that I had different kinds of smiles. Jean-Claude hugged me. I tried to put my face against his chest like normal, but the suit just didn’t feel like him. I had to pull away and look up at his face, as if I was double-checking.
“If you were any other woman I would return the compliment, but I will do as you requested while your family is visiting and not tell you that you are beautiful.”
“Thank you, I know it’s weird, but my therapist said it would help me not to dwell on those issues and free me up to concentrate on the issues that have to be addressed while they’re here.”
“Like the fact that they hate vampires and you’re marrying one,” Nicky said.
“Yeah, that one,” I said, looking at him.
