Benito was tall, dark, and dangerous-looking. He dressed in nice, tailored suits most of the time, and the body underneath was in good shape, but he never managed to make me think handsome—sinister maybe, but not handsome. His dark brown eyes smiled at me, though, and softened his face. He’d moved up the ranks until he was the main bodyguard for Rafael the rat king.

“I’m assuming that Rafael is in the showers if you’re here,” I said.

“Yeah, he said he didn’t want to be disturbed.”

I sort of motioned at the mess of my clothes and hair. “Any way to get an exception?”

“You, Jean-Claude, Micah, and Richard are the exceptions. Rafael says that we can’t keep the kings, or queen, out of their own stuff.”

“Nathaniel isn’t on the list?” I said.

Benito grinned, flashing white, nearly perfect teeth. My dad paid good money for my half-sister to have that kind of smile. Benito’s face was pockmarked and rough; it always made me wonder if he was just one of those people who had a naturally perfect smile. I never asked, because I couldn’t figure out how to ask about the nice smile without insulting the rest of him.

“He’s a prince, not a king; no insult meant.”

“None taken, so I can go clean up?”

He motioned me through the open doorway. The other guard just watched me with eyes so brown they were nearly black, but he said nothing. If Benito said it was okay, then it was.

There were small dressing areas with curtains if I’d wanted to undress in absolute privacy, but the locker room was empty and no one was getting in the door that I wasn’t already sleeping with thanks to Rafael’s men, so I stripped off in front of the lockers. I put my weapons in a locker, but the clothes had to go on the floor and stay there. Whoever did the laundry for us had complained that the clear junk could ruin certain fabrics, so please put it in with the other body-fluid wash. I grabbed a towel from the shelf, and the conditioners that Jean-Claude had made me keep down here for my hair, and went into the shower area.

I heard the water running and knew it had to be Rafael. If he’d just been one of the guards I’d have avoided him and showered around the corner, but he was a great deal more than that. What was protocol if you happened to know a king was in the showers? Did you avoid him, acknowledge him, say hi? He wasn’t my king, anyway, but he was my friend, and occasionally my food. Since the way I fed on him was through sex, it meant we were a little closer than typical friends. He was probably the closest thing I had to a true fuck buddy. You know, you’re in town, they’re in town, and you hook up. I hated the phrase, but for Rafael and me, it wasn’t inaccurate.

I stood there for a minute in the showers debating, and then I heard a small sound. It was a pain sound. I’d seen Rafael after bad guys had flayed the skin from his back. He didn’t make sounds like that for nothing. My hands were full of hair stuff, so I kept the extra-long towel over one shoulder, where it nearly dragged on the ground. I was mostly covered, and that would have to be good enough for whatever was happening. The small, involuntary noises stopped as I looked around the open shower area. He wasn’t in sight, but I could hear a shower still running, so it had to be one of the three private stalls that had shower curtains. I admit that I used them a lot when other people were showering after workouts. Shapeshifters don’t have a problem with nudity, but I wasn’t the only woman who didn’t want to strip down completely with the guys in the shower, so we had the stalls.

I debated on whether to ask if he was all right, but if he was having a moment in the showers, he was entitled. The guy rule was that even if you were crying, the other men ignored it unless you said something to draw attention to it, but quiet crying, especially when you’d tried to get privacy for it, meant you left it alone. Women usually want you to seek them out and ask what’s wrong; men don’t, as a general rule. There are men who want you to ask, and women who don’t, but the rule was true for most people I knew, so I left Rafael to fight his private battle and turned on one of the showers in the middle of the room. I could see if he opened the curtain and wanted to share, but otherwise he had his privacy.

I admit that it was a quick shower for more than one reason, just in case Rafael did come out and want to talk. The second round of conditioner that Jean-Claude had started making me let set in was irritating, but I admitted that my hair looked and felt better since I’d been doing it. I hate when the prissy stuff works so well. It makes me suspect that there’s more practical use to all the pampering than I ever wanted to admit.

I was finally clean and dry and had put in the five, yes five, leave-in products that Jean-Claude had given me to use. I still wasn’t as good as he was at working it through, but it was a start.

In the silence Rafael made a sharp sound, as if moving had hurt.

I couldn’t stand it. “Rafael, it’s Anita.”

“I know your scent,” he said, in a voice that was almost normal, and didn’t match the sound he’d just made.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“You can’t fight my battles for me, Anita.”

I was outside the stall he was in, watching the water splash underneath the curtain. “I know that; the rats don’t allow their king to substitute the way some of the other animal groups allow.”

“We all appreciate that you study each of our cultures,” he said.

I leaned my shoulder against the cool tile. “Is there anything I can do to help you right now? Just say it, tell me, and I’ll leave you to it.”




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