He lifted the hair away from her shoulder, cupped his hand beneath her chin and moved close beside her. “I think I may possibly be induced to forgive you—”
The near-chuckle in his voice told her she hadn’t offended him. Reassured by that, she looked up at him, slyly. “Oh?”
“You could—” He slid her gown off her shoulder a little, and ran an inquisitive finger from the tip of her shoulderblade to just behind her ear “—write another, and let me play the hero—”
“Have you any—suggestions?” she replied, finding it difficult to reply when his mouth followed where his finger had been.
“In that ‘Burning Passions’ series, perhaps?”
She pushed him away, laughing. “The soft-core porn for housewives? Andre, you can’t be serious!”
“Never more.” He pulled her back. “Think of how much enjoyable the research would be—”
She grabbed his hand again before it could resume its explorations. “Aren’t we supposed to be resting?”
He stopped for a moment, and his face and eyes were deadly serious. “Cherie, we must face this thing at strength. You need sleep—and to relax. Can you think of any better way to relax body and spirit than—”
“No,” she admitted. “I always sleep like a rock when you get done with me.”
“Well then. And I—I have needs; I have not tended to those needs for too long, if I am to have full strength, and I should not care to meet this creature at less than that.”
“Excuses, excuses—” She briefly contemplated getting up long enough to take care of the lights—then decided a little waste of energy was worth it, and extinguished them with a thought. “C’mere, you—let’s do some research.”
He laughed deep in his throat as they reached for one another with the same eager hunger.
She woke late the next morning—so late that in a half hour it would have been “afternoon”—and lay quietly for a long, contented moment before wriggling out of the tumble of bedclothes and Andre. No fear of waking him—he wouldn’t rouse until the sun went down. She arranged him a bit more comfortably and tucked him in, thinking that he looked absurdly young with his hair all rumpled and those long, dark lashes of his lying against his cheek—he looked much better this morning, now that she was in a position to pay attention. Last night he’d been pretty pale and hungry-thin. She shook her head over him. Someday his gallantry was going to get him into trouble. “Idiot—” she whispered, touching his forehead, “—all you ever have to do is ask—”
But there were other things to take care of—and to think of. A fight to get ready for; and she had a premonition it wasn’t going to be an easy one.
So she showered and changed into a leotard, and took herself into her barren studio at the back of the apartment to run through her katas three times—once slow, twice at full speed—and then into some Tai Chi exercises to rebalance everything. She followed that with a half hour of meditation, then cast a circle and charged herself with all of the Power she thought she could safely carry.
Without knowing what it was she was to face, that was all she could do, really—that, and have a really good dinner—
She showered and changed again into a bright red sweatsuit and was just finishing that dinner when the sun set and Andre strolled into the white-painted kitchen, shirtless, and blinking sleepily.
She gulped the last bite of her liver and waggled her fingers at him. “If you want a shower, you’d better get a fast one—I want to get in place before he comes out for the night.”
He sighed happily over the prospect of a hot shower. “The perfect way to start one’s—day. Petite, you may have difficulty in dislodging me now that you have let me stay overnight—”
She showed her teeth. “Don’t count your chickens, kiddo. I can be very nasty!”
“Mon petite—I—” He suddenly sobered, and looked at her with haunted eyes.
She saw his expression and abruptly stopped teasing. “Andre—please don’t say it—I can’t give you any better answer now than I could when you first asked—if I—cared for you as more than a friend.”
He sighed again, less happily. “Then I will say no more, because you wish it—but—what of this notion—would you permit me to stay with you? No more than that. I could be of some use to you, I think, and I would take nothing from you that you did not offer first. I do not like it that you are so much alone. It did not matter when we first met, but you are collecting powerful enemies, cherie.”
“I—” She wouldn’t look at him, but only at her hands, clenched white-knuckled on the table.
“Unless there are others—” he prompted, hesitantly.
“No—no, there isn’t anyone but you.” She sat in silence for a moment, then glanced back up at him with one eyebrow lifted sardonically. “You do rather spoil a girl for anyone else’s attentions.”
He was genuinely startled. “Mille pardons, cherie,” he stuttered, “I—I did not know—”
She managed a feeble chuckle. “Oh Andre, you idiot—I like being spoiled! I don’t get many things that are just for me—” she sighed, then gave in to his pleading eyes. “All right then, move in if you want—”
“It is what you want that concerns me.”
“I want,” she said, very softly. “Just—the commitment—don’t ask for it. I’ve got responsibilities as well as Power, you know that; I—can’t see how to balance them with what you offered before—”
“Enough,” he silenced her with a wave of his hand. “The words are unsaid, we will speak of this no more unless you wish it. I seek the embrace of warm water—”
She turned her mind to the dangers ahead, resolutely pushing the dangers he represented into the back of her mind. “And I will go bail the car out of the garage.”
He waited until he was belted in on the passenger’s side of the car to comment on her outfit. “I did not know you planned to race him, Diana,” he said with a quirk of one corner of his mouth.
“Urban camouflage,” she replied, dodging two taxis and a kamikaze panel truck. “Joggers are everywhere, and they run at night a lot in deserted neighborhoods. Cops won’t wonder about me or try to stop me, and our boy won’t be surprised to see me alone. One of his other victims was out running. His boyfriend thought he’d had a heart attack. Poor thing. He wasn’t one of us, so I didn’t enlighten him. There are some things it’s better the survivors don’t know.”
“Oui. Left here, cherie.”
The traffic thinned down to a trickle, then to nothing. There are odd little islands in New York at night; places as deserted as the loneliest country road. The area where Andre directed her was one such; by day it was small warehouses, one floor factories, an odd store or two. None of them had enough business to warrant running second or third shifts, and the neighborhood had not been gentrified yet, so no one actually lived here. There were a handful of night-watchmen, perhaps, but most of these places depended on locks, burglar-alarms, and dogs that were released at night to keep out intruders.