Anita Blake 22.5 - Dancing Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d been told.
    “The stories grow in the telling sometimes, but whatever they’ve decided to tell people, sex did not happen. Now, here I am in person, and every woman who heard the story will be wondering if it was true; some were drunk enough they may believe what they were told happened, and whoever lied the most will be freaking out that I’m here.”
    Katie mastered herself enough to say, “I just need a minute. If you could set the rest of the food on the table and watch the pasta in the oven, I’ll be right back.” Katie went out the door with a bemused Zerbrowski trailing after her.
    I looked up at Nathaniel. “If you say you didn’t have sex, I believe you, but what did you do at the party that was so share-worthy?”
    “Nothing illegal.”
    “I knew that, silly you.”
    He smiled. “You never think less of me, do you?”
    “Why should I?”
    “It doesn’t bother you to know that at least five women here have seen me naked.”
    In my head I thought, since you did a few pornographic movies before we met, there might be a lot more people who have seen you naked, but I didn’t say that out loud. If I brought that up, we’d fight, or he’d get his feelings more hurt than they already were, and that wasn’t what I wanted.
    “You don’t take your G-string off in the club,” I said.
    “For enough money I do at private parties.”
    I hadn’t known that, and fought to keep my face from showing it. Then I thought of something else. “Did the lap dances start before or after your thong came off?”
    “Most before, but the bride got one after.”
    “That must have been tricky.”
    “Lap dances without clothes are always tricky,” he said.
    “I’ll bet.”
    “Are you upset?”
    I honestly wasn’t sure, but the only answer I had was, “Not really.”
    “You don’t look completely happy,” he said.
    “Okay, how long ago was this party?”
    “A year ago, maybe a little longer.” His face was very careful as he said it, watching my face for anger. He watched sometimes like that, waiting for me or Micah to get mad at him. He’d been physically abused as a child, and by age seven he’d had to run away after witnessing his older brother’s murder. He’d asked me once if there was a time limit on how long someone could be convicted for murder. I’d told him, no, a person could always been charged for murder, unlike rape, or child abuse, which does have to be reported as a crime within a set number of years. Nathaniel had nodded, and filed the thought away. I didn’t push. His therapist said that Nathaniel had blocked out most of his early childhood in order to survive. What he did remember was so terrible it worried me; I mean, how bad could the rest be? Fresh on the streets at age seven, Nathaniel had been found by a man who liked little boys; he’d fed him, clothed him, taken care of him, and before the age of ten he had pimped him out. Saying Nathaniel had a hard childhood was like saying World War II was a small border dispute. Becoming a headliner at Guilty Pleasures had been such a climb up the social ladder that it seemed wrong to bitch about a little nudity. If things had gone differently and he’d never been found by the local wereleopards, Nathaniel would probably have died of a drug overdose before he ever reached seventeen. The wereleopards had insisted he be drug-free before they made him one of them. I was very glad that he’d lived for us to meet, and that he was in my life.
    “So the bachelorette party was after we were living together?”
    “Yes,” he said, face, voice, body language very careful.
    I nodded. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s weird that the bride and her friends are here, but it’s okay. It’s your job. You’ve been a good sport about me being shot, stabbed, and nearly dying at my job, so I need to man-up and be a good sport about your stuff.”
    “You’re really not mad about it?”
    I licked my lips, and tried to think how to word it. “I’m not