Skin Trade

“I wouldn’t suggest anyone pushing power into me, just to test the limits,” I said, low.

“I’m just following orders, Anita,” she said.

“And what were your orders, exactly?” I asked.

She ignored the question and answered a different one. “This is Domino, and this is Roderic.”

Domino had to be a nickname from the hair. He just nodded at me, and I nodded back. White Hair smiled and said, “Rick, I prefer Rick.”

I nodded and answered the smile with a small one of my own. I didn’t blame him on the name choice. “Rick,” I said.

Then I felt something else. Something more. It was Crispin, and he was agitated. I fought to keep my eyes on the security tigers because the two tigers with Ava were so much muscle. Maybe not professional muscle, but they had the feel to them of people you wouldn’t want to fight, not if you didn’t have to. I’d been the smallest person in violent situations for years now. I knew how to judge potential. They had potential, and not all of it good. But it was an effort not to look away from the danger zone, a real effort not to scan the crowd for Crispin. He was my tiger to call, which meant that sometimes I could feel his emotions. He was upset, scared, nervous, just wrong in his head.

But just as I could feel his agitation, I could also feel him getting closer to us. I fought to keep my attention on the weretigers in front of me, but they had picked up on my… body language, tension, maybe even my scent had changed. I was more tense because try as I might, I was picking up some of Crispin’s agitation. Wereanimals with some training are like uber-cops. You can’t hide much from them.

Edward spoke low. “What’s wrong?”

“Ask them,” I said.

Rick was no longer smiling; even Ava wasn’t as happy. But it was Domino who said it. “He was ordered to go upstairs and wait for us there.”

“He’s a little conflicted,” I said.

“You can’t serve two masters,” Ava said, trying for a soothing voice, but her words held an edge of that tension, as if Crispin were leaking over them as well as me.

“Who’s conflicted?” Bernardo asked.

“Crispin,” I said, and as if his name had conjured him, he was there. Walking through the crowd of humans, moving through them too swiftly, too easily, as if he were made of water and the crowd were rocks to flow and glide around. But glide implied grace and ease, and there was nothing easy about his movements. Swift, near dance-like, but too jerky to be graceful. What was wrong with him?

The tigers felt him, too, because Domino turned to watch him. Were they picking up his scent or his emotion? Rick kept his attention on us, but there was a tension to his shoulders that seemed to scream that he wanted to turn around and face Crispin. Rick assumed that the greatest danger was another wereanimal. Normally, he’d be right.

Crispin was wearing a T-shirt almost as pale a blue as his eyes, jeans, and no shoes. He hadn’t bothered with shoes. Most of the wereanimals would leave clothes off if you didn’t make them behave.

He held his hand out toward me. I took a step toward him without meaning to. Domino stepped between us. A sound came out of my throat that I hadn’t meant to make, either. I growled at him. It rolled up my throat and across my tongue and between my teeth and lips. The growl vibrated on the roof of my mouth like a taste. I saw the white tigress inside me, and we looked at Crispin and he was ours. You do not stand between us and what is ours.

I felt Bernardo and Olaf shift around me, as if they weren’t sure what to do. Edward was Edward, and stayed still. I knew he would back my play whatever it was.

Domino looked at me, and there was anger in those orange eyes. “You are not my queen, not yet.”

“Get out of our way,” I said, and my voice held that note of growl that I’d come to associate with wereanimals. Outwardly, I was human, but the sound in my throat wasn’t.

Ava touched Domino’s shoulder. “She smells of tiger.”

He jerked free of her hand. “You are not my queen, either.”

Rick said, “Don’t make a scene. Bibiana was clear on that.”

“She has no right to order me about.” I wasn’t sure if he meant me or Ava.

Crispin tried again to move around the other men and come to me. Domino started to grab him, but Crispin simply wasn’t there to grab. He might not be professional muscle, but he had the reflexes of a cat. And apparently, he was a quicker cat than Domino.

Domino tried to move forward, with that we’re-about-to-have-a-fight energy. Rick grabbed his shoulders, and Ava moved in front of him, facing us. Crispin came to my outstretched left hand, and I moved him behind me, so I’d have both hands free, but he’d be protected. He was quick, and he could fight when he had to, but this was a fight he could not win. The black-and-white tiger had the feel to him of death contained and waiting. I knew that with a certainty that made me want to go for a gun.

“You should have gone upstairs as our queen told you to,” Ava said.

“Anita needed me,” he said, and his six-foot-plus frame towered over me, just a little. It seemed wrong that so much tall, athletic grace was hiding behind my short, not so athletic, and definitely not so graceful self.

“You’re hiding behind her,” Domino growled. Rick’s pale hands tightened visibly on the other man’s shoulders. They both had to look up at Crispin, which should have lessened their tough-guy act but didn’t, because it wasn’t an act.

“She doesn’t need any help with violence,” Crispin said.

Edward said, “We’re attracting a crowd.”

He was right. The tourists were getting a show, or anticipating one. We were drawing them away from the slot machines, and that takes a lot in Vegas. I didn’t think we’d done anything that interesting yet. Of course, it could be the three of us in our U.S. Marshal windbreakers and badges, with weapons peeking out all over the place; yeah, that might be enough to attract some attention. Olaf would have looked dangerous anywhere with all the black clothing and leather.

“Let us continue this upstairs,” Ava said, and motioned us all farther into the room, in the general direction of the elevators.

I looked at Domino still in Rick’s grasp, so angry. Was it a good idea to get in the elevator? Probably not, but nothing scary enough had happened yet to make me willing to back down.

“Fine,” I said, “lead the way.”

29

DOMINO CALMED DOWN enough to stand beside Rick and Ava in the big elevator. It was one marked Private, and seemed to go only to one floor. The penthouse, I was assuming.

“Sorry,” Rick said, and sounded like he meant it, “but they can’t go into the private chambers with this many weapons on them.”

“We can’t leave the weapons in the car,” I said. “New rules. Once a warrant is in play, we have to be able to do our jobs at full capacity at any minute, and we are not allowed to leave our weapons in a place where civilians could get hold of them.”

“You lie,” Domino said.

The black and white tigers growled inside me. It was hint enough. The tigresses didn’t like me backing down to any of the males. I took a step closer to him, which put Ava between us. Rick put a hand back on the other man’s arm, just sort of automatically. “Domino, if you can’t smell that I’m telling the truth, then you aren’t dominant enough to be this much trouble.”

He growled at me, low and rumbling, like close thunder. “I will not answer your call, little queen.”

“I haven’t called you anywhere.”

“You did,” he said, “you called us all.”

Rick put an arm across the other man’s chest, moving smoothly into a more solid hold. “You did, Ms. Blake. A few months back, you did do that.”

I sighed, and the anger began to fade, until the tigers inside me swatted at me from the inside out. I flinched, couldn’t help it. I was getting used to the sensation of invisible claws cutting me up, but it was almost impossible not to react a little. It wasn’t real damage. I knew it was metaphysical pain. It hurt, but it did not bleed me. They’d actually put me through medical tests to make certain of that, at one point. It was just pain. I could ignore it, sort of. When the tigers got this bitchy, I had to pay some attention, or it got worse.