Read Online Anita Blake 18 - Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online

the lioness was, because she was one of the few beasts inside me that didn’t have an equivalent on the outside. It meant she was way more interested in other lions than was comfortable for me. There was one werelion who was applying pretty hard for the job, but I kept avoiding him. I had enough men in my life.
    I had slowed the lioness with my breathing and my pulse, but the image that she put in my head was not very human. She wanted me to drop to my knees and rub across him. She wanted more of his scent on us, more of his skin on us. With a gun in my hand, it was easier to push the thoughts down. I let her know that we were in danger, and that did seem to calm all my beasts. They understood danger, and through me, they knew what a gun could do.
    The man kept his hands on his knees, and I moved so that the gun was angled more solidly at his chest. There’d be no collateral damage at this distance, because fast as he might be, he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet from less than three feet.
    “Just so we’re clear,” I said, “if you try to move fast, I will simply pull the trigger, because I know once you move for real it’s my only hope at this range.”
    He nodded, still smiling, so that from a distance it would look like we were being friendly. “You moved me in close so you wouldn’t accidentally hit the nice humans. I smell you, Anita; I know I’m not the only kitty-cat at the table. It’s a weakness to care too much about your pets.”
    I frowned. “Do you mean humans?”
    He nodded, still smiling.
    “I carry a badge; it’s sort of my job to care about them.”
    “First, let’s be very clear. If anything happens to me, then your people die.”
    “What people? You mean the people in the restaurant?”
    “No, but knowing you care does make it easier.” He nodded a little behind me. “It’s a visual.”
    “If I even feel you move too much, I will just pull this trigger.” The lioness in me snarled at the air, and the edge of it trickled out between my lips. It made the threat better, but it was not a good sign for my control. One problem at a time, Anita, one problem at a time. Talking to myself wasn’t a good sign, either, but sometimes using my own name reminded me that I wasn’t the beast, but the person.
    “I believe you,” he said, voice dropping lower. “I will sit very, very still, kitten.”
    I would have protested the nickname, but I had called him kitty first. I turned and found Ahsan almost at our table. He smiled, thinking I was looking for him, and in a way I was, because there was a second bad guy behind him. He had a blond skater’s cut, complete with a wedge of bangs that covered his right eye completely. He wore an oversized tank top and baggy shorts, which could hide a lot of weapons. How did I know he was a bad guy? Maybe it was the gun in his hand that he hid under the oversized shirt. The shirt was so big it hung off one shoulder and showed off that his upper body hit the gym a lot.
    If I’d had concentration left for it, I’d have tried to taste whether he was shapeshifter or human. If he was shifter he was trying to hide his energy, or the energy coming off his friend drowned him out. Either way, he was following behind Ahsan, and he had his gun out. He was wearing exercise gloves like for biking or weight lifting, the ones that covered all the front of the hand. Leather gloves in this heat—seriously paranoid, or seriously had his prints in the crime-stopper databases. Either way, I got to watch him follow the waiter to “our” table. The threat was no longer subtle.
    “Nick,” the man at the table called out, in a happy voice, “thought I’d have to eat lunch alone.”
    The second man grinned at us both, and it reminded me of Jason’s grin. It even filled his blue eyes with laughter. He was damn near six feet and not built like Jason at all, but there was something about him that reminded me; maybe it was a meaner edge of that urge Jason always had to