Crimson Death by Laurell K. Hamilton

be best. If you talk of all this first, it may spoil the mood.”
    â€œI was thinking the same thing.”
    She smiled, and it took her face from severe to truly beautiful. I understood why she didn’t use that particular smile much at work. Customers would have begged her to dance with them, even as dresseddown as she could manage. I basked in the warmth of that smile, because I was on a very short list of people that got to have it aimed at them. It made me smile back, and blush, which was a habit I couldn’t seem to break entirely.
    The blush made her smile broaden enough to flash a delicate hint of fang and show that there was a dimple in that classically beautiful face. She touched my face and leaned in for a very unprofessional kiss. I knew how to French-kiss a vampire without nicking myself on the fangs, but her mouth was smaller than that of anyone else I’d kissed so it was more of a challenge, but it was worth it. She drew back first, leaving me a little breathless.
    â€œEnjoy as much of tonight as you can, Anita.”
    â€œIt’s Jean-Claude. What’s not to enjoy?”
    She smiled. “Very true. I look forward to the next time we can share our king.”
    I blushed and couldn’t stop it. “Me, too.”
    She turned and looked at Ricky and Roger; I’d sort of forgotten about them. Echo could have that effect on me.
    Roger was staring at the floor as hard as he could. Ricky was looking at us as if we were something to eat. I glared at him. “You got something to add?”
    â€œYou can’t blame a man for enjoying the show.”
    â€œYes, actually I can.”
    â€œI am your superior and she is your queen. Both are people you should not be leering at,” Echo said.
    â€œI can control what I say and what I do around beautiful women, but I can’t control involuntary body responses.”
    â€œWe don’t care about your erection,” Echo said. “It’s not important to us.”
    His anger slid across my skin like the smell of well-cooked meat. I’d acquired the ability to feed on anger the way that Jean-Claude could feed on lust. He’d shared that ability with me, but so far siphoning off people’s anger was something only I could do.
    I sniffed the air, making a big deal out of it. “Calm the fuck down, Ricky. You’re starting to smell like food: yummy, yummy anger.”
    â€œFuck you.”
    â€œYou wish.”
    â€œYou just can’t behave respectfully, can you?” Echo asked.
    â€œAnita just seems to bring out the worst in me, I guess,” Ricky said.
    â€œYou are officially on probation, Ricky,” she said.
    â€œThat’s not fair.”
    â€œLife isn’t supposed to be fair.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œIt means that only children whine,
That’s not fair
. Grown-ups understand that fairness is rare and good treatment must be earned.”
    â€œI’m good at my job.”
    â€œYou are. That’s why I’m not going to fire you tonight. But remember this, Ricky: If you disrespect Anita, or any of the female employees again, you will be out of a job.”
    â€œHow can I not look at them and do my job?”
    â€œYou can look, but don’t leer.”
    â€œI don’t understand the difference.”
    She sighed. “I think you mean that.” She frowned and turned to me. “Go to our king and shared lover. I will see that Cardinale does no harm and try to explain the difference between a look and a leer to this one.”
    â€œGood luck on that last part,” I said.
    â€œPerhaps I will enlist some of the other male guards to explain the masculine niceties of looking but not being lecherous.”
    â€œGood idea,” I said.
    She opened the door for me, and the music engulfed us so that I could barely hear her as she told me good-bye, with her face back to its super-serious head-of-security expression. I found myself a