Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton

but when you’re lonely enough, you take what you can find. Cynric was the last pure blue tiger male that we could find. The rest of his people had been slaughtered off long ago; in fact, we weren’t sure where he’d come from. The white tigers of Vegas had found him in an orphanage.
    I fought the urge to squirm uncomfortably and answered him. “It’s okay, Cynric; the news doesn’t usually get crime scene footage this fresh.”
    “And they reported two officers dead,” he said.
    “You knew I wasn’t dead,” I said, and kept my voice even.
    “I know I would have felt the energy drain if you’d died, but you shield really well, Anita. Sometimes so well, it scares me, because I can’t sense you at all.”
    I hadn’t known that. “I’m sorry if that bothers you, but I can’t let you guys know about investigations.”
    “I know, but it’s still… I… Shit, Anita, it scared me.”
    He hadn’t cussed when he first came to us, but he’d picked it up from me—or maybe trying to “date” me would drive any man to curse?
    “I am sorry for that, Cynric, really, but I have to go question the surviving vampires.”
    “I know you have to work, solve the crime.”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “When will you be home?”
    “I don’t know; this one is a mess, so it’ll take longer.”
    “Be careful,” he said, and again his voice sounded young, fragile.
    “As I can be,” I said.
    “I know you have to do your job.” He sounded defensive.
    “I’ve got to go, Cynric.”
    “At least don’t call me that; you know that’s not what I like to be called,” and he sounded exasperated, and still scared.
    I swallowed, took a deep breath, blew it out, and said, “Sin, I’ve gotto go.” I couldn’t keep the displeasure out of my voice. I hated that he wanted to be called Sin, as short for Cynric. We’d tried spelling it
Cyn
, but no one could spell it, so he went with the actual word
sin
. That the only teenager in my bed preferred to be called “Sin” was just rubbing salt in my already wounded sense of self.
    “Thank you. I’ll see you when you get home.”
    “It may be after dawn.”
    “Then wake me up.”
    I had to count to ten to keep from snapping at him, but it was my discomfort that wanted to snap, not really him. He was so young he just didn’t have the skills to deal with me being shot at yet. Hell, some men decades older than Sin couldn’t deal with my job.
    “I’d rather let you sleep.”
    “Wake me,” and now his voice sounded older, an echo of what it would be in a few years, maybe. There was demand in those two words, almost like an order. I fought off my knee-jerk reaction to that, too. I was the grown-up; I’d behave like it.
    “Fine,” I said.
    “Now you’re mad,” he said, and he sounded sullen, and on the edge of anger himself.
    “I don’t want to fight, Cynric—Sin—but I have to go.”
    “I love you, Anita,” he said.
    And there it was, so bold, so out there, so… Fuck. “I love you, too,” I said, but I wasn’t sure it was true; in fact, I knew it wasn’t. I cared for him, but I didn’t love him the way I loved Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel, or… But I said the words, because when someone says they love you, you’re supposed to say it back. Or maybe I was just too cowardly to let the silence fill up; when Sin said he loved me, I said the only thing I could: “I love you, too, Sin, but I have to go.”
    It was Micah on the phone, though. “It’s okay, Anita, go; I’ll take care of things here.”
    “Shit, Micah, I have to have my head in the game here, I can’t… Is he all right?”
    “Solve the crime, catch the bad guys, do your job; Nathaniel and I will take care of Sin.”
    “I love you,” I said, and this time I meant it.
    I could see the smile that went with the tone of his voice as he said, “I know, and I love you more.”
    I smiled. “I love you most.”
    Nathaniel’s voice came on the phone as if Micah were holding it out to him: “I