"You have to be really careful with the younger women," he said. "They'll lie about being over eighteen and it's never them that gets in trouble. Police always believe that the young, innocent girl was taken advantage of. I had one sixteen-year-old who kept sending me lingerie shots of herself. In some states my receiving that kind of shit in my email could get me up on child p**n ography charges."
"What'd you do?"
"I turned her in to the cops. Told them I was concerned that she'd send this stuff to someone who wasn't as moral as I was and get herself hurt."
"You didn't," I said.
"Oh, yeah I did. The girls think it's a game, or something, but it's not them that goes to jail. I don't like them that young anyway." Then he looked at me, and the moment I saw the look I knew whatever he said next would be some kind of teasing, and I wouldn't like it. "But you do, don't you?"
"I do what?" I asked.
"Like them that young, or is it just a rumor that you've got that weretiger, Sydney, or something, from Vegas living with you now?"
"His name's Cynric, and it's not a rumor."
"Sixteen is too young even for me, Anita." But he smiled as he said it, enjoying being able to be morally superior. "And he was a young sixteen, Anita, what little I remember of him."
What was I supposed to say, that I hadn't meant to have sex with Cynric? That we'd been possessed by the biggest, baddest vampire of them all, Marmee Noir? It was true, but after a while the explanations just sounded hollow, because I kept having to make them.
"He's seventeen, and he's legal, and he's in St. Louis because he's the only male blue tiger alive today that we can find. He's on the Harle . . . bad vampires hit list."
Then I realized that wasn't true anymore. Ethan was blue, and he was all grown up. Could I send Cynric home to Vegas? And if I could, should I? He was already my blue tiger to call, but Alex was my red and he didn't live in the same state. Of course, the Harlequin might kill him to hurt me. Shit.
"So you're keeping Cynric safe," Bernardo said.
"Trying to."
"By f**king him?"
I glared at him. "Thanks a lot, Bernardo."
He grinned at me as he pulled out onto the main street.
I glared at him as I unwrapped my burger. I so didn't want to try to eat while we had this conversation, but I did want to have food in me before we got to Edward and Olaf. I definitely didn't want to see Olaf on an empty stomach. I'd need all the strength I could muster.
I tried to decide if I should be angry with him for real, and if I did get angry, why was I angry? Because I felt guilty about Cynric, and that made me defensive about him. I ate my burger without tasting it, and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell to do about Cynric.
"That's it?" Bernardo said. "That's all you're going to say to me? You used to be easier to bait."
I drank some Coke and picked up a French fry. "Were you trying to pick a fight?"
He smiled. "Not a real fight, but it's fun to get you riled up."
I ate the French fry, knowing it was all grease and salt, but then that was what made it taste so good. Why did so many things that were bad for you taste so good?
He glanced at me, then back to the road. "Either you really like the kid, or he bothers you for real."
I sighed, eating my yummy fry and trying not to hunch in the passenger seat. I so didn't want to have this conversation with Bernardo, but then he'd met Cynric the same time I did.
"You met him when I did, Bernardo. He was a virgin, because the white clan is like all the clans, it's all about purity of bloodline, and their queen tiger, Bibiana, likes her men to be monogamous."
"It's because she holds her husband to the big M, and she can't ask the head vampire of Vegas to do something she doesn't make her tigers do."
"Yeah," I said, "and also teenagers don't always have the control with their first orgasm not to shift and eat their partner."
"How's Blue Boy's control?" he asked.
I shrugged, very deliberately not looking at him. "It's good, and don't call him that. He has a name."
"Cynric doesn't sound like a real name for a teenage guy," Bernardo said.
"He goes by a short version of his name."
"Rick?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"Rick's the only thing short for his name," Bernardo said.
"Nope."
He started merging into traffic. It probably meant we were going to exit soon. I hadn't been paying enough attention to where we were, and I wasn't familiar enough with the city.
"What does he call himself, then?"
I mumbled something.
"What?"
"Sin, okay, he likes Sin."
Bernardo laughed out loud, head back, mouth wide, face alight with it.
"Yeah, yeah, enjoy it, laughing boy," I said.
When he could talk, he said, "It's just too good, Anita. Too easy."
"I tried to talk him out of it, but his cousin Roderic goes by Rick, so he thinks of it as taken."
He gave that low male chuckle. "Sin, you're screwing a seventeen-year-old that's named Sin. Oh, man, when I met you, you were like the virgin queen, so untouchable, and now . . ."
"Just stop, okay, I feel bad enough."
He glanced at me as he waited for the traffic to let him exit. "Why feel bad about it? So he's young, so what?"
"You said it yourself, he was a young sixteen. I took his virginity, Bernardo."
"You were mind-fucked by Mommie Darkest at the time, and so was Cynric."
"So were about four other weretigers. Your first time shouldn't be in a vampire-induced orgy, but his was."