Free Anita Blake 20bis - Beauty: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Outtake by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

I’ve always had better luck dating the “monsters” than the humans. Some people say that’s because I’m one of the monsters. Some days I think they’re right, but other days I think they’re just jealous whiner babies. A lot of the shit I got was because I was a petite, attractive woman who slept with a lot of men, not casually, but on a regular I-date-you-basis. If I’d been a man I honestly think a lot of the complaining wouldn’t have happened. Some people, including other women, still think we should be waiting for Prince Charming so we can ride off into the sunset of happily-ever-after-land. This was one princess who could rescue her own damn self. I was fine with the prince fighting at my side, or, hell, I’d rescue him if he needed it. But I was so not the passive, wait-for-my-one-true-love type, and wonder of wonders, I’d found several men who loved me for being the stubborn, messy, violent, sexually-aggressive woman that I am. In fact, they totally encouraged that last part.
    Normally I might have put on some lingerie, or let Jean-Claude get me out of my clothes, but after a crime scene, undressing was not usually part of foreplay. I never knew what I might have rubbed against, stepped in, or had sprayed on me. And even for a vampire, old blood and guts of someone I’d killed was not an aphrodisiac, and honestly it bothered me more than it bothered him. I just wanted the clothes off and put in the plastic bag I kept for such occasions. The weapons came off first, though, and most of them went in the gun safe that now stayed in the corner of his bedroom. We had too many people coming and going that weren’t gun savvy now. Hell, we had some with toddlers. Toddlers and guns do not mix. So, we had gun safes, and I only kept the guns with me that could fit on me, or at hand with me. The guards did the same.
    So, a mountain of guns, blades, and ammo, placed in the safe, among all the other dangerous toys. Then the clothes stripped off and put in the plastic garbage bag so they could be washed later, and I was naked, and down to only one handgun I’d carry with me into the bath. I could hear water running in the bathroom as Jean-Claude filled the big tub. It had a quick fill on it, and there was an extra hot water tank just for the tub. I’d learned that was the magic reason it never seemed to run out of hot water.
    I walked naked and armed into the bathroom with just the Browning BDM in my hand. I was probably as safe as I’d been all day this far into the underground of the Circus of the Damned. If anyone got through all the bodyguards, the fourteen rounds in the Browning wouldn’t really make that much difference, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was that I was finally comfortable naked; being unarmed, that I still didn’t like.
    The bathroom was decorated in black marble with touches of charcoal gray, all the fixtures were shiny silver, and the double sinks had a large mirror that reflected half of the room. The mirror didn’t reveal the stool with its half wall that hid it from the big bathtub, which had an edge of marble big enough not just for sitting, but for Jean-Claude to lie down full length on one side so we could make love. Mirrors surrounded the tub on three sides so it looked like one of those tubs in an expensive honeymoon suite. But what was waiting for me in the bathtub would have made it a honeymoon you’d never forget.
    Jean-Claude was sitting against the far side of the bath, so that he had the best view of me walking through the door. His arms were stretched along the back of the tub, and his skin looked incredibly white against all that black marble. He’d pushed his hair behind him so that it pooled behind his shoulders; it was hard to tell where his curls ended and the marble began. His hair was truly black, like mine; no brunette for us, no matter how dark. The water was still below his upper chest and his nipples showed a little less pale, and the cross-shaped