Shamira hadn’t slept for crap. She’d managed to avoid all the doms and switches the night before, as she was in no mood to play any reindeer games. She had burned out a couple of magazines at the firing range, done whip practice for an hour, then went out and just walked the golf course a couple of times.
‘What’s the point? I thought this would be different, but no. I come up with an idea, someone else takes credit for it. Good enough to do grunt work, but nothing delicate. Oh no, the girl with the muscles can’t to the diplomatic part.’ Deep in her heart, she knew that she was overreacting a bit, but being mad was a powerful thing, kind of like an avalanche. Once it started, it just had to keep going until it ran out of things to eat or until it ran into a wall bigger than it could handle.
‘Screw ’em,’ she thought. Once the sun rose, it was Sunday, her safe day. She was going to go hide out in the lounge, say to hell with research and all the rest, and she was just going to watch football until her eyes bled.
So she had finally gone to bed, getting a grand total of four hours of sleep. That had given her time to throw on some comfortable sweats, sneak out, grab a ton of snacks and soda (the benefits on being unable to gain weight), and stake out a place in the lounge. The lounge had been set aside as a domination free zone.
Since she was the only sub she knew with Sunday off, she figured she’d have it to herself. So she poured some Pepsi on ice, heated up about twenty pizza rolls, broke out the chips and salsa, and turned to the giant HD flat-screen to enjoy the ESPN pre-game show. She had her laptop with her, but she was just going to use it to check scores on the games she wasn’t watching. She was NOT going to do research, damn it.
Her personal sanctuary remained sovereign for about twenty minutes. Clara strutted in wearing a thong, an abdomen-exposing half-shirt, and a pair of slippers.
“Wa’as up?” Clara said, flopping her butt down on the sofa next to a stunned looking Shamira. The Native American beauty stole one of her friend’s pizza rolls. “How can you eat this stuff?” she said, then stole another one. “Horrible.”
“You could always NOT eat them,” Shamira said, moving the platter further away on the coffee table, but not before Clara stole two more.
“Can’t help myself. Finger food is addictive.” She grabbed a chip, dipped it in salsa and downed it. “Now that’s the good stuff.”
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Shamira grumbled. “Or . . . somewhere else?”
“What’s got your panties in a bunch?” Clara said. “I always watch football on Sundays, and I figured it’d be fun to watch with you.”
That sounded far too damn . . . reasonable, so Shamira just sat back, scooted a little further away on the sofa, and raised a class of soda to her lips and kept it there. You didn’t have to talk when you were drinking, or even just pretending to drink.
Clara sighed. Renata had actually dropped by in the waning hours before sunrise specifically to ask Clara to intervene with Shamira on her behalf, after telling her the entire story. Well, Renata’s side of the story of course. Both she and Shane had agreed that Shamira was more likely to listen to Clara than anyone else. Wounded pride was something that even Shamira’s shadow healing couldn’t touch. “Ahem.”
Shamira ignored her. Well, actually she turned up the sound on the television and popped another pizza roll, then went back to her drink.
“AHEM! I asked you a question. What’s got you so pissy?” She actually had to take the remote away before Shamira turned up the volume again.
“Hey, it’s my safe day,” Shamira snapped. “So if I want to sit here and watch damn football by myself, then I can. Right?”
“Actually, it being your safe day means that you cannot participate in any BDSM activities, even if Shane told you to. But you’re still part of this house in other ways, and we’re friends. As a friend, I feel obligated to find out what’s got you so upset.”
“Like you don’t know,” Shamira said, looking sullen and grabbing a handful of tortilla chips.
“You are not going to make this easy for me are you? Yeah, Renata talked to me about what happened, and I’m usually pretty damn confident in her judgment. But she isn’t perfect. She’s also really not used to someone not liking her, and –”
“Then maybe she should actually let me do my damn job,” Shamira snipped, then settled back. She didn’t want to talk about it, not even with Clara. Gorgeous, sexy, mostly-naked Clara. She shook her head.
“How did she not let you do your . . . Oh for crying out loud,” Clara muttered, reaching out and taking the glass of soda away from her friend before she pretended to drink it again. “Now, how did she prevent you from doing your job?”
Shamira realized she was never going to get to watch her sports in peace until Clara was satisfied. So she blurted out the whole thing, including how her tentative authority had been basically shit upon when Renata had overridden her choice of ceremonies. “I mean, blood energy versus sexual energy. How difficult of a decision is that really? Bleeding a vampire is bad, right?”
“Yes, very bad. But did you think that maybe we could send a couple of vamps to each provide a little? Did you think about what this ‘sexual energy’ ceremony might actually require? Or were you just jumping on a chance to do something else wild and say it was just for duty?”
“Great,” Shamira said. “Nice to know you’re solidly on her side.”
“There’s only one side around here,” Clara said, her exasperation beginning to show. “You’re mad because Renata pointed something out that maybe you didn’t want to hear, even if you knew she was right. So now you’re making this into more than it needs to be.”
“Shane said that this wasn’t going to happen. What happened to having confidence in my abilities? My first job and she pulls the rug out from under me. And believe it or not, I am quite capable of being upset about things without it having to be about my sexual hang-ups.”
Clara was actually suffering a phantom headache. She hadn’t had an actual headache in 62 years, but she was able to remember them. “Shane still has confidence in your abilities. Renata still has confidence in your abilities, but you don’t have the experience in dealing with our world that she does. That old saying that things that sound too good to be true usually are? That goes double for us. The fact that Shane let you run with this with only minimal backup means a lot, but you don’t know Shane well enough to have guessed that. When someone is learning to fly a plane, they don’t give them the keys to the 747 right out of flight school. I hope. Anyway, this is just mentoring. And it’s Renata’s job to keep you safe, just like it’s her job to keep Shane safe. Shane ignored her, and look what happened? You died! If you were getting ready to walk into something that might kill you and she knew about it, would you really be that pissed about it if she stopped you?”
“But I researched faeries! They don’t respond with force, lethal or otherwise, unless provoked. I did what I was supposed to, but –”
“Research is great and it was smart for you to do. But research is only part of it, and experience is the other. Renata’s been a werejaguar for 12 years. She was attacked and changed when she was sixteen. She learned what she needed to in a hurry just to survive, because female werecats tend to be taken as mates by dominant males in areas like that, and being willing or not doesn’t make much difference.”
Shamira leaned away from the other woman and proceed to sulk. She knew she was being childish. She knew that Clara was right and that Renata was just trying to help. But knowing the truth and admitting it were two different things. Something else that Renata had been right about.
Clara saw that her friend was distancing herself again, and just decided to let it be. Shamira was a smart woman; she’d come around. The first quarter of the football game was spent in awkward silence, with snacks being mostly uneaten (except for Clara snagging most of the pizza rolls) and beverages not drunk.
Shamira couldn’t have told you what happened in the first quarter of play to save her life. During the commercial break, she got up to microwave more pizza rolls that she wasn’t eating, only to stare at infernal contraption for a full minute after it made the dinging noise. ‘Just apologize,’ she told herself. ‘You’re being a baby. Wait, why apologize to Clara? You should be apologizing to Renata.’ She opened the microwave, grabbed the plate and turned around, only to find that Clara was standing two feet behind her, staring at her with quirks in the corners of her mouth.
“Listen –” Shamira started to say, but was cut off when Clara kissed her. It was one of those toe tingling kisses that made her put the plate down, grab Clara’s mostly bare buttocks and pull her closer. Clara didn’t seem to mind. “What was that for?” she asked at last.
“For seeing it my way. Your whole body is really expressive, you know that? Expressive and hot.” Clara ran her hands down her friend’s back and grab her ass.
“Hey!” the muscular woman said, “it’s my day off. Okay, maybe I did grab yours first –”
“Your day off means that you don’t sub. Doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.”
Shamira smiled, and just that act lifted an invisible weight from her shoulders. She grabbed a pizza roll and placed it in Clara’s mouth.
“These really are horrible,” the girl said, munching happily.
“You keep saying that.” Shamira realized that every time Clara had initiated every kiss. The newbie vampire wasn’t sure why, but Clara’s kisses just made her feel better. Once the Native American was finished with her treat, it was Shamira’s turn to start it. And Clara responded happily, her arms wrapped around Shamira’s waist as her tongue shared the same space as her friend’s. “I really do want to watch the games,” she finished with a chuckle.
“And I really do want to watch them with you,” Clara said. “I like being around you. And I plan on making out on the sofa while we’re watching and stuffing ourselves silly.
Shamira almost wanted to blush. “I think that sounds like the best plan for a Sunday that I’ve ever heard.”
Clara popped another pizza roll. “Told you that listening to me was a good thing.”