No Reason To Hide
Author: DetectiveSimms
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://glitterkitty.net/cloudy/fulldark
Date: August 31, 2002; November 8, 2002
Rating: R
Pairing: Anita/Edward
Description: After saving and being saved by Edward once again, Anita realizes that she is free to be herself with Edward, because he knows her so well already. Vignette. A/E.
Comment: This version of No Reason To Hide was edited by me on November 8, 2002, to add more detail and fix grammatical errors. Nothing was removed because of nature or language. Consider this an improved version of the No Reason to Hide I'd released previously.
Disclaimer: All characters are property of Laurell K. Hamilton. I'm making no money off of this; it is for entertainment purposes only. Plot and character manipulation are my doing.


"I think I'll enjoy gutting you," the weretiger in front of me said in a gleeful tone. He leapt at me then, a blur too fast for my eyes to follow. I was promptly knocked on my ass with the large man-beast on top of me, pressing my body into the hard-packed dirt. I had my Browning out and pressed into his chest, just beginning to squeeze down, when his hand backhanded it away into the air.

What had once been his fingers, had elongated into razor claws, a pattern of black and orange striped fur surrounding them. He snarled in my face, hot breath blowing across my skin in a moist cloud. A rifle shot sounded suddenly, very loud in my ears. The lycanthrope collapsed forward on top of me, his claws spasming and falling on either side as I desperately tried to avoid them. Even if cat lycanthropy is harder to catch than some of the other breeds, I didn't want to test my luck about becoming furry.

I tumbled the guy over off of me, sitting up and looking around for my Browning. Getting a weapon in my hands again was my main concern, as usual in cases like this. It had been taken away from me in the fight, as the bad guys are wont to do, and was now probably hidden amongst the tall weeds that filled the cemetery. Edward strode over to me, rifle gripped loosely in his right hand, and extended his left hand to help me up. Still looking around for my beloved gun, I grasped his hand and allowed him to help me to my feet.

"Nice shot. I thought he'd had me for a minute, Edward," I commented dryly, starting to paw around the grass in a search effort.

"Holding your guts in you while you bleed to death didn't sound appealing," was Edward's tactful reply. "Of course, the alternative of you surviving and being a hairball wasn't
exactly much better."

"Hey, I'd be alive. Damn, where did he toss my Browning?" The night was black as pitch, and even with my excellent night vision, it was a strain to see a black gun in a black night in knee-high grass.

It had been a normal night for me at first. I'd gone to my last zombie raising of the night, Edward as much-welcomed company. When the clients had left and we were headed for my car, two weretigers had attacked us, one going for each of us. We'd both started out with weapons, me with my Browning that had so thoughtfully been taken from me, knives, and an extra clip of silver shot, and Edward with his .22 rifle and God knows what other toys strewn about his persona. When the tiger on me had tossed my gun from me before I could shoot him, I'd thought I'd been dead. Trust Edward to save me.

"Alive, but one of the monsters, most likely. I think it went over near that angel." He pointed at a large stone monolith of a crying angel. I headed in that direction to search around some, and heard Edward moving about behind me, probably searching too.
"Yeah, being a shapeshifter would suck. You probably wouldn't even date me anymore. Aha!" I plucked the gun from a tangle of Queen Anne's Lace and reinserted it in my shoulder holster.

Edward chuckled, coming up behind me and kissing the back of my neck. "Probably, Anita? Although interesting as it might be to see you with literal claws and fangs, I don't know if I could stand it."

No big surprise there; Edward killed the monsters, he didn't date them. "Who do you suppose these guys were?" I asked, changing the subject to the more pressing matter: who was trying to kill us?

He hesitated. "Any reason why random lycanthropes should want to attack you, Anita?"
I considered, staring down at the bodies near our feet, and pulling Edward's arms around me comfortingly. "Not that I can think of offhand. I don't know that many weretigers, and the ones I do know don't want me dead." I stopped again, leaning back against Edward's chest as I thought, being sure to stay away from his right side; both of us were pretty particular about having our gun arms blocked. "Maybe they'd done something nefarious, and were concerned that I was going to kill them anyway. They might've jumped the gun, betting they could kill me first."

"Seems like a hefty price to pay, considering all the people you've got watching your back."

Wasn't that the truth. I grinned quietly to myself. Between a rather sullen Jean-Claude, a more violent Richard, and my ever-loving Micah, I pretty much had a lot of tough people that would kill to protect or avenge me. Not to mention the blond assassin at my back.
Doesn't sound safe, does it? Having a man skilled in committing the ultimate destruction, placed in a perfect spot to end my life. Perhaps having an assassin at my back wasn't the smartest idea in normal circumstances, but these weren't normal circumstances. And I trusted Edward. We'd been romantically involved for a couple of months now, and he'd given me no reason to distrust him since then. Well, he had gone about business in his usual secretive way, but that was just Edward's personality. I trusted him with [several] loaded guns at my back because I was beginning to think I was falling for him. Falling in love seems to be a much-occurring pastime of mine, though for once it was with someone human.

"Let's call the police and get the hell home, Edward. I'm tired and I want to take a shower," I grumbled, pulling away to dust off the seat of my pants where I had been crushed into the ground.

Edward grinned as we headed back to the car to get my new cell phone. "Being covered in chicken blood just doesn't do it for you?"

I glanced a withering look at him. "Despite the aura of gruesomeness it adds to my image,
I don't think it's worth the effect." He chuckled quietly at that, our heels crunching on loose gravel and dirt.

I felt a tingle in between my shoulder blades a moment later, and whirled around with my gun out. Edward turned with me, a second later because he didn't have the senses I did about most preternatural baddies. That second cost him though, as some lithe shape tumbled into him, knocking him to the ground a few feet back from me. In a blur of speed from my already pumped adrenaline, I whipped around and had the gun levelled at the half-man, half-tiger beast on top of my boyfriend.

It was doing no more than holding him down right now. No matter how I moved, I wouldn't be able to get a clear shot with my Browning, so I grabbed a knife from my ankle and crept up behind the pair. The weretiger obviously wasn't paying much attention to me, snarling and bellowing like it was, which allowed me to slice the silver knife through his back, cutting some nerves and causing him to bellow in pain. I yanked the blade through thick tissues and left it to protrude outward.

The tiger-man jerked off of Edward, flopping onto it's back beside him, making the knife twist a bit as it was pressed against the ground. It screamed again, and then was lunging for me, eyes crazed and bloodthirsty for vengeance. I already had my other knife out, however, and was ready for him. Leaning forward slightly, I reared my arm back and sunk it deep into his neck when he got close to me, my arm moving at a spectacular speed to drive the blade home.

Its claws scrabbled at the air blindly, forcing me to tighten my grip on the knife. I actually had to step in toward the weretiger, its claws raking through the air all around my head, its eyes unseeing in its pain. Its shrieks pierced the night like minuscule knives. I yanked the knife back out, splattering myself with blood in the process, and buried it in his chest where his heart was located. I jumped backward; with a final guttural groan, the weretiger sunk to its knees, falling forward onto it's face a moment later. I retrieved my knives calmly before noticing Edward standing up a few feet back, watching me with a pleased expression on his face.

Wiping my knife off on the weretiger's fur, I arched an eyebrow at Edward: "What are you staring at?"

He broke out into a grin then, striding forward to me. "I love watching you kill, Anita."
Slightly disturbing though that was, it made me smile. "You do say the sweetest things, Edward."
* * * *
I stepped in the door, flipping on a light and heading immediately for the bathroom. I had to get all the blood off of me, from the chickens for the zombie raisings to the splatters from the weretiger murders. It was dried and flaking off in patches, and it felt like my skin was too tight underneath it all.

Edward came in behind me, silently. We had worked everything out with the police, and got off scot-free on self-defense pleas. Of course, it helped matters that we'd been outnumbered and attacked by shapeshifters. Punishment was always a lot more in favor of the nonhuman things than us normal people. Riiight.

After my shower, I came out into the kitchen in my new, soft gray robe. It was floor length and very cozy; I'd let Cherry talk me into it when we'd gone shopping together last week. The pard was living with Micah in his new house a few streets down. Not too close, not too far. I'd wanted to be nearby in case they needed me (I was still Nimir-Ra, and I'd have felt terrible if something happened to them because I was dating someone new and wanted more privacy).

The heavenly aroma of hazelnut coffee was permeating the house; Edward was seated at my kitchen table, drinking from one of my mugs featuring Tux, the Linux mascot penguin.

"You picked a good flavor," I commented idly as I poured a cup, and added sugar and real cream. He was watching me with calm blue eyes, his expression blank as a new sheet of paper. I settled in across from him, sipping my coffee slowly, savoring the warmth. Though right now, I would have appreciated a different kind of warmth, from the killer across from me.

Maybe he could sense that because he rose to his feet, coming around the table to me. I set my cup down, staring up at him. He took my hands and pulled me to him, hugging me against him tightly. I sighed and relaxed into him, my hands fanning out across his lower back. I remembered his comment from hours before, before bringing the police into the matter, back in the cemetery, and had to ask him about it.

"Edward, you said you loved watching me kill." A statement, and more of my usual blunt self.

He was stroking my hair, which was lying damp and wavy against my back; it felt nice.
"Yes."

"Why?"

He was silent a moment, thinking about his answer. "I think of you as my student, Anita. Every time I see you kill something well and without letting your emotions get in the way of survival, it's like watching you succeed. You do it so well, you make it look like a macabre art."

I smiled against his chest. Edward was often a tantalizing mixture of practicality and calculation, with a bit of Psycho's R Us thrown in for colour. "So you're like the proud teacher, watching their pupil do a math problem correctly?" I knew that was a bit toned-down for the relationship we actually had, but found the analogy amusing.
He chuckled then, and I felt the vibrations against my cheek. "Not quite so mundane, but yes, that's the gist of it."

I pulled back enough to reach up and meet him halfway for a kiss; seems we were thinking along the same lines tonight. As our lips melded in a wash of heat, I felt his hands slide up under my robe, brushing across my bare breasts and making my nipples tighten. I gasped into his mouth, pressing against his hands and running my own hands across his chest.

He moved one hand down to the tie on the robe, and I felt him tugging at it. A moment later it came undone and I shrugged the cloth back off of my shoulders. It drooped down around my back, caught on my arms, but leaving my upper body out in the open. Edward was kissing me again, easing the robe off of me completely, until I stood naked and breathless in front of him.

"This," I said, my voice lower than usual, "is not fair in the slightest." He ignored my words for the moment, kneeling in front of me to trace light patterns across my stomach with his tongue.

"What's not?" he asked before dipping his tongue into my navel and making me groan against him. His hands had slid around to cup my butt, pressing me forward against his mouth.

I replied simply: "Me being completely nude and you still fully clothed." He looked up at me then, his eyes a deep, blazing blue that were, for once, conveying so many emotions; it was beautiful. I grasped his hands, which had began rubbing up and down my hips, and pulled him to his feet.

"We can remedy that," he commented in an offhand tone before pulling his black shirt smoothly over his head. The move was vaguely reminiscent of the strippers down at Guilty Pleasures. I grinned up at him before moving to suck harshly on his left nipple. I felt his hand sliding through my hair as he made low sounds in his throat. I worked my way down his chest, kissing, nipping, and sucking on every inch of skin I could reach. He was groaning loudly by the time I got to the top of his pants.

He gripped my wrists and pulled me upright and flush against him, his lips and tongue finding mine and probing my mouth insistently. Being with Edward this way was always exhilarating, because it wasn't so very long ago that we were simply hesitant-friends and mutual bodyguards. Now, we still watched each other's asses, but on so many different levels...

It was wonderful having Edward kiss me, undress me, make love to me, and hold me afterward, because he knew me. He understood the whole package. Richard couldn't accept my killing side, Jean-Claude could never be trusted fully, and Micah's love for me was mostly for the pard's care. Edward, however, had seen me at my emotionless psycho-assassin worst, and accepted it. He'd seen my penguin collection; he'd been with me when

I was drenched in holy water, screaming and crying on my bathroom floor. He'd looked down the barrel of my gun pointed at him, and was one of the few people who had survived it. As relationships go, this one wasn't conventional, but then, neither of us were very conventional people.

I think one of the reasons this venture has worked so well is because I know many of Edward's sides, too. I've seen him as his good ol' self Ted Forrester. I've watched the humanity slip from his eyes so easily, like slicing a knife through skin to reveal the thicker things, in the transition from Ted to Edward. I've watched him use a flamethrower on vampires; he's pointed a gun at one of his backups and inquired of me if I wanted the man dead. He'd shown me the gentler side of him when I'd been introduced to Donna and her kids. I'd realized that Edward was more than the best damn killer I'd ever met when I found that a little girl had fallen in love with him as her Daddy, and watched him tuck a flower behind her ear. And I think we trust each other explicitly with our lives, because we just keep saving each other's lives.

Falling into my bed with Edward on top of me. . shouting his name at the same moment he shouts mine. . rolling over against his chest and having his arms wrap around me. . knowing that when I fall asleep next to the most dangerous man I've ever met, I alone don't have anything to fear from him. Being with Edward gives me an opening for peace; there's no reason to hide from myself anymore.

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