Kris swallowed, and dampened her lips. “Why do you want to know?”
“Don’t ask him that,” Roman whispered out the side of his mouth.
“I’m not stupid,” Reese said. “Everyone thinks I am, but I’m not. I haven’t–” He thought of Tenny, of the night he’d introduced Reese to the pleasures of the flesh, and, in turn, Reese had read him a poem and offered him a name of his own. A real name for a real person. His lungs tightened painfully. “I haven’t been a person for very long,” he continued.
“Oh, Reese,” Kris murmured, her free hand sliding across the table toward him.
“I’ve had sex.” Lots of it. More than he could count. And now, when he looked at his sister giving Roman soft looks, he knew exactly what happened between them behind the closed bedroom door.
“With every-damn-body, by the sound of it,” Roman said.
“Roman,” Kris murmured.
“Does he make you?” he asked his sister, and somehow her eyes widened even further. “Is he like Badger?”
Kris gasped. “No. Reese,no. Not at all. He’s never forced me to do anything.”
A darted glance proved that all the golden tan had drained from Roman’s face. Tenny’s last, parting words returned to him. He asked, Kris, “He doesn’t molest you?”
“JesusChrist,” Roman hissed.
“Reese.” Kris’s voice quavered. She looked and sounded scared. “Roman’s good to me. You know that.” Scared for Roman, he realized.
And then he glanced down and saw that, unbidden, his hand had curled around his knife. It was only a blunt butter knife, but he’d made do with worse.
The sight of his hand clenched around the handle, the blade gleaming silver, stunned him.
Never before had he been shocked at the sight of himself. Not until now. Not until all those nights gripped by passion, when he marveled at the clench and flex of muscles, the sheen of sweat, the effort in his whole body, spurred by nothing but want and sensation.
Not until Tenny.
Fine tremors stole through him, and he let go of the knife with effort.
“Roman,” Kris whispered. “Would you–”
“Go in the next room? Gladly.” A chair scraped back, and footfalls receded from the kitchen.
“Reese.”
When he lifted his head, he was alone with his sister. She pushed their plates aside and put hands on the tabletop, reaching out to him physically, and with her voice, as she dipped her head to catch his gaze.
“Did something happen? Did – did someone hurt you?”
He frowned at her. “Who could hurt me?” Her question was honestly ridiculous.
She frowned. “What about that guy – your friend. What’s his name?”
That guy. Your friend. She didn’t even know his name. Reese was closer to him, had shared more with him, than he ever had with any other living being, and Kris called himthat guy.
His hands curled to fists, and he straightened them.
She noticed.
“Tenny,” he said. “His name’s Tenny.”
“Right.” She took a quick little breath through her mouth. “Has he…?”
“He didn’trapeme.” The word tasted foul on his tongue. He snarled it. Wanted to snarl it at Tenny, who knew better, who knew that it hadn’t beenmolesting, but who was retreating behind that – retreating behind a screen of something ugly – to keep from telling Reese what was really wrong.
