Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “It’s not only your control is it?”

  “No, it is fear and exhaustion, and thinking too hard, and your own growing abilities. In a few more months you will be down to one feeding a day, or a night. You will be able to store up the feedings and go longer.”

  “My head is practically in your lap, and I don’t feel the least stirrings.”

  He stroked my hair, and it was a comforting touch. I wanted to be held more than I wanted sex. I wanted him to hold me while I drifted off to sleep. That sounded better than anything else I could think of right now.

  “Once dawn comes my tie with you will weaken, and you will not be able to keep the ardeur at bay. I am sorry, ma petite, but we must feed it.”

  “You’re as tired as I am,” I said.

  “I want nothing more than to climb between the silk sheets and wrap our nude bodies around one another. I want to hold and be held. Sex is a wondrous thing, but tonight I wish to be comforted more than pleasured. I feel like a child in the dark who knows the monsters are under the bed. I want to be told it will be alright, but I am far too old to believe such comforting lies.”

  Maybe it was because I was tired. Maybe it was because Jean-Claude had just said out loud almost exactly how I felt. I remembered other nights when we’d all been this tired, this frightened, this unsure of what the next nightfall would bring. I remembered Asher and Julianna, and I, we, Jean-Claude holding each other. Simply holding each other, the feel of bare skin and warmth, like a grown-up version of a teddy bear. Hold me tonight, Julianna used to say, and unspoken between the two men had been how often her fears allowed them to be as close and frightened as they truly were.

  Julianna had been the bridge between the two men. They would never have been able to be so close for so long without her. I had the memories, I knew how many times her needs had brought them together, her love for each of them had bound them close. Jean-Claude had been the brains, Asher the charm, though both were charming and both intelligent, but Julianna had been their heart. One living, beating heart for all three of them.

  I could never be Julianna. I didn’t have her kindness, her gentleness, her patience. We were so unalike, but here I was centuries later with the same two men. I let out a long breath, took in another, let it out, listened to it shake.

  “Is something wrong, ma petite, I mean more wrong than I know?”

  I raised my face from his knee. “If Asher was truly a ménage à trois with us, then Musette would have to leave him alone, wouldn’t she?”

  Some expression passed over his face, quickly swallowed away, hidden behind that beautiful, polite mask he wore when he was not sure what expression would help, and what would hurt. “If we had been able to answer truthfully tonight that Asher was in our bed, then Musette could not have asked for him. This is true.”

  “If he joined us tonight, then tomorrow he’d be safe.” My voice sounded so matter of fact, as if I were proposing we go shopping, or get dinner.

  His voice was even more careful than mine. “That would be true.”

  “If I had just let you and Asher be a couple when I wasn’t around, then he would have been safe, but I can’t.” I shook my head. “In theory I don’t have a problem with it. I like men. I see men as attractive, so I understand everyone seeing them as attractive. That men are attracted to men makes perfect sense to me. But in practice I can’t bring myself to share my man with another man. I can’t do it. If I found out you and Asher had been doing it behind my back, I’d dump your ass. I know it’s amazingly unfair. I’m sleeping with Micah, and damn near sleeping with Nathaniel, and was having sex with Richard until a few months ago. Yet you have to be with just me. It’s monstrously unfair, I know that.”

  “I am not alienated from your bed when the others are with you, except for Richard, who would never share.”

  “I know, you get blood from the men because I still won’t donate blood to you, but it’s not the same.”

  “I want no one but you, ma petite. I have made that clear.”

  I looked up at him then. “You’ve made it clear, but I know that you do want someone else besides me. I’ve felt what you feel when you look at Asher. I see the way you two look at each other. It hurts sometimes just to watch you be in a room together.”

  “I am sorry, ma petite.”

  I tucked my knees to my chest and hugged them there. “Let me finish this thought, Jean-Claude, please.”

  He motioned for me to go ahead.

  “I can’t let you take Asher to your bed, and I can’t take Asher to mine. But I remember what it was like for the three of you. I remember how safe it felt. There are moments when I forget that these aren’t my memories and I long for what the three of you had. It seems a hell of a lot more peaceful than what we’re doing.”

  I hugged my legs so tight, my arms trembled with the force of it. “I don’t know if I can go through with it, but I’d like to try.”

  “Try what, ma petite?” His voice was very careful.

  “I want Asher safe.”

  Jean-Claude had gone very still. “I do not understand, ma petite.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He shook his head. “Non, I will have no misunderstandings here. You must be precise in your meaning.”

  I couldn’t look at him while I said it. “Bring Asher in here for the night. I don’t promise, but I want him warm and nude beside us. I want to chase that hurt from his eyes. I want to show him with my hands and my body that I find him lovely.” I looked up at him, then, and found his face unreadable. “I don’t know at what point I’m going to scream foul and bail on you both. I’m sure there’s going to come a point, there usually is, but if we bring him into our bed tonight, in whatever way, then he’s safe for tomorrow, right?”

  “What will your Nimir-Raj say?”

  “He assumed that you and I were intimate with Asher when he got to town. A lot of people assume it.”

  “You have told him the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “And won’t he be angry about sharing you with yet another man?”

  I shook my head. “Micah is more practical than I am, Jean-Claude. It’s not just love, or lust, that brings me back to Asher. Tonight it’s securing our power base. If Asher is safe, then we’re all safer. His pain can’t be used against us.”

  “How very practical of you, ma petite.”

  “I’ve learned from the best.”

  He gave me a look, one eyebrow raised. “If I were truly practical in matters of the heart, things would have gone more quickly between us.”

  “Maybe, or maybe not, you knew if you pushed too hard, I’d have either run, or tried to kill you.”

  He gave that graceful shrug. “Perhaps, but I should ask, so there are no misunderstandings, do you mean to bring Asher to our bed only for tonight?”

  “Would it make a difference?” I asked.

  “It may to him.”

  I tried to wrap my head around it all, and failed. “I don’t know. I know that I don’t want to give up alone time with you, just you. I know that I don’t want to always have company.”

  “Julianna and Asher managed alone time even though we were a threesome.”

  “For the first time in a long time my personal life is as close as it’s ever been to working. I don’t want to screw that up.”

  “I understand.”

  “I guess, I want Asher safe, I want to chase that flinching out of his eyes, but in the real world we are just running this up the flagpole. If it works, great, but if it doesn’t work, then what? Will Asher have to leave? Will you lose your second? Will it hurt you and Asher more? Will . . .”

  He touched fingertips to my lips. “Shhh, ma petite. I have called Asher. He comes even now.”

  I felt my eyes go big, my breath freeze in my throat, while my pulse beat like a crazed thing. What had I done? Nothing yet. The ten thousand dollar question was, what was I about to do, and could I live with it later?

  11

  AS
HER CAME THROUGH the door, slowly, his face carefully hidden behind a fall of golden hair. He’d changed to a fresh, unbloodied shirt. It was white and the color did not suit him. “You called,” he said. I froze, still hugging my knees, my pulse suddenly pounding in my throat. Yet my breath stopped for a second or two.

  “We did,” Jean-Claude said in that careful voice.

  Asher looked up then, a glimpse of face through all that hair. I think it was the “we” that brought the reaction.

  Jean-Claude had sat up very straight before Asher came to the door. He was elegant, poised, in his leather and silk.

  I was still huddled on the rug at his feet, staring at Asher like he was the fox and I was the rabbit. Jean-Claude touched my shoulder, and I jumped.

  I looked up at him, and he was staring down at me. “It must be your decision, ma petite.”

  “Why is everything always my decision?” I asked.

  “Because you will not tolerate anything else.”

  Oh, I remembered now. “Great,” I whispered.

  He squeezed my shoulder gently. “Nothing has been said. We can go on as we are.”

  I shook my head. “No, I won’t be the one responsible for tomorrow night if it goes all wrong. I won’t risk him, because of my moral outrage.”

  “As you like, ma petite,” he said, in that careful voice that said nothing.

  “What has happened now?” Asher asked, and his voice wasn’t quite empty, there was a thread of fear in it. With what was sleeping down the hall, I couldn’t blame him.

  I eased my arms from around my knees. They were stiff from holding on too tight. I tried to smooth my numb hands down my legs to touch my skirt and found only my hose. The navy skirt was too short for me to have been sitting the way I was. If there’d been anyone in the room to see, they’d have been able to tell my underwear matched it.

  I got my knees under me, moving slowly, stiffly, my body tight with tension.

  “What has happened?” Asher asked, and this time his voice was bland.

  “Nothing, mon ami,” Jean-Claude said, “or rather, nothing more.”

  “It’s my fault,” I said. I got to my feet, still moving slowly.

  “What is your fault?” Asher was looking from one to the other of us, trying to read something from our faces.

  I stepped off the fur, and my high heels made a sharp sound on the floor. “That you’re in danger from Musette.”

  “You have done all you can to protect me, Anita, more than I had ever dreamt. No one challenges Musette for fear of Belle Morte. You have done what many council members would fear to do.”

  “Ignorance is bliss,” I said.

  He gave me a quick look through the shine of his hair. “What does that mean?”

  I walked towards him, where he still stood just inside the door. “It means that maybe I can be brave because I don’t know any better. I’ve never seen Belle in person. Don’t get me wrong, she’s impressive enough from a distance, but I’ve never met the real thing.”

  I was standing in front of him now. He had turned his face so that only the perfect half showed. He hadn’t hidden himself from me this completely in months.

  I reached up to touch the side of his face he’d turned away, and he flinched, jerking back hard enough to make the door rattle. “Non, non.”

  “I’ve touched you before,” I said, and my voice was low, soft, the voice you’d use to talk to a skittish animal or a man on a ledge.

  He turned his whole face away from me. “You saw the paintings. You saw what I once was, and you have seen now what I looked like when the . . . wounds were fresh.” He turned his back, hands on the door, shaking his head. “You have seen what Belle Morte saw.”

  I shook my head, realized he couldn’t see it, and touched his shoulder.

  He flinched.

  I glanced back at Jean-Claude, and his face was empty, only his eyes shown the barest glimpse of a pain so deep it had nearly destroyed three people.

  I pressed my body against Asher’s back, moved my arms up his sides, hugging him from behind. He froze under my touch, so still, folding himself away, going deep inside where it wouldn’t hurt. I pressed my cheek against his back and held him while his body went quiet under my touch.

  I swallowed past tears that I would not shed. My voice was steady, though. “I have seen you through Jean-Claude’s memories long before tonight. I remember the glory of you under my hands, against my body.” I molded my body against his, clung to him. “I needed no painting to show me your beauty.”

  A shudder ran through his body, and he tried to turn, to throw me off, but I held on, and he couldn’t move away without hurting me. “Let me go, Anita, let me go.”

  “No,” I said, “no, not tonight.”

  He made small struggling motions trapped against the door, like a man trying to pace a room that was only an inch wider than his own body.

  “What do you want from me?” There was something close to tears in his voice.

  “Join us tonight, that’s what I want, join us.”

  He stopped his restless movements and went still again, but not like before. I could feel his heart beating against my cheek. I’d have sworn it hadn’t been beating a second before.

  “Join you how?” his voice was a strangled whisper.

  I grabbed his shirt and used it to turn him around. He moved slowly, like trying to turn the earth against its axis. He pressed his back to the door and showed me only what remained of that perfect profile.

  I pulled on the shirt, trying to lead him into the room, but he would not be moved this far. He looked past me to Jean-Claude. “I cannot do this.” His voice held such pain.

  “What do you think she is asking?” Jean-Claude’s voice was still so carefully empty.

  “She will do anything to keep her people safe, even take a cripple to her bed for one night.”

  I wadded the shirt in my hands and was forced to go to him, because he would not come to me. “I do want to keep you safe from Musette, and this will do it, but that’s not why, not really.”

  He looked down at me, and there was a world in his eyes, a world of pain and need and horror, so big, so lonely. The first hot tear grazed my cheek. I spoke softly to him in French, and I understood some of what I said.

  Asher grabbed my wrists and forced me away from him. “Non, Jean-Claude, not like this. It is either her desire, or it is not to be. I will not divide you from what remains of your triumvirate. I would rather spend a night in Musette’s bed than weaken your power so. You must be strong while they are here, or we will all perish.”

  I took a deep breath, and it was as if something had pulled back from me, like a veil being lifted. I turned and glanced at the vampire behind me. “Did you do that on purpose?”

  He hid his face in his hands and said, spoke, voice no longer empty, “I cannot help wanting what I want, ma petite, forgive me.”

  I turned back to Asher. “It isn’t my desire you want, Asher. You know I’m attracted to you.”

  He tried to look away, but I touched his face, and this time he didn’t flinch away. He let me turn him to face me again, my fingers on the edge of his chin. The skin was still smooth there, even though it was on the right side where most was ruined. It was almost as if the people that had done this to him couldn’t bring themselves to ruin the perfect curve of his lips.

  “It’s not lust you want from me.”

  His gaze dropped. He almost closed his eyes, the expression on his face like a man bracing for a blow. He whispered, “No.”

  I went up on tiptoe, put my hands on either side of his face, one so smooth like satin and silk, but softer, the other rough, pitted, hardly feeling like skin at all. “I do love you, Asher.”

  His eyes opened, and they were so raw, so full of so many things that could be used to hurt.

  “I don’t know how much was Jean-Claude’s memories at first, but whatever it began as, I do love you. Me, no one else.”

  “Yet you have not
taken me to your bed.”

  “I love a lot of people that I don’t sleep with. Okay, that I don’t have sex with.”

  The expression in his eyes began to die. I realized what I’d said, “I want you to come to bed tonight, please, Asher, and not just for sleeping.”

  He put his hands on either side of mine. “Only to keep me safe from Musette.”

  I couldn’t argue that, but . . . “That’s true, but does that matter so very much? Does it matter that that’s why?”

  He smiled gently and moved my hands away from his face. “Yes, Anita, it does matter why. You will take me to your bed tonight, but tomorrow you will feel guilty and you will run away again.”

  I frowned at him. “You talk like I’ve done this before with you, and I haven’t.”

  He patted my hands between his. “You took four men into that bed over there, four of us, yet you have sex with only Jean-Claude. You feed the ardeur from Nathaniel, but you have not fucked him.” He let go of my hands and shook his head, laughing. “Only you could have the strength of will to sleep night after night beside such beauty and not take all that Nathaniel had to offer. I have met saints and priests over the centuries that had not your will to resist temptation.”

  “I don’t seem to be resisting all that much anymore,” I said, hands on hips.

  He laughed again, smile fading as he did it. “Jason you have put firmly back into the box, marked ‘friend.’ But what of me? I do not wish to join you in that bed again, if tomorrow I will be merely another friend. I cannot bear it.”

  I frowned up at him. I’d done my best to forget what happened when Belle Morte caused the ardeur to rise months ago. Thanks to her, I’d participated in the closest thing I hoped to ever get to an orgy. No intercourse, but a lot of hands and bodies touching where they shouldn’t have been. Asher was right; I’d done my best to ignore the whole thing. Ignore it hard enough, and it never happened. But of course it had happened, and I’d not dealt with it.

  “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry that I’m a little squeamish about having been in bed with four men at the same time. Yeah, it embarrassed me, so sue me.”