Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I pulled back enough to whisper so that my breath caressed the wet skin of his groin, “Feed, so we can both feed.”

  He shook his head and looked down at me, and there was a look I hadn’t seen much on his face. Stubbornness. “Pleasure I will take from you, ma petite, but not blood, not while the ardeur rides you. If you still wish to be embraced after the ardeur is fed, then I will gladly, joyfully, comply, but not like this.”

  I slid my hands up the smooth wetness of his hips. “I need to feed now, Jean-Claude, please, please.”

  “Non,” and he shook his head at me, again.

  The ardeur had been ready to be gentle, as gentle as I’d ever felt it, but being denied didn’t make it, or me feel gentle. Angry, stubborn, cheated. I tried to think past it, and couldn’t. I’d been good, so good for so long. I hadn’t fed on Caleb, and no one would have screamed at me for it. I hadn’t fed on Nathaniel, and he was my pomme de sang. I wanted him to go another day before he got munched on. I didn’t like that he’d passed out at the club.

  I hadn’t bothered Jason, who had been too weak to argue. Once I felt Jean-Claude wake, I knew what I wanted. I hadn’t even seen the other men I passed to get to this room. They hadn’t existed for me. Now he was denying me, refusing me, rejecting me. Some small distant part of me knew that wasn’t true, it wasn’t even fair, but that was a distant voice. The voices in the front of my head were screaming, fuck him, feed on him, take him.

  I’d fought until there wasn’t enough of me left to fight. There was nothing but the need, and the need had no mercy.

  I covered him with my mouth again, and I did something that I could only do when he was at his smallest. I drew his balls, gently, into my mouth, so that I held all of him inside my mouth. It was the most amazing sensation to be able to hold him, to flick my tongue on the loose skin between his testes, to roll the delicate eggs of his body against my teeth and cheeks. He filled my mouth this way, so wide, impossibly wide, but because there was no length to match it, I wasn’t choking or fighting to breathe. It was as if I could have held him inside me like this for days. I sucked on him, the shaft, the balls, all at once, fitting my mouth around the base of him, so that my lips formed a seal against his body, and I sucked him, licked him, rolled him, explored him. I looked up and found his eyes had bled to blue at last, but I didn’t care anymore. I closed my eyes, wrapped my hands around the smooth tightness of his buttocks, and gave myself over to the joy of it.

  I heard his cries, felt his body shudder and quiver under my touch, but it was distant. His flesh filled my mouth, rolled so easily under my tongue. I’d always enjoyed the sensation of him when he was loose, but I’d never been able to indulge myself, because after a few touches, like all men, he didn’t stay small.

  I wrapped my mouth close and closer to the base of him and grazed my teeth ever so lightly there. There, the base of all of him, so that to bite too hard would take it all. I knew what an act of trust this was for him. I bit just hard enough to make him cry out, then pulled gently against his body, using mostly lips for pressure.

  I let his balls slip out and sucked the rest of him back in my mouth hard and fast, pulling harder than I should have, sucking him as hard and fast as I wanted, no control now, no waiting, just the feel of him rolling in and out of my mouth, as I pulled on him.

  He screamed my name, half pleasure, half pain, and the ardeur burst over both of us. The heat spread upward through me, and I felt it spread, thrust itself into Jean-Claude. So hot, so hot, so very hot, as if the water around us should boil. I had enough left of me somewhere in all that to let go of him with my mouth, so I didn’t get too carried away. I convulsed against his legs, my nails digging into his butt, hips, thighs, as he rocked above me, and fought to keep his feet.

  He finally half-sat, half-collapsed to the edge of the tub and sat there, propped on his arms, breathing too hard, and that he was breathing at all meant he’d fed his ardeur, as I’d fed off of him. Sometimes it was just an exchange of energy, sometimes it was a true feeding.

  I climbed out of the tub enough to sit beside him, but didn’t touch him. Sometimes right after the ardeur had been fed, touching of any kind could reignite it, especially between people who both held the ardeur. So it had been between Jean-Claude and Belle, so it was sometimes between us.

  His eyes were still solid blue, like midnight skies when the stars have drowned. His voice was breathy, when he said, “You are getting better at feeding the ardeur without true orgasm, ma petite.”

  “I have a good teacher.”

  He smiled the smile a man gives a woman when they’ve just finished such things, and it isn’t the first time they’ve done them, and it won’t be the last. “An apt pupil, as they say.”

  I looked at him, and he was pale alabaster with that black, black hair, those blue eyes. The folds and hollows of his body exposed to the overhead lights were as beautiful and familiar to me as a favorite path that I could walk forever and never tire of.

  I stared at Jean-Claude, and it wasn’t the beauty of him that made me love him, it was just—him. It was a love made up of a thousand touches, a million conversations, a trillion shared looks. A love made up of danger shared, enemies conquered, a determination to keep the people that depended on us safe at almost any cost, and a certain knowledge that neither of us would change the other, even if we could. I loved Jean-Claude, all of him, because if I took away the Machiavellian plottings, the labyrinth of his mind, it would lessen him, make him someone else.

  I sat on the edge of the tub with my jeans and jogging shoes soaking in the water, looking at him laugh, watching his eyes bleed back to human, and I wanted him, not for sex, though that was in there, but for everything.

  “You look serious, ma petite, what are you thinking about so solemn-faced?”

  “You,” I said, voice soft.

  “Why should that make you look so solemn?” The humor began to leak away from his face, and I knew without being a hundred percent sure that he was thinking I was about to run away again. He’d probably been worried about that from the moment I shared a bed with him and Asher. I usually ran after I’d made some big breakthrough. Or would that be breakdown?

  “A surprisingly wise friend told me that I hold back some part of myself from all the men in my life. He said that I do it to keep myself safe, to keep myself from being consumed by love.”

  Jean-Claude’s face had gone very careful, as if he were afraid for me to read his expression.

  “I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. He was right.”

  Jean-Claude looked at me, face still empty, but there was a tightness around his eyes, a wariness that he couldn’t quite hide. He was waiting for the blow to fall, I’d taught him to expect it.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and finished, “What I hold back from you is sharing blood. We fed the ardeur off each other now, but I still won’t let you take blood.”

  Jean-Claude opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it. He’d sat up straighter, hands clasped in his lap. It wasn’t just his face he was fighting to keep neutral, even his body language was so very careful.

  “I asked you to feed off me a few minutes ago, and you said not while the ardeur was riding me. Not while I was intoxicated.” I had to smile at the choice of words, because intoxicated was a good description of the ardeur. Metaphysical liquor.

  “I’ve fed the ardeur, we both have. I’m not intoxicated any more.”

  He’d gone very still, that utter stillness that the old vampires could do. It was like if I looked away, he wouldn’t be there when I looked back. “We have both fed the ardeur, that much is true.”

  “Then I’m still offering blood.”

  He took a deep breath. “I want this, ma petite, you know that.”

  “I know.”

  “But why now?”

  “I told you, I had a talk with a friend.”

  “I cannot give you what Asher gave you, gave us, yesterday. With my marks upon you,
I may not be able to roll your mind at all. It will be only pain.”

  “Then do it in the middle of pleasure. We’ve proven more than once that my pain/pleasure sensors get a little confused when I’m excited enough.”

  That made him smile. “As do mine.”

  That made me smile. “Let’s fool around.”

  “And then?” he asked, voice low.

  “When it’s time, take blood, and then let’s fuck.”

  He gave a surprised burst of laughter. “Ma petite, you are such a sweet-talker, how can I refuse?”

  I leaned into him, pressed a gentle kiss upon his lips, and said, “Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Helena.”

  He gazed into my face with such longing. “I thought you said you could not remember more of the play.”

  “I remembered more,” I whispered, “do you?”

  He shook his head, and we were so close that his hair brushed against mine so that you couldn’t tell where one blackness left and the other began. “Not with you this close to me, no.”

  “Good,” I smiled, “but promise some night we’ll get the whole play and take turns reading it to each other.”

  He smiled, and it was the smile I’d come to value more than any other, it was real and vulnerable, and I think one of the few things left of the man he might have been if Belle Morte had not found him. “I swear it, and gladly.”

  “Then help me peel off these wet jeans and leave the poetry for another night.”

  He cupped my face in his hands. “It is always poetry between us, ma petite.”

  My mouth was suddenly dry, and it was hard to swallow past my pulse. My voice came breathy, “Yeah, but sometimes it’s dirty limericks.”

  He laughed as he kissed me, then he helped me out of the wet jeans, and the wet socks, and the wet shoes, and the wet everything. When my cross spilled out of my shirt, it didn’t glow. It just lay there glinting in the overhead lights. Jean-Claude averted his eyes, as he always did when he saw a holy object, but that was the only hint I had that the cross bothered him. I realized with a start that I’d never worn a cross around Jean-Claude and had it glow at him. What did that mean?

  I’m usually pretty straightforward except in emotional areas, but I was trying to be different, change that, so I asked. “Does it really hurt you to look at my cross?”

  He looked determinedly at the edge of the bathtub. “No.”

  “Then why look away?”

  “Because it will start to glow, and I do not want that.”

  “How do you know that it’ll start to glow?”

  “Because I am a vampire, and you are a true believer.” He was still staring at the water, the marble of the tub, anywhere, and everywhere except at my chest with the cross still hanging around it.

  “I’ve never had a cross glow when you were the only vampire around.”

  He glanced up at that, then quickly down. “That cannot be true.”

  I thought about it some more. “I can’t ever remember it happening. You look away, then I take the cross off, and we go on about our business, but it doesn’t glow.”

  He shifted in the water enough to send little splashes against my legs. “Does it matter?” His voice held just how unhappy he was with the line of conversation.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “If you do not wish me to feed, then I will go.”

  “It’s not that, Jean-Claude, honest.”

  He put a hand on the edge of the tub and stepped out.

  “Jean-Claude,” I said.

  “Non, ma petite, you do not want this, or you would not cling to your holy object.” He took a vibrant blue towel that matched the sheets on the bed and began to dry off.

  “My point is . . . oh, hell, I don’t know what my point is, just don’t go.” I put my hands back to unfasten the clasp of the chain, and the door opened. Asher stepped inside, coated in dried blood, all of it mine. That should have bothered me, but it didn’t. His hair still fell around his shoulders like spun gold, and with Asher, it wasn’t a euphemism for blond. His hair was like gold spun to thick, soft waves. His eyes a blue so pale it was like winter skies, but warmer, more . . . alive. He walked towards us, his long body nude and perfect. The scars didn’t make him less perfect, they were simply a part of Asher, and nothing marred the godlike grace as he moved into the room. He was so beautiful it stopped my breath in my throat, made my chest ache to see him. I wanted to say, come to us, but my voice was gone in the sheer wonder as he glided towards us on narrow bare feet.

  The cross flared to life, not the white-hot glow it had had in the Jeep, but bright enough. Bright enough to leave me blinking. Bright enough to help me think. Asher was still beautiful, nothing could change that, but now I could breathe, move, talk. Though I had no idea what to say. I’d never had a cross glow around him either, until now.

  It was Jean-Claude who said it, “What have you done, mon ami, what have you done?” He had his back to the glow of the cross and was using the towel to help shield his eyes.

  Asher had thrown up an arm to protect his own pale blue gaze. “I tried to roll her mind just enough for pleasure, but the ardeur was too much.”

  “What have you done?” Jean-Claude asked again.

  I watched them both in the light of the cross, one hiding behind the blue towel, the other his own arm, and I answered for him, “He rolled me. He rolled my mind, completely and utterly.” Even as I said it, I knew he’d done more than that. I’d been rolled before. I’d even been rolled once upon a time by Jean-Claude when first we met. But vampire powers to cloud the mind are a dime a dozen, most of them can do it. Most of the young ones have to capture you with their gaze, but the old ones can simply think at you. I was immune to most of it, partly natural ability as a necromancer, and part Jean-Claude’s marks. But I wasn’t immune to Asher. The cross kept glowing, the vampires kept shielding their eyes, and even with them hiding away from the white light, I still wanted them, both of them, but now I had to wonder how much of it was me, and how much of it was Asher’s mind tricks. Damn it.

  32

  WE ENDED UP in the bedroom but not for anything fun. I’d dried off and thrown on extra clothes that I kept at the Circus. I had to put the wet shoes back on though. My cross was safely underneath my shirt again. Once it went under the shirt, it stopped glowing, but there was still a pulsing warmth to it.

  Jean-Claude had knotted the blue towel around his waist, where it draped nearly to his ankles. He’d put a smaller towel on his hair and the blue of the cloth brought out the blue of his eyes. Seeing his face free of all hair made him look more like a boy to me. It was the bones of his cheeks that saved his face from being utterly feminine. He was still beautiful, but an inch closer to handsome without that black veil of hair.

  Asher was still clothed in nothing but the dried blood and the spill of all his own hair. He was pacing the room like some kind of caged beast.

  Jean-Claude had simply sat down on the edge of the bed with the blue sheets still stained with blood and other fluids. He looked discouraged.

  I stood as far from them as I could, arms clasped across my stomach. I’d left my shoulder holster off, so that I wouldn’t stroke my gun while I argued. I was hoping to tone the hostility down, not ramp it up.

  Jean-Claude laid his face in his hands, all pale skin and blue cloth, towels and sheets surrounding him. “Why did you do it, mon ami? If you had only behaved yourself we would even now be together as we were meant to be.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked how sure Jean-Claude was of me, but I couldn’t really argue without lying, so I let it go. Shutting the fuck up is seldom a bad move on my part.

  Asher stopped pacing and said, “Anita has felt me feed. She knew that I could roll her mind completely. She did not say not to do it. She said for me to take her, to feed from her, so I did. I did what she told me to do, and she was awar
e of how I would do it, because she has fed me once before.”

  Jean-Claude raised his face from his hands like a drowning man, coming up for air. “I know that Anita fed you when you lay dying in Tennessee.”

  “She saved me,” Asher said. He’d come to the end of the big four-poster bed.

  I watched the two of them framed against the blue sheets, where so recently we’d had a very good time. I stood there wanting them both, and my arms clung to me, as if by holding on tight I could keep it from happening.

  “Oui, she saved you, but you did not roll her mind completely then, because I would have felt your touch upon her mind and heart, and it was not there.”

  “I tried to roll her mind because it seems to me that every vampire that takes blood from her is in some way under her sway, her power. It is almost as if when a vampire feeds from her, it is she who controls them, not the other way around.”

  I stayed where I was, but this I couldn’t let go. “Trust me, Asher, it doesn’t work that way. I’ve had vamps bite me and have me under their sway before.”

  He looked at me, with those pale, pale eyes. “But how long ago was that? I think that your powers have grown since then.”

  My gaze kept sliding down his body, tracing the blood pattern on that pale, slightly golden tinged skin. I closed my eyes to say the next because I needed to stop watching them. “Do you feel like you have to do what I say?”

  He hesitated, and I fought the urge to look at him, to watch him think. “No.” His voice was soft.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, opened my eyes, and fought like hell to stare at Asher’s face and nothing else. “See, you’re not in my power or anything.”

  He did a small frown. “Are you in my power then?”