Asher walked to stand at the far end of the room beside the false fireplace. It was hard to see in the dimness, but tonight someone had put two tapered candles on the mantel piece, each encased in crystal, so they glimmered like jewels. Asher’s hair sparkled in the uncertain light. He put one hand on the mantel, his head down to stare at the cold hearth, as if the new fire screen Jean-Claude had added was très fascinating. The fire screen was a huge antique fan encased in glass. The colors were vibrant reds, greens, a brilliant spray of flowers and delicate lace. It was pretty, but not that pretty.
I looked at Jean-Claude for some clue, and he merely motioned me to follow Asher across the room. When I just stood there, Jean-Claude took my hand and led me over to the other man.
Asher must have heard us coming, because he said, “I was very angry with you, Anita, very angry. So angry I did not think you might have just cause to be angry with me.”
Jean-Claude squeezed my hand as if to tell me not to interrupt, but I seemed to be ahead on the discussion, so I hadn’t planned to say a word. Never interrupt when you’re winning.
“Jason told us how ill you were after I took blood from you. If you were as ill as he has reported then you would naturally fear my embrace.” He looked up, suddenly, eyes wide and almost wild, lost in the glow of his hair and the flickering candlelight. “I would not have hurt you. It has never been so . . .” he seemed to be searching for a word, “terrible for any of my other,” again he hesitated, “victims.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that, because I agreed with part of what he’d said. I felt that he’d made me a victim of his powers, by not asking first. But whether I’d been aware of it, or not, somewhere in the back of my mind I must have been thinking about the problem all damn day, because I knew one thing for certain. I wasn’t completely in the right, either. Damn it.
I let go of Jean-Claude’s hand, because the feel of his skin against mine made it harder to concentrate right now.
“I can see where you might have gotten the idea that I understood what sharing blood with you would mean. I did ask you to bite me, I did offer to feed you, and you were right, I did know that your bite could overwhelm my natural defenses.” It was my turn to look down at the pretty fire screen that would never know the touch of flame. “I just was so out of my head with,” I almost couldn’t say it, “desire that I wasn’t thinking clearly. But that wasn’t your fault. You could only go with what I said out loud.”
I looked up, met those eyes. “Oh, hell, Asher, even if you could have read my mind at that moment I wanted you to take me, whatever that meant. There were no rules or stop signs in my head.” I let out a long breath, and it shivered, because I was afraid of this, afraid of admitting it out loud, afraid of it all. I was afraid of being consumed by desire or love or whatever the hell you want to call it. “I wanted you to take me while Jean-Claude made love to me. I wanted us all to be together as of old.”
“It is not of old for you, Anita,” Asher said. He looked past me at Jean-Claude. “See, it is as we feared, she is besotted with me through your memories. It is not real what she feels for me. With my powers of fascination or without them, it is not real.”
“That sounds like what I’ve been saying, Asher,” I said. “That because you mind-fucked me I’ll never know if what I feel for you is real. But I can tell you this, what I felt for you before, that was real. It isn’t you before the holy water that I think of, it’s you now, just as you are.”
He shook his head and looked away, making his hair a barrier between us, so I couldn’t see his face. “But I did use my powers to fascinate you, as a snake fascinates a bird. I captured your mind, and I meant to do it.”
I touched his hair, and he jerked away from me, moved down the mantel out of reach. I didn’t try and follow. I took in a lot of air and blew it slowly out. I’d have rather faced a dozen bad guys than this next bit of conversation.
“In your defense, I think we were naked and doing the nasty before you rolled my mind.”
He looked up, face barely clear enough through the shadows and uncertain light for me to see he was puzzled. “Nasty?”
“Having sex,” Jean-Claude said. “It is a quaint American slang term for it, to do the nasty.”
“Ah,” Asher said, though he didn’t look any less puzzled.
I plowed on. I’m nothing if not determined once I’ve made up my mind. “My point is this, we were already having sex. You hadn’t rolled my mind when I agreed to everybody taking their clothes off. You hadn’t rolled my mind when we had foreplay. You hadn’t rolled my mind when I was licking the back of your knees, and other things.” I forced myself to meet his slowly calming eyes. “I volunteered for all that. If I could have figured out a way for you to be inside me that didn’t include fangs I would have, but I wanted you both inside me.”
I had to close my eyes, because I suddenly had a visual so strong that it nearly made my knees buckle. With the visual came the wave of sensation. It didn’t make me claw the air this time. But I was left with a death grip on the mantelpiece, and my breath coming in gasps.
“Ma petite, are you well?”
I shook my head. “Compared to the first time I flashed back on the orgasm, yeah, I’m peachy.”
“Quelle?” Asher asked.
“She has experienced the pleasure of us earlier today.”
Asher looked even less happy. “She has every symptom. I did not believe she would. I thought her necromancy would protect her.”
“I should also tell you that I think Belle Morte had something to do with how sick I was. She was feeding on me and Richard through you two.”
Jean-Claude leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Jason had told us that ma petite. But I still believe that your power has struggled with Asher’s power all day. It is the old question of what would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object.”
“Asher being the irresistible force and me the immovable object,” I said.
“Oui.”
I’d have liked to argue with the division of labor, but it was too damned appropriate. “So what does that mean for us being together as a ménage à trois again?”
Jean-Claude had a moment of something showing on his face, then he went to his blankest of blank faces. It was Asher who spoke, “You would be willing to do this again?”
I started to let go of the mantelpiece, decided not to, just in case, and said, “Maybe.” I looked at Jean-Claude, his careful beautiful face. “I think Jean-Claude has finally found something that he won’t compromise on.”
“Whatever do you mean, ma petite?”
“I mean if I cost you Asher, it will drive a wedge between us.”
“So I am something that you will take to your bed to be with Jean-Claude!” He was suddenly enraged, eyes full of liquid blue fire. His humanity folded away before my eyes to leave him pale and still beautiful, but it was the beauty of carved rock and jewels, a hard, bright beauty with no life to it, no softness, nothing human. He stood before me with his golden hair moving around his face like a halo, blown by the wind of his own power. He was wondrous and horrible, a terrible beauty, like the angel of death come to find you.
I wasn’t afraid of him. I knew Asher wouldn’t hurt me, on purpose. I knew more that Jean-Claude wouldn’t allow it. But I’d had enough. Enough of Asher and of me. In some perverse way Asher and I were well matched in a bad need-therapy sort of way. We both had so many issues about personal intimacy and so many hoops that people had to jump through, that even I was tired of it.
I unbuckled my belt and started sliding it through the loops, when it was far enough back; I slid the belt out of the loop on my shoulder holster.
Asher asked in a voice that echoed through the room, crawled down my spine, “What are you doing?”
I finished taking my belt off, then shrugged out of my shoulder holster. “I’m getting undressed. I assume that Jean-Claude’s got some clothes around here somewhere for me, too. Though I am so not we
aring an outfit that matches yours if it has like petticoats and stays and stuff. You can’t move in that shit.”
“Have no fear, ma petite, I have held your preferences in the forefront of my thoughts, as I chose the clothing.” He held his hands out to the side and struck a lovely, if overly dramatic poise. “Even our clothing is comfortable and easy to move about in.”
We were both ignoring the vampire that was glowering at us. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails when you’re trying to be scary like being ignored.
I started to take my shirt off, but stopped. I did not want to have to go through the glowing cross routine again. I did not want to mess with it. So I went for the bed, where I could take off my shoes in comfort.
“So Jason told you what else Belle did?”
“She has given you the first mark, oui.”
“She knows, Jean-Claude, she knows that Richard and I don’t have the fourth mark.” I hopped up on the bed, laying my belt and shoulder holster beside me. I concentrated on untying my shoes, because I did not want to go where I feared the discussion would go.
“You will not look at me now, ma petite. Why, is it that you fear what I will say?”
“I know that if you gave me the fourth mark that she couldn’t mark me again. I’d be safe from her.”
“Non, ma petite, no lies between us. She could not mark you as hers, but you would not be safe. I could use this as an excuse to claim that last bit of you, but I will not, because I fear what Belle would do.”
I looked up at him, one shoe in my hand. “What do you mean?”
“For now, she thinks she may be able to claim you as her human servant. She may be able to use you to increase her own power. If she finds you are beyond her reach in that way, she may decide that you are better off dead.”
“If she can’t have me, then nobody else gets me either, is that it?”
He gave a small nod, and an almost apologetic shrug. “She is a very practical woman.”
“No, she’s a very practical vampire. Trust me, Jean-Claude that is a whole new level of practicality.”
He nodded. “Oui, oui, I would argue if I could, but it would be lies.”
Asher was walking towards us now. His eyes were still glowing that drowning blue as if a winter’s sky had filled his skull, but for the rest, he looked as ordinary as he ever did. Which was extraordinary. But at least he wasn’t raising a small wind of his own otherworldly power or levitating a few inches off the floor.
“You are both weakened by not sharing the fourth mark. Neither of you is as powerful without it. You know that, Jean-Claude.”
“I do, but I also know Belle. She destroys that which she cannot use.”
“Or casts it aside,” Asher said, voice soft, holding sorrow enough to make my throat tight.
I had my shoes off, my jogging socks tucked into them on the floor. “Casting you aside did destroy you,” I said. I meant it to be soft, but it came out pretty much like I usually sound.
He glared at me, his pupils swimming up through the blue fire like an island reborn from the sea.
“What I mean, Asher, is that she chose what would hurt you worse than death. To be cast out from her affections, from Jean-Claude’s bed, since his bed was hers.”
“She would not kill me because she promised Jean-Claude she would not.”
I glanced at Jean-Claude.
“I came back to her for a hundred years, if she could save Asher’s life. If he died, I was free of her.”
“So she worked to keep me alive,” Asher said, and his voice was bitter enough to choke on. “There were nights when I cursed you for my life, Jean-Claude.”
“I know, mon ami. Belle Morte often pointed out that if only I would allow you to die, you could be spared such humiliation.”
“I did not know that she gave you that choice.”
Jean-Claude looked away, not meeting the other man’s eyes. “It was selfish on my part. I would rather you alive and hating me, than dead and past all hope.” He looked up then, and his face was raw with emotion, so unlike his usual polite blankness. “Was I wrong, Asher? Would you rather have died all those years ago?”
I sat on the bed, watching them, waiting for the answer. In a way I was an audience, in a way I wasn’t there at all.
“There were moments when I longed for death.”
Jean-Claude turned away. Asher touched his arm, fingertips on the velvet. That small touch seemed to freeze Jean-Claude. If he was breathing, I couldn’t see it. “Last night was not one of those moments.”
They stared at each other. Asher’s fingertips barely touching Jean-Claude’s arm. There was so much between them, centuries of pain and love and hate. It was as if all of it boiled in the air, almost visible in the flickering light. I wanted to say kiss and make up, but I knew they wouldn’t. I don’t know what issues they had about each other, but they seemed unable to do things like that without their Julianna. She’d been the bridge between them. The thing that allowed them to love each other. Without her, they stood on the brink of the abyss and gazed at each other, separated by a chasm that neither knew how to cross.
I could never be Julianna. I had too many memories of her. For God’s sake she’d done embroidery. She’d been gentle and kind and everything I didn’t think I was. But there was one thing I might be able to do.
I slid off the bed, and went first to Asher, because I didn’t want to set him off again. I went on tiptoe, and he had to bend down a little for me to kiss him, but he didn’t fight me. I held his face in my hands like it was a cup carved of some delicate stone, something that would shatter if you abused it. I kissed him softly, drinking from that cup as the sacred gift it was. I went to Jean-Claude with the taste of Asher still on my lips. I cupped his face as I had held Asher’s, and I kissed him. He barely moved under my mouth.
I stood back from the two of them. “Now, we’ve kissed and made up. We need to get me dressed, and we need to talk before the banquet.”
Jean-Claude’s voice came out low and hoarse, as if he wasn’t breathing well. “Talk of what, ma petite?”
“The Mother of All Darkness.”
“Jason spoke of her, too, but I hoped he was misunderstanding.”
“It cannot be the Sweet Mother,” Asher said, “she has not woken in a millennium.”
“She’s not awake, Asher, but she’s moving around like a restless sleeper.”
The two men looked at each other. It was Asher who said, “I would put aside petty differences until we are at the bottom of this most grave mystery.”
“What petty differences?” I asked.
“Whether we are to be a ménage à trois, or no.”
I shook my head. “I adore you, Asher, but I don’t have enough energy left to shovel this much emotional shit. Do you realize that you have more hang-ups about personal intimacy than I do?”
He opened his mouth, closed it, then gave that Gallic shrug.
“We’re actually well-matched in a I-haven’t-beaten-you-to-death-yet, sort of way. But for now, let’s both try to put our personal mess aside. Okay, please.”
He gave a graceful bow. “As my lady commands, so shall I obey.”
“For as long as it suits you,” I said.
He laughed then, and it was a good laugh, a sound that glided down my skin and jerked at things low in my body. It brought a sigh from my lips. “Now, where are my clothes for this little disaster tonight?”
43
I HAD, OF course, complained about my clothes. The black velvet and blue silk seemed to be offering my breasts up like pale ripe fruits. The colors emphasized the near translucence of my skin with the undertone of blue highlights. But I knew what the blue highlights really were—blood. Blue blood inside my veins that would burst red when oxygen hit it.
Stephen had done my hair and makeup. He’d done them before, for these little get-togethers. He regularly did it for the other strippers at Guilty Pleasures. I had let him put my hair in a pile of loose curls on top of
my head, so that my neck looked white and bare. Asher’s bite marks stood out starkly against all that flesh.
“My neck and breasts look like they should be on a plate with a sign saying ‘come and get it.’ ”
Stephen stepped back from applying the last bit of eyeliner. “You look lovely, Anita.” He probably meant it, but his blue eyes were all for the makeup, for his work. He saw me as a canvas. He frowned slightly, did some minute adjustment near my eyes that left me blinking. He dabbed with a Kleenex then stepped back again.
He looked me over from the top of my head to the end of my chin, then nodded. “It’s good.”
“It’s positively appetizing,” Micah’s voice came from the doorway. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. The moment I saw him, I knew I’d lost all rights to bitch about what I was wearing.
The color was turquoise blue, with enough green to make his eyes blaze green. The shirt had holes at the top of his shoulder, in the middle of his upper arm, and two in the middle of his forearm. Black cord was threaded through the cloth and tied around his elbow, above and below the holes to keep the cloth from sliding around. The cuffs were wide and stiff, with shiny black buttons, with cutouts on the underside so the skin of his wrists was bare, just as the holes at his elbows left those spots bare. His skin looked very tanned, very smooth, very warm against the turquoise.
The pants matched the shirt—and not just in color. There were holes on the sides that flashed the perfect smoothness of his hip, down to glimpses of thigh. The holes probably went farther down, but black boots cut off the view just above his knee.
The pants were so tight that he really didn’t need a belt, but there was a black cord threaded through the unnecessary belt loops that swung as Micah walked. He was actually almost to me when I realized there were holes on the inside of the pants legs, too.
I shook my head. “There’s more holes than cloth.”
He smiled at me. “I’m food, so you’ve got to be able to reach the blood. Jean-Claude didn’t want anyone to have an excuse to undress anyone.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15 Page 36