“We must see to Nathaniel first,” he said, but his voice was hoarse and thick with need.
I nodded. “Yes, Nathaniel first.”
“And then?” he asked.
“Say what you mean,” I said, and my voice wasn’t as hoarse as his, but it didn’t sound exactly like me either.
“And then there is a couch in my office,” he said.
“I was thinking the desk,” I said.
He looked at me, and even with those drowning eyes, the look was very male. “Either will do for me, but it is you who will be on bottom, so it is your choice.”
“I’ll be on bottom?” I made it a question.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because that is what I want.”
“Okay,” I said.
44
NATHANIEL WAS DONE for the night, there would be no shapeshifting. He was barely conscious in that after great sex kind of way. A few of the customers complained, but not many. Most of them felt that they’d had a show worth the price of admission. We got Nathaniel settled in what the strippers called the quiet room. It had an oversized couch, blankets, low lights, and was just what the name implied, a quiet room, where you could either sleep or get your shit together when things went odd. There were smaller rooms where you could pay to have a private dance, but this wasn’t one of them. This was more a room for crashing when you were tired or had to pull a surprise double shift.
I stroked Nathaniel’s hair, and asked him, “Are you alright?”
He’d opened his eyes just barely and smiled up at me. I’d never seen his face so content. “Yes, very, yes.”
I told him to enjoy the afterglow, and I put Requiem on the door, because Nathaniel was mine to take care of, and I planned on being busy for awhile.
My eyes had bled back to normal by the time I walked down the hallway toward Jean-Claude’s office. He stopped in the hallway and called after me, “Where are you going, ma petite?”
I paused at the door and looked at him. “To your office.”
“Your mood is cooler now, and the power has left you.” He was trying to be utterly neutral, and failing just a bit.
I opened the door still looking at him. “Come into the office, Jean-Claude, and lock the door.” I didn’t wait to see what he’d do, I went through the door, leaving it open behind me. I went to the desk and hopped up on it. I could have tried for subtle, but it was late, and I didn’t feel the least bit subtle. I put my boots up on the desk, my legs apart, and let the skirt ride up as far as it wanted to go. It was outrageously slutty, but the look on his face as he came through the door made me glad I’d done it.
He leaned against the door and locked it, and was unbuttoning his jacket as he walked across the floor. I pulled off the leather jacket and threw it to the floor. His jacket was on the floor, the fluffy white cravat undone so that his upper neck showed pale. I slipped the shoulder holster off my arms but only had the belt partly undone, when he pulled the shirt over his head, and was naked from the waist up. I finished the belt, but he was at the desk before I got it off, slipping the shoulder holster free and setting gun and all beside me on the big black lacquer desk.
I went to my knees on his desk and fell upon the silken muscle and lines of his chest with hands and fingers and mouth. I licked the cross-shaped burn scar. I drew first one nipple and then the other into my mouth. Rolled them with my tongue, sucked them. Used my hands to mound the flesh of his chest, so I could take more of his nipple into my mouth, more of his breast. Until I could lock my mouth around as much as would fill it, and bit down until he cried out and his hands found my face, drew me away from his body, and to his mouth.
We kissed as we had on stage, as if we were exploring every inch with tongue, lips, teeth. He drew back from the kiss, and his eyes had bled to blue. Mine were still my own, but I didn’t care. His hands found my shirt, and he pulled it over my head and bent over me, kissing down the line of my neck, my shoulder, and mounds of my breasts where they spilled up from the black lace bra. He stuck his hands inside my bra and lifted my breasts out so they rested on the underwire, like it was a black frame for the pale mounds of my breasts.
He went to his knees and pulled me to the edge of the desk so he could run his tongue over my breasts. Flicking against my nipples, quick, and light, and wet, until I made small noises. He locked his mouth around my breast and drew as much of my breast as he could between his fangs without nicking me. He sucked, hard and harder, rolling his tongue along my nipple and drawing harder on my breast until he stretched me out in a line that felt so good, but I could feel how careful he was being. It wasn’t the first time he’d played with me like this, but it was the first time that I’d known that this was only the beginning of what he wanted. It wasn’t like telepathy, or a picture in my head, I just knew. I knew what he wanted to do. What he was fighting not to do.
“Bleed me,” I said.
He rolled his eyes up to me, so he could see my face.
“Bleed me, I know how long you’ve wanted to do that now. How careful you’ve been.”
He stopped and released my breast slowly, carefully. He said, “Ma petite, you are drunk with the new powers, but tomorrow night, you will not be.”
I shook my head. “Let me feel what it’s like to have you stretch me tight in your mouth and draw just a little blood. I’m not saying that the whole ride will appeal to me, but I am saying that I’m willing to try a little, to see if I’ll like a lot, or not.”
He looked strangely suspicious, and I realized that it was my expression in his eyes, more than his, as if I’d taught him that look, and this caution.
“I give you my word that I won’t punish you for anything I agree to try tonight. A little blood tonight, only a little, barely a nick, just a taste.” I leaned in toward his face. “I know that you want to feed there now. You never told me.”
“Nor would I have, ma petite, you let me take blood so infrequently, that I would never have dreamt to ask such a liberty. When you will not share your neck, why would I think to ask for more delicate parts?”
“I’m offering now. I’d take me up on it, if I were you. Who knows if I’ll ever offer again, if you say no now.” I stared into his face from inches away and let him see that there was no conflict here, no doubts, just eagerness. Eagerness to try.
“What has gotten into you, ma petite?”
“You, you’ve gotten into me, or I want you to. I want you inside me, Jean-Claude, I want you inside me. I want you to lie me back across this desk, with my breasts bare and your mark on them. I want you to push yourself inside me and watch the blood flow from the wound that you made. I want you to watch the blood flow fast and faster, while you fuck me.”
“You are echoing my fantasy, ma petite, have I taken you over?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, but even the thought of it didn’t panic me. “Just a little tonight, Jean-Claude, just a little nick.”
He reached around my body, and it took me a second to realize he was undoing the back of my bra. He slipped it off my shoulders, down my arms, and let it fall to the floor. He gazed up at me, and his eyes never got higher than my breasts. I didn’t mind in the least.
He cupped my breasts in his hands, gently, reverently, and laid the gentlest of kisses upon each of them. He raised eyes to me that were back to their normal midnight blue, as human as his eyes ever became. “Are you sure, ma petite, are you sure?”
I nodded. “Yes, oh, yes.”
He cupped my right breast in his hand, then took just the tip of it in his mouth, a quick drawing of his mouth over my flesh. He sucked and pulled until my nipple was tight and thick under his touch. It brought my breath faster, made my pulse race. He rolled his eyes upward to watch my face, and whatever he saw there reassured him, because he drew hard and fast, made me gasp. Then he drew, slowly, so slowly, more and more of my breast into his mouth. He’d never taken so much in at once, because to do even this much was to
risk drawing blood. His mouth was so warm, so wide, the hard press of his teeth was as distant as he could make it and still hold me in his mouth.
He used his hands to help his mouth, pour so carefully over me, his breath like heat against my skin. He moved carefully off of me, his mouth sliding back until there was much less between his lips. He went back out to the safe distance that he’d been before. He drew just the tip of my breast in his mouth, and he sucked. He sucked and pulled and stretched it out and out, until I made small sounds low in my throat.
He squeezed my breast between his hand, squeezed it, and rolled his eyes up to watch my face. When I didn’t tell him to stop, he squeezed tighter, tighter until it felt like he was trying to garrote my breast with his fingers. It hurt, it did, but it was all mixed up with the sucking and the pulling on my nipple, and that didn’t hurt, not really. In fact it felt good, so good.
It fell out of my mouth in a voice that was almost a moan, “Yes, please, please, yes.”
He rolled his eyes up again to watch my face, and there was something in those eyes, some knowledge, or warning, and suddenly he bit down, not as hard as I’d seen in his head, but a little. He let the barest tips of those sharp fangs graze my breast as he sucked it, as he squeezed it with his hand. It was sharp, but it didn’t hurt. It was lost in the other sensations. His hand squeezing so tight, his mouth sucking so hard, the tiny bit of the fangs was nothing compared to the rest.
He let his mouth slide down my breast until only the nipple was caught between his teeth. But there on the mound of my breast were two tiny dots of crimson. As I watched those two tiny dots began to glide down my skin. He drew my nipple out and out, and we both watched those two tiny trails of red slide down my skin. He pulled on my nipple so hard and so long, that I cried out, “Enough, enough.”
He drew back, gently, and knelt for a moment watching the colors flow on my skin, not just of the blood, but of the marks of his fingers. They faded, but the two lines of blood didn’t fade. They glided down my skin, and as the sensation returned to my breast, they tickled down my skin. The feel of that tiny gliding touch, the sight of it easing down my skin, made me shiver.
He smoothed his hands up the insides of my thighs, and it was only as his fingers brushed certain parts that I made real pain sounds. “No manual manipulation tonight.”
He frowned. “Are you hurt?”
I explained as briefly as possible. “Let’s just say that the ardeur needed feeding and Requiem was a gentleman. I think we’d both be less sore if he’d been a little less of a gentleman.”
He looked puzzled.
“I’ll explain everything in detail, but later, please, Jean-Claude. Take off the pants, I’ve had all the leather pants up close and personal that I can handle tonight. Let me see you nude.”
He peeled off boots and the leather pants with the practiced ease of someone who wears a lot of them. I’d seen him nude more times than I could count now, but he never stopped amazing me with his beauty. Flawless was the only word I had for him. White and pale, and perfect, as if someone could carve cold white marble and breathe life into it, and plant a blush of color at his groin, where he sat straight and thick and ready. The hair that trailed from the delicate thimble of his belly button down to his groin was as black as the curls that fell around his shoulders. That black, black hair stark and unreal against the whiteness of him.
There should have been gentler words for what I wanted, but all I could think of was how much I wanted him inside me. How much I wanted him to sink that shining color inside my body. “Fuck me,” I said, because make love was not what I meant. I wanted the sex that went with what he’d done to my breast. I wanted the sex that matched the blood trailing down my skin.
“Fuck me.”
He bent over me and licked the blood off my chest, not a quick lick, but thick, long movements of his tongue, as if he’d never tasted anything so good and didn’t want to lose a single drop. I was making small wordless noises and writhing on the desk by the time he raised his face up and showed me eyes that had drowned in blue flame.
I whispered, “Please, Jean-Claude, please.”
He did what I’d seen in his head, he did what I’d offered. He laid me back against the desk and pulled my hips to the very edge of the wood. My skirt was completely bunched around my waist like a belt. I was still wearing the thigh-highs and the boots, and nothing else. He used his hands to spread my legs apart, then came to me, the tip of him sliding against my opening.
“You are wet, but you are still tight.”
“Fuck me,” I said, “please, just do it, please, please, please, please . . .”
Somewhere in the last please, he began to force himself inside me. I was tight, so tight, and so wet. On another night, I would have asked for more foreplay to make that horrible tightness loose, but tonight I wanted to feel him push his way in. I wanted to feel him shove himself inside me.
He pushed himself between my legs, using his hips and legs to drive himself into me. It was just this side of too tight, and I started to struggle underneath the push of it. Not struggle to get away, but struggle because I couldn’t help it. My hands and arms swept over his desk and knocked everything within reach off, including my gun. I wanted something softer to touch, something to scratch and hold on to, but there was nothing but the cool wood of the desk, and that wasn’t what I wanted to touch.
When he was as far inside me as he could go, he began to pull himself out, slowly, as if my body were trying to hold on to him, and maybe it was. He drew himself out slowly, and then began to work himself in, just as slowly. If he didn’t hurry, I wasn’t going to be tight anymore. I wanted that feeling of him forcing himself into my body, and we were going to lose that if he kept being gentle.
“Fuck me, Jean-Claude, fuck me while I’m tight, please.”
“That will hurt,” he said.
“I want it to hurt.”
He gave me a look, then gripped my hips in his hands, let me feel some of that otherworldly strength, and he did what I asked. He drove himself into me, and pulled himself out of me, as fast and hard as he could. It did hurt, and I wasn’t ready for it, and it was exactly what I wanted.
He drove himself in as deep and hard as he could, so that the impact of our bodies tore a grunt from my body and a sound in his that I’d never heard before. He trapped my hips under the strength of his hands, and he forced himself inside me, fought the tightness of my body, as if he were piercing my body, making a new hole, because this one wasn’t wide enough.
The blood was flowing across my chest in widening lines, as my heart beat faster, and my blood pumped itself out of those two little holes. The blood looked so red, so red, on the white of my skin.
He lifted my legs so that my feet were by his face, he grabbed my hips and pulled me further down the desk, closer to his body, and used his weight to push my legs back over my body, so that he changed the angle inside me, made it deeper, sharper.
I cried out.
He moved his hands to my waist and pulled me farther into his body, and he rode my legs down so that I was almost bent in two. We’d done gentler versions of this, and he knew I was limber enough for it, but it was suddenly a much different position. Because he rode my body into a tight knot, fucking me as hard and as fast as he could, but he pushed my body together so that he could lick my chest while he fucked me.
He raised his face up from my chest, and his mouth and jaw were crimson with my blood. He spilled my legs to either side, and jerked me up, off the desk, so that I was suddenly pressed to the front of his body, my legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed me, kissed me with the taste of my own blood like metalic candy in his mouth.
He was making low sounds in his throat, and he drove us into the wall hard enough that my back slapped against it, hard enough that if he hadn’t cradled my head, it would have hit the wall. He drove himself into me again and again and again, as hard and as fast as he could. I wasn’t tight anymore, I was wet and loose, a
nd it didn’t matter.
His chest and stomach were decorated with my blood. Startling crimson splashes against the white of his body. He pressed his entire body against me as tight and close as he could, so that the slickness of blood began to flow between us, as he pinned me against the wall. I held him with my legs locked around his body, my arms locked around his shoulders, I held him, and he fucked me. It was like he was trying to put a hole in the wall behind me, so that every thrust felt like it was pounding me into the wall, crushing me against his body. I almost said, enough, almost said stop, but as I drew breath for it, the orgasm came like a huge overwhelming wave. It engulfed me, and I clawed at him, and screamed, and bucked against the weight and strength of him so that the orgasm became another kind of struggle, another kind of fight. My teeth dug into his shoulder, my nails tried to find a way through his back, and my body rode his, while he pounded me into the wall, and somewhere in all of that I felt his body convulse, felt his hips drive in one powerful effort up and inside me.
He screamed as he came, and I felt him pour himself inside me, felt it as he put his hand against the wall and tried to steady us as his knees collapsed, and we ended on the floor with my legs still wrapped around his waist, him still inside my body.
His breathing was ragged, and his eyes unfocused, as he stared into my face. “Mon Dieu.”
“ ‘Wow’ seems too junior high, but ‘amazing’ doesn’t cover it,” I said. I tried to touch his face, but found that my arms weren’t working that well yet. “Just promise me we can do it again some night.”
He smiled, and it was a tired smile, but it held an absolute delight in it. “That is one promise, ma petite, that I will happily make.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” I said.
“Oh, no,” he said, and found that he had enough strength left to lean in against me, “I will most certainly hold it against you.”
45
WE’D MADE OUR plan for the rest of the night. When we’d recovered enough to walk, we’d throw on our clothes. Pick up Nathaniel and drive to the Circus of the Damned. We’d tuck Nathaniel in somewhere, and Jean-Claude and I planned on a nice, hot bath. But before we’d even gotten to the throwing the clothes on part, my cell phone rang.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15 Page 98