Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “No buts,” I said, “we can take him, I can feel it.”

  “Perhaps Belle Morte is too much in your mind still.”

  It was Asher’s voice, strangled with effort. It drew our eyes to him. His hands trembled in the air as if he were holding some great weight. “Hurry, Jean-Claude, hurry. We cannot hold the circle much longer.”

  “He began this fight,” Requiem said, “let us finish it.” His hands weren’t shaking, but there was a thread of strain in his voice.

  Jean-Claude looked down at Auggie. “Understand this, Augustine, we have never fed like this. I do not entirely know what will happen. Are you content with such a gamble, for it is you who will suffer if it goes badly?”

  I slid my mouth over him, playing my tongue along the foreskin. He shivered, and simply said, “Yes.”

  “Ma petite, stop that, or he will not be able to think.”

  I went back on my knees, and stopped touching him. I put my hands in my lap and behaved. I guess it was cheating.

  “Augustine, do you agree to this?”

  He nodded, hands reaching for Jean-Claude. “Yes, yes, God, yes, the two of you both, yes, yes!” His grip on Jean-Claude’s arm looked almost painful.

  Jean-Claude stroked his hair, soothing him. “Then we will do as you ask.” He looked at me, and it was as if a door opened in my mind. Some inner guard that he must have used almost constantly to keep the marks from being in full force was gone. It staggered me for a moment, made me reach out to Auggie’s thigh to steady myself. The moment I touched him, the ardeur roared back, but this time I could feel Jean-Claude at the other end of his body. I could feel the two different ardeurs like different flavors of fire, and Auggie was our only wood. We’d burn him up, and he wanted us to do it.

  I heard Jean-Claude in my mind, whispering, “I am letting go of my control, ma petite, are you ready?”

  I nodded. He let go, and I fell screaming into the abyss. An abyss of skin and hands and mouths, and bodies. My own body was one huge throbbing need. And I didn’t particularly care how that need got met.

  I ended up on the floor with Augustine on top of me. All that curved hardness going in and out of my body, so that I screamed for him. Screamed my need, my pleasure, and my eagerness. He began propped on his arms so I could watch his flesh slide into mine, but then Jean-Claude joined us, and the angle had to change.

  We had never put anyone in the middle of us when we both fed the ardeur. All these months with Asher, Micah, Nathaniel, Richard, and Jason, and I’d always been the one in the middle. Jean-Claude and I had fed from each other. He had fed from me while I fed at the man, or men, touching me, but never in all those nights had Jean-Claude been touched by someone other than me when we were all naked together. With the marks roaring open between us, I knew how much that had cost Jean-Claude. How horribly careful he had had to be in the middle of the one moment when you should be able to lose all control. So careful, so afraid of scaring me, disgusting me, making me turn away. So afraid of what the other men might say with a badly placed hand, or caress. So careful, so terribly careful, and now suddenly he didn’t have to be careful. I felt the horrible tension in the center of his being relax, like a long-held breath released.

  He explored Auggie first with fingers, and used the wetness of my body to lubricate other places that didn’t normally lubricate themselves. The marks were wide open, so I got flashes of memory, of other men, and other times. Random images as they occurred to him, but even here he chased them away, still afraid of what I’d think. But Auggie’s body was already inside mine, and I felt his eagerness at every probe, every touch. Everything that Jean-Claude did urged him on to more with me, so that all I could think was how would it feel to have Auggie thrusting inside me while Jean-Claude rode him.

  Jean-Claude entered him slowly, and Auggie’s body stilled above mine, as he concentrated on the sensation of it. It had been a long time for Auggie. As he’d said before, he preferred girls, which meant that even here, with both of us eager, Jean-Claude had to be careful, so careful. Nothing spoils great sex like unintentional pain.

  But finally he had everything in he was getting in, and Auggie’s body relaxed above me. Relaxed into the rhythm that Jean-Claude found on top of us both. They both found a rhythm, Auggie’s body pushing in and out of mine, slowly, ramming home at the end, so that I made small sounds at the height of every stroke.

  The two of them found a rhythm together so that the height of one stroke was the height of the other. So that Auggie and I cried out together, and Jean-Claude rode us both. I tried to move with them, but the combined weight pinned me to the floor, so that the best I could do was squeezing Auggie as he came and went inside me. My legs were wrapped around them both, as much as I could, so that Jean-Claude’s body brushed against my foot as he moved. I felt that heavy, delicious weight begin to grow between my legs. I knew that orgasm was coming and that this one couldn’t afford to be a surprise. But I didn’t have to tell Jean-Claude, he knew.

  He stared down at me over Augustine’s shoulder, his eyes all drowning blue fire, as if a midnight sky could burn. His hair had come loose, strands of it sticking to the sweat on his face. I knew that my eyes were dark brown flame, as if I were a vampire. It had happened before. We stared at each other over Augustine’s shoulder, and I felt that weight growing, growing, growing.

  Augustine whispered, “Your breathing’s changed.”

  I came screaming, and it was as if that had been the moment both men had been waiting for, as if they had fought long and hard not to go, and suddenly they could.

  Augustine shoved himself twice, three times as fast and hard as he could inside me. He brought me again, screaming and writhing on the floor, and only then did he go inside me. His body spasming above me, his body trying to dig deeper inside me, so that I cried out. Jean-Claude’s head went back, eyes closed, his body bowed above us both, and we fed.

  We didn’t just feed off Augustine, we fed off all his people in our territory. I felt Haven, the werelion, spasm against the floor, where he still lay in the fallen curtains. I felt Benny, behind the wheel of a car, lose control and have to screech to the side of the highway. Pierce fell against a wall and slid to the floor, his body spasming. Octavius collapsed on the stairs, choking, clawing at the stone, breaking his nails to bloody bits to try to keep it from happening. But nothing could save them, any of them. If we’d been in Chicago we could have fed off every beast and vamp that owed allegiance to Auggie, and he would have let us. For this pleasure he would have sold what was left of his soul and the souls of everyone who worked for him.

  We drank them down, all of them; we fed, and fed, and fed, and while we fed Augustine’s body kept spasming, and every thrust of pleasure brought me again, which brought Jean-Claude. We fed and orgasmed until Augustine went still between us, collapsed, body twitching. Jean-Claude looked down at me over Auggie’s sweating body, a fierce smile on his face. He stared down at me with his eyes gone to blue fire so bright that the skin of his face glowed with it. He glowed with the power we had drunk. So much power, so very much power. I felt like a distant echo that Richard was leaning against a wall somewhere, staggered by the power we’d taken, and shared.

  A thought was enough. Micah and Nathaniel were sitting just outside, one against the wall, the other sitting on the floor. Nathaniel laughed with the power rush of it all. We’d shared the power with all our people, all of them. Good, bad, indifferent, everyone with a connection to us was power drunk and glowing tonight. If there had been a metaphysical satellite up there in the sky, our territory would have glowed from orbit.

  10

  IT TOOK ABOUT an hour to get everyone separated to places where they could clean up. Claudia had sent for reinforcements, so that the wrecked living room was nearly a solid wall of black-shirted guards. Werewolves, wererats, and werehyenas, the people we had treaties with for guard work, all stood around while Octavius had hysterics. If he’d had more guards with him, and we’d had less,
it could have gotten violent, but when you’re outnumbered, outmuscled, and your master is saying, Let it go, well, Octavius had to eat it. He didn’t like it, neither did Pierce, but Haven, of the Cookie-Monster-blue hair, was voting with Auggie. They both liked us just fine.

  Jean-Claude and I lay back in his huge bathtub. My clothes were ruined but I had my knife and gun on the edge of the tub. Nothing else had been salvageable. We’d scrubbed and cleaned, and now were just soaking in the hot water. Auggie had probably already finished in the showers down the hall, but Requiem and Asher were in charge of seeing that our guests didn’t do anything unfortunate. They were both master vampires over four hundred years old, they could handle it. We’d handled everything I wanted to handle for one night.

  Jean-Claude lay back against the edge of the tub, and I lay in his arms, the back of my body cradled against the front of his. He trailed his hand down my arm, and hugged me tighter against him. His body was quiet, pressed against my body. I think we’d both had all we could handle for one night.

  His voice came lazy, with that edge that sleep can give it. “What are you thinking about, ma petite?”

  “If you hadn’t shut the marks down so tight, you might not have to ask.” I snuggled my head into the hollow of his shoulder and chest. “You shut them down as soon as we were finished with Auggie. Why?”

  His body tensed against me, even his arms where they were wrapped around me, not so comforting anymore. “Perhaps I was afraid of what you would find in my thoughts.” His voice wasn’t sleepy now, but had that bland emptiness that he used to hide behind.

  “What would I have found?” I asked, but I wasn’t cuddling now. Tension is contagious.

  “If I had wanted you to know the answer to that question, I would not have shut the marks down.”

  I started to protest, but another thought stopped me. With the marks that wide open, it had only been chance that I hadn’t thought of the baby question. Chance and the fact that the ardeur tended to wipe out anything that wasn’t pertinent to the moment. Now the fear came crawling back, tightening my stomach, tensing my muscles. Please, God, don’t let me be pregnant.

  “What is wrong, ma petite?” he asked.

  I let out a breath that shook around the edges and said, “You know, Jean-Claude, normally I’d push for honesty, but I think I’ve had all the revelations I can handle for one night. It’s okay, whatever you thought, it’s okay.”

  “It is okay without your ever knowing what the thought was?” he asked.

  I settled back into his arms, willing the hot water and the touch of his body to take away that awful tension. “Yes,” I said, “yes.”

  He moved me to the side, holding me in the water, so he could see my face. “Yes, just like that?” His face showed his skepticism.

  I stared up into him; his hair was wet and slicked back from his face, so that nothing took away from it. Those eyes a blue as dark as blue could be and hold no touch of black. His lashes thick and black—it had taken me months in his bed to see his upper lashes by candlelight and realize that he had a double row of upper lashes. Him and Elizabeth Taylor. You only saw it if the light was just right, and his head turned just right. Until then, they were just this unbelievable lace around his eyes. I traced the lines and curves of his face, down to the grace of his lips. I let him see in my eyes what I saw, what I felt, gazing at him.

  He leaned in, and laid a kiss upon my lips. Then he cuddled me back against him, as we’d been before the questions started. No more personal questions tonight, but there were other questions I wanted answered. “Why did Requiem look like someone had pounded his face into a wall?”

  “Because someone had.”

  That made me turn enough to look at him. “Who?”

  “Meng Die,” he said, voice soft, face solemn.

  “Was that the emergency?”

  “Oui. Thank you for sending the extra guards, ma petite, it was wise of you.”

  I shrugged, and turned so that I was sitting across his legs, my hands against his chest, his arms around me still, but I could see his face now. “How did it get so out of hand?”

  “I was called in rather late, ma petite. In truth, I do not know exactly how Requiem and Meng Die allowed their spat to get so terribly out of hand, and so terribly public. Asher, as manager of the Circus, came down to stop it, or take it to a backstage area. That should have been the end of it.” His face was closing down, hiding what he thought of the fight, and the aftermath.

  “Why wasn’t that the end of it?”

  “Because Meng Die decided to fight them both.”

  I sat up in his lap. “Why fight Asher? She’s never been his lover.”

  “But he is your lover.”

  I frowned at him. “So what?”

  “I believe that if a master vampire had appeared who wasn’t in your bed, had never been in your bed, the fight might have calmed instead of escalating.”

  “I’m totally lost here, Jean-Claude.”

  He looked directly at me, but his face was empty enough that it gave me nothing. “You have not asked the right question yet, ma petite.”

  “What is the right question?”

  “What the fight was about.”

  I frowned harder, and said, “Okay, I give, what was the fight about?”

  “You.”

  Now I was really lost. “What?”

  “They were arguing about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Meng Die thinks you have stolen Requiem from her.”

  I pushed back enough in the water so I was kneeling, and not cuddled. The water was deep enough that it came to my shoulders. “Requiem isn’t my lover. I’ve worked really hard to make sure he isn’t my lover.”

  “But you have fed the ardeur from him.”

  “In an emergency, yes. It was to feed, or I was about to suck Damian’s life away. I had to feed, but we didn’t have intercourse, we didn’t even take our clothes off.” I thought about it, and added, “Not all of our clothes. I mean, Requiem was fully clothed.” I started blushing and couldn’t prevent it. I had to stop explaining before it sounded worse and worse.

  “He has offered to feed you more completely.”

  “I know.”

  “Why have you refused him?”

  I looked at Jean-Claude, trying to see behind that perfect mask of a face. “I think I was under the impression that I’m having sex with enough men.”

  His lips twitched. He was fighting not to smile.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  He let himself smile. “Ma petite, there have been women over the centuries who traded lands, titles, their honor, everything, for one more night in Requiem’s bed. His master in London used him much as Belle Morte used Asher and me. Though because Requiem only did women, he wasn’t as flexible as we.”

  I let that last part go. I still wasn’t completely sure how I felt about Jean-Claude doing Auggie. At the time I hadn’t minded—in fact, I’d liked it. I’d liked us both doing him at the same time. We’d fucked him in every way possible, physically and metaphysically, and it had felt a-fucking-mazing. That last part was probably going to bug me the most. But one disaster at a time.

  “Are you saying you’re surprised I turned him down?”

  “No, it is typical of you to turn a man down at first.”

  “At first?” I said, and sounded a little outraged.

  He laughed, and it was that touchable sound, as if it were the sound of pure sex, and it went through my head and all the way down my body. “Stop that,” I said.

  He smiled, face lit with suppressed laughter, but he stopped. “To my knowledge, the only man you have never said no to is your Nimir-Raj, Micah. But the ardeur was newly woken, and so I do not think we can count that one completely. It was your exception, not your rule.”

  “Fine, but I’m still lost. I have avoided Requiem. Graham made some remark that Requiem was refusing Meng Die’s bed and somehow that was my fault.”

  �
��Apparently, Requiem told Meng Die that he would not be her lover any longer, because you do not share your men with other women. He seemed to believe that his being in her bed was what kept you from accepting his offer to be your new pomme de sang.”

  I shook my head. “He shouldn’t have assumed that.”

  He nodded. “Because that isn’t why you refused him, is it?”

  I shook my head hard enough to move the water around my body. “No. And if Requiem had asked me why I was saying no, I would have told him it wasn’t because he was screwing Meng Die.”

  “Then why?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Because he has left his lover’s bed in the hope that you will take him to your bed. He is third in rank among my vampires, and second, or perhaps third, in power. Meng Die is powerful enough to be my second-in-command, but her temperament is not suited to it. As she demonstrated today. You have set two of my most powerful vampires at each other’s throats, ma petite. I need to know why.”

  “I did not start that fight,” I said.

  “No, but you were the cause of it, and if you are to convince Requiem that you will not take him as your pomme de sang, then you must give him a reason that does not include his being Meng Die’s lover. His reasoning was sound, ma petite. You have refused all the pomme de sang candidates who have a female lover.”

  “Graham, Clay, and Requiem are all Meng Die’s lovers,” I said.

  He gave that wonderful Gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing. “So. Is it that you will not take Meng Die’s seconds?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not it. You know why not Graham; he might do for a meal, but he’d be a disaster as a permanent member of the household.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “Clay is in love with Meng Die, she’s just about broken his heart, but he wants her, and I say more power to him.”

  “And Requiem?”

  I leaned back against the side of the tub, out of reach. The bath had stopped being comforting. “Did we have to do this tonight?”