Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The skin had blistered, and hardened, and begun to slough off. Days, or weeks, of healing in minutes. I moved the hardened skin to one side. I wasn’t quite brave enough to pull at it. I moved all that truly dead skin aside until I found the palm of my hand. The skin of the palm was soft, baby soft, but there was a new cross-shaped scar in the middle of my hand. That skin was shiny and not soft, not rough, more slick. Weeks of healing.

  I hadn’t used Raina to heal Requiem. I’d used her to heal me. But I understood why. I’d asked something of her munin that it could not do. She healed lycanthrope flesh, living flesh, and Requiem was not living flesh. No matter how alive he seemed, it was a trick, or a lie, or something I had no name for.

  I stared down at Requiem. He gazed up at me with eyes that had gone back to their normal swimming blue. There was no power in him now. If it hadn’t been silver blades, his body would have smoothed the damage over by now. But it was silver, and that meant healing would be almost human-slow, unless he had help.

  “You are healed?” He made it a question.

  I nodded. “A little trimming away of dead skin, but yeah.”

  “Trimming away the dead,” he said, voice soft. He sighed, and said, “I can go back inside as I am. I will not be at my best, but it was your wounds that were most important.”

  I stared down at him, the two nearly fatal wounds in his upper body, the dozens of cuts and slashes on his arms. But I looked lower and found the rest of his body still hard and ready. “You should walk around nude more often,” I said.

  He actually frowned at me. “Why, m’lady?”

  “Because you are beautiful.”

  He smiled. “I thank you for that.”

  “You say it like it’s not true.”

  “If I were truly beautiful you would have found your way to my bed weeks ago.”

  I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. My necromancy was still here, but it was changed somehow. It was like calling the munin or something about chasing out the Dark Mother had changed my own power. It was still necromancy, but it held an edge of…life. It was more alive, this energy. I didn’t understand it, exactly, but I understood one thing: always before when I’d healed damage on vampires, small wounds, it had been in the daytime when they were dead. Once they rose, their own personality, or soul, or whatever, kept my power from recognizing them as a dead thing, the way it recognized zombies. They always hit the radar as dead, no matter how mobile they were.

  I could feel the wound I had touched. I could feel it, and knew that it was a little like gathering up the bits of a zombie. One of the things I did most often in my job was to make the dead whole again.

  It seemed important to do this thing. As though if I didn’t heal Requiem now, I would forget how to do it. It was like a gift offered once, and wiped away if you don’t use it. I wanted to use it; it would feel good to use. It always felt good to work with the dead.

  I set my fingertips over his wound, and thought about it like clay. Like smoothing clay back into place. I closed my eyes so I could “see” the deeper tissues of the body knitting together, things I could not touch with my physical fingers.

  There was a wind in the car, a wind that was chill, but held an edge of spring. I thought someone had opened a door, but when I opened my eyes, the car was closed. The wind was coming from me. I looked down at Requiem’s body, and found my hands touching smooth, healed skin. There wasn’t even a scar. I moved my hands to the wound on his side, at the ribs. I did it before my conscious mind could say, Gosh, that’s impossible. I pressed my hands to his side, and I smoothed the wound away. The wind blew bits of my hair around my face. The hardened skin of blistered flesh fell away on its own from my hand, as I healed him. Dead flesh, all of it, dead flesh.

  I grabbed his arms, and smoothed my hands from elbow to wrist, to hold his hands, and the skin smoothed behind my touch like a fast-forward camera trick. It wasn’t possible, but I was still doing it.

  The wind faltered, and I fell forward onto him. He caught me or I might have slipped to the floor of the car. Working with the dead always felt good, but it had its price, too. It was especially trying if there was no blood magic involved. It hadn’t occurred to me it would be that similar to raising the dead in price.

  Jason and Nathaniel were beside us. “What’s wrong?” Jason asked.

  Nathaniel answered, “She’s exhausted.”

  I blinked up at him. “Are you exhausted, too?”

  He shook his head. “When you shut the marks down, you shut them down. I can tell you’re exhausted, but you aren’t draining me. I don’t think you’re touching Damian either.”

  “I didn’t want to risk the two of you again tonight.”

  “You shut everybody out,” Jason said. “Jean-Claude is sensing more through me, right now, then you. A pomme de sang is not nearly the connection that you are to him.”

  “Too much happening,” I said.

  Requiem hugged me. “What can I do to make this right, m’lady? How do I repay such a miracle?”

  “If we ever do this again, I need to have you take blood during it, just like a sacrifice at a zombie raising. Blood magic helps the energy.”

  “You need to feed,” Jason said, and he had an abstracted look as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear. It was probably Jean-Claude whispering in his ear.

  “Okay,” I said, settling heavier onto Requiem’s chest.

  Jason and Nathaniel looked at each other, then back at Requiem. “Call your power, Requiem,” Jason said, “call her ardeur. She’s too weak to bind you with it, like she tried to do earlier. Feed her first, and you will be safe.”

  “It’s like a ventriloquism act,” I said, “your mouth moves but Jean-Claude’s words come out.”

  Jason gave me the grin that was all his, and shrugged. “His words, or not, it’s still true.”

  I rolled my head to look up at Requiem’s face. “Is that why you stopped before? You were afraid I’d own you through the ardeur?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I feared I would end as London has ended, and I do not truly wish that.”

  “I don’t think I’m up to binding anyone right now.”

  A look passed over his face that wasn’t gentle, or hesitant. It was a very male look for a moment. “Then I can do as I wish with you.”

  I thought about arguing with the way he’d phrased it, but I just didn’t have the energy for it. Too tired, and too drained. “Yes,” I said, “you can.”

  He sat up, cradling me against the front of his body. He sat up, and half-carried me, until I was lying on the other end of the seat, and he was kneeling over me. His power danced over my body, and even that was energy, that was food. I watched his eyes drown in the blue depths of his own magic, until he stared down at me like one blind.

  “Is this truly what m’lady wishes?”

  I stared down the length of his body. So hard, so ready, almost hard enough that it must have hurt him a little. Too hard for too long is not always a good feeling. With his body practically screaming with need, he asked, asked permission one more time.

  “Requiem,” I said, “I promise I will always think of you as a gentleman, but I’ve already said yes.”

  “It is good to be certain,” he whispered.

  “Whoever taught you this caution, it wasn’t me.” I stroked my hand not across his chest, but just above it, playing in the energy of his aura. So much energy to play with. It made him close his eyes for a moment. “I promise, Requiem, I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

  That made him smile, and he said, “And you will always be m’lady.”

  That made me laugh. Then he poured his power over my body, and the laughter changed to other sounds.

  50

  HE HELD ON to the door to raise himself above me, so that only the long, hard length of him touched me at first. His own magic had made my body tight and wet, and more than ready, so that each thrust was exquisite pleasure. A pleasure so great it was almost painful
that his movement was slow, and shallow. He’d found that spot inside me, and he meant to work it, but I could feel his body fighting his own rhythm, wanting something harder, faster, less controlled. I was torn between wanting him to never stop, and knowing that we needed to hurry. But every time I opened my mouth to tell him to hurry, to let me feed, he thrust inside me again, or moved his hips just a little, and the thought died before I could say it.

  The ardeur was raised, but even the ardeur seemed weak. I’d had it spread to most of the people in a room before; now, with Nathaniel and Jason trapped in a car with us, it hadn’t spread to them. They were untouched. I needed to feed, not just to be strong enough to help Jean-Claude tonight, but to make certain I didn’t start to suck Damian’s life away.

  I watched Requiem’s body glide in and out of mine. In the dimness of the car I couldn’t see that he was wearing the condom that Nathaniel had given him. I was glad someone was thinking about safety, because all I was thinking about was sex and food. Trouble was, they were the same thing right now. I curled my legs back, rose up so I could see him sliding in and out of me. The sight of him inside me for the first time, finally, bowed my spine back, closed my eyes, drew small sounds from me. That warm, delicious weight began to build inside me.

  I found my words, and managed to say, “When I go, you go.”

  “I would soak your body in all the pleasure it could take,” he said, voice full of the strain of all that control.

  Jason said, “We don’t have time to give Anita all the pleasure she can take, Requiem. Jean-Claude needs us.”

  Requiem nodded, but never changed his rhythm, that relentless gentle thrusting in and out, over and over that spot just inside my body.

  “God, you’re good,” I whispered.

  His hands convulsed on the car, so that it creaked under his strength. “If I get to go when you do, then I must let go of some of my control, or I will still be fighting my body.”

  “Can you keep doing this until I go?”

  “Yes,” he whispered it.

  It built, and built, and built, and then came the stroke of his body inside me that spilled me over. It brought me screaming, digging nails into the leather of the seat. It bucked my body against his, and he thrust deep inside me, as hard and fast as he could. He brought me again with that deep thrust, a different kind of orgasm, before the first had finished. I raked nails down his sides, and screamed.

  The pain didn’t make him come again as it did sometimes for Nathaniel, or even Micah. He took it, but he was done, and the pain didn’t change that.

  He drew himself out of me, and even that was a wondrous sensation that made me writhe on the seats. Someone touched my face and the ardeur jumped to him. I smelled wolf and knew it was Jason before I saw his face.

  He swallowed hard, voice breathy. “You’re feeling better.”

  I nodded.

  “No offense, but we need you fed and all of us back inside, as soon as possible.”

  “Yes,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.

  “If we double up, you feed faster, and we’re done faster.”

  I frowned at him, part postorgasmic haze, part the rising ardeur, and part just me. “What?”

  Nathaniel appeared over his shoulder, and touched my hand. The ardeur leaped to him, but it had taken touch for it to transfer. My powers were still weak. “I want you to go down on me while the ardeur rides you.”

  I began to have a clue. “And what will Jason be doing while I’m going down on you?”

  “Fucking you,” Nathaniel said.

  Jason tried to look embarrassed, but never quite managed it. He finally grinned at me. “You want me to be all gentlemanly about it.”

  I shook my head. “I want you to fuck me.”

  He looked startled for a moment, then his eyes filled with that knowledge, that darkness, that is all male. That look that is almost predatory, but not when you want it, when you’ve asked for it, then it’s something to tighten your body low and hard. I cried out just from the look on his face.

  “Let’s fuck,” he said.

  “Let’s,” I said.

  51

  I ENDED UP sitting, facing Nathaniel, him inside me. I wrapped my legs around his waist with him buried as deep inside me as he could go. It reminded me of earlier with London, so intimate a lovemaking. But staring into Nathaniel’s eyes from inches away, with his body inside mine, my hips riding him, it was more. London had had to hold my hair, force me to stare into his face. I wanted to stare into Nathaniel’s face, wanted to watch his moods swim across his face. Wanted to watch him watch me.

  Jason’s hands slid down my back, cupped my buttocks. They’d decided to change places when Jason had mentioned that he’d never gone with me orally. Intercourse, yes, but not oral sex. Nathaniel had told him, “You have to feel her do this. She’s amazing.”

  “I’ve had foreplay from her.”

  “That was when she was trying to be good, it’s better when she’s trying to be bad.”

  “Better than Raina?”

  Nathaniel had nodded.

  A look of almost pain had crossed Jason’s face, and he’d said, “Can I change my order, please?”

  So we’d changed the order.

  Without a lot of foreplay I didn’t normally go in this postion, but there’d been foreplay. Small G-spot orgasm always makes intercourse more fun. Big G-spot orgasm means you’re done for the night, as in Stick a fork in me, honey, I’m done. Requiem had done just enough, and not too much, so that my body was tighter than normal, but still wet, still spasming with aftershocks. Every thrust of Nathaniel’s body brought tiny spurts of pleasure, made me move my hips against his body, and drive him deeper inside me.

  Jason licked a cool, wet line up my spine. It made me shiver, and lean a little back into his hands. Nathaniel kissed me, hard and completely, drowning his tongue inside my mouth, until I had to relax my mouth wide. He drove his body inside me, as if he were imitating himself at both openings. It brought me screaming, the orgasm trying to bow my spine, tear my mouth off his, but his hand at the back of my head kept our mouths pressed together.

  Jason bit my back, and it made me scream more. Nathaniel let go of my hair, and let my upper body fall back into Jason’s arms. “I didn’t feel her feed.”

  “She didn’t feed.”

  Nathaniel’s body started finding a new rhythm from the slightly different angle. My breathing started to change almost instantly. I kept my legs around Nathaniel’s waist, his hands supporting most of my weight. “Move back,” he told Jason. Jason did, and my body bowed backward, my hands seeking his body.

  I was suddenly staring, upside down, at a very intimate part of Jason’s anatomy. Nathaniel’s hands were strong and firm at the small of my back. He gave me the foundation I needed to stretch off into space, and reach for the other man. I wrapped my hand around him, tight and firm. He made a small noise for me. I wanted him to make more.

  Nathaniel’s body just kept going inside me, over and over, deep, and smooth. I felt the beginnings of another orgasm building. I wanted Jason inside my mouth before that happened. I wanted to feed on them both. Nathaniel had put a condom on before being inside me, but Jason would slip naked between my lips. I could suck him clean, and naked, and I wanted it. In that moment the ardeur, my own special hunger, might not have cared whose body I was playing with. I needed to feed.

  Jason wasn’t quite at the angle I needed, and I said, “Please, please.” He used his own hand to help guide himself between my lips. My hands wrapped around his thighs and ass. I started to make love to him with my mouth. To suck, lick, and writhe my mouth, my tongue, and ever so lightly my teeth, around the smooth muscled length of him. I moved my mouth, strained my throat to meet each thrust.

  I lost myself in the sensations at my mouth, and Nathaniel reminded me, hard and fast, that I had two men to satisfy. I fought to keep both rhythms going: my hips writhing to meet Nathaniel’s thrusts, and my mouth and throat to meet Jason’s.<
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  Jason’s hands found my upper back, and he helped support me with one hand, while his other hand found something to hold on to. Their hands were like a safety net, holding me, supporting me, helping me fuck them.

  “Are you close?” Jason asked, and his voice sounded strained.

  For a moment I thought he was talking to me, but his body kept me from answering. Nathaniel said, “I can be.”

  “Either she has to slow down, or I’m going to go.”

  Nathaniel’s hands tightened at the small of my back, and he sat up higher, and changed the angle of my hips at the same time. It was like he’d been waiting to do it. It forced my legs higher up his back, put my pelvis at a more than forty-degree angle. His next thrust made me scream around Jason’s body.

  “God, Nathaniel, stop that, or I’m…”

  He thrust two, three times, with every word. “Just…a…little…more!” And he brought me, screaming, screaming with Jason’s body thrusting inside me, so that I screamed around him. My nails dug into his body. Jason thrust one last time as deep and hard as he could down my throat, and I felt him go, felt it hot but too far down to be thick. I got only the heat, and the spasming of him inside my throat. Nathaniel thrust deep and hard between my legs, a heartbeat later. It made me scream as I was trying to swallow Jason down. It made me have to suck harder or choke.

  Jason cried out, his body spasming, his nails digging into my back where he held me. He screamed my name, and the ardeur finally fed. I fed. I drank them both down, and the rush of energy tightened our bodies, made us all cry out. Nathaniel thrust inside me again, brought me again. Jason spasmed deep inside my throat again; I felt him spill inside me. A moment before I’d been fighting not to choke or throw up, and now the ardeur rode me, and I drank him down as if he were exactly what I wanted. I drank them both down; everywhere our skin touched I got small sips, but down my throat, and between my legs, that was food. It was exactly what I needed, exactly the way I needed it. Maybe the feeding would last longer if I fed on men who weren’t tied to us metaphysically, but I didn’t love anyone who wasn’t tied to us. So I had to feed more often, so what?