He raised my hand and laid a gentle kiss on the knuckles. “We are here to see that you do not eat the swan king for real.” His smile widened and filled his dark eyes with happiness. Requiem and other vamps who had come from England with him said they’d never seen him this relaxed, and hadn’t even known he could smile.
I smiled back at him and nodded. “That would be bad.”
Jason peeked around the much taller man. He grinned at me, but there was a flinching around his spring-blue eyes, a hollow look that said he’d been crying. I held out my other hand to him. London moved out of the way so Jason could hug me. He practically climbed into the bed to do it. We were friends, and sometimes lovers, but his reaction surprised me. I patted the top of his short blond hair, sort of awkwardly, and it wasn’t just the IV that made it awkward, though that pulled. That was sooo going to have to come out before I fed on Donovan.
“Jason,” I said, “it’s all right.”
He shook his head against my shoulder and raised a tear-stained face. His voice was thick with tears as he said, “Liar.” He tried to smile, but didn’t quite make it.
I touched his face with my free hand. “Jason, I…” I didn’t even know what to say. This reaction was more than a friend’s reaction. Then I thought, maybe the grief wasn’t for me. His Ulfric and his master were both near death. If they died, his world would never be the same. The next Master of the City might not have a use for him as a pomme de sang.
I tried to cup his face, but the IV caught again. “Can someone get this out of me? I can’t feed the ardeur hooked up to tubes.”
Lillian threaded her way through the growing crowd and took out the needle. I carefully looked away at the crucial moment. I was better than I used to be, but I still didn’t like seeing needles go in or out of my flesh. It just creeped me.
Jason moved away enough for the doctor to work, but he kept my hand like it was a lifeline. Jason was usually so together that sometimes I forgot that he was only twenty-two. He was actually the same age as some of the werelion college students that Joseph had let me choose from. His excuse on the age had been that older lions had jobs and families. At the time I hadn’t questioned, but now, well, I’d probably be questioning everything the lions did for a while.
“I’m your wolf in case your beast decides to rise,” Jason said.
“I thought Sylvie…”
She spoke from in back of the crowd of shapeshifters. “With the ardeur raised in the room, I’m not staying. Nothing personal, Anita. I mean you’re cute, but I don’t do women, and with you this weak, and Jean-Claude out of it, I don’t want to take the chance that this thing spreads through the room.” She came to the bed and patted my shoulder, a little awkwardly. She wasn’t much better at the buddy thing than I was. “The wolves will do everything they can to get you all through this.”
“Better than the lions,” I said.
“It’s not their Rex in the next room, it’s our Ulfric,” she said, and there was a flare of her beast, like the hot breath of the monster in the dark. I shivered, and she shut the power down. “Sorry, I’m going.” With that she went for the door. As she went out, someone else came in, and I cried out, “Micah!”
He didn’t exactly run to me, but it was close. He was still wearing the dress shirt and slacks I’d last seen him in, but they were covered in dried stains. Blood dried to black and brick red. Maybe I stared at the bloodstains, because he unbuttoned it as he came and threw it on the floor. For once, seeing his chest and shoulders bare didn’t make me think of sex. All I could think of was whose blood it was, Richard’s or Jean-Claude’s. Micah said, “Don’t reach out to them with power, Anita.”
“How did you know that’s what I was thinking?” I asked.
He smiled, but his eyes were tired, relieved to see me up and around, but tired. “I’m your Nimir-Raj.” That was often his answer to things when I asked how he read me so well. He was Nimir-Raj to my Nimir-Ra, and that seemed answer enough for him. He kissed me, and I expected Jason to let go of my hand so I could hug Micah, but he didn’t. Micah and I glanced at him, and I saw the fear naked in Jason’s eyes for a moment. I’d never seen his eyes like that. That one look let me know how terribly close we’d come to dying, and how close we still were. One look, and I knew that we weren’t out of the woods yet.
I looked up into Micah’s chartreuse eyes. “It’s not just the little vampires that the energy is supposed to save, is it?”
Jason’s hand tightened on mine. Micah hugged me, and I put my free hand over that smooth, warm, permanently tanned skin. I breathed in the scent of his neck, so precious to me. “Tell me,” I whispered.
He drew back enough to see my face. “When Jean-Claude dies at dawn he could take you and Richard with him.” I searched his solemn face and found only truth there. Truth, and fear, behind his eyes, hiding better, but it was there.
I called out, “Lillian!”
She was there. “Yes, Anita.”
“How likely is it that Jean-Claude will drag us with him?”
“Truthfully, we don’t know, but it’s a possibility, and we’d rather not find out.” She touched my forehead the way a mother takes a temperature. “Feed on Donovan, Anita. Take the energy he offers so we don’t have to worry about it.”
“You’re not sure this will work, are you?”
“Of course we are.”
“I don’t need to be a vamp or a shapeshifter to know that was a lie,” I said.
She stepped back, suddenly brisk and all professional. “Fine, we aren’t certain, but it will be enough energy to save some of you. Whether all of you will be saved, we just don’t know. This is new science here, Anita. New metaphysical science, which is always an uncertain thing.”
I nodded. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”
“You asked,” she said.
Edward came up through the crowd. “They told me it would work.”
“We said it was the best idea we had,” Lillian said. “That is not the same thing.”
Edward nodded. “All right, I heard what I wanted to hear.” He gave me a very serious look. “Don’t die on me. The other bodyguards would never let me live it down.”
I smiled. “I’ll do my best to protect your reputation.” I had a thought. “Now you get to wait outside.”
“What?” he said.
“I don’t think I can have sex in the room while you watch. Sorry.”
He grinned at me. “I guess I’d have trouble in front of you, too.” Then he did something that surprised me. He moved Jason away from my hand and took it, firm and certain, in his. He held my hand, and we looked at each other for a long moment. He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head. “If you die, I promise the Harlequin will pay for it.”
Apparently, the secret was out, and we were just calling a spade a scary shovel. I nodded. “You didn’t have to say it, I knew you would.”
He smiled, squeezed my hand, and left. I almost called him back. Surrounded by men I loved, and had sex with, but strangely I felt safer with Edward in the room. But the danger I was about to face wasn’t his kind of danger. In the room or out of it, Edward couldn’t help me now.
27
I DIDN’T SO much raise the ardeur, as simply stop fighting it. My control of it had grown to the point where I had to give it permission to feed. I had to unleash it. Maybe if the beasts inside me hadn’t risen at nearly the same time, I wouldn’t have thought of the ardeur as something on a leash. Something on a chain, yeah, a chain with a leather collar at the end of it. Yeah, something leather and metal studded, and tight.
I’d thought they had too many guards in the room, until I got close to Donovan Reece. Then part of me thought sex, and three or four other parts of me wondered what the flesh under all that skin would feel like between my teeth. Donovan had requested that the other men turn their backs and give us what privacy they could. They’d done it. Some had done it with a look that said it was silly, but they’d done it. Then Donovan took
his clothes off. He stripped like a pale, white dream. The ardeur had made certain that his body was ready for me. He lay against the front of his body like something carved of ivory and blushed with the first pink of sunrise. He was as pale as a vampire, but he was dawn, he was sunlight on water, he was moonlight on wings. I heard the sound of birds calling in the night. I’d never known swans had a voice, almost like geese, but…no. No, not geese, swans.
Donovan’s voice came strained. “You’ve undone my control of my power. Something about the ardeur has stripped me bare of more than my clothes.”
I found I could still talk, above the feel of a night’s sky and moonlight, though it was like seeing double, as if the vision in my head threatened to be more real than the man beside me. “My version of the ardeur gives you what you want most, sometimes.” I leaned in beside his cheek and whispered into that perfect curve of ear. “What do you want most, Donovan Reece?”
He turned to me, and his eyes were a dull gray. “Not to be king.” He rolled us over so that he was suddenly looking down at me. His body was still pressed to the front of mine, not inside, but the sensation of him hard and firm trapped between our bodies made me cry out. He leaned over me, pressing that weight against me. He wrapped his arms around me, which put my face into his chest. I’d have trouble breathing with him on top. But he seemed to realize it and raised his upper body enough to curl around me, until his face was next to mine. “Can you give me what I most want, Anita?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Try.”
“It may not work the way you think it will.” I tried to think past the ardeur, past the feel of his body against mine, tried to think past the warm scent of his skin. The ardeur had a mind of its own, and a funny way of granting desires. I didn’t trust what would happen if that was what he truly wanted.
“Give me what I want, Anita.” He raised his upper body above me.
“I can’t control the ardeur that well, Donovan.”
He raised himself so that his upper body was in a half push-up, which pushed his lower body harder against mine. I whimpered for him.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
I had to open my eyes to answer him. “Not hurt, no.”
Something in my voice, in my unfocused gaze, made him smile. “No, not hurt,” he said, smiling down at me. His eyes were bluer than I’d ever seen them, as if something about this moment had chased the gray from his eyes.
I realized that his request to not be king had made me tone back the ardeur. It scared me, because the ardeur was a power unto itself. It did things, decided things, that I didn’t understand. If Jean-Claude had been able, I would have asked him. Of course, I had people I could ask. It was just going to be awkward to ask. One of the other reasons that Requiem and London were in the room was that they had more centuries of experience with the ardeur than I did. As victims, true, but still they knew it in ways I’d only begun to glimpse.
I put a hand on Donovan’s chest, to push him away, to give me breathing space. We were in a hurry, but we weren’t in such a hurry, were we? I mean, if he were dead, he wouldn’t be king. Sometimes the ardeur was a very literal thing. But I’d forgotten that the white hairs on his chest weren’t hair, but feathers. The moment my palm touched the silk of the feathers and the heat of his chest, I forgot what I was going to ask. My hands found his body, and he was hot to the touch, as if his temperature had spiked.
“Your skin, it’s hot.”
“I told you, you took my control away.” He leaned in as he said it, keeping his shoulders up, but lowering his head for a kiss. I could feel his heart thudding against the palm of my hand. I could feel it in a way that I hadn’t been able to feel since the ardeur was new to me. I felt his heart like it was something holdable, as if I could reach into his chest and cup it, caress it. I was suddenly very aware of all the blood rushing through his body. I could hear it, feel it, like warm ribbons running just under his skin. I could smell it, hot, metallic, sweet. I had closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see his face, watch him kiss me, but it wasn’t the human part of me that was the problem. Closing my eyes didn’t take away the feel, the weight, the scent of his skin, and of what lay so close under all that flesh.
He kissed me. He kissed me for the very first time, and I didn’t care. I moved away from those soft lips, and kissed my way along the line of his jaw. Kissed my way onto his neck. He seemed to take it as an invitation, because the hard length of him pushed between my legs. I opened for him, but put my hand on the back of his neck, holding his neck close to my kisses. His hair was the softest I’d ever touched, but it meant almost nothing to me. I could smell what I wanted, smell it like candy just under his skin.
He pulled against my hand. His voice was strained as he said, “Anita, I need a better angle.”
I kept my hand pressed into his neck, brushed by that soft hair, held him where a few kisses more would put me where I wanted to be. I felt him now, pushing against my opening, but not quite there. Normally, that distracted me from other things, but not tonight. Almost without thinking I moved my hips, my legs, angled my body for him. He entered me, and that did distract me. It made my eyes fly open wide, made me cry out and writhe underneath him. But I never let go of the back of his neck. I pressed my face in tight against his, as I raised my hips off the bed, my legs in the air so he could push himself in and out of me. I cried out under the strength of his body.
“Let me rise, Anita. Let me look at you.”
“No,” I whispered, “not yet.”
He pushed against my hand at his neck again. I put my other hand on his back. I held him in place and kissed over the pulse in his neck. It jumped and beat against my lips like something alive. Like a trapped bird in a cage of flesh. I would set it free. I would let it pour into my mouth, and…There was a moment of sanity, a heartbeat of, no, then Jean-Claude’s power breathed through me, his hunger, both his hungers, and there was no more doubt. There was only the press of Donovan’s pulse against my mouth, his body thrusting inside mine, my hips rising to meet him, and my mouth on his neck.
I bit him and tried to be gentle, but gentle wasn’t what I wanted, wasn’t how I felt. The sensation of his flesh in my mouth, caught between my teeth, as I bit slowly down, harder, and harder, felt so good. But what I wanted to do was bite more, take more of his flesh into my mouth, into me. The fluttering heat of his pulse like a frightened butterfly beat against the roof of my mouth. It was like a caress, urging me on, begging me to free that dancing bit of life.
Donovan lifted me up off the bed, his arms locked around me as he went to his knees. The movement startled me, made me ease back from the biting.
His voice was shaky. “Too much teeth, Anita.”
He knelt on the narrow bed, his arms wrapped around me, his body no longer inside me. My legs were wrapped around his waist. I must have done it automatically when he moved. He’d stopped making love to get me to stop trying to eat him.
His neck had a perfect impression of my teeth like a purplish-red bruise in the white perfection of his flesh. Blood traced down his shoulder and back where my nails had gone into that smooth skin. I could have said so many things, but the one thing I said was the one that amazed me most. “You broke the ardeur’s hold.”
“I may not be a predator, Anita, but I’m still a king; that means I have to give myself to you. You can’t just take it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right, I’m not angry. Just don’t tear my throat out, or carve my back up, okay?”
“I’m not sure she can help it,” Micah said. I looked out from the man in my arms to find not just Micah but all the men crowded around the bed. Remus seemed to be arguing with Requiem and London. Too low to hear, but body language said it all. I met Micah’s eyes and asked for help with a look. I’d thought of Donovan as just meat, just food. The sex hadn’t been enough to distract me from blood, and meat.
Donovan asked, “What can I do to keep myself s
afe?”
Requiem came to the bed, his black cloak tight around him. “If you are strong enough to sit up with her as you did, then you are strong enough to hold her down.”
“We can’t guarantee your safety, Reece,” Remus said.
Donovan looked at the guard. He shifted his grip from my waist to lower, but there was no wavering, as if he could have held me forever. It answered whether the swanmanes were stronger than normal humans; they were. “I know you cannot guarantee my safety.”
“She could tear your throat out before we could move,” Remus said.
“If it gets that out of hand, we interfere,” Micah said.
“Interfere how?” Remus asked.
“Grab her, help Donovan hold her down.”
“The ardeur will spread to anyone who touches her,” Remus said.
Micah nodded. “I know.”
Remus shook his head, a little too rapidly. “I can’t do my job then. I can’t keep Reece safe.”
“Because you won’t risk the ardeur spreading to you.” Micah made it a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” Remus said.
“Then leave,” London said.
“We need a senior guard in here,” Remus said. “Who do I send in my place? Bobby Lee is still in South America. Claudia, no. Who replaces me?” He sounded tormented, torn between duty and what? Duty and fear? Duty and the ardeur?
“We are out of time for niceties, Anita,” Requiem said. “I speak for the vampires. If the lesser among us are to be saved, it must be now.” There wasn’t a poetic allusion in the statement. Things were bad when Requiem stopped quoting poetry.
It was almost as if his words brought the ardeur crashing back. One moment I was almost neutral in Donovan’s arms, the next I was kissing him as if I’d crawl into his mouth. My nails just seemed to automatically dig into his back again. The feel of his flesh parting under my nails made me cry out in pleasure, and him in pain. I tried to tone down what I wanted to do to him. I tried not to bite at his mouth but only kiss, but the effort had me making small frustrated noises against his lips.
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