I screamed, screamed, and screamed, screamed my pleasure, but it was a sound that would have been pain for most people. It wasn't pain; it was release. I gave myself over to that moment, completely and utterly. Jean-Claude's hand inside me, Micah's body in my mouth, Nathaniel's flesh under my nails. I let go of the headboard, and had just enough of me left to mark higher up on Micah's back, while my other hand just kept digging at Nathaniel's hip and ass.
I heard voices, and knew vaguely that they weren't us. I heard Jean-Claude say, "Get out," but I was too far gone to look, or care.
He shoved more of his hand inside me in one quick motion, and that brought me, too. He'd worked me until my body would give orgasms like a gift, so wet, so excited, so thick, so tight, swollen with pleasure.
Micah's body was beginning to lose its rhythm, he tasted close. The apex of his thrust climbed down my throat, and back out; my own saliva poured down my mouth, because there was no time to swallow.
Jean-Claude leaned over me, with his fingers still inside, but his mouth licked between my legs, while his fingers kept going in and out of me. He couldn't do the deep sucking that the others could—fangs got in the way— but I didn't need deep. He'd worked me to the point where quick flicks of his tongue, back and forth, back and forth, started to bring me. That warmth building up, up inside me, as if the center of my body were a cup, filling up drop by drop with pleasure, until with one last lick, the cup spilled, and I screamed around Micah's body. He thrust one last time, so deep that I choked, and I knew in that moment that he'd been careful, and now he wasn't, now he finally did make me take those last two inches. I finally touched his body for longer than a second. I started to pull away. His hand went to the back of my head, as if he'd hold me in place, but he moved, and let me draw back, and drew himself out.
I watched Micah fight for control. Jean-Claude moved inches to the side, so his mouth nestled in the very upper, very inside of my thigh. Jean-Claude's fangs plunged into me, and I was to that point where pain was pleasure, and die feel of him piercing my skin, his mouth sucking on me, brought me up off the bed, throwing my upper body upward, screaming. My body brushed against the front of Micah's body, and it was that little bit too much. My body came back to rest on the bed, and Micah spilled himself across my breasts, hot, so hot, die liquid thick and heavy, running between my breasts, down die side of my body, pooling trickling down my stomach. The sensation of it made me cry out.
Jean-Claude raised his mouth off me. His mouth was smeared witii my blood, and his body was hard and ready, full of my blood, so he could pleasure my body, and his. He usually started out slow for intercourse, but tonight he, like Micah, had done his slow. He was suddenly above me, held up on his arms like a push-up, but his lower body didn't stay up. He thrust into me as hard and fast as I'd ever felt him, and I could watch every tlirust as he moved in and out of me. Three strokes, five, and he brought me. I thrust my hips up to meet his, writhing under him. He brought me twice more, before I felt him begin to lose die rhythm of it, and witii one last tlirust he spilled himself inside me. He stayed above me, holding himself on shaking arms, while he gazed down at me, lips open, fighting for breath. He normally collapsed on top of me afterward, but my chest was covered in Micah's juice. It was already growing thinner, beginning to trickle down my sides like icing melting in die heat.
He stayed above me, panting, and smiling, his moutli still smeared witii my blood. He bent down, carefully, keeping his upper body and hair out of everything, but he kissed me. Kissed me widi my blood like sweet copper in his mouth.
He pulled out, and left me blinking, dazed with it all. He had barely moved out of die way, and Nathaniel was there, above me. I couldn't remember when he'd moved from the head of the bed. I'd lost track.
I stared down the line of his body, poised above me, and I thought, Didn't I promise to start using condoms} But the worst had happened, I was already pregnant, it didn't matter anymore. Jean-Claude had caught me by surprise, but I let Nathaniel plunge himself inside me, naked, his flesh inside mine with nothing between us.
He found that rhythm that he did sometimes, like a shuddering wave down his body, like he was dancing inside me. And with each shuddering wave, he thrust into me, thrust into me, right over that spot. Jean-Claude had given himself over to the sex, but Nathaniel was doing his usual careful job of it, as if even after all the foreplay he was going to give me my money's worth. His emotions were raw, but his intercourse was controlled. He
wouldn't come until I did, he just wouldn't. He'd made a game of making me come over and over, until I begged him to. It wasn't going to take long tonight.
It didn't. I felt that weight begin to build between my legs, slow and steady, but faster than normal because of all that had gone before. "Close," I whispered, "close." My hips began to rise up and down with his movements, so we danced for each other, my hips thrusting upward as his thrust down, so that we met again and again. The orgasm caught me, and there was no more dancing for me. There was just screaming, and nails along his sides, me writhing, but no rhythm, no control.
I came to myself panting, double-visioned, and found his body back in the same rhythm. He kept going in and out of me, as if he could do it all night. He damn near could. He brought me again, and this time I wound my upper body around him, pressed our chests together, dug claws into his back. He pressed his upper body against me, putting his upper chest against my mouth, while his body kept pumping away. I knew what he wanted, and I gave it to him. I bit him, bit him until I tasted blood. I held his upper body against mine, so that he wouldn't jerk away and cause me to hurt him more than I planned. My mouth filled with blood, and his rhythm faltered. Pleasure he could fight off all night, but pain, pain would bring him faster.
But he brought me again first, and I tore my mouth away from his body, so I didn't bite him too much. I turned my face to the side, and screamed. I wrapped my legs around his body, locked my heels at the top of his ass, and pinned him to me, so he couldn't get the rhythm he wanted.
He raised himself up on hands and knees, with me clinging to the front of his body. He crawled us both to the head of the bed, and used one hand on my ass, and the other on the headboard, to lift me up, and put my back against the headboard. His voice came in a strangled whisper. "I want to move more." And he did, he moved in and out of me, over and over and over, while I clung to him with my arms and legs. He brought me again, and again, and finally one more time, and then he asked, "Please, please."
Some nights he liked to beg before I said yes, but tonight I didn't think either of us could stand much more. I whispered it against the sweet smell of his neck, "Yes, go, go, go inside me. God, go, please!"
He stopped trying for rhythm and thrust inside me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me again; I dug my nails into his shoulders and back, and he finally thrust up inside me. Thrust as far and hard as he could. He stayed there like that for a heartbeat, forever, then he slumped lower on his knees, while I still clung to him.
Our bodies were slick with sweat, and blood, and other things. He clung
with his hands to the headboard, his heart beating so fast I could see it. "God, that was good," he said, voice breathless, and not quite like his voice at all, yet.
I tried to say yes, and couldn't do it. It was as if I couldn't figure out how to form words, and I still couldn't make my eyes work. The world was still a white-edged blur, like something wrapped in cotton.
"Anita," Micah said, "are you all right?"
I managed to give him a thumbs-up, because it was the best I could do. It wasn't the first time that Micah and Nathaniel had fucked me wordless.
"Damn," Micah said, "I thought with three of us we might finally fuck you unconscious." His voice was teasing.
It took me three tries to say, in a very hoarse voice, "You need more men."
Micah leaned in close, kissed my cheek. "I think we can arrange that."
I managed to whisper, "Not tonight."
He kissed my cheek again. "Not tonight." He turned to Nathaniel. "You need help?"
Nathaniel nodded, wordlessly.
Micah and Jean-Claude helped peel us apart, then they went into the bathroom to clean up. Nathaniel and I still couldn't move enough to leave the bed. We lay side by side, touching, but not in each other's arms. Our bodies weren't working well enough for that, yet.
"God, Anita, I love you," he said, voice still breathy.
"I love you, too, Nathaniel," I said. And I did.
21
I fell asleep like I did most nights with my stomach cuddled against the back of Nathaniel's nude body, the warm curve of his ass tucked up tight against my stomach, one arm up so I could touch his hair, the other around his waist, or maybe a little lower. Micah cuddled in behind me, mirroring me almost exactly, except that his arm didn't curve in around my body but stretched across so that he was touching a little of Nathaniel. Jean-Claude cuddled in against Micah as if he'd done it before, putting his arm across Micah so that he could touch me. His hand curved around me, and I raised the arm around Nathaniel's waist, so I could touch Jean-Claude's arm. Dawn was close, and that warm, living arm wouldn't be warm or living for long. Vampires lost heat faster than a dead human. I wasn't sure why, but they did.
I enjoyed the warm curve of him while I could. Nathaniel snuggled closer to me, as if he'd pressed his ass through me into Micah, but I didn't mind. I liked it close. Besides, I knew he was missing me holding him tight. My fingers played on the small hairs on Jean-Claude's arm, back and forth, tracing his skin. The feel of him like that made me regret for an instant that it wasn't my body he was pressed up against.
I fell asleep in a nest of warm bodies and silk sheets. I'd had worse nights.
I came instantly awake in the pitch black, my heart in my throat. I didn't know what had woken me, but it was something bad. I lay there pressed between Micah and Nathaniel, looking around the room in the dim light from the half-open bathroom door. It was the light Jean-Claude left on for us when we slept over. The room looked empty, so why was my pulse in my mouth? Bad dream, maybe.
I lay there pressed between the men, straining to hear something, but there was nothing but their quiet breathing. Jean-Claude's arm was across
Alicah's body, but it was no longer warm. Dawn had come and gone, and taken him from me again.
Then I saw a shadow. A shadow sitting on the foot of the bed. When I looked directly at it, it wasn't there, but out of the corner of my eye I could see it: a blackness that began to take on a shape, until there was a dark outline of a woman sitting at the foot of the bed. What the hell?
I shook Micah's arm, trying to wake him, but it didn't work. I tried Nathaniel, and the same thing happened, nothing. Their breathing never changed. What was happening?
I couldn't wake them. Was I dreaming and didn't know it? I drew breath to scream. If it was a dream, it wouldn't matter; if it wasn't a dream then Claudia and the guards would come. But the moment I drew a sharp breath, the voice floated through my mind. "Do not scream, necromancer."
The breath left me, as if someone had pushed on my stomach. I finally managed a whisper: "Who are you?"
"Good, this guise does not frighten you. I was hoping it would not."
"Who ..." Then I smelled it: night. Night out of doors, night some place warm and soft with the scent of jasmine on the air. I knew who it was. "Marmee Noir" was the least rude of the nicknames the vampires called her. She was the Mother of All Darkness; she was the first vampire, and the ruler of their council, though she'd been in hibernation, or a coma, for more than a thousand years. The last time I'd seen her in a dream she'd been as big as the ocean, as black as the space between the stars. She'd scared the shit out of me.
The shadow smiled, or at least that's what it felt like. "Good."
I struggled to sit up, and the men slept on, not even moving in their sleep. Was this a dream, or was it real? If it was real we were in deep, deep shit. If it was a dream, then I'd had powerful vamps invade my dreams before.
I put my back against the wood of the headboard. It felt real and solid. But I didn't like sitting there naked in front of her. I wished I had a gown, and the thought was enough. I was suddenly wearing a white silk gown. Dream, because I'd been able to change it. Dream, it would be okay. It was just a dream. The knot in my gut didn't believe me, but the rest of me tried to believe.
I thought of several questions to ask that shadow, and finally settled for, "Why are you here?"
"You interest me."
It was like having the devil suddenly take a personal notice of you; not good. "I'll try to be less interesting."
"I am almost awake."
I was suddenly cold down to my toes.
"I can taste your fear, necromancer."
I swallowed hard, and couldn't keep my voice from being breathy. "Why are you here, Marmee Noir?"
"I need something to wake me after such a long sleep."
"What?"
"You, perhaps."
I frowned at her. "I don't understand."
The shadow began to grow more solid, until she was a small female figure in a black cloak. I could almost see her face, almost, and I knew I did not want to. To see the face of darkness was to die.
"Jean-Claude has still not made you his, still not crossed that last line with you. Until he does, another more powerful than he can take what is his, and finish it."
"I am bound to a vampire," I said.
"Yes, you have a vampire servant, but that does not close the other door." She was suddenly sitting at my feet. I tucked my feet up, and pushed myself against the headboard. It was a dream, just a dream, she couldn't really hurt me, but I didn't believe it.
She spread a hand wide, and the hand was carved of darkness. "I thought this guise would make me less frightening, but you cringe from me. I am wasting a great deal of energy to speak to you in dream, rather than invade your mind further, yet still you fear me." She sighed, and the sound of it flittered through the room. "Perhaps I have lost the knack of being human, even to pretend. Perhaps if I have lost the knack, I should stop trying—what do you think, necromancer? Should I show you my true form?"
"Is this a trick question?" I asked.
I felt her frown, rather than saw it, because I couldn't see her face yet.
"I mean, is there a good answer here? I don't think seeing your true form would be a good thing, but I don't really want you to keep playing human-ish for me, either."
"Then what do you want?"
I wanted Jean-Claude awake to help me answer this question. Out loud I said, "I don't know how to answer that question."
"Of course you do; humans always want something."
"You to go away."
I felt her smile. "This is not working, is it?"
"I don't know what was supposed to work," I said. I was hugging my knees now, because I did not want her touching me, not even in dream.
She stood, in the middle of the bed, then I realized that wasn't exactly it.
She stood, but then she kept growing, stretching up and up, like some black flame. The light reflected off whatever she was becoming, as off water, or sparkling rock. How could something gleam and give no light? How could something both reflect light and absorb it?
"If you are afraid of me anyway, then why pretend?" Her voice echoed through the room like a rush of wind. I could smell rain on the edge of that wind. "Let there be truth between us, necromancer."
She vanished; no, she became the dark. She became the darkness in the room. One minute she was a central point, almost a body, the next she was the darkness. She hung in the dark of the room, and that darkness had weight and knowledge. I was like every other human who had ever huddled around the fire because they could feel the darkness pressing around them. Feel the darkness waiting for them. She didn't try to talk to me now, she simply was, not words, not even images, but something I had no words for. She simply was. A summer night does not talk to you, but
it exists. The dark of a moonless night does not think, but it is still alive with a thousand eyes, a thousand sounds. She was that night, with one addition: she could think. You don't want the dark to be able to think, because it won't think anything you want to know.
I screamed, but the darkness filled my throat, cut off my air. I was choking on the scent of night, drowning in jasmine and rain. I tried to call my necromancy, but it wouldn't come. The darkness in my throat laughed at me like the cold twinkling of stars, beautiful and deadly. I tried for my link to Jean-Claude, but she had severed it. I tried for my link to Nathaniel and Micah, but her animal to call was all cats, both great and small. My leopards could not help me now. The darkness whispered them to sleep.
I remembered the last time she'd been this close to me metaphysically, and thought of the only thing she hadn't been able to control. I thought of wolf. It had taken Richard's tie to me, and Jason's closeness, to waken my wolf in me and chase the darkness back, but we'd grown closer now, my wolf and I, and it came. A huge pale wolf with markings of darkness leapt out of trie darkness, its eyes filled with brown fire. It put itself between me and the dark. It let me wrap my fingers in its fur, and the moment I touched it, I could breathe again. The scent of night was there, but it wasn't in me.
The darkness swelled around me like some great dark ocean, building up, up, to crash upon the shore. The wolf tensed against me, so real against my body. I could feel its bones, its muscle, under the fur, pressed tight against me. I could smell its fear, but knew it would not leave me alone. It would stay, and defend me, because if I died, so did it. It wasn't Richard's wolf, it was mine. Not his beast, but mine.
That black ocean reared above us, so that the bed was like some tiny raft. Then it fell toward us with a sound like a thousand screams. I knew those screams—victims, eons of victims.
The wolf sprang to meet that blackness, and I felt teeth sink into flesh. I felt us bite her. I had an instant to see the room where her real body lay, all those thousands of miles away. I saw her body jerk, saw her chest rise in a sharp breath. Her breath sighed through the room. "Necromancer."
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