Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  I lay back against the bed and stared at the bite mark on his chest, with his nipple in the center of it, and a thrill went through me, a wave of pleasure at the sight of it, and a feeling of . . . possession. I’d marked him.

  I drew my left wrist out of his hand, and he didn’t fight me. He stayed propped above me on his arms, his hips pressed against me, his hair in a cascade around us. He stared down at me, and his face was raw with need. I didn’t need anything else to tell me how much he wanted me to finish what I’d begun.

  I raised up enough to kiss him, and his lips trembled against mine. The kiss was long and full, and a sound came low in his throat, and he suddenly collapsed against me, his full body weight pinning me to the bed, our mouths, our arms, our bodies locked together in a warm, vanilla-scented nest of his hair, like being rolled in warm satin. Nathaniel kissed me as if he would climb inside me through my mouth, and I opened for him, let him explore me, taste me, touch me. It wasn’t his hand underneath my top, kneading my breast, that brought me to my senses. It was my hands down the back of his shorts, cupping the smooth curve of his buttocks. It helped me swim back into control, to fight down the desire, the hunger. Where the hell was Jason? I stopped kissing Nathaniel, stopped touching him, while his hands, his mouth, explored my body. His need was so strong, so strong. I could not leave the bed. I could not walk away. I was not that strong.

  “Nathaniel, stop.”

  His mouth was on my breast through the satin of the top. He didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Nathaniel, stop!” I grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him away from me. The front of the top was wet where his mouth had been. His eyes didn’t seem to focus on me. It was as if he didn’t see me at all.

  “Nathaniel, can you hear me?”

  He finally nodded. “Yes.” Anyone else would have protested being stopped, but he simply looked at me, eyes beginning to focus. There was no resentment on his face, no anger. He simply did what I told him to do and waited for me to say more. I didn’t understand Nathaniel; even knowing his heart’s desires gave me no real understanding of him. We were too different, but today that difference might help us.

  I would not, could not have sex with Nathaniel. But I couldn’t stop completely either. I had to feed. I had to sink my teeth into his flesh, had to bathe in his lust, had to. “Get off me.”

  He rolled onto his back, gazing up at me, lying in a pool of his hair, like a shining auburn frame around his body. I wanted to see all of him framed against his hair, and all I had to do was drag his shorts down the curve of his hips. The image was so strong I had to close my eyes, take deep breaths. The need to touch him lashed through me, almost painful, as if the ardeur could force me to do it. And maybe it could. But I would control how I touched him. I would control at least that much.

  I opened my eyes and found him gazing up at me with those impossible lilac eyes. “Roll over onto your stomach,” I said, my voice hoarse.

  He rolled over without a single question, and I was reminded how absolutely helpless he was with a dominant. He would do what he was told, whatever he was told. It helped steady me, to know that I had to be in charge. I had to have some control, because he would have none.

  I picked up handfuls of that thick hair and pushed it to one side like a piled beast. I bared his back, in a clean smooth line. He turned his head to the side and gazed at me through the film of his hair. There was no fear in him, only a vast patience, an eagerness, and need.

  I rose on all fours over him, straddling his body, and lowered my mouth to his skin. I licked across his shoulders, but it wasn’t enough. I bit him, gently, and he made a small movement underneath me. I bit harder, and a tiny sound escaped his lips. I bit him hard enough that I felt his flesh fill my mouth, felt the grip of him, the meat of him. I wanted to tear at his flesh, to literally feed from him. The desire was almost overwhelming. I collapsed on top of him, my cheek against his back, until I could control myself. But the scent of his flesh, the smoothness of it under my cheek, the rise and fall of his breathing under my body, it was too much. I would not eat him literally, but I had to feed.

  I bit the flesh of his back, drew him into my mouth, and this time I did not stop until I tasted the sweet metallic taste of blood. It was the beast that wanted to finish, blood was not enough. But I raised from the wound and moved on. I marked Nathaniel’s back with near perfect imprints of my teeth, and more and more of them held blood. It was as if the longer I did it, the harder it was to control.

  The scent of fresh blood tightened my body, filled me with heat and longings that had to do more with food than sex. I sat straddling his body looking down at his back, at my handy work. Blood ran in tiny drops from some of the wounds, but mostly it looked like tiny mouths pressed into his flesh. And it wasn’t enough.

  I slid my hands down the back of his shorts, drawing my nails delicately along his flesh. He writhed under the touch, started to rise from the bed, and I pushed him back down. “No, no,” I said, and he went still under my hands.

  I slid his shorts down his body until he lay nude underneath me. I spread his legs so I could kneel between them, lowered my mouth to that smooth, untouched skin, and marked him. There was more flesh to hold in my mouth here, tight, but more plentiful. I filled my mouth with him, drew blood in red, hot circles, until I heard him making small helpless noises. And I knew they weren’t pain noises.

  I rose on my knees above him, gazed down at the wounds I’d laid on his body, and I wanted more.

  I slid my satin top off and wiggled out of the shorts. I laid my naked body on his and rolled along his back, his buttocks, rubbing the blood from the wounds on my body. Nathaniel was saying, “please, please, please,” over and over under his breath. His need was like a pressing weight, a thick cloud that hovered over us. It was chokingly close, so overwhelming. He wanted this so badly. This, not sex, this. He’d waited so very long for me to dominate him, to take him.

  Micah had wanted me, but his had been the want of a relative stranger. A man wanting an attractive and powerful mate. But with Nathaniel it was different. His desire had built over years, over a thousand intimacies, a thousand denials. It had built until it was a great weight in his body, in his mind. It was a thing that burdened him down, filled him up, and he could not be free of it. I understood why Jean-Claude had said that we would feed off those we were already attracted to. There was so much more to feed from with Nathaniel. Our history together made it not just a feeding, but a feast.

  I worked my way back down his body, biting along his flesh, not drawing blood now. I lay with my cheek pressed against the curve of his buttocks, fighting with myself not to reach my hand around to the front of him. Fighting the growing need. I would not touch him, not like that. When I could trust myself, I spread his legs as far as they would go, and bit down, marking areas untouched, getting ever closer, until I could see him pressed between his body and the bed. I wanted to lick him there, roll his testicles in my mouth. But I didn’t trust myself. I’d laid his back and buttocks bloody, I didn’t trust myself, couldn’t guarantee what I would do. I moved my mouth back without touching him, and the pressure of his lust and mine rode like summer lightning, almost there, almost there. I ran my tongue on the small ridge of skin just in back of his testicles, and Nathaniel cried out.

  I sucked the skin, drew it into my mouth in a long line, working it with tongue and teeth, and the pressure broke over us like a storm released in one long thunderous burst. He called my name, and I raked his thighs with my nails and fought with two different hungers not to bite that delicate bit of skin away from his body. When it was over, I drew back from him just enough to see that I hadn’t marked him, not even the mark of my teeth. I lay on the bed, between his legs, one arm on his thigh, the other folded beneath me, listening to the pounding of my heart.

  He lay quiet except for his still frantic breathing. A sound raised me up to gaze over Nathaniel’s leg, propping myself up on the smooth wounded flesh of his butt.
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br />   Jason was standing in the middle of the room with what looked like shackles in his arms. His eyes were wide, his own breathing a little too fast.

  I should have been embarrassed, but the ardeur was sated, and my beast lay curled inside me like a contented cat. I was too well-pleased with myself to be embarrassed. “How long have you been watching?” Even my voice sounded lazy, content.

  He had to clear his throat twice before he could say, “Long enough.”

  I climbed back up Nathaniel’s body, until I was pressed against the length of him. I laid my cheek against his face, and whispered, “Are you alright?”

  “Yes.” It was a whisper.

  “I didn’t hurt you?”

  “It was . . . wonderful. Oh, God, it was . . . better than I’d imagined it.”

  I raised up, stroking his hair, turning back to look at Jason, still standing in the middle of the floor. “Why didn’t you try and stop me?”

  “Jean-Claude was afraid you’d tear out Nathaniel’s throat or something messy like that.” Jason’s voice was returning to normal, only the slightest edge of uncertainty in it. “But I watched you. Every time I thought I’d have to intervene, you drew back. Every time I thought you were going to lose control, you didn’t. You rode the hunger, you tamed it.”

  I felt Jean-Claude waken, felt him take his first breath of the day. He sensed me, too, felt me still lying naked on Nathaniel’s body, smelled the scent of fresh blood, felt that I had fed, and fed well. I felt him coming towards me, hurrying towards me, attracted to the scent of blood, and warm flesh, and sex, and me.

  16

  “JEAN- CLAUDE’S COMING” , JASON said.

  “I know,” I said.

  Jason walked to the foot of the bed and gazed down at us, at me. His eyes lingered on me. Most of my body was hidden beside Nathaniel, but he looked at what was revealed. If I hadn’t had that glimpse into his heart, I’d have been mad, or told him to stop, but I didn’t know what to say now. He wanted me, just me for me, not forever, but just for a night, a day, a week, just for sometimes. Jason’s feelings for me might be the most uncomplicated of all the men in my life. Uncomplicated had its attractions, even with the ardeur gone. The moment I thought gone, I realized that wasn’t true. The hunger was just below the surface; like something simmering in a pot, you have to keep the heat low, or it boils over. I’d had enough heat for one day.

  Jason and I looked at each other. I don’t know what we would have said, but just then the door opened. It was Asher. His room was closer than the coffin room, but I hadn’t expected him. His golden hair lay in perfect waves around the shoulders of his robe. Vampires didn’t move in their “sleep” so no morning hair problems. The robe was a rich, deep brown, open over matching pajama bottoms. His chest was bare, and the robe flared around him like a cape as he strode into the room.

  He came to stand beside the bed, but his gaze went to Nathaniel’s body, to the blood. “I felt . . .” He raised his eyes to my face, and I peered at him over Nathaniel’s body. “I felt the call.”

  “I didn’t call you,” I said.

  “The power did.” He dropped to his knees beside the bed. “You did this?”

  I nodded.

  He reached out towards me, as if to touch my face, then jerked back. It was like he’d touched something in the air in front of me that had startled him. He raised his hand to his face and sniffed it, then licked it, as though there was something there to taste.

  “May I taste your pomme de sang?” It was French for apple of blood, and it was a nickname for a person that was a regular donor to a particular vampire. Part of me wanted to argue with the phrase, but I had fed off of Nathaniel, even tasted his blood. To demand a different phrase was splitting hairs a little too finely for my conscience. We’d call a spade a spade.

  “Define taste.” I said.

  “Lick the wounds.”

  The suggestion should have bothered me, but it didn’t. I lowered my face enough to see Nathaniel’s eyes. “Is it okay with you, Nathaniel?”

  He nodded, face still pressed to the bed.

  “Help yourself.”

  Asher lowered his mouth to Nathaniel’s back, to a wound just above his waist. He kept those ice blue eyes rolled up towards me, the way you would watch someone on a judo mat—afraid that if you look away, they’ll hurt you. It reminded me of watching lions drink from pools, with their eyes rolled up, watching for danger while they drank.

  Nathaniel made a small sound as Asher licked the wound. It had stopped bleeding, but as the vampire traced the wound with his tongue, I saw blood well to the surface again. Vampires have an anticoagulant in their saliva, but I’d never seen its use demonstrated quite so well before.

  It made me wonder. I curled closer to Nathaniel’s body, one leg entwining over his. I didn’t ask permission, because he was mine, and I knew him well enough to know he would not only not mind, but he would welcome it. I lowered my mouth to another of the wounds that had nearly stopped bleeding and licked. There was the sweet copper taste of blood, and the thick, rich taste of his skin, and a taste of . . . meat. As if I could tell what he would taste like if I ate him one bite at a time.

  The beast flared over my skin like something trembling and alive. Nathaniel’s beast responded to it, flaring, rolling, as if I could see it just below his skin, just below his ribs, as if I could feel where it lay in the heart of his body. In that moment I knew I could call his beast, could coax him to change when the moon was far from full. I was his Nimir-Ra, and that meant so much more than merely being his dominant.

  Asher’s eyes had drowned in pale blue fire, so he looked blind as he licked at the wound. He gazed into my face, directly across Nathaniel’s body, our eyes at the same level as we tasted the wounds. My wound bled a little bit more, but not as much as Asher’s did. I was not truly a blood drinker—I fed on other things—and staring across Nathaniel’s body, feeling his breathing quicken as the two of us touched him, I knew that those other things were here for the taking.

  Asher’s hand slid over Nathaniel’s body, until he touched my thigh where it curved over Nathaniel’s leg. The moment he touched me something rushed between us. It was as if the ardeur recognized him, as if it had touched him before.

  It made me raise up from the wound, drew me back into myself a little. Something on my face made Asher take his hand back.

  Jean-Claude entered then. He was wearing a black robe with black fur at collar, lapel, and sleeves. His black hair melted into the fur, so you couldn’t tell where one blackness stopped and the other began. The last time I’d seen him in the robe, I’d told him there better be something under the robe besides skin. Now, I hoped there wasn’t.

  Seeing him brought the ardeur boiling over me again. It made me catch my breath, things lower than my stomach clenching tight enough to draw a sound from my throat.

  “She holds your incubus,” Asher said, and his voice tore my gaze from Jean-Claude to him.

  “Oui.” Jean-Claude glided around the room to the opposite side of the bed from where Asher knelt.

  “She tastes of you, and of Belle Morte.”

  “Oui,” Jean-Claude said. He walked around the bed to the other side, and I rolled away from Nathaniel so I could see Jean-Claude move. The movement exposed the front of my body, and I had enough of myself left to roll onto my stomach.

  Jason said, “Awww.”

  I ignored him.

  Jean-Claude lifted the robe so he could crawl onto the bed. The movement revealed a long, pale line of skin from his shoulders to his stomach. The glimpse of that white flesh caught between the blackness of the fur made me want to untie the sash and expose his entire body. But I stayed where I was, half-leaning against Nathaniel, because I was afraid to move. Afraid to go to Jean-Claude, because I didn’t trust myself.

  There was just enough of me left not to want to make love to Jean-Claude in front of the other men. But it was a razor-thin part, something that glittered in the darkness but didn’t
quite believe itself anymore.

  “The hunger recognizes Asher. Is it because it’s yours, or because it’s hers?” I asked.

  “Hers?” he asked.

  “Belle Morte.”

  “I do not know,” he said. And he was close enough now that the edge of the robe brushed my body. I could see a thin line of pale skin below the waist where the robe gaped. A thin, thin line of white, but it was enough to let me know that there was nothing under the robe but Jean-Claude.

  I wanted to open the robe, to see all of him. I said it without thinking, as if I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. “Open the robe.” It startled me as if I didn’t know my own voice.

  I closed my eyes, tried to think.

  “It is alright, ma petite. Once taken, blood fills your stomach, but lust . . .” Fur brushed in a teasing line down my arm. “Lust is always there, never vanquished completely, never satisfied.” He brushed the edge of his furred cuff down my waist, my hip, my thigh, my calf. When he brushed it along my foot, he started back up, but this time on the back of my body, so that the teasing brush touched my buttocks, my back, my shoulder.

  I lay wordless, breathless, under his touch. When he curved the fur around my face, I grabbed the edge of the robe and held him away from me. “Make everyone leave.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  “I can do nothing until I have fed, ma petite, you know that.”

  “I know. Blood pressure.” I was having a hard time thinking. “Then do it, but . . .”

  “Hurry,” he said softly.

  I nodded.

  He drew his sleeve out of my grip and looked down the bed to Jason, who was still standing there, watching the show. “Come, pomme de sang, come and enjoy the rewards of your sacrifice.”

  The phrase was oddly formal, and I’d never heard it put that way before. I expected Jason to go around the bed to the same side as Jean-Claude, but he didn’t. He rolled over the foot of the bed in a movement so liquid it was like watching water flow, as if his skin barely contained some elemental energy that had nothing to do with the flesh and bone body I was seeing. He ended on his knees on the opposite side from Jean-Claude. I could taste the movement of his body in my mouth, not just his heart, but as if every throb and beat of him was trying to slide over my tongue and down my throat. I could feel his eagerness, not for me, but for what Jean-Claude had to offer. He came eagerly to the vampire, in that breathless rush that you usually save for sex. They mirrored each other, both on their knees, gazing at each other across my body.