I stared at him. It was so something Richard would do. Theoretically, I even approved, but theory and practice aren’t the same. In real life it had been a bad idea, and Richard should have known that better than I did.
I felt my face go blank, empty. It was a good cop face. I didn’t want anything I was thinking to show for this. “So this Louisa shifted in the middle of sex and killed her husband, and the cops caught her.” I didn’t add that I was surprised they hadn’t shot her on sight. Finding the big bad wolf eating the body of the nice little human would be cause enough for shooting to kill.
“Louisa turned herself in. I think if she didn’t think suicide was a sin, she’d have killed herself.” He turned my way walking to the sliding glass doors, leaning his forehead against the glass, as if he was tired.
I wished I could have said it wasn’t his fault, but it was. He was her sponsor, the one who was supposed to teach her how to be a shapeshifter. I’d learned from dealing with the wereleopards, and Richard, and Verne’s pack in Tennessee that orgasm of any kind was one of the true tests of their control. Orgasm was supposed to be a release, but to truly give up all control meant shifting form, and that was the ultimate nightmare when you had a human lover. Richard had lectured me often enough when we were dating that he didn’t trust himself the night of the full moon, or even the day before. He didn’t fear losing control and killing me, just losing control and scaring me to death. Or more honestly, grossing me out. He had shifted on top of me once, and that had had nothing to do with sex. And that one experience had sent me running to Jean-Claude. Well, Richard changing on top of me and seeing him eat someone.
I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was that I had to say something, that silence was almost worse than anything.
He spoke without turning around. “Go ahead, Anita, tell me I’m a fool. Tell me I sacrificed both of them on the altar of my ideals.” His voice was bitter enough to choke on, just hearing the pain in it.
“Louisa and her husband wanted to hold true to who they were. You wanted to help them do that. It’s perfectly, logically you.” My voice was empty, but at least it wasn’t reproachful. It was the best I could do. Because it was a waste, a waste because Richard and the girl and her fiancé had been more worried about appearance than reality. Or maybe I’m just cynical, and tired, oh, so tired.
It was like any really good tragedy—entirely dependent on the personalities of the people involved. If Richard had been more practical and less idealistic; if Louisa and her late husband had been less religious, less pure; hell, if the husband really brought her to orgasm with just intercourse, then if he’d only been less talented. So many things had gone into making all the good intentions go horribly wrong.
“Yes, it was perfectly, logically me, and I was wrong. I should have at least forced her to have her first experience with Guy where the pack could oversee it, save him. But Louisa was so . . . delicate about it. I just couldn’t insist. I just couldn’t make her strip down in front of strangers and have her most intimate moment witnessed. I just couldn’t do it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I did the only thing I could think of to comfort him. I went to him and put my arms around his waist, put my cheek against the smooth firmness of his back, and held him. “I am so sorry, Richard, so very sorry.”
His body started to shake, and I realized he was crying again, still soundlessly, but not gently. Great racking sobs shook his body, but the only sound he allowed himself was the harsh shaking of his breath as he gasped, trying to get enough air.
He slid slowly to his knees, his hands making harsh sounds down the glass of the door, as if he were taking skin off as his hand slid down the glass. I stayed standing, leaning over him, cradling his head against my body, my hands on his shoulders and chest, trying to hold him.
He fell backwards, and I was suddenly trying to hold all his weight as he went for the floor. I tripped on the hem of the robe, and we ended in a heap on the floor, with his head and shoulders in my lap and me struggling to sit up. The knot on the towel had loosened, and a long, uninterrupted line of his body showed from his waist down his hip to his foot. The towel was still in place, but it was losing the battle.
His mouth opened in a soundless cry, then suddenly there was sound. He gave one ragged, tear-choked scream, and the sound seemed to free something inside him. Because the sobbing was suddenly loud, full of small, awful, painful sounds. He sobbed, and whimpered, and screamed, and clutched at my arms, hard enough that I knew I’d be bruised. And all I could do was hold on, touch him, rock him, until he quieted. He finally lay on his side, his upper body as far into my lap as he would fit, the rest of him curled up so that one thigh covered him. The towel formed a heap on the floor underneath him. I didn’t even know when the towel had fallen away. I was sort of proud of that, because usually when I see Richard naked, I lose about forty points of IQ and most of my reasoning ability. But now, his pain was so raw, that that took precedence. It was comfort he needed, not sex.
He finally lay quiet in my arms, his breathing slowed almost to normal. His eyelids had fluttered shut, and for a moment I thought he was asleep. Then he spoke, eyes still closed. “I appointed an Eros and Eranthe for the pack.” His voice was still thick with all the crying.
Eros was the Greek god of love, or lust, and Eranthe was the muse of erotic poetry; in werewolf lore they were the names for sexual surrogates. A man and a woman that did what needed doing when a werewolf’s sponsor was too squeamish. Verne’s pack had them, because Verne’s lupa was very jealous of her Ulfric, and sometimes you just needed someone who isn’t emotionally involved.
“That’s good, Richard. I think it will make things easier.”
He opened his eyes, and they were bleak. It made my chest ache to see that look in his eyes. “There are other positions that would make a lot of things easier,” he said, voice thick and low.
I tensed up. I couldn’t help it, because I knew that there were titles among the lukoi that would make all the problems he’d created in the pack fixable. There were titles that amounted to executioners, torturers. The lukoi have a long history through some very harsh times. Very few packs fill these slots anymore. Most don’t see the need, but then most Ulfrics are good little tyrants; they don’t need to delegate the rough stuff.
“Do you know what Bolverk means?” Richard asked softly.
“It’s one of the names of Odin. It means worker of evil.” My voice was almost as soft as his.
“You didn’t remember that from a semester of comparative religion back in college.”
“No,” I said. My pulse had sped up. I couldn’t help it. Bolverk was the title for what amounted to someone who did the Ulfric’s evil deeds. It could be anything from trickery, to lies, to murder.
“You asked Verne about it, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” I kept my voice low. I was afraid to be loud, afraid he’d stop talking. I thought I knew where the conversation was going, and I wanted to get there.
“Jacob is going to challenge Sylvie,” Richard said, and his voice was growing stronger, “and he’ll kill her. She’s good, but I’ve seen Jacob fight. She can’t win.”
“I haven’t seen him fight, but I think you’re right.”
“If I made you Bolverk . . .” He stopped. I wanted to yell at him to finish, but I didn’t dare. All I could do was sit there, very still, and try not to do anything that would change his mind.
He started over. “If I made you Bolverk, what would you do?” That last was soft again, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was saying it.
I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding and tried to think. Think before I spoke, because I’d only get one shot at this. I knew Richard, and if what I said didn’t meet with his approval, the offer would go away, and he might never be willing to ask for this kind of help again. I’d seldom been so eager to speak and so afraid at the same time. I prayed for wisdom, diplomacy, help.
“First, you’d need to
announce my new title to the pack, then I’d choose some helpers. I’m allowed three, Baugi, Suttung, and Guunlod.”
Richard said, “The two giants Bolverk tricked to get the mead of poetry, and Guunlod, the giant’s daughter, who he seduced for it.”
“Yes.”
He rolled his upper body over, so he was looking up at me. “You spent almost every weekend of the last six months in Tennessee. I thought you were just studying with Marianne, learning how to use your talents, but you were studying the lukoi, too, weren’t you?”
I tried to be very careful, as I said, “Verne’s pack runs very smoothly. He’s helped me make the wereleopards into a true pard.”
“You don’t need a Bolverk or a Guunlod to make the leopards into a pard.” His gaze was very direct, and I couldn’t lie to him.
“I was still your lupa, but not a werewolf, the least I could do was learn about your culture.”
He smiled then, and it reached his eyes, just a little—chased that lost look away. “You didn’t care about the culture.”
That pissed me off. “Yes, I did.”
His smile widened, his eyes filling with light, the way the sun filled the sky as it rose above the edge of the world. “Alright, you cared about the culture, but that wasn’t why you wanted to know about Bolverk, the evildoer.”
I looked down, feeling just a little embarrassed. “Maybe not.”
He touched my face lightly, turning me to look down at him again, to meet his gaze. “You said you didn’t know about Jacob before you talked with him on the phone.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“Then why ask Verne about Bolverk?”
I stared down into those true-brown eyes and spoke the truth. “Because you are kind and fair and just, and those are lovely things to have in a king, but the world is not kind, or fair, or just. The reason Verne’s pack runs smoothly, the reason my pard runs smoothly, is because Verne and I are ruthless when we need to be. I don’t know if you could be ruthless if you had to be. But I think it would break you, if you managed to pull it off.”
“Having you be ruthless for me is going to break something inside of me, Anita. Something that’s important to me.”
I stroked his hair, feeling the thick softness of it. “But me doing it won’t break as much, or as badly, as you doing it, Richard.”
He nodded slowly. “I know, and I hate myself for that.”
I leaned over and kissed his forehead, very gently. I spoke with my lips touching his skin. “The only true happiness, Richard, lies in knowing who you are—what you are—and making peace with it.”
His arm curved up around me, holding me against him. He spoke with his mouth against the hollow of my throat. “And are you at peace with what you are?”
“I’m working on it,” I said.
He kissed my throat, very softly. “Me too.”
I drew back enough to see his face, and his hand thrust upward through my hair, pulled my face down to his. We kissed, soft, then harder, his lips, his tongue, his mouth working at mine. I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him—kissed him long and hard. When I drew back, breathless, I found that he’d rolled his lower body over and lay on his back, nude. He laughed at the expression on my face and pulled me down towards him. I lost that forty points of intelligence and all my reasoning skills as he undid my robe and I ran my hands down the long line of his body.
I had just enough self-possession left to say, “Not here. We’ve got an audience in the living room.”
His hand slid under the green satin of the camisole, curving around to my back, pulling me against him. “There’s no place in the house that they won’t hear us, smell us.”
I pulled back from him before he could kiss me. “Gee, Richard, that makes me feel a lot better.”
He propped himself up on one arm, staring down at me. “We can go into the bedroom if you want, but we won’t be fooling anybody.”
I didn’t like that, and it must have shown on my face, because Richard drew his hand out from under my top, and said, “Do you want to stop?”
We hadn’t really gotten started, but I knew what he meant. I looked into the solid brown of his eyes, traced the edge of his jaw with my gaze, the fullness of his lips, the curve of his throat, the spread of his shoulders, the way his hair fell around him, catching the early morning light, bringing out shades of gold and copper in his hair, the swell of his chest, his nipples already dark and hard, the flat line of his stomach with that thin, dark line of hair that went from his belly button to . . . the skin was darker, richer, you could almost smell the blood that pumped him full and hard. He looked ripe, like he was something full to bursting with life. I wanted to touch him, to squeeze, oh so delicately. I lay on the floor with my hands at my sides, my pulse beating in my throat, and said, “No, I don’t want to stop.” My voice was almost a whisper.
His eyes filled with that dark heat that spills into a man’s face when he’s almost a hundred percent sure of what’s about to happen. His voice was deeper, that low note that most men’s voices get when the excitement runs deep. “Here, or the bedroom?”
I tore my gaze away from him to look at the open doorway to the living room. There was no door to close. I needed more privacy than this. Even if they could hear us, even smell us in the bedroom, at least they wouldn’t be able to see us. Maybe it was only an illusion of delicacy, but sometimes illusion is all you’ve got.
I looked back at him. “Bedroom.”
“Good choice,” he said, and got to his knees, taking my hand, so that when he got to his feet, he half-pulled me to mine. The movement startled me, and I fell against him. The height difference was enough that it put my hand on his hip and so very close to other things. It embarrassed me how very much I wanted to touch him, hold him. I started to pull away, because I was so close to losing all decorum and groping him right there in the kitchen. I wasn’t entirely sure that if I grabbed him we’d make it to the bedroom. I wanted that door between us and everyone else.
He put his arms around my waist and lifted me off my feet, until our faces were even and I didn’t know what to do with my legs. If I’d been sure we wouldn’t be using the kitchen table I’d have wrapped my legs around his waist, but I didn’t trust either of us that far. He put his arms under my butt, so that my head was slightly above his, and I rested in his arms almost like I was in a swing. I could still feel him pressed hard and firm against my body, but it had a certain decorum to it that straddling his waist lacked. He started walking for the door, carrying me, his eyes so intent on my face that he almost tripped on a chair. It made me laugh, until his eyes came back to meet mine, and I saw the need in those dark eyes. That one look robbed me of speech, and all I could do was stare into his eyes as he carried me into the bedroom.
37
THE BEDROOM WAS empty when he kicked the door shut behind us. I didn’t know if the living room was empty or not. I couldn’t remember anything but Richard’s eyes from the kitchen to the bedroom. Every room might have been empty, for all I’d seen.
We kissed just inside the door; my hands were full of the rich thickness of his hair, the firm warmth of his neck. I explored his face with my hands, my mouth, tasted, teased, caressed, just his face.
He drew back from my mouth enough to say, “If I don’t sit down, I’m going to fall down. My knees are weak.”
I laughed, full-throated, and said, “Then put me down.”
He half-walked, half-staggered to the bed, laying me on it, going to his knees beside it. He was laughing as he crawled onto the bed beside me. He lay beside me, his knees hanging over the side of the bed, though since he was tall enough for his feet to actually touch the floor when he lay like that, maybe hanging wasn’t the right word. We lay beside each other on the bed, laughing softly, not touching.
We turned our heads to look at each other at the same moment. His eyes sparkled with the laughter, his whole face almost shining with it. I reached out and traced the lines of laughter around h
is mouth. The laughter began to fade as soon as I touched him, his eyes filling up with something darker, more serious, but no less precious. He rolled onto his side. The movement put my hand along the side of his face. He rubbed his face into my hand, eyes closed, lips half parted.
I rolled onto my stomach, and moved towards him, my hand still on his face. He opened his eyes, watching me crawl towards him. I propped myself up on hands and knees and watched his eyes as I leaned in towards his mouth. There was eagerness there, but there was also something else, something fragile. Did my eyes mirror that look, half-eager, half-fearful, wanting, afraid to want, needing, and afraid to need?
My mouth hovered over his, our lips touching, delicate as butterflies blown by a warm summer wind, touching, not touching, sliding along each other, gliding away. His hand grabbed the back of my neck, forced my mouth to press against his, hard, firm. He used his tongue and lips to force my mouth open. I opened to him, and we took turns exploring each other’s mouths. He came to his knees, hand still pressed to the back of my neck, our mouths still locked together. He drew back, crawling backwards to the head of the bed, leaving me kneeling alone in the center of the bed. He reached under the covers, drew out pillows, propped himself up, watching me. There was something almost decadent about him naked, propped up, watching me.
I knelt looking back at him, having a little trouble focusing, thinking. I finally managed to say, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, voice deep, lower than normal. It wasn’t the growl of his beast, it was a peculiarly male sound. “I want to run my beast through you, Anita.”
For a split second, I thought it was a euphemism, then I realized he meant exactly what he’d said. “Richard, I don’t know.”
“I know you don’t like otherworldly stuff during sex, but Anita . . .” he settled into the pillows in a strange smoothing motion that somehow reminded me that he wasn’t human, “I felt your beast. It rolled through me.”
Just hearing it out loud took a little of the glow off for me. I slumped back against the bed, still on my knees, but no longer upright, hands limp in my lap. “Richard, I haven’t had time to think this through. I don’t know how I feel about it yet.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 240