Anita Blake 12 - Incubus Dreams

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I wrapped my arms around Damian’s shoulders and back, got one leg free to wrap around his waist. I held him to me and said, “No, Gregory!” If he pulled him off I’d end up hurt as bad as Richard. “You’ll tear me up worse.”

  The leopardman hesitated, growling. He said in that thick voice they all had in half-human form, “He’s hurting you.”

  Damian snuggled his mouth deeper into my flesh, forced a sound that was not happy out of my mouth. But I said, in a breathy voice, “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

  I could tell Gregory was puzzled even through the fur. I wasn’t always good at facial expressions once my friends went furry. But this one even I could read.

  “Damian,” I said, my voice was soft. I wanted to see that he was in there before I said the words. His eyes were closed, but he relaxed against me by inches, until he wasn’t so much pinning me to the floor as lying on top of me. It was more my arms and leg that held him pressed to me. “Damian,” I said again.

  I felt him come back into himself as if a switch had been thrown. One moment, monster, the next, Damian. Even before he opened his eyes and looked at me, I knew he was in there again. He was back from wherever he’d gone. Relief flooded through me until my arms and leg started to slide off of him. Weak with relief wasn’t just an expression.

  He was still sucking at the wound, but it was gentler now. It had stopped hurting. He drew, slowly, from the wound, his mouth crimson with my blood. I was suddenly aware in a way that I hadn’t been before that we were both nude, and he was male, and he had fed. His body was thick and heavy against my thigh, where a moment ago it hadn’t been. Blood pressure is a wonderful thing.

  If I had not put a leg over his body to help hold him against me, it wouldn’t have been quite so compromising. If Gregory hadn’t tried to help me, I wouldn’t have… oh, hell. I was suddenly afraid in a very different way. Afraid to move, afraid of making things worse, or better. Afraid of how my body pulsed in his arms. It was as if all the blood in our bodies was pulsing in time. It was hard to breathe. I was almost choking on… power. Magic. I’d bound him once before and it hadn’t been like this.

  His hand slid slowly, tentatively down the side of my body, and it wasn’t so much a caress for sex, as just for touching. He used his whole hand, getting as much of his skin against mine as he could. I felt him marveling at the grace of our bodies so close, so completely without barriers. His skin hunger was there like some new kind of beast. A need so intense and so long denied that it was a kind of madness of its own.

  I felt his loneliness like a great echoing thing. It brought tears to the edges of my eyes and made me want to fix it.

  I moved my hands along his back, so that I was no longer holding him, but closer to an embrace. “Blood of my blood,” and he moved upward to bring his mouth to mine for the kiss that would seal the words, but that small movement slid his body against the front of mine, so that the swell of him brushed against me, and that brief touch made me writhe underneath him, and it suddenly wasn’t a kiss I wanted to seal this bargain with.

  The thought helped me pull back. Helped me realize that what I was thinking was not entirely me. I gazed up into his emerald eyes and knew who was doing the thinking.

  Nathaniel knelt beside us. I reached out a hand, and the moment he touched me, I could think a little, and Damian’s pull was a little less. Damian snarled at him, and those green eyes wavered, as if sanity wasn’t permanent in them, not yet.

  Jean-Claude was in my head, and I felt a tiny thread of fear from him. “You must finish binding him, ma petite, and you must start from the beginning of the words.”

  I wanted to ask, “Why are you afraid?” And I must have thought it very hard, because he answered, “If he goes insane now, ma petite, your lovely throat is very unprotected. Finish it.”

  Maybe Richard was hearing the interior conversation, because he came to kneel on the other side of us. Suddenly, it couldn’t have gotten more awkward. “I’m here,” he said, and he said it like it should have made things better, as if he didn’t understand how horribly embarrassing it was to have him kneeling there.

  Damian gave him an unfriendly look, and a sound that was more growl than anything trickled from his mouth. I was losing him. “Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh,” and he gazed back down at me, and with each word, sanity filled his eyes, his face, him. He slid his body against mine, and I felt him pushing against me. And again I felt that almost overwhelming need. That certainty that it was not a kiss we needed to seal this with. The need roared over me. I thought for a heartbeat we’d raised the ardeur, but then I could hear it—them. Two needs. I turned my head and found Nathaniel gazing down at me with those lavender eyes. It was there in his eyes, his face, but I could have told you what was there without using my eyes, because I could feel it. Feel him. Them. Both of them, pushing at me, not just physically, but in ways that hands could never hold you down, or bodies pin you to the floor. Their need undid me more easily than any physical strength or threat. Their need undid me because I cared for them, and if you could feel another’s pain, as if it were your own, wouldn’t you do anything to stop that pain? Wouldn’t you?

  My voice was breathy, and it was Nathaniel’s gaze I held when I said, “Breath to breath, my heart to yours.” Damian slid inside me in one long push of his hips. The sensation made me writhe underneath him, made me grip Nathaniel’s hand hard enough to dig nails into his flesh. My hips ground upward to meet Damian’s thrust. It was as involuntary as the next breath I took.

  A sound drew my attention away from Nathaniel, and it wasn’t a sound from above me. The sound came from the other side of us. Richard had pushed himself away from us, until his back met the side of the white couch. I don’t know what I expected to see on his face, lust, disgust, anger, jealousy, maybe, but what I saw was fear. A fear so raw and naked, that it hurt to meet his eyes.

  Damian grabbed my face, turned me back to look up at him. “It’s me I want you to be thinking about,” he said, and he began to pull himself out of me, slowly. For a second I thought that would be it, but part of me knew better. He’d raised himself up, almost in a push-up, the tip of him barely inside me, and gazing full into my face, his eyes pinning mine as surely as his body pinned the rest of me, he said, “Blood of my blood,” and thrust into me. I cried out underneath him, and Nathaniel echoed that cry, while his hand gripped mine. His lavender eyes were wild when I turned to look at him. Damian touched my face again, but a touch was enough to turn me to face him, to feel his body sliding out of mine, to hear his whisper, “Flesh of my flesh,” before he married our flesh as close, as fast, as he could. I felt Nathaniel convulse hand to hand, and I felt his pulse like a second heartbeat against my palm, but I kept my eyes on Damian’s face, my gaze on his as he drew his body out of me, almost, and, said, “Breath to breath,” and slammed himself inside me. I screamed and Nathaniel’s voice echoed mine. I finally realized that Nathaniel was getting if not the full ride, a shadow of what I was feeling. Damian drew himself out, out, until… “My heart to yours,” and he slid himself inside me.

  He stayed frozen above me, body as deep inside me as he could get. His breathing was harsh and shallow. A shudder passed down his body from head to toe, and I writhed underneath him from it. Nathaniel moaned, jerking on my hand, as if it were his body being explored. Damian’s voice was shaky, “Oh, don’t do that. If you do that again, I won’t last.” He buried his face against my hair, and another shudder rippled down his body and made me dance underneath him, crying out, and that was it. He was suddenly above me, his upper body arched, and he shoved himself into me, deep, hard, and it was partly his body inside me, partly watching his body above mine, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, his hair like a bloody waterfall around the pale candle of his body, and knowing that he was thrust as deep inside me as he could get that tore a scream from my lips. And Nathaniel’s voice screamed with me, our hands convulsing around each other, our nails biting into each other�
�s skin. I felt Nathaniel’s body thrust against the carpet, felt him let go, and that orgasm traveled back up my arm and into Damian. It was his turn to scream, and that made him writhe with his body still plunged inside of mine, which made me move underneath him. It was like being caught in an endless loop of pleasure; one body’s release, bringing the other, until we ended in a sweating, bloody pile on the floor.

  Damian let out a shaky laugh. And I felt, heard, knew, that underneath the lust was sorrow, and an almost certain knowledge that he might never get to do this again, once my head cleared. For some reason that made me think of something I had forgotten. I turned my head and found that Richard was still there, but it wasn’t fear on his face now, but a sort of wonderment. I realized in that moment that, though Richard wasn’t getting all the sensations that Nathaniel was getting, he could still hear inside my head. So could Jean-Claude, but it was Richard’s thought that came the clearest. “You’ve never fucked either of them.” On the heels of that thought came another, that he’d assumed I was screwing everything in the house, because he’d pretty much been doing the same down at the lupanar.

  I was naked in the middle of sex with one man, maybe two, depending on how you counted things, yet, suddenly, I had the moral high ground. Weird.

  18

  « ^ »

  Gregory crawled to us on all fours, sniffing just above our bodies. He said in that growling voice, “Me next.”

  I had to look up and back over my shoulder to give him the look he deserved, but looking back with him on all fours gave me a sight line down his body, and suddenly I was more embarrassed than I had been. Shapeshifters look sort of like they do in the movies in half-man form, but there is one big difference. They have genitalia, and right at that moment Gregory was very, very happy to be here. I think what bothered me more than the erection was that he’d gotten it from watching me have sex with Damian. For some reason, unfair probably, it bothered me that Gregory had enjoyed the show.

  “Back off, Gregory,” I said, and my voice sounded harsh and like I meant it, even while I blushed.

  He did his kitty-cat impression of a smile and backed off, literally. He put his head down, and crawled backward, abasing himself. It was a gesture closer to a real wolf than a real leopard, but wereanimals are people at heart, and some gestures just translate better to our human brains. Abasing yourself by going low is one of those gestures.

  Damian was looking down at me, and the look was not one that I’d ever seen on a man’s face just after finishing sex. He looked sad, and I remembered the burst of emotion at the end. Sorrow covering the pleasure like evil chocolate ruining your ice cream.

  But it was more than the look on his face. I realized that I could feel his sadness. Feel it, not like it was my own, but like it was a coat that clung to my skin. I was still hooked up to him emotionally, well, not just emotionally. I could feel him plunged deep inside me, his weight still pinning my lower body. Touching made any sort of metaphysical intermingling worse. I needed to stop touching him. And not just him.

  Nathaniel lay beside us, his fingers still tangled in mine. The side of his body pressed up against me, so that our bodies touched from shoulder to hip. He must have scooted closer when Damian finished. I think I would have remembered if Nathaniel’s body had been touching mine during the act. Wouldn’t I?

  His lavender eyes were unfocused, almost sleepy. What came through his skin was contentment. Contentment like a great warm ocean that filled him, floated him, held him, rocked him. Maybe I stared at him too long, or maybe he sensed my own growing unease, because his eyes focused, sharpened, and the look in them wasn’t the least bit sleepy. It was almost an anticipatory look, as if he were already thinking about next time. Since I didn’t think he’d had a first time yet, it helped clear my head. Anger always did.

  “Everybody off, out of the pool,” I said.

  Damian’s sorrow was almost like rain on my skin. Nathaniel wasn’t sad. He went straight to panic, afraid he’d done something wrong. “It’s alright, Nathaniel, you’re alright. We’re all alright.” I wasn’t sure I actually believed that down to my toes, but the panic subsided, and everybody got off of me. Yeah. Though Damian’s sadness clung to me like I’d walked through some metaphysical cobweb.

  While we were getting untangled, Micah came through the splintered door. I’d been found in compromising positions by boyfriends before, but never with less embarrassment. He didn’t ask stupid questions or make me feel like a slut. In fact he concentrated on the most important thing. “Wow,” he said, and the wow seemed to take in the blood scattered here and there on the floor and the walls, the injuries that he could see on most of us, the broken door, all of it, but what he said out loud was, “Is everybody alright?”

  I started to get up off the floor, and Damian offered me a hand up. I wouldn’t have taken it normally, but we’d just had sex, and it seemed odd to slap away his hand. The moment my hand touched his, I realized it was more than that. That need to put my skin against his was still there. One moment of good sex didn’t take away centuries of need. Sex was like some kind of fuel like food—you burned it up and needed more.

  I got my hand out of his and took a slightly shaky step away from Nathaniel and Damian. A little distance would be helpful, I hoped. “We’ll all live,” I said.

  “Good.” He cocked his head to one side and said, “I didn’t know that Damian could walk around this early in the day.”

  “He can’t,” I said.

  “Do I say the obvious, ’but he is walking around during the day,’ or do you want me to just stop asking questions?”

  I was suddenly tired, and I probably wasn’t the only one. “Have you been to bed at all?”

  He shook his head, and as if I’d reminded him, he rubbed his chartreuse eyes, his sunglasses already tucked into the front of his shirt. “When I drove the guy home from the bar, he had a live-in girlfriend and a child. Girlfriend started a fight about his drinking. Anger does not help you fight the change.”

  “Did he shift?” I asked.

  “No, but it was close, and he’s so new…” Micah shook his head again. “I’d feel better if the girlfriend was a little more understanding about how dangerous he could be. She just didn’t seem to understand.”

  “She didn’t want to understand,” Richard said.

  Micah turned and looked at him. I realized that of all the people in the room, Richard had been the only one that Micah hadn’t really looked at. “Then you’ve met Patrick’s girlfriend.”

  Richard started to shake his head, stopped in mid-motion, and winced. “No, but I’ve seen it. The human spouse just doesn’t want to understand that they’re married to a monster.” I think he meant it to sound matter-of-fact, but it didn’t. It sounded bitter.

  I’d never made Richard feel like that, that I knew of; no, he’d spent a great deal more time making me feel like a monster. So I let it go. I let it go because I didn’t know what to say, or if there was anything to say. Okay, I had one thing to say. “The coalition is offering a monthly meeting for family members. I thought we’d given flyers out to the werewolves.”

  Richard got to his feet, cradling his arm. “This is my Patrick, Patrick Cook?”

  Micah said, “Yes.”

  “And you’ve been baby-sitting him all night?”

  “Yes,” Micah said, again.

  Richard looked down at the floor, then back up. He met Micah’s gaze, but his face wasn’t completely happy about it. “Thank you for looking after my wolf.”

  “The wolves are part of the coalition, too,” Micah said, “I’d do the same for anyone’s people.”

  “All the same, thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  There was one of those awkward silences. I hated to leave everybody alone, but I really needed a shower. The shower would hurt the wound on my throat, but I’d just had sex without a condom, which meant all the mess had gone into me, but it wouldn’t stay there. So I needed to clean up.
Truthfully, I’d have preferred a condom, but it hadn’t occurred to me until afterward. Tammy had gotten pregnant on the pill. Yeah, she had fallen afoul of the fact that antibiotics don’t mix well with the pill, but still. That one percent chance suddenly seemed like it wasn’t good odds. Damian was a thousand-year-old vampire; chances were he was infertile, but still… It was one thing getting pregnant by a boyfriend, but pregnant by someone who wasn’t even that… well, that seemed somehow worse. “I’m taking a shower.”

  They all looked at me. I guess it was abrupt. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand here like this anymore. So everybody behave themselves. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “I’ll call for a doctor,” Micah said.

  I nodded. “Good, good.” I suddenly had to not be there, naked, smelling of fresh sex, with Richard and Micah in the same room. Having Damian and Nathaniel naked didn’t help my comfort level. I was fairly comfortable around nudity in general now, but specific nudity, that was still a problem. For more reasons than I was comfortable with, I needed to leave the room.

  “By the way, there’s a woman crying in your car in the driveway,” Micah said.

  “My car?” I asked.

  “No, Richard’s, or at least I assume it’s Richard’s. I know Gregory’s car, and that’s not the one she’s in.”

  Richard cursed under his breath, something he rarely did. “Clair, I forgot about Clair.”