Richard walked to the bed, his eyes downcast, not looking at us. He sat down on the bed near me. The three of us scooted back a little to give him more room. He must have felt the bed move, but he ignored it. He pulled off his boots and let them fall to the floor, then socks. He took off his T-shirt and I was suddenly looking at the muscled expanse of his naked back. His hair caressed the edges of all that bare skin.
I fought the urge to touch him. I was afraid of what would happen. Afraid that he would take it wrong.
He had to stand up to undo his belt, unbutton the fly. The sound of the buttons coming undone jerked things low in my body. Richard had been the man who taught me the joys of button-fly jeans.
Micah’s arm curled around my waist, drawing me in closer to his body. Was he jealous?
Richard hesitated. As a shapeshifter nudity should have been second nature, maybe first, but he didn’t like being nude in front of my other lovers. He just didn’t. He stripped the jeans down in one motion. If he’d been wearing underwear, he wasn’t now. The sight of him nude did what it always did: it made me catch my breath and think about touching him. All Richard had to do to win any fight with me was to strip. I just couldn’t argue with him when he looked so scrumptious.
He let the jeans hit the floor, then turned toward the bed. His eyes were still downcast, his hair spilling forward around his face. He finally looked up, and our eyes met. I didn’t try to keep my face blank. I let him see what I thought of him beautiful and nude before me. Even with Micah’s body pressed against me in the bed, Richard was still beautiful.
He smiled, half shy, and half the old Richard. The Richard who had known how much I loved him, and how much he meant to me. He lifted the covers up and slid under them. He was tall enough that he had no trouble getting into the bed without help. “Scoot over…please,” he said.
Micah scooted, moving me with him a little. Richard slid into the space we’d made. I felt the bed move, which meant Nathaniel had moved, too. The bed wasn’t a king-size, it was an orgy-size bed. We’d had more people than this on it at the same time, sometimes even for sleeping.
Richard scooted down until he was almost pressed to the front of my body, but not quite. Micah’s hand was still around my waist. “I’m not sure where to put my hands,” Richard said.
Micah laughed, but it was a good guy laugh. “I know what you mean.”
“Where do you want to put them?” Nathaniel asked.
I glanced over my shoulder and found that Nathaniel was peering over Micah’s more slender body at us.
“I’m nervous, tired. I want to be touched and held.”
“You’re a shapeshifter,” Micah said. “We all like skin contact when we’re shaky.”
Richard nodded. He was propped up on one elbow, and he made even Nathaniel look small. Richard was one of those large men who didn’t seem that large until moments like this; then you appreciated the full physical presence of him. “I brought wolves with me. They’re in one of the guest rooms. I could have my puppy pile. I didn’t have to come here for that.”
I swallowed hard enough that it hurt.
Micah said, “Then why are you here?”
“I’m tired of running from myself.”
I wasn’t sure that answered the question, but Richard seemed to think it did, and I felt Micah nod behind me. “Stop running.”
“I’m not sure I know how.”
It was like I wasn’t there, as if whatever issues they were discussing had less to do with me than with the two of them. Maybe the three of them—or did Nathaniel feel as left out as I did?
“This is a good start,” Micah said.
Richard nodded, then finally gave me the full attention of those eyes. Those eyes that I once thought would be the eyes I woke up with every morning. Lately he hadn’t slept over much. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?” I whispered.
“I want to kiss you, but I don’t want to have sex with everyone in this bed.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant he didn’t want to have sex while the other men were in the bed or if he didn’t want to actually have sex with them. I was pretty sure both were true.
“I’ve been wanting to touch you since you took off your shirt,” I said. There, that was the truth. Maybe if we told the truth we’d be okay.
He smiled, and it was Richard’s smile. That smile that he sometimes gave that let you know he really did know how lovely he was to look at. He usually came off humble, but then he had that smile.
He leaned in toward me, his hands still chastely to himself. Our lips touched, his hair spilled along my cheek. Micah’s hand eased from around my waist, letting me know I could move where I wanted to move. Or that’s how I took it. I let my hand rest against the swell of Richard’s chest. His hand cupped the side of my face. We kissed, and his lips were still as soft, as full, as kissable as they had always been. My hand slid down the curve of his chest to his waist. He pulled me in against his body, and the kiss grew to something fuller, deeper. My body fell against his, my hand tracing across his back, not sure whether to touch lower. His body was already growing with need. I wanted to react to that need, but he’d said he didn’t want to have sex with all of us in the bed, and no one was leaving.
He drew back from the kiss, breathless, panting, eyes laughing. “God, how do you do that to me?”
My own voice came breathy. “You, too.”
He laughed, then his gaze slid past me to the other men. His eyes darkened for a moment. “I can’t, I can’t, not yet.”
“Truthfully, Richard, this is more than I ever thought you’d do with Micah and Nathaniel.”
He nodded. “Me, too.”
“Would it totally spoil things if I asked what changed your mind?” Nathaniel asked it. I’d wanted to ask it, but I wouldn’t have.
Richard looked across the bed at the other man. “It’s none of your business.”
“No, it’s not,” Nathaniel said.
Richard bowed his head, then nodded. “Okay, I love Anita. I’m trying to learn to love all of her, even the part that wants to live with two other men.” His eyes were uncertain, a little angry.
Nathaniel said, “My therapist told me that if I’m an equal partner in our relationship I need to ask for what I want. Did yours tell you that you need to resolve your feelings about Anita?”
Richard ignored the question. “What did you ask Anita? What aren’t you getting from her?”
“I’ll answer yours, if you’ll answer mine.”
Richard nodded, as if that was fair. “Yeah, my therapist says I have to either come to terms with Anita’s life, or move on.”
“You know I’m into the bondage and submission scene?” Nathaniel said.
I wanted not to be naked in the bed with them while they had this conversation, but if they could be honest, I could lie there and let them do it. “I know. Raina talked about you a lot.” Raina had been the old lupa of the wolf pack. She’d taken Richard’s virginity and trained Nathaniel to be a good little pain slut.
Micah and I looked back to Nathaniel. It was like a therapy tennis match.
Nathaniel nodded. “Anita won’t do it with me, and I want her to.”
“She’s not much more comfortable with that side of herself than I am,” Richard said.
“I know,” Nathaniel said.
“Did she agree to do it?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you going to leave her if she doesn’t come across with it?”
Micah and I lay back between them, feeling superfluous.
“I’ve asked permission to have someone else abuse me, but save sex for Anita.”
Richard looked at me, finally, and I wished he hadn’t. “You really know how to pick them, don’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, but it was hard trying to sound indignant naked in a bed with three men.
Richard laughed, a good, open laugh. He kissed me hard and fast. I lay there and frowned a
t him. “It means let’s go to sleep.”
He settled on his side, facing me. I hesitated a second, then turned onto my other side. It started a chain reaction with Micah and Nathaniel following suit. It took us a while, but finally we were all settled. Richard’s body spooned along the back of mine, Micah against me, and distant Nathaniel against him. My hand went over both of them, so I could still touch Nathaniel. Richard had the hardest time figuring out where to put his arm. He finally seemed to think, To hell with it, because he let his arm follow the line of mine, so he was both holding more of me and helping me hold the other two men. For sex, it would have been fun, but for sleeping, I thought I’d have trouble relaxing. But either it had been a long night, or the sensation of being held between Richard and Micah’s body was more comforting than I realized. Nathaniel went to sleep first, as he always did. Micah and Richard went at almost the same time. Sleep wrapped over me, Richard’s breath warm against my neck.
12
I WOKE IN a tangle of bodies. I was on my back with Micah and Richard half on top of me, as if even in their sleep they had fought over who would touch the most of me. The scent of their skins had mingled into a rich perfume that tightened my body. But I was still pinned and not comfortable at all. I was so tangled that I couldn’t even rise enough to see Nathaniel on the far side of Micah. I thought the uncomfortable position had been what woke me; then I caught movement at the foot of the bed. I held my breath. Was it one of the guards? Somehow I knew it wasn’t.
The faint light from the half-open bathroom door didn’t really show me anything. It was almost as if the light were being sucked at by the dark, as if eventually the darkness would swallow the light completely. My pulse was thudding in my throat, so hard I could barely breathe past it, and swallowing hurt. I knew who was in the dark, and I knew I dreamed. But just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean it can’t hurt you.
“What is that?”
I screamed, a short, sharp scream. I was looking into Richard’s face. He was awake. He started easing up to sit, and I moved with him. He tried to shake Micah awake, but I didn’t bother. I’d had this dream before.
“Wake them up,” he whispered, eyes searching the darkness.
“Her animals to call are all cats; they won’t wake.”
“Who…Marmee…”
I stopped the words with fingers against his lips. “Don’t,” I whispered. I don’t know why we were whispering. She would hear us. But there’s something about being in the dark when you know the predator is out there, that makes you whisper. You try to be small and quiet. You pray that it passes you by. But this wasn’t a predator, exactly; this was the entire night, given life and substance, and a mind. I smelled jasmine and summer rain, and other scents of a land that I had never seen except in vision and dream. The land where Marmee Noir had begun. I had no idea how old she was, didn’t want to know. I was a necromancer. I could have tasted her age on my psychic tongue, but I didn’t know if I could swallow that many centuries. I feared I’d choke.
“Necromancer.” Her voice eased through the night like a sweet-scented wind.
I managed to swallow past the beating of my heart. “Marmee Noir,” I said, and my voice was only a little hoarse. It was better with Richard beside me, awake. His arm wrapped around me as if he felt it, too, that together we were more here. Maybe our accidental sharing of dreams, Richard and me and Jean-Claude, had a purpose. One we just hadn’t understood until now.
I leaned into the curve of Richard’s body, and his arm tightened. My hand on his bare chest let me feel the beat of his fear against my palm.
The darkness gathered, almost the way light will narrow down to a point of brightness, except this was darkness compacted, squeezed down as if a small black hole were forming in front of our eyes. The black hole took on the vague shape of a woman in a cloak.
I thought, very carefully, in my head at Richard, “Don’t look at her face.”
“I know the rules,” he said out loud. He had heard me; good, great. Mind-to-mind talking was still not my best thing in dream or out of it.
“Do you truly believe that not looking upon my face will save you?”
Great, she read minds, too. I’d had much lesser vamps be able to do it. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Tell me again why Micah and Nathaniel won’t wake?” Richard asked, his voice soft, but not a whisper anymore. It was too late for whispering. She’d found us.
“Necromancer,” she said.
“Cats are her creatures to call, all cats, so she can keep them out of the dream. Jean-Claude was with me last time and she was able to keep him out, too. She doesn’t do wolves.”
“Your wolf will not save you this time, necromancer.”
“How about mine?” Richard said, and a low growl trickled out from between his lips. It raised the hair on my arms, and that part of me where the beasts waited, stirred. The best I can describe it is that the place is like a cave where my animals wait. They walk up a long corridor to get to me. Since they’re inside me, that can’t exactly be right. But it’s the visualization that works for me.
In dream, though, the wolf inside me could come out and play. My wolf was pale, white and cream with a black saddle and marks on her head. She crouched in front of me and joined her growl with Richard’s. I dug my free hand into her fur and found it like last time: soft, coarse. I could feel the vibration of the growl through my hand, feel the muscle and meat of her body. She was real, my she-wolf. She was real.
Richard stopped growling and stared at the wolf. She turned eyes that were brown and glowing to him. My eyes when vampire powers had filled them. They stared at each other, then she turned back to the darkness. When Richard looked down at me, his eyes were the amber of his wolf.
“Your master has left you both with the last piece undone,” she said. Her voice floated around the almost-body she’d formed from the shadows. She came to the foot of the bed.
The wolf crouched, and growled, that sound that was absolutely serious. It was the last warning sound before violence.
She didn’t try to touch the bed. She actually stopped moving. I remembered seeing her body in that distant room jerk when my wolf bit her in dream last time. Had it hurt her enough to make her hesitate? Had it hurt her enough to make a true threat? God, I hoped so.
“You can still be enslaved to any master stronger than he, and there is no one stronger than me, necromancer.”
I clung to the wolf’s fur and Richard’s body. “I believe that last part, Marmee Noir.”
“Then why has your master left this door open?”
The question puzzled me.
“I do not know that expression on your face. I have been too long without humans.”
“I’m puzzled,” I said.
“I will help you not be puzzled, necromancer. I came tonight to make you mine. To shatter your triumvirate and make you my human servant. I do not need to share blood to own your soul.”
I was trying to breathe past my pulse again, and having trouble doing it.
“You won’t touch her,” Richard said, and his voice sounded gravelly, the beginnings of the change in the sound of his words.
“I think you are right, wolf. I think it would be a battle with you by her side. I am not ready for battle, not yet. But there are others who know what Jean-Claude has not done.”
“Who?” I managed to ask.
“Do I need to say the word?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to say it, but Richard said, “It’s against your laws to say it out loud. A killing offense, Jean-Claude said.”
She laughed, and the darkness tightened around the bed like a giant’s fist. You knew, could feel, that it could crush the bed and everyone on it, if it wanted to. “That is not the trick I have come to play, wolf, but fine: Harlequin. They know you are not safe. They know that I am close to waking. They fear the darkness.”
“Everyone’s afraid of you,” I said. The wolf had begun to relax under my grip. Y
ou could only hold on to emergency mode for so long. Apparently, we were talking, not fighting. Fine by me.
“True, and I would have taken you tonight. I planned on it.”
“You said that already,” Richard said, his voice a little more human, but sullen.
“Then let me not repeat myself, wolf.” Her anger was not hot, but cold, as if an icy wind danced across my bare skin. Richard shivered beside me. I didn’t think I’d have to caution him to be nice. That flex of power explained it nicely. “By tomorrow they will be upon you, and I do not want them to have you.”
“Have me, how?” I asked.
“I will allow Jean-Claude to have you, because you are already his. But no one else. I would prefer you were my human servant, but Jean-Claude is acceptable. No one else, necromancer. I will destroy you before I allow the Harlequin to make you their slave.”
“Why do I matter to you?”
“I like the taste of you, necromancer,” she said, “and no one else can have you. I am a jealous Goddess, and I do not share power.”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. I nodded as if that made sense to me.
“A parting gift, necromancer, wolf.” The shadowed form vanished, but she wasn’t gone. The darkness suddenly had weight and grew thicker, as if the night itself could become so thick it would eventually crawl down your throat and choke you. She’d done almost exactly that to me before. The scent of jasmine and rain was thick on my tongue.
[Anita Blake 15] - The Harlequin Page 13