Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I’m not offering to go back to what we had, Anita. I understand that that won’t work for us. You are harder and more ruthless than I will ever be, and I can let you be that, but not if you’re my only sweetie. I need a little distance from the worst of it, so I can pretend a little. Not much, but just enough so I don’t lose my mind.” He snuggled back until his head was resting against Jean-Claude’s side. Jean-Claude was all black fur and velvet against white skin. His hair spilled around his naked upper body like a dark dream. He turned his head so he could look at Richard lying there. Richard was all tan and jeans, and seemed to burn with how very alive he was. They looked like they’d stepped out of two very different porno movies.

  Jean-Claude looked up at me, and there was a pleading in his eyes. Without a word, he asked, “Please, ma petite, please do not spoil this.”

  “No fourth mark,” I said.

  “Agreed,” Jean-Claude said.

  “For now,” Richard said.

  I looked at him.

  “Right now a lot of things seem like a good idea. No, don’t frown, Anita, if a little vampire magic can take the edge off my anxiety, I’m all for it. It works better than the pills the doctor gave me.”

  “Lycanthropes’ bodies work too fast for most medicines to stay in the body long enough to help,” I said.

  “I know,” Richard said, and he raised his head up just enough that he was resting directly on Jean-Claude’s bare back. It was probably just as well that he couldn’t see Jean-Claude’s face when that thick hair touched his skin. He probably wouldn’t have liked any man looking like that because of him.

  “Come, ma petite, let us be a true triumverate at last. Be lupa in more than just name for Richard and his pack. Keep your living arrangements as they are, but allow Richard to visit.”

  “While he keeps searching for Ms. Right among the human population.”

  “You will have your men, and he will have his woman. It is fair, ma petite.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fairness of it. “I don’t know how I feel about all of this, some great, but others, I don’t know if I’ll be able to live like that.”

  “We can but try,” Jean-Claude said.

  Richard held his hand out to me. “Anita, please, please, if you leave, you know I won’t stay. You were able to let Jean-Claude get closer without me being there to buffer it, but I need you to help me.” He pushed up to his knees and held out his hand. “Please, Anita, I promise not to run, no matter how dark my fantasies get.”

  “Just feeding for Jean-Claude and some slap and tickle?” I asked, and couldn’t help but sound suspicious.

  Richard glanced back, and he and Jean-Claude had one of those rare guy moments. The looks they exchanged said plainly that that hadn’t been what they had in mind. Jean-Claude said, voice mild, “If that is all you wish from us, we can restrain ourselves.”

  I closed my eyes. Was that all I wished from them? No. Was that all I could stand right now? Maybe. It was a wonderful offer. It seemed to fix most of the problems that we’d raised with the new power, so why was I still hesitant? “You know, finding a wife that would be okay with you sleeping with another woman isn’t going to be easy.”

  “Nothing worth doing is easy,” Richard said, “and maybe I’ll find that the white picket fence isn’t for me, after all. All I know is that right now, right this moment, I know what I want, and what I want is you.”

  A lot of women would have run to him, thrown their arms around him, and said something like, “Oh, Richard.” But that just wasn’t me. What I was thinking was that if Clair had been his little fuck-buddy, he wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t want me, now. I dropped the towel on the floor and was shaking my head. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

  Richard was still holding his hand out to me. “Neither am I.”

  “Then why are we doing it again?”

  “Because we want to.”

  “Doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.” But I moved, slowly, toward the bed.

  “Because when I’m near you, all I can think about is the smell of your skin, and the way your hair spreads like black foam on my pillows. Because when I’m near you, all I can remember is how your body feels against mine. I have to be a bastard to you, so that I don’t fall down at your feet and beg you to take me back. Tell you that it wasn’t you I hated. It was me, and I’m sorry that I took that out on you. Sorrier than I can say. That you had the courage to make a life that worked for you, regardless of how far that life was from where you wanted it to be. Help me have the courage to do the same, Anita. Help me be who I am.” He moved his hands just a little closer to mine. His fingers brushed mine. I think I would have jerked away like you do when your skin brushes something so hot it will burn. But he grabbed my hands, wrapped them in the warmth of his hands. His hands that were so much bigger than mine, so that he could hide my hands in his, as if I were a child. I’d never really liked that about Richard. He was so much bigger than me, that sometimes I felt overwhelmed. Like now.

  I’d learned a long time ago that if something sounds too good to be true, it is. If someone promises you everything your heart desires, they lie.

  He drew me into the circle of his arms, so that the front of my body was pressed against his. He buried his face against my chest, still covered by silk, but the weight of his face against me made me close my eyes, and when I opened them, I was looking at Jean-Claude. He looked not at Richard’s bare back, but at me, at my face. I watched him be afraid. Be afraid that I’d say, no.

  Richard rubbed his face against the silk, and his breath came through the cloth like something that should have burned, but it didn’t. It made me shiver as if I were cold, but held in the circle of his arms with his breath hot on my skin, I felt as if I would never be cold again. I couldn’t stop my hands from stroking his hair. Still woefully short, but thick and heavy, and just . . . Richard’s.

  Jean-Claude was on his knees. He didn’t raise his hands, but he put the word please into his face, those eyes. His voice whispered through my head, “Ma petite, we endanger everyone that depends on us by this hesitation. Everything we have worked so hard to build hangs upon the next challenge to my power, or to Richard’s. If we do not embrace our power as a triumverate, there will come a night when someone sweeps over us and we will not prevail. The worst that could happen is not that Richard may come to your bed, then come no more, or that you may grow discontent with Micah and Nathaniel. The worst is that we are dead, and our people will be at the mercy of others that do not love them.” He held his hand out to me. “Come to us, ma petite, come to us, and let us build a fortress behind which our people, all of our people, may be safe.” That last he said out loud.

  Richard raised his face enough to gaze up the line of my body. “Please, Anita, don’t punish everyone because I’ve been a bastard.”

  Jean-Claude was close enough that I could have taken his hand, while Richard still held me in his arms. “Please, ma petite, if there is word or deed that would move you, I would say it, or do it. Tell me only what to say, or what to do, and it is yours.”

  I took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. I reached out and let his fingers brush mine. He came that fraction closer so he could take my hand, and that was the deed. He took my hand, and I knew that nothing he’d whispered in my head had been a lie. What would I do to keep my leopards safe? Anything. What would I do to undo the damage that Richard had done to his wolves? Almost anything. What would I do to keep Jean-Claude’s vampires from being at the mercy of masters like Belle Morte? Anything.

  A night of metaphysical, or not so metaphysical, sex, with one man that I loved and another man that kept breaking my heart, so I must love him, too, or he couldn’t keep doing that, seemed a small enough price. Or maybe I just wanted to be with them both in a bed for the first time. Yes, the first time, contrary to all the rumors. Maybe I feared the chance would never come again, and I simply didn’t want to be the one who said no. Maybe.

>   58

  WE STAYED ON the corner of the bed, as if there was no more bed to use. I was still not sure it was a good idea. I think Richard was uncomfortable with Jean-Claude being in the bed. Jean-Claude was just being patient, biding his time, because he knew if he pushed, one of us would bolt. When Richard’s mouth first found mine, and I drank in the taste of him like some almost forgotten addiction, I thought I’d be the one to run screaming for the hills. But the third time Richard winced when Jean-Claude brushed his bare back, I began to think it wouldn’t be me that screwed this up.

  He cursed in French, then said in English, “I put my hand on your shoulder to steady myself, nothing more. You are acting as if I am after your virtue. I assure you that I am after ma petite’s virtue, not yours.”

  Richard sighed and looked down so that even sitting in his lap I couldn’t see his face. “You keep touching me.”

  Jean-Claude made a sound low in his throat. “How am I to touch her, if she is in your lap, your arms, kissing you, without at the very least brushing your body with mine? I am not such a magician that I can share a woman with another man and never once touch the other man’s body.”

  “Trust me, he hasn’t been doing much more than holding me,” I said. I touched Richard’s chin, and he let me raise his face up to me. I looked into those solid brown eyes, and all I saw was pain, confusion. “What’s wrong? You were the one who was all hot for this. You talked me into it, remember?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He pressed his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Jean-Claude and I stared at each other over his bent head. I asked the question with my expression, what the hell is going on? “Tell us what is wrong, mon ami, and we will try to help.”

  “The last time I was in a bed with another man and a woman, it was Raina and Gabriel.”

  I’d known that Raina had been his first lover, but that he’d ever let Gabriel touch him, that I had not known. I was so astounded that I was glad he couldn’t see my face. Raina had been bad enough, but both of them, at the same time. Uckies, uckies, uckies.

  Raina’s munin was usually quiet behind its metaphysical cage bars, but my reaction gave her a tiny opening. Raina had behaved herself for so long, that it caught me off guard. Made me a little less quick to squash her back down, and protect us all. Or maybe it was the fact that I was touching one of her pack, one that she knew in every way.

  I saw Gabriel like a technicolor ghost, with his black curls just long enough to touch his pale gray leopard eyes. The silver ring through his nipple glinted in the lamplight. I was lying back in the middle of a big bed, and Gabriel crawled from one side, and Richard crawled from the other, both moving in that graceful stalk as if they had muscles in places that humans did not. It was a younger Richard, less muscled, face a little less sure of itself, his hair cut neat and clean. Richard when he was twenty, before I ever met him. His face so open, eager, laughing. We’d told him it was a game. Raina wanted to have two men ravage her. A little rape fantasy among friends.

  He pinned my wrists, her wrists, and as requested, there was no foreplay. It was supposed to be rough. I could see through her eyes, as she watched Gabriel come in behind Richard’s back. It was a rape fantasy, alright, but Raina wasn’t the victim.

  Richard screamed, and stood up, dumping me to the floor. He took two shaking steps, and collapsed to his knees. Something about what Raina’s munin had done, had torn down his shields. I wasn’t getting the memory, just his reaction to it. Shame, anger, rage. I got glimpses of Gabriel and him fighting. Not struggling, but beating the hell out of each other. Both of them nude, slick with each other’s blood. Raina watching from the bed, her mouth wet, her tongue playing along her lips, enjoying the show.

  Richard tried to shield, but he couldn’t. It was as if the emotions had stripped him of his shields. It was Jean-Claude’s cool touch in my head that shut it down. He shielded Richard from me, and I think from himself. He gave him back his metaphysical clothes, so that he wasn’t raw before us.

  “I, too, have my memory of Gabriel,” Jean-Claude said, his voice was soft.

  We both looked at him. Richard said, “You, and Gabriel?” The look on his face showed his disgust.

  “Not by choice. It was her price for convincing Marcus that he should continue to ally with me.”

  “A night with both of them?” I asked.

  Jean-Claude nodded.

  “Did you know?” Richard asked, “before, did you know what they wanted you for?”

  He nodded again. “I negotiated that night as completely as any night I have ever bargained for.”

  Richard was still on his knees on the floor. He looked back at Jean-Claude. “And you knew, you knew that she wanted to watch Gabriel . . . have you?”

  “She wanted many things, but that was one she was most adamant about.”

  “How could you let him do that to you?” A strange look came over Richard’s face. “Oh, but you don’t mind. You like men.”

  Jean-Claude’s face went blank, him hiding away. “Actually, yes, I did mind. I minded very much, but it was one of the points that Raina would not give up. She wanted certain things, and that was one of them.” He raised his robe around his shoulders as if he was cold, and would not look at either of us. “I talked her out of a great many things that would have hurt a great deal more.”

  “You didn’t enjoy it,” Richard said.

  Jean-Claude gave him a look, such a look. It sent the vampire’s power like cool water through the room. “Rape is rape, Richard. Is a woman less raped because she likes men? That’s a question, Richard.”

  “No, of course not,” he said.

  “Then why is it less rape for a man who likes men to be raped by another man?”

  Richard looked away at that.

  I was left sitting on the floor not knowing what to say, or who to comfort, or even how to start comforting. “I didn’t know any of this.”

  “My bargain with Raina was based on it not being known. It would have undermined my authority, which would have defeated the purpose of the bargain.”

  I got up off the ground and went to Jean-Claude. I reached out to him, half-afraid he’d move away. No one’s good with this kind of pain, but men seem especially bad at it. I think it’s because they have a hard time thinking of themselves as potential victims. Women are raised with the possibility. Most of us understand from an early age that we are not the biggest or strongest. It’s why when women fight, they fight dirty; something’s got to make up for the lack of upper body strength.

  I touched his face, and he gave me that blank beautiful look. As if he were a painting that held color and line, and beauty, but not life, as if telling the secret sucked something precious away from him. “I’m sorry,” I said, softly.

  He smiled, and some tension left him, and something of him began to seep back into his eyes. “I thought you might be upset, find me sullied goods.”

  I raised eyebrows at that. “You never blame the victim, Jean-Claude. Don’t you know that by now?”

  He smiled a little wider and laid his face against my hand. “I have never thanked you for killing them both.”

  “They were trying to kill me at the time, and film it for a snuff flick. Trust me, it was my pleasure to whack them both.”

  Richard got to his feet and came to stand near us, just out of comfortable reach. “That night was why I broke up with Raina.” He laughed, and it sounded bitter, as if he would choke on it. “Broke up, God, that sounds so high school. Gabriel and I nearly beat each other to death, while she watched.” He was shaking his head, and even with his hair barely grown out, it was already longer than it had been in the memory. I wondered if that was one of the reasons that he grew it long, so it would help him feel different.

  “I can find other food,” Jean-Claude said. “You do not have to do anything you are not comfortable with.”

  Richard looked at us, my hand still on Jean-Claude’s face. “What I said ea
rlier is still true. We need the three of us to be as close as the two of you are.”

  “I do not believe you are ready to do what is necessary for such a binding,” Jean-Claude said.

  “What is necessary, exactly?” he asked.

  Jean-Claude licked his lips. “This is magic, not science. In truth I am not sure. We could do the fourth mark, that I know how to do, but what happened at the club last night was not the fourth mark. It was as if ma petite slipped into me. We were joined as never before, and it made us unbelievably powerful.”

  “How did it work?”

  “We touched.”

  “We were in the middle of a crisis of police proportions,” I said.

  “Oui, but I think it will work with touching. We are of Belle’s line, and most of her magic can be reached through physical closeness.”

  “Physical closeness,” Richard said, and he shook his head. “Define physical closeness.”

  Jean-Claude smiled. “Tell me what you would have of me, Richard. What rules and restrictions would make you feel safe?”

  “If I said, don’t touch me?”

  “Then I say we are wasting our time. Ma petite and I were touching when it happened, not intimately, but the contact was important. Physical contact makes most of my powers easier.”

  “Define not intimate.”

  “I think he was holding my hand,” I said.

  Richard smiled, a quick flash in his tanned face, “Hand-holding I can manage.”

  Jean-Claude smiled, and it was nice to see them smiling at each other for once. “I would ask that if I need to touch you for balance that that be allowed.”

  Richard narrowed his eyes a little. “Depends on where you’re touching me, but okay.”

  Jean-Claude shook his head. “That is not Richard’s look, that is your look, ma petite. Your look from our Richard’s face.”

  “Well, you know what they say, couples start looking like each other after awhile.”

  Richard looked at me. “Couple?”

  I shrugged. “If I’m going to be lupa to your Ulfric, then yeah. That’s how your pack will see it.”