Jean-Claude moved, making a hole between himself and Nathaniel. It was an invitation to join the circle. Richard just stood there, eyes on the ground, hands limp at his sides. It was Nathaniel who moved even farther out, letting go of me, and only keeping Asher’s hand. Nathaniel moved so that the circle became almost half a circle. Jean-Claude took his cue from Nathaniel, and moved farther away from me, his arm still around Micah. I stood alone with the men like a backdrop.
Richard stood there, unmoved, as if he hadn’t noticed. I took a step forward, and touched fingertips to the fringe of his hair where it hid the edge of his face. He flinched, and raised his eyes to me. The pain in those brown eyes made my throat tight. Maybe I was just having an emotional night. Or maybe, if you love someone, you can never see that much pain in his eyes without wanting to fix it.
I had to go up on tiptoe to touch his face, one hand resting against his arm to steady myself. I rested my hand against the side of his face, just at the swell of his cheekbone, feeling the strength of that curve under my hand. His face was like him, strong, and outwardly perfect. Inside that nearly perfect male package there was a storm raging. It showed in his eyes, all that pain, that anger. His arm flexed under my hand. The smooth swell of muscle molding itself against the curve of my hand. I wasn’t sure if he’d done it to remind me how strong he was, or if it was the only sign that he was still flinching. From the look in his eyes, I was betting on flinching.
He began to lean in toward me, as I stretched upward to meet him. Our lips met, but it was more a touch than a kiss. His lips moved against mine, the gentlest of kisses. I kissed him back, a soft caress of lips. Then his mouth pressed against mine, and there was nothing gentle about it. He broke from the kiss with a sound that was half sob and half sigh. He fell to his knees, dragging me with him, clinging to me as if I were the last solid thing in the universe.
I held him, stroked his hair, murmured his name, “Richard, Richard,” over and over. He cried like his heart was breaking.
Jean-Claude knelt beside us. He put his hand on the back of Richard’s head. When he didn’t react to the touch, Jean-Claude put his arms around both of us. He laid his face against the side of Richard’s head, and said something in French that I didn’t catch. Whatever he said, it was low and comforting.
Nathaniel knelt on the other side opposite Jean-Claude. He touched my shoulder, but hesitated about touching Richard.
It was Clay who came and knelt at Richard’s back. He gave me worried eyes, and pressed himself along Richard’s back, his arms holding him tight. He said, “Smell the pack, and know that you are safe.” It sounded like an old saying.
With Clay’s body to protect Richard, Nathaniel hugged me and Clay, but we all hugged Richard. Clay had understood how much Richard needed the touch, but he’d also understood that he might not let leopards and vampires get that close. But another wolf of his own pack, that was safe. That one moment of understanding pushed Clay from bodyguard to friend in my book.
Micah came in at my back, hugging us close. Asher finally knelt, more by Nathaniel and me than Richard, but his hand touched Richard’s hair. We all gave what we could.
The crying began to ease, then stop. I felt the tension in his arms, his body, ease. His breath went out in a long, heavy sigh. I felt him settle into the warmth and the touch. I felt all that care and worry drift away in the press of bodies, and caring.
Then he drew in a deep, full breath, and rose up higher on his knees. It was like a man rising from deep water, except that this water was hands and bodies. He rose to his knees, then started struggling to his feet. We all moved back to let him stand.
He smiled down at me, at all of us. “Thank you, all of you. I needed it. I didn’t know how much…” He started to move out of the kneeling circle of us. Jean-Claude and Clay moved back so he could walk out.
He stopped at the foot of the bed, and took a breath so deep his body shuddered with it.
Jean-Claude stood, and helped me to my feet. I didn’t protest the help; I felt shaky. Richard wasn’t the only one who needed to be held tonight.
Everyone got to their feet, in ones and twos. We waited for Richard to say something, or for one of us to think of something worth saying.
He turned back and gave us a smile. It was his old smile, his Boy Scout smile, I used to call it. He looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in a while.
“I’ll bunk in Jason’s room tonight.”
“You don’t have to leave,” I said.
The smile slipped a little, letting some sadness through. “I can’t sleep here, Anita, not with all of them.”
“I don’t think everyone is staying,” I said.
He shrugged. “I don’t want to share you, Anita. Especially tonight. But I saw your face when Nathaniel and Micah held you. You never look that peaceful with me anymore.”
I opened my mouth, to say something comforting, but he held up a hand and stopped me. “Don’t deny it, Anita. I’m not angry, just…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do, but I know I can’t share you tonight. It will be dawn soon, and you won’t want Jean-Claude with us. He’s the only one I could stand to share you with tonight.” He shrugged again. “But you’ll want something warmer.” His face struggled to look cheerful, and almost succeeded. “It’s better if I just go. I’ll say, or do, something to upset Anita tonight. I know I will.” His frown turned into something bitter for a second. “I appreciate the comfort, I needed it, but part of me still wishes you were all gone.” With that, he turned on his heel and went for the door.
“Clay,” I said, “go with him.”
Clay didn’t argue, and when he followed him out, Richard didn’t protest. I took it as a good sign. I hoped so, anyway.
19
JEAN-CLAUDE HUGGED ME in against his body. “I am sorry, ma petite.”
Asher came and kissed me on the cheek. “I am not sorry he is gone.”
“Be nice,” I said.
He cuddled in against me, his arm going around Jean-Claude’s shoulders. “We all behaved ourselves admirably and your Ulfric still leaves in a huff.”
Nathaniel came to stand in front of me. He pushed a lock of my hair back from my face. “Honestly, Anita, I’m not sorry he’s staying somewhere else for the night. I want to hold you tonight, and Richard wouldn’t let me in the bed.”
They were both right, so why did I feel like I should defend Richard’s honor?
“Enough of this,” Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite is tired. We will leave her with Micah and Nathaniel.” He kissed my upturned face, gently, his face showing nothing. There were nights when he asked not to be sent away, but tonight he didn’t even try for it.
He let me go, and started for the door, Asher at his side.
“It seems wrong to keep kicking you out of your own bed,” Micah said.
Jean-Claude turned back, and said, “Ma petite is not comfortable when I die at dawn. We will respect her sensibilities in this tonight. She has had enough shocks for one night.”
Asher slipped his arm through Jean-Claude’s. “We’ll be in my room.” I’d seen them arm in arm a hundred times. I’d sent them off to bunk in Asher’s room dozens of times. But for the first time, I wondered what they would do once they got there. Would they have sex? Would they do with each other what Jean-Claude and I did with Auggie? Did the thought bother me? I wasn’t sure.
Micah looked at me. “Damian doesn’t die at dawn if he’s with you. Shouldn’t we find out if the same applies to Jean-Claude?”
“Don’t push me, Micah.” I felt almost frantic with the need for some kind of normality tonight. My voice didn’t sound frantic, it sounded angry.
“He can sleep on the other side of me, so if he dies at dawn, you won’t be touching him.”
I shook my head. “Why is this so important to you? Why tonight?”
“I do think we need to find out if Jean-Claude has gained some of the same powers Damian has, but truthfully, Belle Morte had a harder time contr
olling you once he touched you. I’d like to keep him close to you tonight, just in case.”
I blinked at him, then sighed. “Practical as always,” I said.
“Eminently practical,” Asher said. He let go of Jean-Claude’s arm. “I will go to my lonely bed.”
“Asher,” I said, “please, I can’t deal with any more hurt feelings tonight.”
He smiled at me, and came back to me. He hugged me, gently, and gave me an almost brotherly kiss on the forehead. “I will not cause either of you more distress tonight. But I would like a chance to test this theory of vampires in the day. If it works for our Jean-Claude, then perhaps it might work for me.”
“It only works for Damian if Nathaniel is in the room. I think without Richard it won’t work for Jean-Claude either.”
Asher stepped back, gave that Gallic shrug, and went for the door. He waved at us lightly, but I had too many centuries’ worth of memories of his body language, thanks to Jean-Claude’s memories. Asher was bothered. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He was the only one kicked out of the room. But I didn’t call him back. I didn’t really want to have one corpse in the bed, let alone two.
I turned back to the corpse in question. He stood there in his elegant robe. A triangle of his chest showed, so pale, surrounded by the black of the fur lapel. His hair was a foam of curls, softer than mine.
Tiredness came over me in a wave. No, it wasn’t being pregnant, it was just everything. I had had all I could handle for one night.
Micah hugged me from behind. Nathaniel came to stare down at me. He lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. He gave me the gentlest of smiles, then said, “You’re beat.”
I nodded, his fingers still under my chin.
He kissed me on the mouth, still gentle, no demand to it. He took my hand and started leading me toward the bed. Micah let his arm fall away but kept my other hand, so that Nathaniel led us both to the bed.
The bed was draped in red tonight. Crimson, from the curtains that graced the four posts to the mounds of pillows. The sheets underneath the bedspread either would match the rest perfectly, or would be some high-contrast color. Once upon a time Jean-Claude’s decoration had been exclusively black and white. I’d complained. I still remembered the first night I’d seen the bed draped in red. I’d stopped complaining about the monochrome color scheme after that, afraid of what he might do next.
Nathaniel had to let go of my hand to wiggle the coverlet out from under the mound of pillows. The sheets were black, like a splash of darkness in all that red. Some of the smaller pillows would get piled in the room’s two chairs, beside the false fireplace. Thanks to modern technology it could actually make flames, but in all the time I’d been with Jean-Claude I’d never seen anything in the fireplace but an antique fan framed behind glass.
Nathaniel and Micah went back and forth like busy ants until the seats were piled high with pillows, and there were still plenty left on the bed.
Jean-Claude had come to stand on the other side of the bed from me. We stood there staring across the expanse of red and black silk. When I say expanse, I mean it. The bed was larger than a king-size. Orgy-size is what I’d started calling it, but I hadn’t actually shared that with Jean-Claude. I didn’t mean to imply anything about what he was doing when I wasn’t here. The bed was just the biggest one I’d ever seen. Then I realized, that wasn’t entirely true. Belle’s bed was this size. I really wished I hadn’t thought of that. Suddenly I was cold.
“What is wrong, ma petite?” he asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to share the observation, as if talking about it would make it more true.
Micah and Nathaniel came back to the bed. Micah stopped and looked from one to the other of us. Nathaniel started unbuttoning his shirt.
“I think you might want to wait on that,” Micah said, still looking from one to the other of us.
Nathaniel kept unbuttoning. “They’ll work it out.” He slipped the shirt off, and went for the large armoire. It was dark rich wood that matched the bed. Nathaniel opened it, and started hanging up his shirt. The armoire was empty except for our extra clothes. Nathaniel’s, Micah’s, mine. Jean-Claude had a room the size of a small warehouse that was full of clothes. He’d started hanging an outfit at a time in the armoire, but he still kept his room as clean and empty as he could. He’d gotten in the habit when he used to entertain strangers on a regular basis. You don’t keep things you value in a room where you’re going to have one-night stands. Jean-Claude didn’t do one-night feedings and fucks now, but old habits die hard. Vampires, I’d found, once they have a habit, really don’t like giving it up. Old dogs, new tricks, that sort of thing.
Nathaniel came back to the bed wearing absolutely nothing. I had one of those moments of discomfort. I’d seen him nude more times than I could count. I’d seen him nude in front of Micah and Jean-Claude more times than I could count. So why was I blushing?
Nathaniel climbed into the bed, pulling the sheet up just enough to keep me from yelling at him. Left to his own devices I think Nathaniel would have been nude all the time. He lay back against the red and black pillows. His hair was still in its braid so that his face was framed by all that black and red silk. His face had started to fill out; bone structure that had only been a promise six months ago was somehow more real, more masculine. He was moving from the pretty handsomeness that some young men get, to the more handsome handsomeness that most of them grow into. He’d also grown nearly an inch taller in the six months we’d been together. At twenty he was growing into what some people hit at seventeen, or earlier. Genetics is a wonderful and confusing thing.
He smiled at me, and the smile was all male. That pleased smile that said he knew I was looking at him, and how much he liked the effect he had on me. He’d been in my bed for half a year, naked in it for about a month, and I was still staring at him as if it were the first time.
It made me blush and look away.
“Come to bed, Anita,” he said, “you know you want to.”
The anger was instantaneous. I wasn’t blushing when I raised my eyes back to him. “I don’t like being taken for granted, Nathaniel.”
He sighed, and sat up, putting his muscular arms around his knees. “Don’t let the whole baby thing push you back. You’ve made a lot of progress in your comfort zones, don’t lose ground now.”
“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” I asked, hands on hips, glad to be angry. Anger was so much better than sad, or scared, or embarrassed.
His lavender eyes went all serious, not scared, or worried, but grown-up serious. “Are you really going to make us do this?”
“Do what?” I demanded.
He sighed, and said, “Why is my being nude bothering you?”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally said, quietly, “I don’t know.” That was the truth; stupid, but the truth.
Micah came to me, touched me tentatively. I went to him, wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me close, and I turned my face in against his neck, so I could smell the warmth of him. Just the smell of his skin made something hard and cold inside me loosen. I breathed in the scent of him, and underneath the smell of clean skin and aftershave, Micah had that nose-wrinkling smell, an almost sharp smell, of leopard. The smell of home.
He spoke against my skin, “Let’s go to bed, Anita.”
I nodded, still pressed against him.
I felt his mouth move in a smile against my skin. I knew exactly the feel of it, which meant I must make him smile with his mouth pressed to me a lot. I guess I did.
He drew away and started unfastening his collar. He had a tie bar to remove. I stood there and watched him begin to reveal his tanned upper body, but instead of enjoying the show, I felt the anxiety creep back.
I touched Micah’s arm, stopped him in the middle of undoing one of his cuff links. “Stop for a minute.” He turned puzzled eyes to me.
“You’re nervous again,” Nathaniel said. “Why?”
I sh
ook my head, then looked across the bed. Jean-Claude was still across the bed, but he was leaning on one of the big wooden posts. His arms entwined around it as he watched us. His face was neutral, but I’d been further into his head tonight than ever, in one special area.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?” Micah and Nathaniel asked together.
“I know what’s wrong.”
They both looked at me, but it was Jean-Claude that I looked at. “It’s you,” I said.
“I have seen your men nude before,” he said in that pleasant neutral voice.
“We’ve been in bed all naked and sweaty, Anita,” Nathaniel said.
“Yes, but you’ve never had sex with him. I had sex with him.”
“Jean-Claude has fed off me, Anita,” Micah said, “has had more of my blood than yours.”
I looked at Micah. “Are you saying having him take blood is the same thing as having sex with him?”
He shrugged, and I watched his face shut down to the look he wore when he wasn’t certain what look I wanted. “I’ve had sex that didn’t feel as good as Jean-Claude’s feedings.”
“Then you were doing the sex wrong,” I said.
He smiled. “I was young; I got better.”
“Yes, you did,” I said, and smiled back.
He kissed me, then moved back and gave me a searching look. He moved past me to put the first cufflink on the bedside table. He started on the other sleeve, his back to me. I glanced up and found that I wasn’t the only one watching him.
Jean-Claude’s neutral, beautiful face watched us all. We had been naked and sweaty in a bed together. Hell, some nights the pile had included Asher and Jason. It just depended on who had fed whom last. So why was I suddenly bothered by Jean-Claude watching Micah take off his shirt?
I suddenly had a smart idea. I don’t have that many of them, not about my own emotional life anyway. “I know what’s wrong,” I said again.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15 Page 166
