Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  They all looked at me. I touched Micah’s naked back, but looked at Jean-Claude. “It was what we did tonight with Augustine.”

  Jean-Claude sat on the corner of the bed, one arm still wrapped around the bedpost. “What exactly are you referring to, ma petite? We did many things with Augustine tonight.”

  “I know that everyone thinks we’re all snogging each other’s brains out, but tonight was the first time I’d ever seen two men kiss. I’ve never even seen someone do…” I faltered. God, was I still such a baby? No, damn it, I was a grown-up. “I’ve never seen anal sex before, let alone between two men. Let alone between my lover and a stranger.” I took in a big breath and let it out, and went to the edge of the bed, a little closer to Jean-Claude. “Am I making any sense?”

  “You were disturbed by what you saw,” he said.

  “Wait,” Nathaniel said. The wait turned me to him. He was propped up on the pillows, the sheet forgotten in his lap, so that he was barely covered at all, but his face showed he wasn’t even thinking about it. “How did you feel when Jean-Claude kissed Auggie?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it, because I wasn’t sure what the answer was. How had I felt? “I didn’t mind it. It was…interesting.” That wasn’t true. I looked down at the bedspread and said, “No, I…it was interesting.”

  “Interesting bad, or interesting good?” Nathaniel said.

  Without looking up, I answered, “Good.”

  Someone sighed, and I wasn’t sure which of them had done it. I looked up, slowly, and no one was looking at me like I’d said something awful. I don’t know why I thought anyone in this room would think it was wrong that I liked seeing Jean-Claude kiss another man, but I did think it. I was waiting for someone to tell me to be ashamed of myself. I’d seen someone I loved kiss another man, and not only hadn’t I been horrified, but I’d liked it. Was that wrong? I had waited for it to feel wrong, but it hadn’t. It had felt strangely right, as if I’d been waiting my whole life to see it. It had felt right in that way that only the things that truly speak to your heart can feel. I hadn’t felt bad when it was happening. I was feeling bad now. Why? Was it guilt? No, I felt uncomfortable, and a little squeamish, but not guilty. So what was it?

  Micah touched my arm. “So many thoughts flying over your face—what are you thinking?”

  “That I don’t feel bad, and shouldn’t I feel bad about it.”

  He looked puzzled, frowned. “Bad about what?”

  “Shouldn’t it bother me that I saw Jean-Claude kiss another man, a stranger at that?”

  “Did it bother you?”

  I shook my head. “Not at the time, no.”

  He smiled, eyes still a little uncertain. “But it’s bothering you now. Why?”

  “Did it bother you to watch us like that?”

  He gave me a look. “I’ve watched you have sex with other men before, Anita.”

  I suddenly felt thirteen again, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing.

  “I believe, ma petite, he is asking how you felt about watching me with Augustine.”

  I looked at him, happy he’d helped me, but uncomfortable that he’d had to help me.

  “Did it bother you?” Micah asked me.

  I shook my head. “No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was…” My breath shivered out of me. “It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together.”

  “Then it’s okay,” Micah said. “Don’t feel bad because you don’t feel bad.”

  Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. “It sounds stupid when you say it out loud.”

  He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. “It’s not stupid, Anita. It’s how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.”

  I drew back enough to see his face. “You’re okay with everything we did tonight. You don’t think we’re evil or something.”

  He chucked me under the chin. “That’s Richard’s voice in your head, not mine.”

  I nodded. He was right, on part of it.

  He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. “Take off the robe and let me hold you all naked and warm.”

  I wanted to, in fact I couldn’t think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn’t touch my robe, and I didn’t climb on the bed.

  Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.

  I turned with a little gasp. “You’re naked.”

  He frowned at me. “Yes, we always sleep naked.”

  I shook my head, and said, “But…,” then I realized what was wrong. I’d sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true ménage à trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn’t been fact, until tonight.

  I tried to put it into words. “I knew in theory you liked men as well as women,” I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I’d ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he’d vanish.

  “But now you know in fact, and you think less of me,” he said, in a voice as empty as his face.

  “No, not less, just…,” I tried again. “In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy catagory for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don’t sleep with them, or…oh, hell.” I looked up at Micah. “Won’t it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?”

  Micah laughed. “Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?”

  I frowned at him. “I don’t…” I pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. “Fuck you,” I said, but I was starting to smile and that usually meant I’d lost the argument. I wasn’t even sure it was an argument.

  “Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself.” His face held a hint of humor now.

  I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. “Stop it, all of you.”

  “Stop what?” Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

  “Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?” Jean-Claude’s neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.

  “No,” I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.

  “Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?” Micah’s mouth was twitching at the edges.

  I glared at them all. “Maybe.”

  “Anita—” Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. “Anita, remember I thought I’d have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true ménage à trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj.”

  I frowned at him. “So it doesn’t bother you?”

  “No. I’m not into men, but I don’t seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do.”

  “Don’t compare me with him,” I said, and was all set to be angry.

  “If it was another woman sleeping naked with you, you’d have the same problems that he does,” Micah said.

  “I’ve slept with some of the female wereleopards before.”

  “But never nude, either you or them,” Micah said.

  I started to deny it, then stopped. Was he right? “
I don’t know, I…I might be able to sleep nude, if it’s just sleep, with another woman. I don’t think I’d like it, though. I’d rather sleep pressed between two men.”

  “And that’s fine,” he said, “but if you knew for a fact that a woman saw you as a potential sex partner, you’d treat her differently.”

  “Yes, she’d go in the boy box.”

  “According to your thinking, Nathaniel and I should put Jean-Claude into a different box now, right?”

  I thought about it, then nodded.

  He smiled. “Anita, seeing him with Auggie wasn’t the first clue I had that Jean-Claude liked men.”

  I looked from one to the other of them. “Have I missed something?”

  “Not what you are thinking, ma petite.” Jean-Claude sat more solidly on the corner of the bed, his back against the foot of it, his knees drawn up for his arms to wrap around. “I have not seduced either of your cats behind your back.”

  I hadn’t really thought he had, but…“Then what is Micah talking about?”

  “Anita,” Nathaniel said, “pay more attention the next time that Jean-Claude feeds off one of us, or Asher feeds off me. You won’t have to ask.”

  “But I’ve been in the bed while you guys did that. What did I miss?”

  The three of them exchanged a look. “No, no looks, just tell me.”

  “You said you were tired,” Micah said. “I think you don’t want to know this, or you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  “Don’t want to know what?”

  Again they exchanged that look.

  “Stop that,” I said, and I had to fight the urge to stomp my foot at them.

  “Let us cuddle together, ma petite. Let us hold you, and give you the comfort that we all need tonight. It has been a long night, a good one in many ways, but long. You are tired.”

  I was tired, but the rush of anger, and confusion, had chased back the tiredness. “I am tired, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and let you hold me. But damn it, you’re all looking at each other like there’s an elephant in the room, and I can’t see it.”

  Claudia spoke from the edge of the room, where she and the rest of the bodyguards were so quiet. We were close to kicking them out of the room. Okay, I was close to kicking them out. “I think I can catch this one,” she said.

  I looked at her. “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Jean-Claude feeds from a man the same way he feeds from a woman. Most vampires differentiate when they feed. Hetrosexual vamps take more liberties with opposite-sex victims. Homosexual vamps take more liberties with same-sex vics. Jean-Claude doesn’t differentiate, do you understand?”

  “When have you seen him feed on other women?”

  “Aha,” Claudia said, “and that is exactly why he doesn’t feed on women except at the clubs, in public. You’d be jealous of other women if he took them in private, but you aren’t jealous of men. You don’t see them as sexually competitive for Jean-Claude’s attention.”

  My head was beginning to hurt. “You’re giving me a headache, Claudia.”

  “Only because you don’t want to think this one through.”

  “You’re saying that Jean-Claude likes both men and women, but because I’d be jealous of women, he takes mostly men. I get it, I get it.”

  “Thank you, Claudia,” Jean-Claude said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Do I apologize to anyone, everyone?” I asked.

  “Just take off the robe and get in bed,” Nathaniel said. “Silk is cold without another body to warm it up.”

  I smiled at him, shook my head, and started to undo my robe. I stopped, and said, “Everyone that’s not getting in the bed, outside.”

  “If it’s an invitation…,” Graham started.

  “Can it, Graham,” Claudia said, and went for the door.

  He hesitated, but he followed her. Lisandro was already going for the door. Claudia had sent most of the others out when things calmed earlier. Probably sent them to watch over our “guests.” The bodyguards piled out. The door shut, and we were alone.

  Micah crawled onto the bed, on the other side of Nathaniel, leaving room for me. “You’re looking a little overdressed,” he said.

  I undid the sash and let the robe fall to the floor. I crawled up onto the silk with the help of their hands. They pulled me down between them, so their naked bodies pressed in against me. There was a moment where I had to close my eyes. The sensation of their warm, bare skin sliding against mine was almost overwhelming. It was like wrapping myself in a favorite blanket with my favorite stuffed toy in my arms, and my gun close at hand. Sandwiched between Micah and Nathaniel was the safest, best place I’d ever known.

  Nathaniel kissed me. My arms slid around his shoulders automatically. He took that as an invitation to press his upper body against mine. Micah’s hand slid across my hip, until his hand found the inside of my thigh. He stroked his hand back and forth, and without thinking about it, I moved my leg so he could reach other things if he wanted to.

  My hands slid down Nathaniel’s back, found the curve where his waist met lower things, traced the two dimples in his very lower back. The kiss had grown into something more, and his body responded to that promise, swelling where he lay trapped against my hip. The feel of him hard and firm against me made me shudder into his mouth.

  He drew back enough to watch my eyes fluttering open and shut. “You are my most favoritest toy.”

  It was more effort than I would have admitted out loud to focus on his face. Micah’s hand kept stroking my thigh, as if he was coaxing me to open my legs for him, but I’d already done that. His fingers kept trailing on that last inch before he touched intimate parts. I wanted him to touch me. Wanted his fingers to finish that teasing promise.

  “I thought you were tired,” Micah whispered, but his mouth was just above my neck, so hot, so close.

  “I was.” My voice was thick, but not with sleep.

  “What do you want?” he breathed against my neck. That alone made me shiver.

  “Touch me.”

  “I am touching you.” His fingers trailed just below where I wanted him to touch, back and forth, back and forth, but not the back and forth I wanted.

  “Please, Micah. No more teasing.”

  His fingers slid over me, and that first touch drew small sounds from me.

  “So eager,” he said, and he rose up enough to see my face. His own face was eager, too, but there was also a soft wonder to his face. He raised his hand from between my legs to touch, lightly, along my face. “I love that look on your face,” he said.

  “What look?” I whispered.

  He smiled. “That look.” He leaned in for his own kiss. Nathaniel’s hand curved over my breast, as Micah’s mouth found mine. Nathaniel’s touch made me more eager at Micah’s mouth, so that the kiss was more than it would have been. I fed at Micah’s mouth, my hand running over his body. I tried to use both hands, but Nathaniel caught my hand, pressed it to the bed, so he could lower his mouth to my breast. He filled his hand with my breast, pressing it until it was just this side of pain. His tongue flicked over my nipple. Micah’s tongue slipped inside my mouth, tasting me. Nathaniel’s mouth slid over more of me, and he sucked, hard and fast. It brought me screaming off the bed, screaming my pleasure into Micah’s mouth. I tried to raise my other hand off the bed, but Nathaniel held it trapped. He bit my breast, and I raked nails down Micah’s back. Nathaniel let go of my other hand, and bit me harder. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to dance that line between pain and pleasure. I put a matching row of scratches down his back, and they let me go.

  I lay gasping on the bed between them, trying to focus my eyes around the white, cottony edges of the world. Micah said, “That was fun.”

  Nathaniel said, “Mmmm.” He flicked his tongue across my nipple, quick and gone.

  I writhed across the bed, my hands grabbing at the silk sheets. “Oh, God!”

  A hand caressed my ankle. That one quiet touch opened
my eyes, made me gaze down my body to find Jean-Claude kneeling there. He was still wearing the robe, belted tight. His face was neutral, pleasant. “Micah invited me to touch you, but I’ve found that it is your invitation I need.” Translation: sometimes in the midst of all the men, I got pissy if someone touched me without my saying yes first. Just because one of the men was touching me didn’t mean that everyone got to touch me equally. A girl’s got to try to draw a line somewhere.

  “You can’t have intercourse until you’ve fed again,” I said.

  He smiled. “So American. There are other ways to pleasure a woman.”

  “But you won’t be able to…”

  His hand slid up my calf, the most delicate of touches. “I will be content, ma petite.”

  “We can stop now,” Micah said, “if you want. This was fun.”

  I gazed down his body and saw just how fun he thought it was. He was long, and thick, and ready, and long and thick for Micah was very long and thick indeed. I glanced down at Nathaniel, and found him just as ready. No, he wasn’t as big as Micah, but then the only one of the men who could compare was Richard. Though Richard didn’t seem as aware of it as Micah.

  Nathaniel was definitely more, just not as more as Micah. Not in length anyway, but in width, well, yeah. Men are hung up on length; trust me, girls pay attention to width, too. Frankly an inch or two less length wasn’t always a bad thing; depended on what you wanted to do with it.

  I ran fingertips over both of them, and just that light touch made them shudder, and me writhe. “So pretty,” I said, “seems a shame to waste them.”

  “We’ll get more,” Micah said.

  “I agree with Anita,” Nathaniel said, grinning.

  Micah smiled at him, a bright flash of teeth in his tanned face.

  “I will join Asher.” Jean-Claude began to slide off the bed.

  “Don’t go,” I said.

  He looked at me; it was a very searching look. “I do not have the patience of your two cats, ma petite. They have served blood for Asher and myself more than once, then watched us have our way with you.”

  “We had to save them for the ardeur the next day, or next night,” I said.