Incubus Dreams ab-12

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "And what will you be doing while Jean-Claude holds me down?"

  "Whatever I want to do."

  I frowned harder. "Uh-unh, I need more of a clue than that."

  "Don't you trust me?" And just the way he said it, the look in his face made me want to say no. If we'd been alone I don't think I'd have let him tie me up without a detailed list of planned activities. But Jean-Claude I trusted to referee. This new, more reasonable, more seductive Richard, I wasn't sure of yet.

  "Anyone who's said 'trust me' or 'don't you trust me' to me couldn't be trusted."

  "So you don't trust me," he said, and the smile faded at the corners.

  "I didn't say that."

  "What did you say, ma petite? " Jean-Claude asked.

  "Yes."

  Richard frowned at me. Jean-Claude made a small line in his forehead, for him a frown, when he was trying not to show anything.

  "Yes," I said.

  Jean-Claude smiled. It took Richard a moment longer to get it. "Yes," he said.

  I nodded.

  "Yes," he said again.

  I nodded, again.

  He smiled, and the smile was that wonderful smile. The one that made him look younger, more relaxed, more... himself, somehow.

  I felt a smile spread across my face, a smile that I couldn't stop and didn't want to.

  "Yes," he said, still smiling.

  "Yes," I said.

  "At last," Jean-Claude said, and he was smiling, too.

  60

  Jean-Claude's hands on mine, his body spilled out along the head of the bed. The pillows had all been thrown to the floor, so there was nothing but the silk sheets and the three of us. "Trade places," Richard had said. It had seemed so simple. I should have known nothing about Richard was ever simple.

  He put his hands on my arms, just under where Jean-Claude held me. He wrapped those big hands around my arms, then began to slide his hands down my arms. He was only touching my arms, such an innocent place to touch, but he made the movement slow, and sensuous, trailing an edge of fingernail like the tiny press of something harder, and so much more dangerous against my skin. His hands reached under my arm, the trail of nails tickled, and made me writhe and giggle. Half because it tickled, and half because of the slow, sure movements of his hands. I'd forgotten what it was like to have all of Richard's attention in a bed. When you think you'll never be able to touch someone again, you try to forget.

  I waited for him to curve his hands over my breasts, but he didn't. He moved his hands just a little lower on my sides, so that his hands barely brushed the edges of my breasts and kept moving down my body. That one small brush against the edges of my breasts caught my breath in my throat, and closed my eyes, to shudder under his hands.

  His hands, so large they cupped my ribs, and nearly met at my waist, his thumbs pressing over my belly button, my lower stomach. I waited for his hands to go lower, and just as he had above, he moved his hands to the sides of my hips. Swept that sure, heavy, glide of skin and nails away from even the beginning of my pubic bone, so that he was only touching my hips, my thighs, but nothing more. His hands kept sliding downward, but he'd skipped the parts I most wanted him to touch. It left me making small noises, low in my throat, not from what he was doing, but from what he hadn't done. From what I wanted him to do.

  It made me raise my arms, or try to, but Jean-Claude's hands were there. He kept my hands pressed to the bed. I put more effort into it, and found that I could raise my hands off the bed an inch or so, but Jean-Claude pressed me back to the bed, going up on his knees to get the leverage he needed. I'd made him change positions, made him work a little harder, but that was all. I put more effort into raising my wrists, freeing my arms. I don't know why, maybe because I hadn't really thought about not being able to get away. Being trapped in theory is one thing, knowing it for a fact, is different. Or different for me.

  "Why struggle?" Richard asked, in a voice that held a tone I'd never heard from him. "You know that Jean-Claude won't let anything bad happen." His big hands finished their glide down my body, to end with his fingers wrapping around my ankles. He didn't press them to the bed, just held them, held my ankles in his hands.

  I tried to get away from him. I couldn't help it. It was just one of those things. Tell me I can't, or show me I can't, and I have to try. I wasn't trying as hard as I could, but I was trying. Trying enough to feel the strength in his hands, a strength that could bend steel. I couldn't get away.

  He spread my legs, using his hands on my ankles. He spread my legs, wide and wider, while I tried to stop him. It was a game, because we'd all agreed to this. I wanted him to make love to me, but game or not, there was something about the way he spread my legs with the strength in his hands, while Jean-Claude pinned my arms, that sped my pulse, and made the struggles go from halfhearted to not so halfhearted. It was stupid, but I couldn't help myself. I had to try to stop him from spreading my legs, from exposing me, and the fact that I couldn't both scared me and excited me. The two feelings should have been mutually exclusive, but they weren't.

  "Tell me to stop," Richard said, and his voice had grown deeper.

  I shook my head. "No."

  "Then why are you struggling?" he asked, and there was a look in his face, eager, dark, happy, all at once. He pushed my legs farther apart, until it was just this side of hurting. Until the muscles in my thighs began to ache with the stretch. "Why are you struggling, if you don't want me to stop?"

  I said the only thing I could think of, "I don't know." My voice was breathier than I thought it would be, as if my pulse was interfering. I realized then, that he'd spread my legs so far apart that I really couldn't struggle, not unless I wanted it to hurt. It made me push harder against Jean-Claude's hands. I raised up a few inches, so that he actually had to come to his knees, and press down, to hold me secure. Him coming to his knees meant that suddenly his body was exposed just above my head. He hung loose and soft just above me, and until he fed he would stay soft. I loved the sensation of him in my mouth when he was like this, because it didn't last, except when he had not fed. Now, I could explore the softness of him as long as I wanted, and it wouldn't change. I strained back for him, neck bowing, mouth reaching, and he was out of reach. Dangling just above me, but his hands held me down, and I couldn't get to him. Jean-Claude had to know what I was trying to do, but he kept his weight on my wrists, and his body arched above me, out of reach.

  My voice came out strained, breathless, "Please."

  "Please, what?" Richard's voice from the other end of the bed.

  " Ma petite has a penchant for men when they are soft. Until I feed, she could indulge this... desire."

  "And you're keeping it just out of her reach," Richard said, his voice dropped an octave lower so that it was almost painfully low, his voice just before it began to growl.

  " Oui. "

  "Why?" he asked.

  "Is that not the game that you wish to play?"

  A thin line of growl trickled from Richard's throat. "Yes, yes, it is." He was up on all fours, too, but unlike Jean-Claude he was thick and heavy against the front of his body. "But I don't want it to be you she's begging for, I want it to be me."

  "Why can it not be both of us?" Jean-Claude asked.

  The two men stared at each other, and I had a moment to feel their, not power, but almost as if their wills were suddenly power. I could feel the strength of their wills aimed at each other. "You chose not to let me feed," Jean-Claude said, "deliberately. You thought she would not have a use for me until I could be erect." He smiled. "You underestimate ma petite 's love of the male body. She loves us in all our many forms." That last held some note, some jab, that I didn't understand. I should have, but the feel of their hands on my body, and the view of both of them nude had me distracted. I never seemed to think as clearly around them when they were naked, embarrassing, but true.

  Richard's face darkened with anger, and the first trickle of his power slipped past his so tight shiel
ding. It danced along my legs like a breeze off the plains of hell. Hot, so hot. It raised goosebumps in a shivering line down my body. Me, shivering, brought their attention back to me. Jean-Claude's face was pleasantly neutral, hiding. Richard looked down at me, and the anger was still there, but underneath that was something else. It held sex, but it also held something darker. Something that promised things beyond sex, beyond anything safe and sane. A moment to glimpse in his eyes things he probably didn't want to see in any mirror, before he turned away, so I couldn't see his face. As if he knew what I'd seen.

  "If you're going to fight, get off of me," I said. It was a little tough to put much authority in my voice when I was naked and they were holding me down, but I managed. My voice was suddenly mine again, not breathy, not sexy, just mine.

  "That is not up to me, ma petite, " Jean-Claude said. "Are we going to fight, Richard?"

  That hot, hot wind eased out from his body again. A line of heat to trail like something solid and reaching across my skin. It was like fingers, fingers made of heat climbing up my skin, touching places Richard had very deliberately avoided. When that seeking heat caressed between my legs, I gasped, and managed to say, "Stop it, whatever it is, stop it." The heat climbed higher, using my body like a fleshy ladder.

  "Does it hurt?" Richard asked, but he was looking at Jean-Claude, not me.

  "No," and the power caressed my breasts as if some great monster had breathed their breath hot across them. I shuddered under that touch, eyes closing, neck bowing.

  I opened my eyes staring up into Jean-Claude's face. His face was still pleasant, unreadable, hidden. "Are you well, ma petite? "

  I nodded. I might have said something else, but Richard's power caressed my throat, flowed over my lips, so that my mouth felt hot, as if some hot, thick liquid lay on my tongue. I looked up into Jean-Claude's midnight blue eyes, and whispered, "Richard."

  Jean-Claude lowered his face over mine, more of his weight pressing in his hands, against my wrists, so even as he came closer, I was held more tightly. I opened my mouth for him, but he paused just short of a kiss. He licked the air above my mouth. I thought at first he'd missed, but he raised up enough to look down my body to Richard. "What game is this?"

  "You and she aren't the only ones who gained power when she bound herself to Damian and Nathaniel." His voice wasn't happy when he said it, in fact the anger was back. The anger fed directly into his power so that a line of scalding heat flashed up my body and tore a scream from my throat.

  Jean-Claude put his mouth to mine, and his power was in his kiss. A blessed coolness to glide over my tongue, down my throat, to spill in a chilling line through my body and quiet all that heat. And as if Richard's power had been waiting for that very thing, it surged forward, and I was suddenly covered in their power. It was as if my body was the wick for Richard's candle and the spout for Jean-Claude's cool water to flow down. But you can't be both flame and water. You can't burn and drown, not at the same time. My body tried, it tried to be cold and hot, flame and water, life and death. But wait, that last, that last we understood, my power and me. Life and death, especially death.

  My power didn't simply rise, it burst my shields, like a dam smashed, and the power of that torrent, so long contained, poured over us all. It swept us not away, but together. We were on our knees on the bed with Richard pressed to the front of me, and Jean-Claude against my back. They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if its direct opposite does not also exist. I don't know if that's true, but in that moment I understood that though each opposite needs the other, they also can't exist simultaneously. They are two sides to a coin, but what of the coin? What is the coin that separates good from evil, light from dark, what is it that binds them together, yet keeps them eternally apart? Good and evil, light and dark, I don't know, but with Richard and Jean-Claude, it was me.

  I was the metal that both separated them and bound them together. I was their coin, and they were my different sides. Always apart, always together, different, but all of one piece. Richard pressed to the front of my body, and it was as if he burned, as if his body was so hot, it should have burst into flames, as if the sun itself lay within his skin. Jean-Claude pressed at my back like water, cool, cold water, that had risen from the very depths of the sea, where it runs cold and black, and slow, and strange things glide there. If you look at the sun too long you go blind; if you swim too deep into the sea you drown.

  I screamed, screamed because I didn't know what to do with the power. I was their coin, but I didn't know how to forge us into one piece. It was like trying to fit three people into one body. How do you start? Who gets shoved in where?

  But I wasn't master here, it wasn't my job to find a way to fit three such huge pieces into one. Jean-Claude's cool power flowed over me, soothed the burning, touched the edge of Richard's power, and brought us all back up to the surface of our metaphysical sea. He said almost exactly what I was thinking, "I can only hold it back for a moment, when next we drown, we must not fight it. We must embrace it, and each other."

  "Define embrace," Richard said, and his voice was thick with effort, as if he were holding back his side of some huge weight, and maybe he was.

  "You into Anita's body, and I will feed upon yours."

  We didn't have time to say yes or no or anything. The power was just suddenly back, as if we'd opened a door and found the building falling down around us. We were out of time. We either rode the power, or it would bury us. Bury us along with everyone we loved, everyone we'd vowed to protect. Distantly, I had the thought, if we would but take the fourth mark, it would be easier to ride, but the thought vanished under the press of Richard's body. His body was ripe and thick and ready, and he'd made certain that Jean-Claude's wouldn't be. There might have been other ways to bind us, but Richard had taken some of Jean-Claude's choices, and mine, by simply not allowing the other man to feed. Funny how you try to avoid one evil, and fall headlong into another.

  Richard pushed himself inside me. I was tight, and he was thick, but the moment he began to push inside me, the terrible weight of power eased. It was as if Richard's body broke the plane of some barrier, as if my body were a door, and we'd pushed inside.

  Richard's voice came strained, "Tight, so tight. I don't want to hurt you." He was above me in a sort of push-up, and the view between our bodies was perfect. Perfect for watching him push his way inside me.

  I grabbed his arms, and said, "Don't stop, God, don't stop."

  "You're too tight."

  "Not for long," I said.

  "Is she wet?" Jean-Claude asked.

  Richard gave him a look, and it wasn't friendly. "Yes."

  "Then you will not hurt her."

  "You said it yourself, Jean-Claude, you aren't this well-endowed, you don't know how you can hurt a woman without meaning to."

  I slapped Richard's shoulder, because I couldn't reach his face. He looked down at me, anger so ready in his eyes. "I am not Clair. I want you, Richard. I want you inside me, please, Richard, please. Don't stop, please, don't stop."

  He looked down at me, and the look on his face was very male, and very Richard all at the same time. I watched him, felt how much he wanted to shove himself inside me, but that part of him that was still Richard, still thinking so hard, was afraid. Not afraid that he'd hurt me, but afraid to see the same look on my face he'd seen on Clair's. I tasted the fear of that on my own tongue. Felt the pulse in my neck speed, not with lust, but fear. Fear that Clair was right. That he was an animal. If I could have slapped her around in that moment, I might have. The last thing Richard needed was more emotional shit to shovel.

  "If you will not do it, m on ami, then let me feed, so that we may finish this."

  "I am not your friend," Richard said, and his anger spread like hot oil on my skin. It didn't hurt like earlier, and I knew that was Jean-Claude's doing. He was dulling the edge of Richard's power, or rather tu
rning it from burning pain, to something more fun. Heated oil rolling down my skin instead of biting bits of fire; how could I argue?

  "Be my enemy then," Jean-Claude said, "but one of us must do this. If you will not, then you must help me do it."

  I sat up, and he wasn't far enough in for it, so that he slipped back out. That pressure came crashing back. Jean-Claude grabbed a handful of my hair, pulled my head back, and kissed me. Hard, deep, tongue searching my mouth. I melted into that kiss, gave my mouth to his, my face to his hand, my head to the hand still wrapped in my hair. His other hand slid from my face down my neck, my shoulder, to caress the front of my breast. He bent me back against his body, and I understood. As we'd discussed, his power lay in seduction. He was literally building a deeper binding on the foundation of sex. Each touch, each caress, each penetration, another stone to keep us safe. I'd have argued with his choice of building materials, but I wasn't master here. This was his ball game, not mine. Of course, there was more than one way to play ball.

  Jean-Claude's hands slid over the front of my body, until he held my breasts. He squeezed them between his hands, squeezed them hard and sharp. I came away from his mouth with a gasp, and a sound low in my throat. "You will not hurt her, Richard."

  Richard hadn't moved back. He was still sitting where my body had left him, his body between my knees, close enough that he could have joined Jean-Claude in the foreplay, but he just knelt there.

  I stroked my hand over him, found him not as hard as he had been. I wrapped my hand around him, tight and hard. Brought a small sound from him. "I want this," and I squeezed him again, watched his eyes lose focus, "this inside me."

  I could feel that he wanted to, but his fears held him closer than any lover's arms ever would. I let go of him and turned with a cry to Jean-Claude. I felt suddenly half-crazed with need. A need to have someone inside me. Jean-Claude hadn't fed yet, but there was still something I could do for my own pleasure. I turned my back on Richard, and laid a light kiss on Jean-Claude's mouth, but that wasn't what I wanted. He rose up on his knees as if he knew where I was headed.