“You son of bitch,” I said softly.
The smile widened. “Our dream was interrupted, ma petite.”
“I knew it wasn’t an accident that you were in my dreams,” I said. It came out hostile, and I was pleased. Because the hot summer wind was blowing the scent of his cologne against my face. Exotic, with an undercurrent of flowers and spice. I almost hated to wash my sheets for fear of losing the scent of him sometimes.
“I asked you to wear my gift so I could dream of you. You knew what I meant to do. If you say other, then you are lying. May I come in?”
He’d been invited in often enough that he could have crossed my threshold without the invitation, but it had become a game with him. A formal acknowledgment every time he crossed that I wanted him. It irritated me and pleased me, like so much about Jean-Claude.
“You might as well come in.”
He walked past me. I noticed the black boots were laced up the back from heel to top. The back of his black jeans fit smooth and tight so there was no need to guess what he wasn’t wearing under them.
He spoke without turning around. “Do not sound so grumpy, ma petite. You have the ability to bar me from your dreams.” He turned then, and his eyes were full of a dark light that had nothing to do with vampire powers. “You welcomed me with more than open arms.”
I blushed for the second time in less than five minutes. “Richard is in jail in Tennessee,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“You know?” I said. “How?”
“The local Master of the City called to tell me. He was very much afraid that I would think it was his doing. His way of destroying our triumvirate.”
“If he was going to destroy us, it would be a murder charge, not attempted rape,” I said.
“True,” Jean-Claude said, then laughed. The laughter trailed over my bare skin like a small, private wind. “Whoever framed our Richard did not know him well. I would believe murder of Richard before rape.”
It was almost exactly what I’d said. Why was that unnerving? “Are you going down to Tennessee?”
“The master, Colin, has forbidden me to enter his lands. To do so now would be an act of aggression, if not outright war.”
“Why should he care?” I asked.
“He fears my power, ma petite. He fears our power, which is why he has made you persona non grata in his territory as well.”
I stared at him. “You are kidding, I hope. He’s forbidden either of us to help Richard?”
Jean-Claude nodded.
“And he expects us to believe it’s not his doing?” I said.
“I believe him, ma petite.”
“You could tell he wasn’t lying over the phone?” I asked.
“Some master vampires can lie to other master vampires, though I do not think Colin is such a power. But that is not why I believe him.”
“Why then?”
“The last time you and I traveled to another vampire’s lands, we slew her.”
“She was trying to kill us,” I said.
“Technically,” he said, “she had set all of us free save you. You she wished to make a vampire.”
“Like I said, she was trying to kill me.”
He smiled. “Oh, ma petite, you wound me.”
“Cut the crap. This Colin can’t really believe that we are just going to leave Richard to rot.”
“He has the right to deny us safe passage,” Jean-Claude said.
“Because we killed another master in her own territory?” I asked.
“He doesn’t need grounds for his refusal, ma petite. He merely has to refuse.”
“How do you vampires get anything accomplished?”
“Slowly,” Jean-Claude said. “But remember, ma petite, we have the time to be patient.”
“Well, I don’t, and Richard doesn’t.”
“You could have eternity if you would both accept the fourth mark,” he said, voice quiet, neutral.
I shook my head. “Richard and I both value what little is left of our humanity. Besides, eternity my ass, the fourth mark wouldn’t make us immortal. It just means that we live as long as you do. You’re harder to kill than we are, but not that much harder.”
He sat down on the couch, folding his legs under him. It wasn’t an easy position, wearing that much leather. Maybe the boots were softer than they looked. Naw.
He rested his elbows on the couch arm, leaning his chest outward. The sheer red cloth covered his chest completely and left nothing to the imagination. His nipples pressed against the thin fabric. The red haze of cloth made the cross-shaped burn scar look almost bloody.
He raised himself upward with his hands propped on the couch arm like a mermaid on a rock. I expected him to tease or say something sexual. Instead, he said, “I came to tell you of Richard’s imprisonment in person.” He watched my face very closely. “I thought it might upset you.”
“Of course it upsets me. This Colin guy, vampire, whatever the hell he is, is crazy if he thinks he’s going to keep us from helping Richard.”
Jean-Claude smiled. “Asher is negotiating even as we speak to try and allow you to enter Colin’s territory.”
Asher was his second banana, his vampire lieutenant. I frowned. “Why me and not you?”
“Because you are much better with police matters than I am.” He threw one long, leather-clad leg over the couch arm and slithered over it to his feet. It was like watching a lap dance without a lap. To my knowledge, Jean-Claude had never stripped at Guilty Pleasures, the vampire strip club he owned, but he could have. He had a way of making even the smallest movement sexual and vaguely obscene. You always felt like he was thinking wicked thoughts, things you couldn’t say in mixed company.
“Why didn’t you just call and tell me all this?” I said. I knew the answer, or at least part of it. He seemed to be as enamored of my body as I was of his. Good sex cuts both ways. The seducer can become the seduced, with the right victim.
He glided towards me. “I thought this was news to be delivered face-to-face.” He stopped just in front of me, so close that the slightly full hem of my nightie brushed his thighs. He gave a small movement of his body and the satin edge of the nightie moved gently against my bare legs. Most men would have had to use their hands to get that kind of movement. Of course, Jean-Claude had had four hundred years to perfect his technique. Practice makes perfect.
“Why face-to-face?” I asked, my voice a little breathy.
A smile curled his lips. “You know why,” he said.
“I want to hear you say it,” I said.
His beautiful face fell into blank, careful lines, only his eyes held the heat like a banked fire. “I could not let you leave without touching you one last time. I want to do the wicked dance before you leave.”
I laughed, but it was tense, nervous. My mouth was suddenly dry. I was having trouble not staring at his chest. The “wicked dance” was his pet euphemism for sex. I wanted to touch him, but if I did, I wasn’t sure where it would stop. Richard was in trouble. I’d betrayed him once with Jean-Claude; I wouldn’t let him down again. “I need to pack,” I said. I turned abruptly and started walking towards the bedroom.
He followed me.
I put my gun on the bedside table beside the phone, got socks out of the drawer, and started tossing them into the suitcase, trying to ignore Jean-Claude. He doesn’t ignore easily. He lay on the bed beside the suitcase, propped on one elbow, long legs stretched the length of the bed. He looked fearfully overdressed against my white sheets. He watched me move around the room, moving just his eyes. He reminded me of a cat: watchful, perfectly at ease.
I went into the nearby bathroom to get toiletries. I had a man’s shaving kit bag that I kept all the small stuff in. I was traveling out of town more and more lately. Might as well be organized about it.
Jean-Claude was lying on his back, long, black hair spilling like a dark dream on my white pillow. He gave a slight smile as I entered the room. He held a hand o
ut to me. “Join me, ma petite.”
I shook my head. “If I join you, we’ll get distracted. I’m going to pack and get dressed. We don’t have time for anything else.”
He crawled towards me over the bed, moving in a rolling glide like he had muscles in places he wasn’t supposed to have them. “Am I so unappealing, ma petite? Or is your concern for Richard so overwhelming?”
“You know exactly how appealing you are to me. And yes, I am worried about Richard.”
He slid off the bed, following at my heels. He glided in a sort of graceful slow motion while I hurried to and fro, but he paced me, matching each of my quick steps with his easy ones. It was like being chased by a very slow predator, one that had all the time in the world but knew in the end it would catch you.
The second time I almost ran into him, I finally said, “What is your problem? Quit following me around. You’re making me nervous.” Truth was, his body being so close made my skin jump.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and sighed. “I don’t want you to go.”
That stopped me in my tracks. I turned and stared at him. “Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“For centuries I have dreamed of having enough power to be safe. Enough power to hold my lands and finally, at long last, have some sense of peace. Now I fear the very man who could make my ambitions come true.”
“What are you talking about?” I came to stand in front of him, arms full of shirts and hangers.
“Richard; I fear Richard.” There was a look in his eyes that I’d seldom seen. He was unsure of himself. It was a very normal, human expression. It looked totally at odds with the elegant man in his peekaboo shirt.
“Why would you be afraid of Richard?” I asked.
“If you love Richard more than you love me, I fear you will leave me for him.”
“If you haven’t noticed, Richard hates me right now. He talks more to you than to me.”
“He does not hate you, ma petite. He hates that you are with me. There is a great difference between the two hatreds.” Jean-Claude stared up at me almost mournfully.
I sighed. “Are you jealous of Richard?”
He looked down at the toes of his expensive boots. “I would be a fool if I were not.”
I transferred the blouses to one arm and touched his face. I turned his face up to mine. “I’m sleeping with you, not Richard, remember?”
“Yet, here I am, ma petite. I am dressed for your dreams and you do not even offer me a kiss.”
His reaction surprised me. Just when I thought I knew him. “Are you hurt that I didn’t give you a hello kiss?”
“Perhaps,” he said very softly.
I shook my head and tossed the blouses in the general direction of the suitcase. I bumped his knees with my legs until he opened his legs and let me stand, pressing my body the length of his. I put my hands on his shoulders. The sheer red cloth was rougher textured than it looked, not soft. “How can anyone as gorgeous as you are be insecure?”
He wrapped his arms around my waist, snuggling me against him. He squeezed his legs against me. The leather of the boots was softer than it looked, more supple. With his arms around me and his legs squeezing against me, I was effectively trapped. But I was a willing captive, so it was okay.
“What I want to do is go down on my knees and lick the front of this nifty shirt. I want to know just how much of you I can suck through the cloth.” I raised my eyebrows at him.
He laughed soft and low. The sound raised goose bumps up and down my body, tightening my nipples and other places. His laughter was a touchable, intrusive thing. He could do things with his voice that most men couldn’t do with their hands. Yet he was afraid I’d leave him for Richard.
He rested his face on my chest, cradled between my breasts. He rubbed his cheeks softly back and forth against me, making the satin slide against me, until my breath came faster.
I sighed and leaned my face over him, folding our bodies together. “I don’t plan to leave you for Richard. But he’s in trouble, and that comes before sex.”
Jean-Claude raised his face to me, our arms so entangled that he almost couldn’t move. “Kiss me, ma petite, that is all. Just a kiss to tell me that you love me.”
I laid my lips against his forehead. “I thought you were more secure than this.”
“I am,” he said, “with everyone but you.”
I pulled back enough to study his face. “Love should make you feel more secure not less.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, “it should. But you love Richard, too. You try not to love him, and he tries not to love you. But love is not so easily slain—or so easily aroused.”
I bent over him. The first kiss was a mere brush of lips like satin rubbing against my mouth. The second kiss was harder. I bit lightly along his upper lip, and he made a small sound. He kissed me back, hands sliding to either side of my face. He kissed me as if he were drinking me down, trying to lick the last drops from the bottle of some fine wine, tender, eager, hungry. I collapsed against him, hands sliding over him as if even my hands were hungry for the feel of him.
I felt his fangs, sharp, bruising against my lips and tongue. There was a quick, sharp pain and the sweet copper taste of blood. He made a small inarticulate sound and rolled over me. I was suddenly on the bed with him above me. His eyes were one solid glowing blue, the pupils gone in a rush of desire.
He tried to turn my head to one side, nuzzling at my neck. I turned my face into his, blocking him. “No blood, Jean-Claude.”
He went almost limp on top of me, face buried in the rumpled sheets. “Please, ma petite.”
I pushed at his shoulder. “Get off of me.”
He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, carefully not looking at me. “I can enter every orifice of your body with every part of me, but you refuse me the last bit of yourself.”
I got off the bed carefully, not sure my knees were steady. “I am not food,” I said.
“It is so much more than mere feeding, ma petite. If only you would allow me to show you how very much more.”
I grabbed the pile of blouses and started taking them off the hanger and folding them in the suitcase. “No blood; that is the rule.”
He rolled onto his side. “I have offered you all that I am, ma petite, yet you withhold yourself from me. How can I not be jealous of Richard?”
“You’re getting sex. He’s not even getting dates.”
“You are mine, but you are not mine, not completely.”
“I’m not a pet, Jean-Claude. People aren’t supposed to belong to other people.”
“If you could find a way to love Richard’s beast, you would not hold back from him. Him you would give yourself to.”
I folded the last blouse. “Damn it, Jean-Claude, this is stupid. I chose you. All right? It’s a done deal. Why are you so worried?”
“Because the moment he was in trouble, you dropped everything to run to his side.”
“I’d do the same for you,” I said.
“Exactly,” he said. “I have no doubt that you love me in your way, but you love him, too.”
I zipped up the suitcase. “We are not having this argument. I’m sleeping with you. I am not going to donate blood just to make you feel more secure.”
The phone rang. Asher’s cultured voice, so like Jean-Claude’s: “Anita, how are you this fine summer evening?”
“I’m fine, Asher. What’s up?”
“May I speak with Jean-Claude?” he asked.
I almost argued, but Jean-Claude had his hand out for the phone. I gave the phone to him.
Jean-Claude spoke in French, which he and Asher had a habit of doing. I was glad that he had someone to speak his native tongue with, but my French just wasn’t up to following the conversation. I suspected strongly that sometimes the vampires spoke in front of me like you would speak in front of a child that doesn’t have enough grown-up talk to follow the conversation. It was rude and condescending, but they were centuries-old
vampires, and sometimes they just couldn’t help themselves.
He switched to English, talking directly to me. “Colin has refused you entrance to his territory. He has refused entrance to any of my people.”
“Can he do that?” I asked.
Jean-Claude nodded. “Oui.”
“I am going down there to help Richard. Arrange it, Jean-Claude, or I’ll go down there without arrangements being made.”
“Even if it’s war?” he asked.
“Shit,” I said. “Call the little son of a bitch and let me talk to him.”
Jean-Claude raised his eyebrows but nodded. He hung up on Asher, then dialed a number. He said, “Colin, this is Jean-Claude. Yes, Asher told me what you have decided. My human servant, Anita Blake, wishes to speak with you.” He listened for a moment. “No, I do not know what she wishes to say to you.” He handed me the phone and settled back against the headboard of the bed as if watching a show.
“Hello, Colin?”
“This is he.” His accent was pure Middle American. It made him sound less exotic than some of them.
“My name’s Anita Blake.”
“I know who you are,” he said. “You’re the Executioner.”
“Yeah, but I’m not coming down there for an execution. My friend is in trouble. I just want to help him.”
“He is your third. If you enter my lands, then two of your triumvirate will be within my territory. You are too powerful to be allowed entrance.”
“Asher said you also denied access to any of our people, is that true?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why, for God’s sake?”
“The Council, the rulers of all vampire kind, itself fears Jean-Claude. I will not have you in my lands.”
“Colin, look, I don’t want your power base. I don’t want your lands. I have no designs upon you whatsoever. You’re a master vampire. You can taste the truth in my words.”
“You mean what you say, but you are the servant. Jean-Claude is the master.”
“Don’t take this wrong, Colin, but why would Jean-Claude want your lands? Even if he was planning some sort of Ghengis Kahn invasion, your lands are three territories away from us. If he was going to try conquering someone, he’d pick land next door.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 85
