[Anita Blake 15] - The Harlequin

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “He always gets there before I do.”

  “There isn’t a single thing that Micah got to do that you didn’t have the chance to do first.”

  “My fault again,” he said.

  “Your choices,” I said. I couldn’t keep the strain out of my voice. Fine, let him know how much I was hurting.

  “I love that,” he said.

  I frowned up at him, my hands pressed over my abdomen. “What?”

  “That sound in your voice, I love it. The last time I heard it was in Raina’s voice.”

  I frowned harder. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know that she was a sexual sadist, and God knows she was, but she also liked pain. She liked rough sex from both sides; dishing it out and being the dish.”

  I couldn’t frown harder so I said, “I actually did know that. I have some of her memories, remember.”

  “That’s right, you carry her munin, her ghostly memory.”

  The munin were the ancestral memories of the werewolves. When a wolf died, they ate a little bit of the deceased and made them a permanent group memory. For real, not just ritual—though most werewolves couldn’t “talk” as directly as I could with Raina’s munin. It was supposed to enable you to access memories, get advice, but Raina had done her best to try to possess me for real. I had almost complete ability to keep her contained inside me. She wasn’t like the beasts, or the ardeur. Raina was something I could keep caged. Using her powers, that was chancier.

  “You used her to heal the cross burn in your hand. Maybe you could use her to heal yourself now?”

  I looked at him. The cross-shaped burn on my hand was a shiny, permanent scar. Raina’s ability to heal was something I had retained. It had been one of the reasons that Richard had made her munin, instead of leaving her body to rot. She’d been a sexual sadist and tried to kill us both, but she had been powerful. So I could sometimes use her abilities to heal myself and others, but the cost was always high. I could cage her inside me, ignore her, but if I let her out, well, she demanded payment. Her payment was usually painful, or sexual, or both.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that would be a good idea right now.”

  “Have you ever seen memories of her and me together?”

  “Some. I try to steer clear of them.”

  “The last time I was able to do what we did today was with her.” He looked at me, his face almost peaceful, waiting.

  “You miss her.”

  “I miss some things about her. Remember, Anita, I was a virgin. I didn’t understand how unusual what she was teaching me was.”

  “Nothing to compare it to,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “There are other sexual positions where you can be as rough as you want, and I won’t hurt this much afterward, Richard. Part of it is that you don’t do it this rough during the ardeur. The ardeur steals my ability to guard myself.”

  “Don’t you understand, Anita? I hate, and I love, that I hurt you. I love the sound of strain in your voice. I love the thought that my body did this to you. That just flat does it for me. That I was so big, so powerful, so violent, that you’re hurt inside. You’re right, if I hurt you enough for hospitals, it wouldn’t be fun. That I wouldn’t enjoy. Raina tried to get me to enjoy that level, but for that she had to turn to Gabriel.”

  Gabriel had been in charge of the local wereleopards before I had to kill him. He’d being trying to rape and kill me, on film, at the time. Raina had been offstage urging him on. They’d made a lovely couple, in that lower-circle-of-hell sort of way. I’d sent them to hell together on the same night; talk about a double date.

  “Yeah, Gabriel liked it serial-killer bad.”

  “So did Raina,” Richard said, “though not her body, not for the worst of it.”

  “I’m told a good dominant in the bondage and submission scene never asks of their sub what they aren’t willing to do to their own body.”

  “That’s the rule,” Richard said, “but we both know that Raina wasn’t a good dominant.”

  “No,” I said, “she wasn’t.”

  “The cramping easing?” He made it a question.

  “Yeah, how did you know?”

  “Your face is smoothing out. You’re not clutching as much at your stomach. And I watched Raina work through the same kind of pain, a lot. She said one of the things she liked about me was that I could be as rough as she wanted in exactly the way she wanted it.”

  “For future reference, don’t ever fuck me this hard in that position again, okay?”

  He nodded. “What position do you like?”

  I opened my mouth, closed it. Tried to think of how to phrase it. “I don’t like it this rough on a nightly basis. After a session even close to this rough, it takes a day or two to feel like doing it again.”

  “You’ll have to feed the ardeur in a few hours.”

  “There are gentler ways to feed it, Richard.”

  “Not with Micah there isn’t.”

  “Well-endowed doesn’t mean you can’t be gentle, Richard.”

  He nodded. “You’re right.”

  We stared at each other a moment. Something on his face made me say, “Raina really fucked you up, didn’t she?”

  He nodded. “Yes, she did. When she found out I enjoyed it rough, she wanted to make sure I’d never be able to get my needs met anywhere but with her. She meant to keep me, Anita, and if she hadn’t tried to include Gabriel, I might have stayed with her.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” I said.

  He gave me sad eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because you’re a good person, and if it hadn’t been Gabriel it would have been someone or something else. Raina couldn’t resist pushing people past their boundaries. She’d have kept pushing until she broke you; it’s what she did.”

  He nodded and took in a breath deep enough that it rocked his broad shoulders. “I’ll clean up in the group showers.”

  I wanted him to go, but…He’d tried so hard. He’d actually saved me from Marmee Noir. “You can clean up here.”

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t.”

  The way he said it seemed odd. “Why not?”

  “Because I like the idea I hurt you. I like it a lot. I don’t trust myself not to hurt you again.”

  “I’d say no, Richard. You respect no.”

  He nodded. “But I also know the effect we have on each other. I don’t trust myself not to try to seduce you again, so that I can push myself inside you while you’re still bleeding from the first time.” He closed his eyes and a shudder ran down him from head to feet. I didn’t think it was because he was repulsed by what he wanted to do; no, it was a shudder of anticipation. He was being honest with me, with himself, about what he wanted.

  “I like it rough sometimes, Richard, but not that rough. Sorry.”

  He nodded and gave me a sad smile. “Raina helped me enjoy intercourse too rough for anyone else. She made Nathaniel like pain in a way that most people wouldn’t even survive.”

  “I know.”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t. You think you know, but you can’t imagine it. I saw some of what she taught him to enjoy.”

  “He doesn’t talk like you ever saw him with her,” I said.

  “Blindfolds, earplugs, nose plugs; you can’t see, hear, or smell who’s in the room. She invited me over once, tried to get me to help her, but torturing was never anything I liked. Raina found that disappointing.”

  I swallowed and tried to think of something useful to say; nothing came to mind. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “I don’t know why I told you that. Did I want to shock you? Did I want you to think less of Nathaniel? Less of me?” He shook his head and started for the door again.

  I was ready for him to leave because I didn’t know what to do with the mood he was in, and I really didn’t want more sex. The hard cramps had passed, but I was hurting, and would be for a while.

 
; He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Do you realize that most of the men in your bed are ones that she was with?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  He turned and looked over his shoulder at me. “Jean-Claude was with her and Gabriel; it was the price she demanded from him. You know she made Jason a werewolf?”

  “Yeah.” I’d actually shared that memory with Jason. She’d tied him to a bed and cut him up while she fucked him. She hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. I’d been inside her head on the memory, and she hadn’t cared. She really was serial-killer material, because her pleasure had meant more to her than Jason’s life.

  I got a whisper through my head. “Think harder, Anita.”

  I shivered, and that made my lower body hurt. “Go, Richard, go, okay?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think I need not to think about her so hard.”

  “She talked to you?”

  I nodded.

  “You think you have her under control, and maybe you do, but you might just think on this. Jean-Claude, me, Jason, Nathaniel, all of us were hers first. Maybe there’s a reason you’re attracted to her old lovers.” With that very unsettling thought, he left, closing the door behind him. I was happy that Richard was doing therapy; it was helping, honest. The trouble was, he seemed to want me to do therapy with him, and that I wasn’t ready for.

  17

  I DID A quick cleanup, and then realized I had no clothes in the bathroom. My robe was lying in a heap beside the bed. Great. I wrapped the towel more securely around my hair, then wrapped one of the bigger towels around my body. One of the good things about being short was that the towel covered me from armpits to ankles. The funny thing was that almost no matter who was in the other room, they’d probably seen me nude at least once. I should have just walked out and gotten my clothes out of the armoire and ignored everybody. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t that comfortable around my own nudity. There were days when I was pretty sure I’d never be that comfortable.

  Worse yet, my gun was outside in the bedroom. My clothes I could live without, but that I’d left my gun in the other room said just how much Richard affected me. He made me forget myself, even the parts of me that almost no one else could drive from my mind. For some reason I just couldn’t go out there unarmed, I don’t know why. I just couldn’t do it. I was still aching all the way up to almost my belly button. The cramping had mostly stopped, but I was feeling stupid and vulnerable. I wanted a gun. It would make me feel better. There, that was the truth. I’d started hiding guns in the places where I spent a lot of time. They were for emergencies. This wasn’t an emergency, but…hell with it, it was my gun. If I felt the need, screw it.

  I knelt down by the sink and opened the cabinet doors. I had to reach back and up into the plumbing to find it, but there was my Firestar duct-taped among the pipes. There’d been a couple of times when I’d been separated from my carry guns and needed a gun. So I’d given into my paranoia and hidden a few around. The Firestar wasn’t my main backup gun anymore, so it lived here as the ultimate hideaway. I brought the gun out into the light and laughed. There was writing on the tape. It read, “Anita’s gun,” in Nathaniel’s handwriting. He’d been with me the day I did it. Apparently he’d added his own little touch when I wasn’t looking. He’d handed me the pieces of tape. Had he written on it then, and I just hadn’t noticed, or had he come back later? I’d ask him.

  It left me smiling and shaking my head as I took the tape off the gun. I’d have put it in my pocket, if I’d had one. The gun was very visible against the white towel. I tried the grip in my hand, squeezed it a little. A tightness in the center of my body eased. What does it say about your life when a gun makes you feel this much safer?

  I checked to make sure the gun was still loaded, because any time a gun has been out of your sight, you damn well better check. Never trust anyone else that a gun is either loaded or unloaded; check it yourself. Gun safety 101.

  Towel tucked tight under my arms, and gun in hand, I opened the door. I thought for a moment the bedroom was empty, but then Clay and Graham stood up near the fireplace. They’d been sitting in the room’s only chairs.

  “Clay, shouldn’t you be in bed somewhere? You just got off work at Guilty Pleasures.” I looked at the bed and found it stripped down to the slightly singed mattress. My gun had been there somewhere.

  As if he read my mind, Clay said, “Your gun is in the bedside table.”

  I didn’t check to make sure he was telling the truth. One, I trusted Clay; two, I had a gun in one hand and the other hand helped hold the towel in place. I was armed and out of hands. “Thanks, but why aren’t you in bed?”

  “After they found the bugs in all the businesses, Jean-Claude asked us to do double shifts.” He ran his hand through his short blond curls. Early twenties looked better on no sleep, but he still looked tired.

  “Don’t I even get a hello?” Graham asked. I looked at him and couldn’t fight a frown. He was about the same size as Clay: six feet tall, but his shoulders were much broader. Graham was muscled in a way that only serious weight lifting would give you. His black hair was so long on top that his dark eyes peered out from the hair. The bottom of his hair was freshly shaved, very short, so that it looked like two different haircuts put together. He wasn’t wearing the black T-shirt that was standard bodyguard wear. He was wearing red. The red shirt was a new addition to the bodyguard uniform. Most of them were still in black, some with the appropriate club name and “Security” written on them, or just plain black. Red meant the guard was okay with being emergency food for the ardeur. It had been Remus’s idea originally. He’d come up with it after I’d nearly killed Damian, Nathaniel, and myself from not feeding the ardeur enough. I thought the red shirt idea was a joke until the first guard showed up wearing one.

  Strangely, since the red shirt policy went into effect, I’d gained a much better control over the ardeur. Let’s hear it for fear, embarrassment, and sheer stubbornness. Graham had been trying to get into my pants for months, so no big surprise that he volunteered. What creeped me out was some of the other guards who’d done it. Men I hadn’t known thought of me in a sexual way. I mean, it’s one thing to suspect a man lusts after you, but absolute confirmation, well, that made me uncomfortable.

  “Hey, Graham, nice shirt,” I said, and I was happy that it sounded hostile.

  “Why are you mad at me? It’s not my rule. Be mad at Remus, or Claudia, or Jean-Claude. It’s their rule that you are not to be alone in a room unless accompanied by a man willing to feed the ardeur.”

  “Since when?” I asked.

  “Since this mysterious bad guy came to town. No one’s giving details, but apparently the people who give us orders are worried that the bad guys will use magic to make the ardeur go out of control. So you have to have food at all times.” He didn’t sound happy about it. Maybe my being pissy was finally rubbing off on Graham. Good.

  “We’re short of red shirts today, Anita,” Clay said.

  “Why?”

  “Because the guard is doubled around all of Jean-Claude’s businesses. He’s having to renegotiate with Rafael and Narcissus for more people.”

  “I guess we pay more money, we get more men,” I said.

  The two men exchanged a look. “Maybe,” Clay said.

  I was getting cold standing there in nothing but a towel, so I went to the armoire for clothes. “What else could they be negotiating for except money?” I said. I stared at the double door of the armoire, because the towel was slipping, and I had a gun in the other hand. I’d never been good at getting a towel to stay fastened. It wasn’t like both of the men hadn’t seen me naked. But…damn it.

  “Power,” Clay said. “Everyone wants a closer tie to Jean-Claude now that he’s his own vampire bloodline. And Narcissus is seriously freaked that Asher’s new animal to call is hyena.”

  “Freaked how?” I asked. I tucked the arm with the gun tight
on the towel and tugged on the door of the armoire. It stuck.

  “We’re wolves, not hyenas, so this is all secondhand,” Clay said. “Narcissus wants guarantees that Asher won’t try to run his clan.”

  I finally got the door opened; yea for me. “Asher isn’t powerful enough to do that.”

  “Maybe,” Clay said, “but Narcissus is worried about it. He wants to negotiate now before it’s an issue.”

  I had black jeans in hand, but I really needed the second hand to get the other clothes.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Graham said. He stalked toward me. He was angry enough that as he got closer I got little bits of it, like embers from a fire hitting my skin. He grabbed the edge of the jeans in my hand. I held on. We glared at each other. “I’ll just hold the clothes for you, Anita. That’s it, okay?”

  It was a reasonable idea. It was helpful. So why didn’t I want to do it? Because Graham seriously bugged me. His persistent pursuit of sex with me, with no pretense of emotion, let alone love, really hit my buttons wrong. Of course, if he’d lied about me being the love of his life, that would have pissed me off more. God. I let go of the jeans. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Thank you.”

  Graham blinked down at me as if I’d never said thank you to him before. Maybe I hadn’t. Shame on me then. He put his life on the line to keep me safe. So he was a lech; at least he was an honest lech.

  I looked up at him. This close I could see the slight uptilt of his brown eyes. His mother was Japanese, which got him the hair and eyes. The rest of him looked like his blond and blue-eyed father had cloned himself. Meeting his parents by accident one night hadn’t made me like him better. In fact it had made it worse. His parents seemed like good people. Would they be ashamed to know how much of a horndog their only child was? It seemed likely.

  I shook my head and turned back to the armoire. I’d concentrate on getting dressed. That would help me feel better. I always felt better with clothes on. Grandma Blake’s influence. There was a woman who thought naked meant bad.

  I was getting low on shirts here. My choices were black or red. Black made me look like one of the bodyguards, and red, well, red looked like all the red shirts were my people, like a special Anita Blake uniform. I picked up one of the black shirts, put it back, picked up a red shirt, put it back.