Jason

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  She was shorter than I was, more petite, so that when we stood she fitted under my arm like I did with most of the men in my life.

  I ran my thumb over her knuckles over and over, to reassure us both. She liked to touch me, in some ways needed to touch me, but she was usually still when we touched, holding on, but not petting until sex started. I'd asked her about it once and been informed that her ex-master had liked her to hold on, but not to pet him, and I knew the kinds of things he'd done to teach her his rules. I'd broken her ties with him metaphysically, and my one regret was that I hadn't hunted him down and killed him yet. We had other people hunting him now. I'd learned that when you're king you can't always go slaying the dragons, because if the king dies the kingdom needs a new king, and the next one may be a real bastard. I risked myself enough as a U.S. Marshal; I wasn't allowed vendettas.

  I stayed with Jade and kept her safe; that was my job. Hunting down her tormentor and killing his ass was left to guards who were also ancient vampires and knew him of old.

  J.J. stood beside the bed holding Jason's hand. "If I clapped my hands and made happy bat noises, would anyone get mad at me?" she asked.

  He shook his head. "I wouldn't, I'm just sad I'm only allowed to watch. I'm more exhibitionist than voyeur."

  She kissed his cheek. "I'm sorry, honeybunch."

  "I feel your pain," Domino said from the other side of the bed.

  J.J. had agreed that he could strip down to a pair of silken boxers similar to what Jason was wearing. It was fair in case either she or Jade relented and let me have my extra guy in the bed, or let each other have their lover. Jason's silk was a blue that almost matched J.J.'s nightie; Domino's was a red that matched Jade's, since I'd bought both his and hers as a pair. Jean-Claude had helped me pick the color so that it was a perfect match of scarlets.

  "I know you do, bro," Jason said, and gave a fist bump to the air that Domino returned in the air on his side of the bed. I'd have traded places with either of them in a hot minute, so that I didn't have to do this particular scene. In a way Jade topped from the bottom, which was a phrase to describe the way a submissive could control a relationship even though the dominant was supposed to be the one in control.

  Technically, I should have been able to dictate to her that I wanted Jason in the bed, and she'd just have to deal, but the submissive had a full vote, and she'd said no. I had a full vote, too, and could have said, Jason is in the bed or we're done, but I hadn't. Why hadn't I? Because I wasn't sure whether I really wanted him in the bed with me as much as I just didn't want J.J. and Jade there, and that was the truth. I was so far outside my comfort zone I couldn't see it from the shore anymore. I felt lost at sea, but determined to weather the storm, even if it was a storm formed of soft flesh and silk. To do anything else would be cowardice, and I couldn't do that, wouldn't do that. I wouldn't be a coward on something so important to this many people I valued, loved. This was too important for my issues to win. Either you work your issues, or they will work you. It wasn't so much Jade topping from the bottom, it was me, my near-panic driving me forward and forcing me to face whatever the hell bothered me about extra women in the bed with me.

  I sat there rubbing my thumb faster and faster across Jade's knuckles as if her hand were a worry stone, and if I just petted hard enough I'd figure out what was wrong in my head to make me this uncomfortable.

  I had female friends who were this afraid of multiple men in bed, as if more men equaled rape, but for me, men were like a security blanket. Women scared me, and I had no idea why. I just knew that I wouldn't let this fear best me any more than I let fear of that noise in the dark keep me from going in gun ready, searching for the rogue vampire I knew was inside. All fear is the same no matter the cause of it; you conquer or are conquered by it. I wasn't into losing, not even to myself, maybe especially to myself.

  I told myself I could safe-word at any moment, and kept trying to rub a hole through Jade's hand.

  Jade leaned in and whispered, "Are you all right, Anita?"

  Truth was, no, but out loud I said, "Sure."

  She gave me a look, and if we'd lowered our metaphysical shielding, she could have felt everything I was feeling, and I her, just like I could do with Domino, Jason, and Nathaniel. Jade was my black tiger to call, Domino was my white/black, Jason my wolf, and Nathaniel my leopard to call. They were my animals to call, my Moitie Bete; we all had to work at not sensing each other's emotions.

  Of course the tension singing down my hand into Jade's probably gave me away just fine. You don't have to be psychic to pick up on the obvious.

  "Anita," Jason said.

  I looked at him and J.J.

  "You okay?"

  I shrugged. "I think this is the most complicated BDSM scene I've tried without Jean-Claude or Asher involved. It's like we have all this talent and potential, but no one is in charge." That was all true. It wasn't exactly what was spooking me, but it was still part of the truth. It also meant that they'd probably quit asking me what was wrong.

  "I cannot be with Asher," Jade said.

  I shook my head. "I wasn't suggesting it, just not sure who's directing everything."

  "We've made love with Nathaniel in bed with us before," she said, her voice soft, low, and strangely musical. Her voice didn't always sound that way, but it often did when she was trying to persuade, or I guess manipulate me. I'd asked her if she'd had theater training, but she didn't seem to know what I meant, so I'd let it go. I let a lot of things go with Jade, even I knew that, but when she puzzled me enough I stepped back rather than pushing. I wasn't sure if I was growing up, or she was winning.

  "You're in charge, Anita," Domino said, "so be in charge. What do you want to do?"

  In my head I thought, Leave. Maybe it showed on my face, because he said, "Do what you enjoy and Jade will follow your lead."

  Jade nodded.

  "Really?" I asked her.

  "Truly," she said.

  "Okay, I know what I want to do."

  "I will follow where you lead," she said.

  I knew it was both the truth and a lie. She'd follow me for a while, until she decided she didn't want to, or she got too uncomfortable, then she'd do whatever the hell she wanted to do and somehow it would be my fault, again. I was starting to seriously sympathize with the men who were dating me.

  8

  I SNUGGLED DOWN against the left side of Nathaniel's bound body, and Jade mirrored me on his right. I started by kissing those full lips of his; he kissed me back with his eyes already losing their focus as he began to give himself over to the rope, to our touch, to simply not being in control. It was one of my favorite things about bondage.

  Jade leaned over, but didn't kiss him; she offered her red lips to me. She had never kissed Nathaniel on the mouth. It was something she saved for me. We kissed and it was a mingling of identical scarlet lipstick. She'd started wearing my shade of red, because if she wore something else it ruined both our lipsticks, or made colors that looked good on neither of us. I realized that she got more kisses now that our lipsticks matched; good thing the color looked good on both of us.

  Nathaniel watched us kiss, his lips touched with red just down the center. He'd coined it the go-faster stripe, and wore it proudly. There was an eagerness in his eyes that wasn't just the submission; he liked seeing us kiss above him. I loved it when he and Micah kissed, so I totally got that he liked seeing me kiss another woman. Funny, I hadn't thought he had that typical male fantasy of two women and him; just goes to prove that bisexual doesn't mean not guy, just a different kind of guy.

  I kissed him again, leaving our mingled reds brighter on his lips, and then moved to the warm sweetness of his neck, breathing in the vanilla scent of him, before laying a perfect red lip print against his skin. Jade mirrored me on the other side of his neck. I kissed the top of his shoulder, then the very beginning of his chest, feeling the flex of his muscles as he pulled at the rope that bound that arm. Nathaniel and I both liked to test
our bonds, not to get away, but more to feel the pull and know we were trapped, held, helpless, at the same time that we knew we were not. All he had to do was say his safeword and I'd untie him. The same held true when it was my turn to be tied up. Bondage was the illusion of danger, not the real thing. I'd been tied up for real by bad guys and that wasn't exciting at all, just scary.

  I laid my mouth over the mound of his pectoral muscle just above his nipple, and Jade kissed him at almost the same time so that we were beginning to truly mirror each other across Nathaniel's body. I put my mouth over his nipple and licked just the tip of my tongue across him, back and forth, quick strokes until his nipple became a small, firm point. I rolled my eyes upward so that I could look across his body at Jade, and found her fire-colored eyes looking at me. I used my tongue to lick and tease his nipple, keeping my eye contact all for Jade. Nathaniel began to make soft, eager noises for us.

  We kissed slowly down his body an inch at a time, marked in red lipstick prints across his skin. We placed the last kiss on the top of his foot, just below the black circle of rope around his ankles.

  I sat back, kneeling to look at our handiwork. There was something incredibly satisfying seeing him stretched beautiful and nude with the tracks of our lip prints decorating all that bare skin. His groin was untouched, but we'd both planted kisses all around it on his thighs and hips, until he'd whimpered. His body was more than ready to be touched, straight, hard, and eager. I'd avoided the area partially to up the teasing, but mostly because Jade was mirroring my lead better than she ever had before with Nathaniel and I wanted her to keep doing that. She'd already let me push her outside her usual comfort zone; I wanted to ease her further out, not push her off the cliff, not yet.

  It wasn't just kindness, or even caution on my part. Jason and J.J. stood by the bed doing their own light petting. I knew that she was waiting for me to say, Okay, come aboard. There were so many possibilities of cliffs tonight that I didn't want to be pushed off either, so I wouldn't push Jade. Treat people as you want to be treated, and hopefully that whole karma thing works out.

  Touching Nathaniel had helped me gather myself--grounding and centering, my friend and teacher Marianne would have called it. Whatever you called it, I felt better, more sure of myself and everything else, including the people around me.

  I crawled over Nathaniel's legs and went to Jade. I wrapped her in my arms, drew her in close and kissed her, not just so she wouldn't get mad at me, but because I wanted to. She was mine, and she'd been very brave and marvelously sensual with Nathaniel. I kissed her, tongue sliding inside her mouth, my eager hands sliding over the silk she was wearing. I thought, as I thought almost every time I French-kissed her, that women had smaller mouths than men. She was so tiny in my hands, delicate bones and flesh, that she triggered the instinct that you should protect that which is smaller than you are. In reality she could have overturned a small car without breaking a sweat, but in that moment I kissed my delicate girl, feeling protective and proud, and drew back from the kiss leaving her breathing hard, her pupils huge with the endorphin rush of my attentions.

  We'd smeared our lipstick, but not that much. I'd learned to kiss without ending up looking like a clown from kissing the men; now it was just a slightly more delicate dance with two women, two lipsticked mouths. Jade and I were learning. Of course, tonight if we didn't smear our lipsticks all to hell, we'd be doing it wrong.

  I turned and looked at Jason and J.J. They were still holding each other, but had stopped making out to watch. I didn't know when they'd gone fully voyeur on the show, when Jade and I were still kissing our way down Nathaniel, or when I kissed Jade. Didn't know, didn't care; all I cared about was that as I crawled across the bed toward them, J.J. watched me like a bird that sees the snake coming, fascinated and a little afraid, as if she thought I might eat her, which was sort of funny since I was the only other non-wereanimal in the room. But there are all kinds of ways to be devoured; taking actual flesh is just one of them.

  I crawled to the very edge of the bed and held my hand out to her. "I want your lipstick smeared all over ours."

  J.J. hugged Jason tighter and said, "She moves like you do sometimes, like she has more muscles and tendons than humans have, dangerous sexy graceful."

  I laughed then. "If you think I'm the most graceful thing on this bed, you are so wrong."

  She smiled then, gave Jason a quick kiss, and took my hand, and I pulled her onto the bed.

  9

  I STARTED THE kiss with J.J., but there was no hesitation from her; she fell into the kiss with eager hands and mouth. She definitely kissed back, much more aggressive than Jade usually was. I stiffened for a second, debating how I felt, and then I gave back eagerness for eagerness and let my hands knead her body underneath the blue silk. My hands expected softness, and found some of the leanest muscle stretched over the most delicate body I'd ever held, so she felt both fragile and incredibly strong at the same time. Jade might have been an amazing athlete when I wasn't looking, but her body still felt soft and you had to search for the muscles. J.J.'s strength was right there at the surface, covered in warm, smooth skin.

  Her pink lipstick was smeared with my red, and I knew my lipstick must look as bad. It wasn't neat, but it didn't look like clown makeup either, it looked . . . like we'd smeared it kissing each other wildly. But wait . . . we had.

  It made me laugh almost wildly. J.J. gave me a questioning look out of her clear blue eyes, and I reached for her again, sliding my hands underneath the bit of blue silk, so that I could feel more of that taut, satin-kissed, muscled skin. I realized vaguely that I was getting an echo of someone in my head and it wasn't me. I wasn't being invaded by some evil spirit, but I shared memories with Jean-Claude, and he had loved women for more centuries than America had been a country. Somewhere in his past had been someone that J.J. reminded him of, and I was able to get that fierce, happy echo without having to experience the actual memory. I liked that.

  But I'd also had to own that if I hadn't agreed with the joyful eagerness of Jean-Claude's memory, it couldn't have forced me to do anything I didn't want to do. I wanted to slide the blue silk over J.J.'s head and see the body I'd been touching, so that I saw the blue lace of her thong sitting against the lean swell of her hips. I wanted to run my hands over all that lean and feminine muscle, so I did. Her breasts were so small and she so lean that they were almost just an extension of the pectoral muscle like men can get, but when I cupped them in my hands they were soft, moving and changing as I squeezed and caressed them. To get as much breast in my hand as I wanted I had to mound one up, so that I could lean over and wrap my mouth tight around her, and suck. I did it until she cried out, "God!" It encouraged me a little too much, so that she had to say, "Too hard, less teeth."

  I eased up, and pulled back to find our mingled lipsticks decorating her breast as if I'd painted it with my mouth. Some movement caught my eye and I found Jason holding on to one of the dark wooden bedposts. His fingers were holding on to the heavy carving of the bed like it was an anchor to hold him where he was, and his face was more than eager. His eyes held something close to pain, and I remembered that he, like me, wasn't much of a watcher. We were both more doers.

  I turned and looked at Nathaniel, still tied in the middle of the big bed, unable to come play. His lavender eyes were some of the darkest purple I'd ever seen them, lips half parted, face raw with lust. His body was eager and ready just from watching me with the other women. He didn't have this reaction to just Jade and me, and I realized that he liked J.J.'s less complicated eagerness, too.

  Domino had moved to the bed, his fingers actually touching the edge of it. He was fighting to keep his face neutral and failing, but he was trying. Nathaniel wasn't hiding how he felt, but then he was nude and male, it was a little late to hide. Domino controlled his face, but his body was so hard and tight against the red silk undies that it made me want to crawl over there and touch him, strip him of the silk and have him join us.<
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  I turned last to Jade, because only she had moved farther away from us; all the men who could move closer, had. Her face was very careful, trying for neutral, but I knew the set of her shoulders, that almost hunched look. I realized in that moment that I'd have done better, had fewer issues, if she were more dominant a personality, had more aggression and surety to throw in with mine, rather than making me chase, seduce, when I didn't truly want to do either.

  J.J.'s hands slid under my own bit of black silk, and there was a demand to her touch, a lack of tentativeness that I liked a lot. Maybe my biggest trouble with Jade wasn't that she was female, but that she was so uncertain, so that I always had to persuade, do all the planning, and just court her in a way that the men normally courted me. As J.J. pushed me back against the bed I had a feeling that she wouldn't make me be in charge of all the relationship. Yay, so yay!

  What do you do in the middle of making out with one woman, when you realize your other lover may not be the girl of your dreams? You reach for her, because you can't bear to see that careful sadness on her face, so I did. She rewarded me with one of the most brilliant smiles I'd ever seen on her face, and I couldn't do anything but smile back, and then J.J. worked my nightie up over my breasts and pressed her mouth to one of them, and the smiling turned into me making wordless, eager noises for her.

  Jade pulled her red silk over her head and threw it behind her. She bent over me, kissing me upside down, while J.J. tried to put as much of my breast into her mouth as she could. It might have made me giggle, except that Jade's mouth was pressed to mine, the silk of her hair falling around my face.

  J.J. began to suck on my breast and I didn't feel like giggling anymore. Jade leaned over me, her breasts brushing my face as she bent over my other breast and licked over my nipple. I mounded her breast in my hand and returned the favor. Her body shivered for me, and then she used her hand to draw my breast up, so she could suck on my nipple, and all three of us began to suck, lick, and nibble a breast apiece. We had three leftover breasts and more mouths in the room. I would have loved to bring Jason and Domino onto the bed to join the breast play, and the thought of Nathaniel only being able to watch it all tightened things low in my body, not because I wanted to exclude him, but because I knew how much it would excite him to be forced to only watch with his body so eager to join. But what works in fantasy doesn't always work in reality; if you add too many people it can go from erotic and exciting to a game of Jenga. Adding the boys, even if both women would have agreed, might have been too much, like Internet porn: sex that no one really enjoys, but it looks impressive, and gives you bragging rights of I'm kinkier than thou.