Rafael

by K. Hamilton, Laurell

  “I feel the press of time, Anita. We are running out of it if we are to plan something elaborate between us.”

  “Then maybe we should go simple instead of elaborate,” I said.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s like I can almost see a question in your eyes, Rafael.”

  “What question,” he said.

  “Ask it, and I’ll know.”

  He took in a big breath of air and it shook on the way out. He looked a little to the side as if he didn’t want to watch my face while he asked. “I want to make love to you, Anita.”

  “I’ve already said yes to sex, Rafael.”

  He shook his head, and now he gave me the full weight of his dark brown eyes. “Let me make love to you tonight.”

  I fought not to frown at him. “Okay, I mean haven’t I already agreed to that?”

  “For this once, I don’t want to tie you up, or play the bedroom games we usually do. I would like to simply have sex with you.”

  “I’m not really a straight missionary kind of girl,” I said, still not understanding what he was asking.

  “That is what I thought, we come up with something that will make us both happy.” His voice was okay, but he looked away while he said it, hiding his eyes.

  I squeezed his hand, trying to draw him into a hug, but he stayed turned away. I grabbed his suit jacket and pulled him around so that he had to look at me or over my head. There was pain in his eyes, as if I’d said something that hurt him, and I had no idea what had just happened to add to the weight of sorrow on him today.

  “I feel like we’re having two different conversations here, Rafael. Please, just talk clearly with me. We were friends years before we added the benefits, so please just for a few minutes talk to me like I’m your friend that you have sex with, not just another crazy woman that you date.”

  He smiled and then laughed. “You are not crazy, Anita, maybe you are not crazy enough for me to be comfortable.”

  “Hey, I offered to set some of your belongings on fire if you needed me to be crazy for you.”

  He hugged me. “No, please don’t.”

  I hugged him back, my face pressed against his chest. “Then talk to me, just talk to me, not around me, or about what you think is in my head, but just treat me like you used to treat me before we started having sex. Talk to me like I’m your friend and we’ll go from there.”

  He rubbed his face against my hair. “If you were my friend, I would say I am dating a woman who is into hot bondage sex and at first that was amazing and exactly what I wanted, but now I would like to make love to her. I would like to have sex with her that didn’t include tying her up, or chasing her, or even the delight of tearing her clothes off, though I would like to do that later.”

  I settled into his body as much as his gun and knives and mine would let us. Nathaniel wasn’t wrong about the weapons getting in the way. “Deal on the clothes tearing for later, but we don’t have to have rough or bondage sex every time we’re together, Rafael. If you want to make love without it, we can try.”

  “Try,” he said, and started to pull out of the hug.

  I grabbed his jacket and kept him from going too far. “Damn it, Rafael, stop picking at every word choice I make and just listen to what I’m actually saying, not what negative shit is translating in your head.”

  “I don’t know what that meant,” he said.

  I fought not to sigh out loud. “It means if you want to make love without any bondage, then let’s do that.”

  “I thought you only did bondage.”

  “Not always.”

  “Or only with multiple people at once like the three-way you offered earlier.”

  “Look, we’ll discuss that later, but right now if you want to make love to me, then the answer is yes.”

  “Yes, just like that,” he said, studying my face.

  “Just like that,” I said, smiling up at his serious eyes.

  “Is this where you tell me I should have asked sooner?”

  I shook my head. “No, this is where I remind you that I said yes, make love to me, and you’re still talking.”

  He smiled and then it blossomed into a full-out grin, which I don’t think I’d ever seen before. “No more talking,” he said, and took my hand in his and started leading me down the hallway.

  9

  RAFAEL GOT ME out of my clothes, so that I stood nude in front of him by the bed, but he was still wearing his dress slacks; even his belt was fastened. His feet were bare against the carpet, the hem of his slacks too long without the dress boots to hold them up. I traced my hands down the front of his chest; my skin looked even paler against the brown of his, and I liked the contrast. He took my hands in his.

  “Your hands are so small, but you are the only woman that I have ever undressed whose pile of weapons beside the bed is larger than mine.” He smiled at the end of the sentence and raised my hands up so that he could lay soft kisses on my palms.

  “You knew I wasn’t like all the other girls before you got me out of my clothes.”

  “I did,” he said, and kissed first one of my wrists and then the other. His lips gentle, his breath warm. He began to kiss his way up my arms, first right, then left, until he came to my elbow. He kissed the bend of my arm, right, left. I expected him to keep kissing up my arms, but instead he went to his knees in front of me and laid a kiss on my stomach.

  My voice was breathy as I said, “You’re wearing too many clothes.”

  “This is the first time I have made love to you, not just sex, but lovemaking.” He looked up at me and there was something in his face that was tender, or vulnerable, or something I had no words for. “I want to remember to pleasure you before I take my pleasure; the pants will remind me.”

  “Clever you,” I said, and traced my fingers down the side of his face. He bent forward and kissed my stomach again a little lower than the first time, and then lower still. He kissed one gentle touch at a time down my stomach, his hands on my hips either to hold me in place or just to have someplace to put them. He laid gentle kisses over the mound of me, and the sensation was even more because I shaved and there was no hair between me and his lips. He kissed as deeply on me as he could without spreading my legs apart and then looked up at me. His breath came out in a sigh that felt almost hot as it spilled between my legs. It made me shiver and touch his shoulders to steady myself.

  He moved to the side, kissing where my hip met my body, and then went to the other side and did the same. His hand cupped against the front of my body. His skin was warmer than mine, so that I pressed into his palm like my body was asking for him to touch me more. It was an involuntary movement like a flower turning toward the warmth of the sun.

  “So eager,” he said.

  I opened my eyes and hadn’t even realized I’d closed them until I looked down my body at Rafael. “Don’t you want me eager?”

  “Yes, yes I do,” he said, pressing his hand more firmly against the front of my body, rubbing the bottom of his hand so that it began to press and tease without actually touching directly on the most sensitive parts of me.

  He kissed the side of my hip and then slid both his hands up my body until he cupped my breasts in his hands. He started fondling them gently, and it wasn’t enough sensation for me. I didn’t always need bondage, but I needed more than this. I pressed my hands against his, and said, “Harder, please.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me and then began to dig his fingers in just a little bit more, squeezing my breasts in his hands, pulling on them. It brought a small involuntary sound from me. He stood up and cupped one breast, so that he could suck my nipple. He started out too soft again, and I felt like I needed to explain to him that lovemaking didn’t have to mean everything was gentle, at least it didn’t for me.

  “Harder, please,” and he did what I asked, until I told him that was enough. It wasn’t hurting, but it was firm, and I could feel the pull of his mouth o
n me; that was what I wanted. He sucked until I made happy noises for him, and then he did the same on the other breast, until my legs were wobbly, and I was holding on to him for support.

  He drew back and put his hands around my waist as he knelt on the floor again. This time he kissed and licked his way down my body until he could flick his tongue between my legs. I gasped for him, and he drew back and said, “Sit on the bed for me.”

  It wasn’t what I’d expected him to ask, but I did it. He spread my knees and leaned down to lick me, which was fun, but not quite the angle either of us needed. I lay back on the bed with my knees trailing over the side, and he put his hands under my thighs and began to kiss softly, gently down first one thigh and then the other. He was so slow and so careful that I was making impatient, eager noises before he got to the center of things, but he didn’t touch me there. He kissed in the little hollow where the leg and body meet, and then he kissed the other side deeply, using his tongue as if he were kissing my mouth or other things. It felt wonderful, but it was teasing by this point, so close, but not close enough.

  He finally licked up the center of me, and it brought my upper body off the bed like he’d lifted me. “So sensitive,” he said, licking around the very outer edges of me.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Please what?” he asked.

  “You know what.”

  He licked a little further on one side and it felt amazing, but not . . . and then the other side, and he began to mirror himself on one side and then the other, licking around and over everything and everywhere but the one spot I wanted him to touch. It felt so good and at the same time was making me want to scream with frustration.

  “Please, Rafael, please.”

  “You mean this?” He flicked his tongue over the one spot he’d been avoiding, and just that caught my breath in my throat.

  “Or this?” he asked, and slid his tongue underneath the spot, so he was touching just the edges of what I wanted. It was both exquisitely wonderful and exquisitely frustrating.

  “Rafael!” I cried his name, but it wasn’t in pleasure, more exasperation.

  He laughed, a deeply masculine chuckle, and then he licked across me and it made me cry, “Rafael!” but in a good way. He began to lick, swirling his tongue over and around that spot, doing bigger circles farther away from time to time, and then he’d lick me exactly where I wanted him to until I was almost there, almost, almost, and then he’d move away.

  I finally yelled at him, “Damn it, either do it, or don’t.”

  He drew back with his face shining with how happy my body was with everything he’d done, and asked, “You don’t like being teased?”

  “Not this much, no.”

  “I have enjoyed doing it.”

  “Sadist,” I said.

  He gave that deep chuckle again, and then he put his mouth between my legs and began to suck. After everything he’d already done it was almost too much sensation and not enough, as if my body didn’t know if it was coming or going. He figured out that it wasn’t working and began to lick swirls over that one spot, and finally he used his fingers to spread everything else aside so he could suck only on that one spot. I started screaming before I’d actually come, because it was almost too much after all the foreplay and then suddenly I was going over that edge of pleasure and it was like he held the center of me in his mouth, pulling me through and into and over, as if the world dissolved into the sensation of his mouth on me. I screamed and writhed until the world was white-edged, like seeing through mist. I lay twitching, unable to move or focus my eyes as I felt him stand and move away from me. The next thing I was sure of was him pushing his way between my legs. It raised my body off the bed and made me cry out for him. I saw his skin dark through the paleness of the condom as he used one hand to help guide him inside me. Normally he’d have had to work his way in, but I was so wet that all that hard, eager length just slid inside me.

  He said something I think was a curse in Spanish. “So wet.”

  “Make love to me.” I sounded breathy and almost not like me, but I managed to say it.

  He did what I asked, pushing himself gently into me and pulling out, until he found a rhythm that was gentler than any we’d ever done together. He worked us farther up on the bed and stayed on top, but kept his upper body raised so I could move underneath him. We found a rhythm together of his thrusts and my hips rising to meet him, over and over, in and out. I couldn’t see him gliding in and out of me, but I could feel every inch of him as I rose underneath him to meet his thrust with mine.

  “I am close,” he said.

  “So am I.” My voice was breathy, and I fought to keep my rhythm with his, and then I felt the edge of orgasm. “Almost,” I told him.

  “Feed when we go.”

  “Yes,” I said, and then from one thrust to another he brought me screaming, neck bowed backward to shriek his name without deafening him.

  He cried out above me and his body thrust one last time inside me and all the barriers came down. I fed on his strength as he held himself above me, I fed through his skin everywhere he touched me, and through him like a doorway I fed on all the rodere.

  I’d learned to keep my touch light with people I knew so that I didn’t intrude too far into them. I had accidentally gotten memories, thoughts, emotions before, and there were ones that enjoyed the energy orgasm. They had to welcome the energy in so it was their choice, though Jean-Claude had shared memories of Belle Morte being able to bring pleasure against people’s will like metaphysical rape. I worked really hard not to do anything like that. Jean-Claude had taught me how to fly through them, skimming like wings above their energy, feeding but not too much, not too deep. Face after face, a hand raised as if to touch me, another raised as if to fend me off, but they couldn’t keep me out completely, because Rafael had given them to me. Even as I rode the amazing wave of power buoying me up as if I could fly for real, and felt it spill out of me to spread like golden magic to everyone who had a cord plugged into my power, I still had enough of me left to understand why they feared us. There was a moment where I couldn’t feed off someone, like a rock in the stream of power, so I did what water does and flowed around it and moved on to other faces, bodies, emotions from joy to happiness, fought to pull back so that emotions weren’t touched, and then the faces turned upward with joy and welcome and that was the best feast of all, because it was a sharing. I liked sharing better than taking. Thousands of people, thousands and then I was coming back, back like the ocean pulling back from the shore to go home, and then there was that rock again that I could engulf. It stopped me like the ocean noticing one pebble. What was that? Who was that? I pushed at them, concentrated all that power on just that one . . . he was twenty-something, handsome, smooth-featured, pale brown skin with greenish-gray eyes. If I hadn’t had Micah’s eyes to compare to, I’d have said they looked exotic. They were arrogant, defiant, enraged, but under that was . . . fear, and . . . something . . . something else. I dived deep into those forest-green, gray-mist eyes, I flew straight into his gaze and traced that something. Hector’s energy pulsed, because of course that was who it was; he tried to push me out of him, tried to shield something from me, from us, I wasn’t even sure which us I was referring to, and I didn’t care. The energy was only warm on top, like icing on a cake, but what was underneath was cold, so much colder than a shapeshifter. He tried to push us out, and he was able to shove us to the surface almost. We were back staring into Hector’s face, his eyes like forests and mist, and then they filled with brown light so dark it was almost black, as if night fell on the forest and started to burn it down. Hector was the moitié bête of a master vampire. A vampire that didn’t belong to Jean-Claude.

  10

  “HOW IS IT even possible for a master vampire to hide themselves this completely from us?” I asked as I paced at the foot of Jean-Claude’s bed. I’d gone to him for sympathy and hugs while we discussed the nasty surprise waiting inside Hector. Instead I
couldn’t get up on the bed for comfort, because Asher was already there with him and he still wasn’t on my cuddling list. Since Jean-Claude could feel most of my emotions unless we both shielded harder than we were currently shielding, he knew I wanted a hug, but he didn’t come to me or tell Asher to move, which pissed me off. I was already scared; anger wasn’t a good addition.

  Jean-Claude was lounging on the huge, custom-made bed, watching me. He was wearing one of his favorite robes, the black one with black fur edging. It was also one of my favorite robes to see him in; there was just something about the utterly white skin of his chest framed by the black fur, his long black curls mingling with the fur until it was hard to tell which darkness was which, and he’d even opened the top enough so I could see the pale brownish cross-shaped burn scar on his chest. He’d opened the robe purposefully that far because he knew how much I enjoyed the view, which pissed me off even more.

  “We have an emergency here, Jean-Claude, or didn’t you sense the vampire master that’s got its hooks in Hector?”

  “You know I did.”

  “Then why aren’t you more upset?”

  “I have sent word for everyone to gather here, so we can plan our strategy for tonight, ma petite. Rafael is off telling his people in person, and then he will join us here. Until everyone arrives there is nothing more we can do, so why do you not join us on the bed for the cuddling and comfort?”

  I stared at him, openmouthed, not sure what to say. I wasn’t sure if I was more upset that he didn’t seem to be taking the threat seriously, or that he was trying to encourage me to cuddle with him and Asher, when he knew I hadn’t forgiven the other man for his years of terrible behavior.

  “You have shocked her speechless,” Asher said from the bed where he lay beside Jean-Claude. I was working so hard at ignoring him, because he was still on my shit list from the epic string of bad choices he’d made that had led all of us to dump him. Jean-Claude had taken him back recently, but with one other exception the rest of us were still pissed at him. At first being pissed at him had made him less attractive to me, but as he kept behaving better, it got harder to stay angry at him, and even harder not to see him as beautiful.