Jason (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 23)

Nathaniel's deeper voice said something like, "Give them a few minutes to recover."

Yes, that. I voted that. Jason's hand patted me again, and I fought to turn my head enough to look at him, but I had so much of my own hair spilled across my face that it was just a shine of his blond hair, and the glow of the lamp on the other side of the bed, so that the world seemed edged with light and I couldn't tell if it was really how the room looked, or if it was still the shiny afterglow; sometimes it made halos of light around everything, even things that didn't actually have a light shining out of them. Yay, great sex!

I kept waiting for Nathaniel to move closer and touch me, take his turn, but he didn't. When I could move I'd look around and see what was wrong.

"That was incredibly hot, and if I didn't love Jason enough to marry him, I'd just want to climb all over both of you and join in, but . . . I think . . . I think I'm intimidated."

I began to get a clue why Nathaniel hadn't joined us, because he could see J.J. and I couldn't. We could have great sex later; emotional hand-holding sometimes had to be done ASAP, or there was no sex later. That made me fight to turn my head more and raise a clumsy hand to push my hair out of my face so I could see better. The room was all shiny golden light, but I still had trouble focusing beyond the top of Jason's head to J.J., where she sat on the far side of the bed. Nathaniel was nestled in the pillows above us.

Jason found his voice first. "Why? You are great in bed, J.J., and we have amazing sex together."

"I love making love to you, Jason, but it's never like this."

"It is so hot between us," Jason said.

She nodded. "But it's not . . . it's not." She made a vague gesture in our direction.

"Do you understand what Jason meant about rough now?" Nathaniel asked.

She looked at him. "Yes," but her eyes were too wide, and her face too unhappy. This could all go so terribly pear-shaped and blow up the happiness they shared. It was always a danger to show this much of the rest of your life to someone who didn't want to be a part of it; if they freaked out on you, then your two halves of happiness could become one half of happy and another half of serious sad.

I raised my head up enough to say, "Nothing we did takes away from the lovemaking that you and Jason share."

"If this is the kind of sex he wants, I'll never be able to do it."

"I don't want this rough all the time," Jason said. "Most of the time lovemaking is what I want." He sat up, drawing his knees in and wrapping his arms around them. He knew he was in trouble.

"Do you and Anita make love?"

I wanted to say, Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

"Mostly we do this, and I share Anita with Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude. I enjoy sharing with another guy."

"Nathaniel was very good at oral; you both need shirts that say, Oral skills approved by lesbians!" and she grinned.

Something tight in my chest eased; if she was making jokes, we could work this out.

Jason crawled over the bed toward her. "I love you."

"I love you, too." Her face went serious again.

Jason wrapped her in a hug and kissed her, trying to put more body English into it, but she stopped, and pushed him away enough to study his face. "I get why you want to keep Anita, just for the oral sex alone. She's amazing at it, and I do not like going down on boys that much."

I wanted to ask, Why not?, and then thought, Why not? "Why don't you like going down on boys?" I asked.

"I like breathing, and my gag reflex is a lot more than yours."

"I used to have more gag reflex."

"How'd you get past it?"

"Practice," I said, and I couldn't help but smile and then look down when I realized I was blushing.

"Lots," Nathaniel said, moving toward me.

"And lots," Jason said.

"Of practice," Nathaniel and Jason said together, and then they laughed that masculine laughter that was usually about girls and sometimes at the girl's expense, but not always. Sometimes it was just a shared buddy happiness that just happened to involve sex.

I let my hair hide my face while I finished blushing. God, would I ever not blush?

"You're blushing," J.J. said. "I wouldn't think this would embarrass you."

"I'm not embarrassed about loving oral sex, but lying here naked in front of Jason's lady love after just fucking our brains out is a little beyond even my usual limits."

"Really?" J.J. asked.

I nodded, and finally looked full at her. Her face was very serious over Jason's shoulder; the back of his body perfectly nude was wrapped in her arms, but it was as if the nudity meant nothing to her, or even really the sex. If the sex wasn't bothering her, what was?

"What's wrong, J.J.?" I asked; once I wouldn't have, but I knew that if this was going to work we had to talk about it, all of it.

"I think I'm trying to process that I'll never be able to meet all of Jason's needs."

"But he'll never be able to meet all of yours," Nathaniel said.

"That's different; he's a boy and I love women."

"Why is it different?" I asked.

She looked at me. "Because I could physically meet his needs that you meet, but he couldn't meet my needs with Freda, he doesn't have the right parts."

"It's not just boy and girl parts," Jason said. "It's different people meet different needs."

"It's a lot more than just preferred genitalia," Nathaniel said.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I'm probably the most truly bisexual person in this bed, so for me it's really not just the genitalia, but each person in my life meets different needs that no single person, or even two individual people, could meet," Nathaniel said.

"Examples," she said.

Jason settled behind her so that he was cradling her in her blue silk nightie. It meant they were both mostly covered, and Nathaniel still had his silk shorts on, which meant I was the only truly nude person in the bed; how did this happen? I was suddenly cold, or modest, or both, and I got up enough to slip under the sheet.

Nathaniel scooted down to slip under the sheets, too, so he could wrap me in his arms, so we were almost mirroring how Jason and J.J. were cuddling, except we were lower in the bed and propped against the pillows while they were sitting up more.

Nathaniel held me in the warmth of his arms and the solidness of his body as he said, "Jason is my best friend, Anita is the woman I love most in the world, Micah is the man, Jean-Claude is our master and him taking blood as foreplay with all of us in the bed is amazing, Asher is my dominant for bondage and sometimes for rough sex, Cynric is the little brother I never had, Nicky is brother and friend and I'm learning to really enjoy co-topping Anita with him, Dev is completely comfortable with his bisexuality, and that's nice just to have someone else who feels the same way, and I'll leave out everyone who doesn't have some sexual connotation for me, but there are friends and family who I'll never get naked with that are important to me and help make my life work."

"How is your little brother a sexual connotation?" she asked.

I fought the urge not to squirm, because I had issues with Cynric. Sin was what he wanted to be called, not Rick. He was nineteen now and a senior, but I still had trouble with the age difference between him and me. I would miss him if he left my life, but he still hit all sorts of issues for me. I gave my best blank cop face and let Nathaniel talk. We were shoveling J.J.'s issues right now, not mine.

He hugged me tighter, as if he felt that small body movement and understood it all. "I like watching Cynric have sex with Anita, and I enjoy sharing her with him, just the three of us, or sometimes with other people joining in."

"One of my biggest fantasies is sharing Jason with another woman, but I have a sister and I can't imagine sharing Jason with her," J.J. said.

"Maybe if Cynric and I had been raised together from childhood it would be different, but he was seventeen when we met, and he's a younger brother for me, but I've never thought of him a

s anything but an adult, younger than me, but still a person and not a kid."

She nodded. "That makes sense, I guess, so he's family of choice, not of blood?"

"Yes," Nathaniel said, laying a soft kiss against my cheek. I caught a faint hint of J.J.'s scent; it wasn't bad, just different, just not me. His face was still shining from going down on both of us. I wrapped his arms closer around me and let the surety of him help me feel better about so many things.

"If Freda weren't so insanely jealous of Jason, things would be so great. How did you find so many people that aren't jealous?"

"Jean-Claude has a reputation; if you want to be in his inner circle, you'd better not be the jealous type," Nathaniel said.

"Jean-Claude is amazing, and he seems to override your sexual preferences, as if everyone should want him," she said.