Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

My voice sounded breathy as I said, "You have to be careful French-kissing vampires, Nicky."

He licked the fresh blood from his lip and said, "I'm not used to the fangs yet."

"Bloody kisses like sweet copper pennies in my mouth," Jean-Claude said.

"Pretty talk," Nicky said.

"Jean-Claude always knows just what to say. I think it's something about being French," I said.

"Non, ma petite, mon lionne, I am inspired by such bounty before my eyes."

"You know that Nathaniel likes to bite, right?" Sin asked.

We all looked at him.

"I've seen kisses that ended with lips bleeding a lot more than this."

"Then we will have to do better, won't we, Nicky?" Jean-Claude said.

"Yeah, we wouldn't want the kid disappointed."

"Don't call me kid."

"Prove that you aren't one and I'll stop."

"How do I prove it?"

Nicky smiled, a damn-near-evil smile. "I've got a few ideas."

30

NICKY TRIED, BUT in the end Sin saw it all as a sort of competitive dare, so nothing that Jean-Claude was willing to do was enough to scare him off. I think Nicky would have been willing to personally do things that would have freaked Sin out, not because he wanted to have sex with him, because I was pretty sure he didn't, but because Nicky was just that competitive. If it was a game of chicken, Nicky was not going to be the one who flinched. Once I would have said the same of Jean-Claude, but something about Sin hit issues for him that I didn't even know he had. Maybe the idea that his issues were part of what had kept me from being in love with Cynric was true, but if so, how the hell did we prove it, or fix it? Hell, did we want to fix it?

All the clothes were gone, the four of us nude in the newly delivered double king-size bed with the red silk sheets from the even bigger bed tucked in and around the bed, so that we were still on top of the sheets rather than fighting to get them free. Jean-Claude's skin was so white against the crimson sheets. Sin's summer tan looked even darker against them. Nicky looked paler when his skin was next to Sin's tan, but he didn't look pale at all next to the nearly pure white of Jean-Claude's body. Nicky's eye seemed like an even brighter blue no matter if his face was next to Jean-Claude's midnight blue or Sin's blue tiger's eyes.

I kissed Nicky's face, laying my lips over the scar where his other eye would have been, and he put his arms around me as I lay on top of him and took my kisses to the scars, the same as my lips touching the closed lid of his other eye. I'd convinced him a while back that to me the scar was just another texture of his body to kiss and caress.

Someone started kissing along my back while I was kissing Nicky, and I wondered for a moment, but I didn't have to look to know the feel of Jean-Claude's lips against my skin. He spoke with his mouth against my lower back, his hands smoothing over my hips so that I writhed against the front of Nicky's body. "I need you on top, Nicky."

"All you have to do is ask," he said, and he rolled us over so fast that I made that high-pitched "eep" sound that was such a girl sound. I was just suddenly staring up at Nicky above me. I laughed a little nervously, because I could feel his weight above me. Muscle weighs more, and so did Nicky. We weren't having intercourse yet, so it was just all that heaviness pressing me against the bed. I had a moment of realizing that if he wanted to trap me, I was trapped. It sped my heart, raced my pulse, and made me swallow hard. If Nicky hadn't topped me in the bedroom, would that moment have scared me for real? I don't know, because he did and I let that little flash of fear grow, because I knew he'd like it.

He leaned over my face, sniffing loudly along my skin. "Fear makes the meat taste better," he said in a voice that held an edge of growl. When he raised his face, his eye had changed to lion amber. He let a trickle of growl slide out from between his human lips. I trusted him utterly, but the game was to be afraid in that safe roller-coaster-ride way, so I didn't fight that moment of terror that thrilled through my body. It was instinctive, hardwired into that primitive part of the brain that remembered what a growl like that meant against the skin of your throat.

Sin crawled across the bed from the right side of us. He lowered his head and sniffed the air near me. "She's never afraid of me like this."

"You don't know how to be scary yet," Nicky said.

The weight was suddenly crushing and I said, "Too heavy."

Jean-Claude appeared over Nicky's shoulder and I realized I was pinned under their combined weight. If Nicky hadn't been raised just a little above my chest, they might have been heavy enough to keep me from breathing. I managed to say, "If we were fucking this would be fun, but it's just heavy now."

Jean-Claude laid his head on Nicky's shoulder, settling even more of his weight on top of the other man and on me. "Nicky, do you want to be inside her when I feed?"

"Yes, let me make her come at least once before you feed, because once you do I won't last."

"As you like," Jean-Claude said; he smiled down at me and then slid out of sight, but I could tell by the weight that he wasn't on top of Nicky anymore. Nicky was free to move his body enough for me to feel that he could pretend for Cynric that he was into sex with Jean-Claude, but some things couldn't be faked. He wasn't completely soft, but he wasn't that eager hardness that he usually was when we got to this point. I expected him to change positions, or ask for a hand or maybe a mouth from me, but he didn't. He moved his hips so that I had the choice of spreading my legs or him grinding himself into my pelvis. I wanted to make love to him, so I helped. By the time he'd settled himself between my legs, he was harder than he had been just seconds before, but still not hard enough. With most men, if they weren't hard when they started, you needed to back up and do some more foreplay, but Nicky raised himself on those amazing arms, his upper body rising above me so that I caressed my hands along all that hard work in the gym carved into the body above me. I gazed down the line of his body past the ridged hardness of his stomach until I could see that part of him that he was pushing against me. Even only partially erect, the sight of it tightened my body, and I threw my head back with a small cry so that I was suddenly staring up into his face.

His hair had spilled forward so I could see all of his face. There was no way for him to hide. The first time I'd seen him like this he'd ducked his head and let his hair fall back in front of his scars, but now he just looked at me bold as brass, his face and that one blue eye so confident, so Nicky, now that he knew that I wouldn't look away or flinch. He wasn't going to see anything in my face except how much I wanted him.

He smiled down at me and began to push his hips as if he were already inside me. It made that part of his body rub against my opening and other things. I could feel him growing harder, bigger, and the sensation of it drew small, eager sounds from me, so that I raised my hips to meet him, but he was still not quite hard enough. He put all his weight on one arm and reached down to use his hand to angle the crown inside me. I almost protested, but as soon as the head penetrated I couldn't speak for just a second and he was already pushing himself in and out of me. With every thrust he grew firmer, longer, until he was as hard as he needed to be to start fucking me. We made love, but I made love with all my men. Nicky liked to fuck; there was no other word for what we both enjoyed together. He drove himself in and out of me fast and faster, driving himself deep so that he hit every sweet spot inside me over and over and over again. If Jean-Claude hadn't been with us Nicky would have pinned my wrists and made it rougher, but that didn't work for my raven-haired fiance. So I got to look down the long line of Nicky's body and watch his body work in and out of mine, until in between one stroke and another I orgasmed, screaming my pleasure into his face. It startled him, I think, but he kept his rhythm so the orgasm built and fed into another one and another. I gripped his arms where he held himself above me, and if it had been most of my other lovers I would have raked my nails down his arms, but we'd had this discussion before so that even while I screamed my ple

asure I didn't forget that some night soon he'd be in charge of me and if I bled him now he'd bleed me later. I didn't like being bled during sex any more than he did. Well, except for one type of bloodletting.

Nicky's voice was clear, but full of the effort he was putting into fucking me and not going himself. "Jean-Claude, feed now. I'm not going to last much longer."

Jean-Claude came up behind him again, but this time their combined weight only pushed against Nicky's hips, burying him deeper inside me, which made me cry out again. Nicky shuddered above me, eye closing for a moment, and then he said, "Do it, Jean-Claude."

Jean-Claude smoothed Nicky's yellow hair to one side to bare the strong, thick line of his neck. He whispered in French against Nicky's hair, and I felt some tension go out of Nicky. He was still thick and hard inside me, still holding that impossibly muscular chest up off me on the swell and curve of his arms, but I knew the vampire was inside his head now. Jean-Claude raised his head. "Are you ready, mon lionne?" he whispered.

"Yes, Jean-Claude, do it. Just do it!"

Jean-Claude opened his mouth wide, so that I caught a flash of fangs, his eyes a solid burning blue, as if the night sky had caught fire, and then he struck. I could see his mouth locked on the side of Nicky's neck, watch his throat swallowing, his mouth sucking. Nicky's body reacted, beginning to pump inside me again. He was already buried as deep inside me as he could go, and Jean-Claude's body pinned his hips so he didn't have much movement, but what he had was enough. He began to move faster in and out, in and out, hitting deep and hard, so that I screamed out again for him, fighting not to close my eyes so that I could see Jean-Claude drinking him down, Nicky's eye closed, face almost slack as if he'd already gone, but I could feel him harder than ever, so hard, so thick, so . . . He brought me screaming again, and this time he yelled with me, his body shoving one more time deep inside me. I could feel him quivering inside me as he came, and his body shuddered above me as the vampire rode him.