Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"You could look a little less unhappy about this," Domino said.

"I'm sorry, really," I said, and I included Ethan in the apology. "It's just that I keep trying to trim my list of lovers and make a big deal out of the trimming, and now here we are again."

Ethan smiled. "Your dance card was beyond full by the time I came into your life; I figured that out once I got to St. Louis, and yes, I was disappointed, but now I'm with Nilda, and I'm happier than I've ever been. That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't met me in Washington."

I patted his arm. "Thanks, Ethan, but will Nilda have a problem with us sleeping together again?"

He shook his head. "She knows I'm one of your moitie betes, and to a member of the Harlequin that means I belong to you first and everyone else second."

"Good to know," I said, and turned to Domino, who was not smiling.

"Will Jade be okay with us doing this?"

"Jade wants to fuck you, too, Anita. She'll be fine."

That made me frown, because I'd just gotten free of a relationship with Jade that had been unsatisfactory on my part and frustrating for her. I didn't want to get dragged back into it when we got back home.

"Is it really that bad a choice, the two of us?" Domino asked.

I smiled, but looked down because I knew it wasn't going to make it all the way up into my eyes. "No, of course not. You are both lovely in bed."

"Lovely sounds like girl-speak for good, but not great," he said.

"Why are you making this difficult?" I asked.

"Because if I'm going to get a chance to have sex with you again, I want you to treat it less like a chore you have to do, and more like something fun. I know you're only doing it to try to heal, but still, sex is supposed to be fun, Anita."

That made me smile all the way up, so I let him see it. "Thanks for the reminder, because you're right. I was treating it like a chore, and I'm sorry for that. I'm just worried about what the Irish police are going to do, or what they're going to allow us to do tonight."

Edward said, "Nolan and I will help Pearson persuade the upper management."

"I hate it when police are run like a corporation. It just doesn't work that way," I said.

"That's still how most of them are run, especially in the larger cities."

"It still doesn't make it right," I said.

He agreed with me but sent me off with the two weretigers, saying, "Have fun."

I looked at the two men who were waiting for me a little down the hallway. They were almost the same height, just under six feet. Domino's shoulders were broader and he just bulked up a little more when he worked out. Ethan was even more slender than when I'd met him, honed down from the workouts and training that our guards did. Both of them were in better shape than when I found them. Domino had been muscle for the mobster who was also master vamp of Las Vegas. Being mob muscle didn't come with a set exercise routine. Ethan had been a bodyguard for the queen of the red tiger clan. I looked at him, realizing just how much thinner he was now, and he'd been thin to begin with; either he wasn't eating enough or he'd leaned down through all the exercise with us. Once I got him out of his clothes, either he'd have more visible muscle or he'd have less muscle mass in general from poor nutrition. Either way, once we got to our hotel room I'd find out.

73

I DIDN'T FIND out if Ethan was starving himself or had just carved himself down to lean muscle, because Domino won the toss, or rather threw down with "I am more dominant than you are, so unless you want to fight about it . . ." which Ethan didn't. It was sort of my fault, because I was having trouble choosing and had made some noise about why not make it a threesome? Neither of them wanted to do that, but they took my suggestion as meaning I had no preference between the two of them, so they decided for me. Normally, I might not have been okay with that, but there was nothing normal about our trip to Ireland. My arm was aching by the time we walked to the hotel, so I was good with someone else taking the initiative.

Ethan went into the connecting room and shut the door between us. I sat down on the edge of the king-size bed, my arm in the sling, and hugged it a little closer to me, carefully.

"How much pain are you in?" Domino asked.

"Enough. I want this healed."

He came to stand near me. "I mean, are you in so much pain that it's going to interfere with the sex?"

"My concentration may not be what it's supposed to be," I said.

He knelt in front of me. I was suddenly looking into those red-and-orange eyes. They so looked like tiger's eyes in his human face, but strangers would ask where he got the cool contacts. Very few people saw the reality of him. I wasn't sure if they lied to themselves, or if other people were just that blind to anything outside the ordinary. Micah's leopard eyes didn't have clean circles of color between his gold and yellow. It was more an intermingling of the two colors, but Domino's red and orange were separate, not perfect circles, but the imperfections of it made the two colors bleed over just a little here and there, so the illusion was less fire and more water, as if his eyes held both heat and cool, flame and liquid. I touched his face, laying my fingers beside those eyes and tracing downward along his cheek to find the softness of his lips with just the tips of my fingers. The movement made him close his eyes for a moment and let his breath out in a long sigh that seemed to hold months of stress and tension, just blown away with one breath.

I caressed his hair next, playing with the scattering of white curls as if someone had spilled white rose petals into all that raven-black hair. He was watching me now, the tiger eyes full of so many emotions that no real tiger would ever feel, because they couldn't possibly overcomplicate their lives as much as humans did.

He touched my face and his hand was big enough to cup the entire side of it, so that I laid my cheek in his hand as if it were a pillow and let myself relax into the nearly fevered warmth of his skin.

I said, out loud, "So warm."

"I have warmer places on my body."

"Show me," I said.

74

ONCE HE WAS nude, I could see the play of new muscles under his skin; he was beginning to bulk up and I could trace the shadow lines of a six-pack across his stomach just hidden below a layer of warm, soft, kissable skin. He was only a few pounds from having that cut fierceness that graced the cover of so many magazines, but he looked beautiful just as he was, and I knew through dating so many dancers and weight lifters that a true six-pack is either a very clean diet, or genetic luck, or a combination. We all hit the gym to stay in shape for our jobs whether it was stripping onstage, performing in ballet, fighting monsters, or guarding other people's bodies, but for that fitness-model look you had to spend almost more time in the gym than with the people you loved, and it just wasn't worth it to me.

Domino had to help me off with my clothes; getting the sling off had been almost the most painful part. First it was straightening the arm, which hurt, and then letting the arm hang hurt. We ended up putting the sling back on once I was nude. That way I wasn't wincing every time I moved.

"Why does this hurt so much?"

"You had a piece of someone driven into your arm so deep that you almost had to have surgery to have it removed," he said.

"Oh," I said, and after that, I stopped asking stupid questions, or tried to; I sometimes say what I'm thinking too much when foreplay is just starting. I did my best not to ask anything else that obvious. Either I managed it, or Domino didn't care enough to comment. He just ran those warm hands over my body, and he was right; other parts of him were even warmer.

I tried oral sex on him in one of my two favorite positions, with him lying flat on the bed and me kneeling over him, but I couldn't bear for my arm to hang at the angle I needed. I straightened up with him firmer than when I'd started, but not to my usual level of happy. I knelt beside him and said, "I'm sorry my arm is in the way."

"I would love for you to go down on me later when you're feeling better, but I understand that you're hurt

ing. Let's fix that."

"Sounds good. How?" I was cradling my arm now. It wasn't aching anymore; it was just hurting. Waves of pain were radiating from my arm, up my shoulder, down the side of my body. It was not as bad as when they'd cleaned and treated the wound, but it was bad enough that I was beginning to wonder how I was going to get past it for sex. I liked a little pain with my sex sometimes, but this was not the right kind of pain. This just fucking hurt.

"I can feel the echo of how much you're hurting," he said.

"I'm sorry for that," I said.

He touched my good arm. "You don't have to be. It's part of my job as your beast half to feel what you're feeling and help you heal it."

"Domino, I'm not sure if I can do this hurting this much."

"You've just gotten spoiled sharing our healing abilities," he said, smiling and trying to make light of it.

"Yes, I have gotten spoiled. I'd forgotten what a bitch it was to get hurt during an investigation and still have to keep going."

"I have an idea," he said.

"I'm all ears."

He looked me up and down, lingering on my breasts. "I wouldn't say that," he said, and he touched where he'd looked the longest, and it felt nice to have him caress my breasts, but the pain overwhelmed it.

He finally propped pillows up against the headboard and helped me recline with pillows helping to hold my arm in place, so I didn't keep having to use my good arm to hold it. He started caressing my thighs and passing that warm hand over the front of my body. He didn't try to go for the gold, didn't try to play with me, but just kept petting me with those big, warm hands of his, and I started to relax into the pillows and his touch. He finally started touching more to the point, helping me spread my legs wider so he could lie between them tracing the edges of me, petting me and finally laying one big hand over the front of me so that he cupped all of me in the fevered warmth of his hand, pressing the palm of it against me, so that it was almost like being held, but just there. It was so gentle and I felt myself growing wet and tension trying to leave. I wanted what went with that tenderness.