"I appreciate the help, but if our pards really do merge, then Caleb is going to have to learn to respect me, not you."
"You don't want my help?" He made it a question.
"Priority tonight is Gregory, but Caleb and I are going to have to come to an understanding."
"Are you going to shoot him too?"
I tried to read Merle's face and failed. A sort of blank hostility was all that showed. "You think I'll have to?"
Merle gave a very small smile. "Maybe."
It made me smile, a little. "Great, just what I need, another discipline problem in my pard."
His smile vanished like a hand had wiped it away. "We're not your cats, Anita, not yet."
I shrugged. "Whatever you say."
"We are not yours," he said.
I watched his face and saw something cross it in the moonlight. Maybe if I'd had better light I could have deciphered it. "Why does the thought of me being in charge bother you so much?"
He shook his head. "It's not you being in charge that bothers me."
"Then what is it?"
He shook his head again. "What bothers me is you trying to be in charge and failing--failing really, really badly."
"I do my best, Merle, that's all I can do."
He nodded. "I believe you, but I've seen a lot of people try their best and still not make it."
I shrugged and let it go. "Be pessimistic on your own time, Merle, we need a little hope here, not negativity."
"I'll just shut up then," he said, which implied that if he couldn't be negative he had nothing to say. Fine by me.
I turned back to Gregory and his wide, frightened eyes. I touched his face gently, trying to ease some of that fear, but he flinched ever so slightly when I touched him. You get enough abuse in your life, and you begin to think that every offered hand is a blow waiting to strike.
"It'll be alright, Gregory," I said. Since he couldn't hear me, I must have been saying it to reassure myself. It didn't seem to do a damn thing for Gregory.
I tried to see Gregory as a lust object, and I failed. I ran my hands over the smooth skin of his back, I grabbed a handful of those yellow curls, looked into those lovely eyes, but all I could feel was pity. All I could feel was protective towards him and how much I wanted to keep him safe. He was totally nude, sitting in front of me, and he was lovely. There was nothing wrong with the way he looked, except that I didn't see Gregory in that way. Trust me to find a way to make virtue a problem.
I turned to Stephen, who was still kneeling beside us. "I'm sorry, he's beautiful, but I want to hold him, keep him safe, not have sex with him, and protective instincts are not going to get Raina to come out."
Cherry said, "You simply called Raina at the lupanar. Why is this different?"
I looked up at her, standing nude and comfortable against the deck railing. Zane was next to her, clothed, and just as comfortable.
"I can call Raina, but I can't guarantee she'll help me heal Gregory. The healing usually comes with lust, not without."
"Call her," Stephen said. "Once she's here maybe the rest will come."
"You mean call her munin, then get her in the mood, not me."
He looked very solemn, but he nodded.
"You know what her idea of sex is, Stephen."
He nodded again. "Trust me," he said.
Strangely, I did. He wasn't dominant, in fact was very often a victim, but Stephen did what he said he'd do, at almost any cost. There was a desperate stubbornness in him, no matter how often you knocked him down.
"I'll call the munin."
"And I'll make sure that Raina sees Gregory the way she needs to see him."
We looked at each other and had one of those moments of near perfect understanding. Stephen would do anything to save his brother, and I would almost anything to help him do that.
Chapter 30
I SAT BACK on my heels in front of Gregory, and I opened myself to the munin, dropped that barrier that kept Raina out, and she spilled up through me like warm water filling a pipe, up, up, riding on a wave of eagerness that she hadn't had at the lupanar. A thrill of fear went through me. I knew it was a bad sign, but I didn't fight her. I let her come, let her fill me up, let her laugh bubble from my throat.
When she looked at Gregory, she had no trouble seeing him as a sexual object, but then Raina saw almost everyone as a sexual object, so no big surprise.
I touched his face, caressed the line of his jaw. Gregory's eyes widened. I realized in that moment that he might not know what the hell we were doing, or what had changed. I could call Raina and think rationally. I'd fought long and hard to be able to do that. I could be distant while my hand glided down Gregory's bare chest. I could stop my hand--our hand--at his slender waist, and Raina couldn't force me lower. She snarled in my head, giving me a visual of her in wolf shape, snapping at me. But it was just a visual, like a dream; it couldn't hurt me, or anyone.
Raina spoke in my head. "This wolf still has teeth, Anita."
"You know the rules," I said.
"What?" Stephen asked.
I shook my head. "I'm talking to Raina."
"That is just creepy," Zane said.
I agreed with him, wholeheartedly, but Raina was already talking in my head, and I couldn't answer him. "I know the rules, Anita, do you?"
"Yeah."
"I do whatever I please ..."
"And I try to stop you," I finished for her.
"Like old times," the voice in my head said.
It did sound like the relationship we'd had when she was alive. She wanted to kiss Gregory, and I didn't fight it. The kiss was openmouthed, but soft, nothing that would scare me too badly. In her own way Raina was learning how to work me, too.
I'd never kissed Gregory before, never wanted to. I still didn't want to. Kissing, in some ways, is more intimate than intercourse, more special. I pulled away from his lips, and Raina was just as happy to kiss the side of his neck. His skin was warm and smelled like soap. I buried my face under his hair at the back of his ear and found the hair still damp, smelling of my shampoo.
I tried to call healing from Raina, but she fought me. "No, not until after my reward."
I actually had leaned back from Gregory, and must have said it out loud, because Stephen asked, "What reward?"
I shook my head. "Raina won't heal him until after she's been ... fed." It was a type of feeding; in her own way Raina was like the ardeur, except she only needed feeding when I called her--her craving, not mine.
"What do you want?" I asked it out loud, because I still wasn't comfortable with having silent conversations in my head.
She gave me a visual of kissing down his chest, of forcing him onto his back on the deck, and the next thing I remembered clearly was laying a gentle kiss beside Gregory's belly button. He was lying on his back, watching me with unfocused eyes. I was lying across his body, pinning his legs, my nearly na**d chest pressed over his groin. I didn't remember getting there. Shit.
I rolled off of him, and Raina came like heat, racing through my body, drawing my mouth down to his hip, licking along that small hollow just where the waist meets groin. Gregory writhed under the stroke of my mouth, and as much as I'd tried to ignore it, drew our gaze to his groin.
He was hard, ready, but the sight of him pushed Raina back, left me in control, not because it was embarrassing, but because I had never seen Gregory erect before. He was still lovely to look at, but he was an odd shape, almost hooked at the end. I didn't know that men could be made that way, and it stopped me cold.
Raina screamed in my head, roared over me in a rush of body memory. The memory was of being on all fours with a man riding me from behind, riding Raina. I couldn't see who it was; all I could do was feel. They'd found that spot in a woman's body, and the rush of orgasm was close. Raina threw her-- our--head back, a rush of auburn hair flinging free of our face, and I saw Gregory's reflection in the room's mirror.
Raina whispered in my head, "It's always like that with him from behind, because of his shape."
I tore free of the memory and found myself on all fours beside Gregory, one hand on his body. I fell back from him, because the shared memories didn't work without body contact.
I turned my face away so I wouldn't see him nude and ready, because I could still feel the memory of him inside my body, Raina's body. A hand touched my bare arm, and the rush of memories this time was overwhelming. I was there.