Incubus Dreams (Vampire Hunter 12)

I waited for him to curve his hands over my br**sts, but he didn't. He moved his hands just a little lower on my sides, so that his hands barely brushed the edges of my br**sts and kept moving down my body. That one small brush against the edges of my br**sts caught my breath in my throat, and closed my eyes, to shudder under his hands.

His hands, so large they cupped my ribs, and nearly met at my waist, his thumbs pressing over my belly button, my lower stomach. I waited for his hands to go lower, and just as he had above, he moved his hands to the sides of my hips. Swept that sure, heavy, glide of skin and nails away from even the beginning of my pubic bone, so that he was only touching my hips, my thighs, but nothing more. His hands kept sliding downward, but he'd skipped the parts I most wanted him to touch. It left me making small noises, low in my throat, not from what he was doing, but from what he hadn't done. From what I wanted him to do.

It made me raise my arms, or try to, but Jean-Claude's hands were there. He kept my hands pressed to the bed. I put more effort into it, and found that I could raise my hands off the bed an inch or so, but Jean-Claude pressed me back to the bed, going up on his knees to get the leverage he needed. I'd made him change positions, made him work a little harder, but that was all. I put more effort into raising my wrists, freeing my arms. I don't know why, maybe because I hadn't really thought about not being able to get away. Being trapped in theory is one thing, knowing it for a fact, is different. Or different for me.

"Why struggle?" Richard asked, in a voice that held a tone I'd never heard from him. "You know that Jean-Claude won't let anything bad happen." His big hands finished their glide down my body, to end with his fingers wrapping around my ankles. He didn't press them to the bed, just held them, held my ankles in his hands.

I tried to get away from him. I couldn't help it. It was just one of those things. Tell me I can't, or show me I can't, and I have to try. I wasn't trying as hard as I could, but I was trying. Trying enough to feel the strength in his hands, a strength that could bend steel. I couldn't get away.

He spread my legs, using his hands on my ankles. He spread my legs, wide and wider, while I tried to stop him. It was a game, because we'd all agreed to this. I wanted him to make love to me, but game or not, there was something about the way he spread my legs with the strength in his hands, while Jean-Claude pinned my arms, that sped my pulse, and made the struggles go from halfhearted to not so halfhearted. It was stupid, but I couldn't help myself. I had to try to stop him from spreading my legs, from exposing me, and the fact that I couldn't both scared me and excited me. The two feelings should have been mutually exclusive, but they weren't.

"Tell me to stop," Richard said, and his voice had grown deeper.

I shook my head. "No."

"Then why are you struggling?" he asked, and there was a look in his face, eager, dark, happy, all at once. He pushed my legs farther apart, until it was just this side of hurting. Until the muscles in my thighs began to ache with the stretch. "Why are you struggling, if you don't want me to stop?"

I said the only thing I could think of, "I don't know." My voice was breathier than I thought it would be, as if my pulse was interfering. I realized then, that he'd spread my legs so far apart that I really couldn't struggle, not unless I wanted it to hurt. It made me push harder against Jean-Claude's hands. I raised up a few inches, so that he actually had to come to his knees, and press down, to hold me secure. Him coming to his knees meant that suddenly his body was exposed just above my head. He hung loose and soft just above me, and until he fed he would stay soft. I loved the sensation of him in my mouth when he was like this, because it didn't last, except when he had not fed. Now, I could explore the softness of him as long as I wanted, and it wouldn't change. I strained back for him, neck bowing, mouth reaching, and he was out of reach. Dangling just above me, but his hands held me down, and I couldn't get to him. Jean-Claude had to know what I was trying to do, but he kept his weight on my wrists, and his body arched above me, out of reach.

My voice came out strained, breathless, "Please."

"Please, what?" Richard's voice from the other end of the bed.

"Ma petite has a penchant for men when they are soft. Until I feed, she could indulge this... desire."

"And you're keeping it just out of her reach," Richard said, his voice dropped an octave lower so that it was almost painfully low, his voice just before it began to growl.

"Oui."

"Why?" he asked.

"Is that not the game that you wish to play?"

A thin line of growl trickled from Richard's throat. "Yes, yes, it is." He was up on all fours, too, but unlike Jean-Claude he was thick and heavy against the front of his body. "But I don't want it to be you she's begging for, I want it to be me."

"Why can it not be both of us?" Jean-Claude asked.

The two men stared at each other, and I had a moment to feel their, not power, but almost as if their wills were suddenly power. I could feel the strength of their wills aimed at each other. "You chose not to let me feed," Jean-Claude said, "deliberately. You thought she would not have a use for me until I could be erect." He smiled. "You underestimate ma petite's love of the male body. She loves us in all our many forms." That last held some note, some jab, that I didn't understand. I should have, but the feel of their hands on my body, and the view of both of them nude had me distracted. I never seemed to think as clearly around them when they were naked, embarrassing, but true.

Richard's face darkened with anger, and the first trickle of his power slipped past his so tight shielding. It danced along my legs like a breeze off the plains of hell. Hot, so hot. It raised goosebumps in a shivering line down my body. Me, shivering, brought their attention back to me. Jean-Claude's face was pleasantly neutral, hiding. Richard looked down at me, and the anger was still there, but underneath that was something else. It held sex, but it also held something darker. Something that promised things beyond sex, beyond anything safe and sane. A moment to glimpse in his eyes things he probably didn't want to see in any mirror, before he turned away, so I couldn't see his face. As if he knew what I'd seen.

"If you're going to fight, get off of me," I said. It was a little tough to put much authority in my voice when I was na**d and they were holding me down, but I managed. My voice was suddenly mine again, not breathy, not sexy, just mine.

"That is not up to me, ma petite," Jean-Claude said. "Are we going to fight, Richard?"

That hot, hot wind eased out from his body again. A line of heat to trail like something solid and reaching across my skin. It was like fingers, fingers made of heat climbing up my skin, touching places Richard had very deliberately avoided. When that seeking heat caressed between my legs, I gasped, and managed to say, "Stop it, whatever it is, stop it." The heat climbed higher, using my body like a fleshy ladder.

"Does it hurt?" Richard asked, but he was looking at Jean-Claude, not me.

"No," and the power caressed my br**sts as if some great monster had breathed their breath hot across them. I shuddered under that touch, eyes closing, neck bowing.

I opened my eyes staring up into Jean-Claude's face. His face was still pleasant, unreadable, hidden. "Are you well, ma petite?"

I nodded. I might have said something else, but Richard's power caressed my throat, flowed over my lips, so that my mouth felt hot, as if some hot, thick liquid lay on my tongue. I looked up into Jean-Claude's midnight blue eyes, and whispered, "Richard."

Jean-Claude lowered his face over mine, more of his weight pressing in his hands, against my wrists, so even as he came closer, I was held more tightly. I opened my mouth for him, but he paused just short of a kiss. He licked the air above my mouth. I thought at first he'd missed, but he raised up enough to look down my body to Richard. "What game is this?"

"You and she aren't the only ones who gained power when she bound herself to Damian and Nathaniel." His voice wasn't happy when he said it, in fact the anger was back. The anger fed directly into his power so that a line of scalding heat flashed up my body and tore a scream from my throat.

Jean-Claude put his mouth to mine, and his power was in his kiss. A blessed coolness to glide over my tongue, down my throat, to spill in a chilling line through my body and quiet all that heat. And as if Richard's power had been waiting for that very thing, it surged forward, and I was suddenly covered in their power. It was as if my body was the wick for Richard's candle and the spout for Jean-Claude's cool water to flow down. But you can't be both flame and water. You can't burn and drown, not at the same time. My body tried, it tried to be cold and hot, flame and water, life and death. But wait, that last, that last we understood, my power and me. Life and death, especially death.