Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 12)

43

Graham double-parked in front of Guilty Pleasures and said he'd valet the car for me. I let him do it, which said just how well I was feeling. I was better, but I'd shoved a lot of the last feeding into Damian, and apparently, not kept enough for myself. The learning curve on the new version of the ardeur was going to take some getting used to.

Requiem offered me his hand to help me out of the Jeep, and I took it. I was stiff and more than a little sore, and since he'd helped get me that way, it seemed fair he help me out of the Jeep. Besides, I couldn't just flounce out of the Jeep like normal. I had no underwear on, and one of my great goals in life was not to flash anyone tonight by accident.

Clay, the new blond werewolf, was at the door. A trio of women were chatting him up. A man in coat and hat slipped past his back and into the club. Clay didn't seem to notice. He was far too busy staring at the redhead's chest.

He noticed us in time to suddenly usher the women into the club, before we got there. He stood, one hand on the opposite wrist, as if he'd been doing it all night. But everything about him screamed kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Requiem had a little trouble with the steps leading up to the door, too, which let me know that vampire or not, he might have a few rubby spots of his own. When we were at the top, even with Clay, I stopped long enough to say, "All those women better be of age, Clay."

He looked surprised, either at the thought of it, or that I'd seen him. "They're over twenty-one."

"You see ID?"

He looked perplexed. "Well, Maria said that her friend had left her ID at home. I know Maria."

I shook my head. "You better hope someone catches her friend inside." I let Requiem lead me past the puzzled werewolf.

It was 1:00 in the morning, but when Requiem opened the door, the sound of many people in a small space, having a very good time, spilled out around us. It was hot inside the doors, and it wasn't caused by the heating system, it was just that many bodies in a small space. I couldn't see if Nathaniel was on stage yet, because my view was blocked by a curtain of black-shirted security.

Buzz was talking to the three women. "If she doesn't have ID, she doesn't get in."

"But Clay told us it would be alright," the redhead said, and I assumed it was Maria.

"Maria," Buzz said, "you know the rules. No exceptions, not even for regulars."

The man who'd come in just ahead of us was facing two of the largest security guards I'd seen. One was as blond as Clay, and the other was very, very brunette, as in African American brunette. They were both over six feet, with a shoulder spread that was nearly as wide as I was tall. They made Buzz look small, and I wondered where they'd been when Primo was beating everyone's ass.

The brunette said, "You are not allowed in here."

"I have a right to see my own son," the man said.

"I told you, Marlowe is not dancing tonight. He called in sick."

Marlowe was Gregory's stage name, and he only had one biological unit that called itself his father. The man who'd sexually abused them as children, pimped them out to other pedophiles, and even put them in films. I knew he was in town, but we had a restraining order against him. Alright, Gregory and Stephen did.

I patted Requiem's hand and said, "Excuse me a minute." I went to the big security guards. Buzz saw me moving, and he gave the three women over to someone else to usher outside. He followed me. You'd think he didn't trust me not to start trouble.

"Excuse me," I said, "are you Anthony Dietrich?"

He turned, then had to look down, as if he'd expected me to be taller. "Who's asking?"

The creepy thing was that he had their eyes. Those beautiful cornflower blue eyes stared out of a lined and aged face. He was close to six feet tall, and the face was flat and harsh, not the delicate bone structure of the boys. Only the eyes staring out of a stranger's face.

The eyes shook me, so that I stood there staring for a second, and it was Buzz who said, "The boys have a restraining order against you. You can't enter this club without violating it. Charon, Cerebus, get his ass out of here. Don't hurt him, but get him out."

The two big men took an arm apiece, lifted, and carried him, without his feet touching the ground, out the door.

I turned to Buzz. "Does he try to get in here often?"

"A couple of times, whenever Harlow or Marlowe are scheduled."

I shook my head. "That is just so... wrong."

Buzz nodded, then took a deep breath and shook his shoulders, like a bird settling its feathers. "I'm going to have to talk to Clay."

"You talk to him, then send him to me, because I want to talk to him, too."

He looked at me. "Okay, but Brandon saved a chair by the stage for you, and I think he'll be very disappointed if you don't at least catch the end of his act."

It took me a second to remember that Brandon was Nathaniel's stage name. "Oh, yeah, sorry, got distracted."

"The fact that that piece of shit keeps trying to get in and watch his sons strip distracts me, too."

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Requiem will take you to your seat. Enjoy the show."

The vampire was just suddenly at my elbow, and I let him lead me through the crowd, but my eyes were back toward the door. What did Anthony Dietrich want with Gregory and Stephen? What could he possibly want from them after all these years? They were too old for a pedophile to be interested in them, weren't they?

I bumped into a chair and had to apologize to the woman who sat in it, and pay more attention to what was in front of me than what was behind. It was worth paying attention to.

Nathaniel was on stage. I don't know what I'd expected. I knew he stripped. I knew he performed. But I'd never seen him do it.

It wasn't that Nathaniel was shy, but he was quiet, gentle. The person on stage was neither of those things. He stalked, he strutted, and he danced. It was similar to what he'd taught me, moving to the beat of the music, but this was the real deal. Him throwing himself around the stage, springing up in the air, and spilling himself back down, every movement fluid and graceful, and amazing.

He was down to a cream-colored G-string. It left his ass bare and held him tight in front, so that he filled the cloth, and I knew him well enough to know that he was already excited. That he liked what he was doing. His eyes sparkled with it, his face shone with a fierce joy. He threw himself into the air again and landed in a push-up position. The audience screamed.

Requiem lowered me to the chair by the stage and lifted the reserved sign off the seat before I sat on it. I forgot to smooth my skirt down in back until I touched the cold chair. I had to sit up enough to smooth it down and not put my bare cookies on a chair that someone else would have to sit on later. Just politeness. But my eyes never left the stage.

Nathaniel did push-ups, then his hips dropped lower, and his body came up, and he did a movement that managed to look like he was fucking the stage, and at the same time, was a bigger movement than that, like a wave that went from his head to his feet. Over and over again, until the women in the audience were almost hysterical. A woman two chairs to my right was pulling down her blouse, flashing her breasts at him.

He crawled across the stage in that way that the wereanimals had, as if they had muscles in places that humans didn't. It was graceful and dangerous, and utterly sensual, as he slinked on all fours toward the end of the stage.

From the back, with his legs tight together, he looked nude. He laid his head on the floor, and the ponytail of his auburn hair spilled out around him like a cloak. He stayed that way for a moment, in a tight ball that looked so terribly nude. Then the music changed and his head flew up, his hair spilling in an arc through the air like a shining spray of colored water, until it fell around his back, and I realized that he had it up in a high, tight ponytail. So that the hair bounced and moved with him. He used it like it was a piece of costume, to hide his body, to peek pale flesh through it, then to swirl it around him so that the hair itself was the show for a moment, then he began to do that sensuous crawl around the stage, and people began to put money in the thin strap of his G-string. There was already a pile of money at the far end of the stage, as if he'd been getting it all along, but only now was he letting them slip the bills in so close to his body.

One woman pulled on the G-string, pulling it away from his body, and he cupped his hand over the front of him, to hide, and I almost got up. Almost rode to his rescue, but he didn't need to be rescued. He kissed her, and she let him move her hand away from his clothes and sat back like he'd stunned her. He joked and chastized and flowed through their hands like muscled water. He was always almost close enough, but never quite where they reached, if they were reaching where they shouldn't have.

I watched the other women, and the one or two men, and I felt something. Lust, I think, it was lust, but it was as if their lust was solid enough to grab, to pull out of the air itself and wrap around my body like a coat. Jean-Claude's voice whispered through my head, "Ma petite, do you want to know how to feed on their lust, to feed without touching?"

"You know I do," I whispered.

And it was like before with Primo, it was as if he stepped inside my skin almost, so that I suddenly knew what he knew. I knew how to open myself up and pull in the thick air. It wasn't like breathing, and it wasn't like feeding when I touched someone, it was closer to literally pulling at the air with metaphysical hands and dragging the lust hand over hand and pulling it inside me. It was the oddest sensation, as if the lust were silk or satin and I pulled it inside my body, as if silk scarves could pass through a hole in my skin. The sensation felt like I'd made a wound in my body and was pulling things through that wound. It was a sensation just this side of pain.

Jean-Claude's voice in my head, "It will not be so uncomfortable when you have practiced it."

"It feels awful."

"But are you feeding?" he asked.

I had to think about it, because all my attention was on how disturbing it felt to draw the lusts of strangers inside me. But once I thought about it, I realized I was feeding. I felt less cold than I had, but... "Do you ever fill up this way?"

"It keeps one from starving, but it is not a meal, no."

I don't know what I would have said to that, because suddenly Nathaniel was in front of me. I think he was repeating himself, but I hadn't heard him the first time. "I said, do you want to come play with the kitty?"

Jean-Claude was gone from my head, and I'd stopped feeding from the audience. Everything just shut down, everything but the lavender eyes staring at me from the edge of the stage. His hand was held out. Women's voices were calling, "I'm not shy... pick me, if she doesn't want to go. Brandon, Brandon, she doesn't want you, but I do..."

I put my hand in his, but I made a face to show just how uneasy this whole thing made me. I didn't like to dance where strangers, or even friends, could see me. Being dragged on stage at a strip club was so far beyond my comfort level. Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about what it would mean to mark him tonight. On stage, in front of people. Eek!

I stumbled going up on the stage, because I remembered the short skirt and the lack of anything under it, so I was very ladylike getting up on stage. Trouble was the stage was too high from the floor to be that ladylike, so I stumbled, and he caught me and gave me a look. That look gave me a last refuge. That look said, If you can't do this, I'll let it go. He would have, too, but I also knew that if it wasn't me, it was going to be someone else. Truthfully, I wasn't sure how I felt about watching him get pawed, or paw another woman. The fact that I thought flaunting myself up on stage would be a lesser evil than watching someone else flaunt themselves at Nathaniel, said clearly that my priorities had become skewed.

They'd brought a chair up on stage, and I hadn't seen it. The money was missing from his G-string, I think he'd put it with the pile at the end of the stage. I hadn't seen that either, which meant that I'd missed some of the act while I was feeding off the audience.

He led me to the chair and sat me down in it with a flourish of his arm. I looked up at him and knew that the look on my face was suspicious. It said clearly, What are you going to do to me?

He laughed, and it was that full-throated laugh that turned his face from handsome to something younger, more innocent, for lack of a better word. I valued that laugh, because I didn't get to hear it often. If me sitting here like this made him feel that good, then it just couldn't be that bad.

He put a hand on the back of the chair on either side of my shoulders, leaning his face very close into mine. I could see the eyeliner around his lavender eyes now and realized that there was mascara there, too, not a lot, but his eyes didn't need a lot to go from beautiful to freaking amazing. "You're not allowed to touch me, and I'm only allowed limited contact with you, but your hands need to stay on the chair most of the time." His lips showed the shadow of the smile that gleamed in his eyes.

I don't know what I would have said to that, because the music came up, or maybe it just began, and he started to dance. It had been spectacular enough from the edge of the stage, up this close, it passed from spectacular to embarrassing. It didn't matter that I slept with him almost every night, or that I'd seen him more nude than this more than once. It mattered only that it was in public, and I didn't know what to do.

He started by writhing over me with his hands still on the back of the chair. His chest was so close to my face that it was harder not to have my lips touch him, than to touch him. I'd seen him use his body before, but not like this. It was as if every muscle from shoulder to groin was capable of moving independently, and he was using every one of them. It was amazing, and in private I would have told him so, but here and now, I blushed.

He sat in my lap with his legs wide around the chair, his hands still on the back of it. If he'd just sat, I could have handled it, but of course he didn't. He moved his hips around my lap, like he was stirring something, but the movement didn't stop at the hips, it danced up his body, so that it was a bigger movement and more of the crowd could see it, as if there was any doubt what he was pantomiming.

My face was hot, as if my skin would burn if you touched it.

He leaned in against my hair, where I'd hidden my face, and whispered, "I'll stop and pick someone else if it's too much."

I raised up enough to meet his eyes. "Pick someone else?" I said.

"The act doesn't change," he whispered, "just who's on stage." The smile was gone from his eyes. He was serious again. I'd killed the smile in his face, or my embarrassment had. God.

I touched his face, cupped the edge of his cheek against my hand. I looked into those suddenly serious eyes, while the music beat and pulsed around us. In that moment there was no crowd. There was nothing but his face and my decision. I forgot the people, forgot that I was supposed to be embarrassed, forgot everything but that I wanted him to smile again.

"No, don't pick anyone else. I'll try. I'll really try."

He gave me that flash of smile that I'd only recently known he had in him, and he dropped to his knees in front of me. His hands played lightly on my knees, and he began to spread my legs apart, but he was still dancing to the music, even on his knees, and he saw the problem before the rest of the audience did.

He put his body between my knees and leaned in enough to say, "You're not wearing anything."

I had to smile at the almost surprised embarrassment on his face. It was nice to know that he could be embarrassed. "Nope," I said.

He laughed again, and raised up high on his knees, his hands on the back of the chair again. He thrust against me, not touching, but it must have looked worse to the audience, because they yelled and screamed and began to throw money onto the stage.

He didn't so much fall down my body, as spill down it, again that sense of liquid grace that the wereanimals had when they wanted to. He ended with his face in my lap, across the stretched fabric of the skirt, his upper body actually hiding the rest of me from the audience. The skirt had ridden up enough that everyone knew I was wearing black lace thigh-highs. His hands traced up my hose, above the boots, across my knees, and up my thighs, until his fingers came to the edge of the lace.

His fingers traced just above the lace, played along the bare skin of my thighs. He turned his head in my lap, just enough so that his lips were close to my bare thigh, and he kissed the inside of my thigh. That one small touch made me shudder, and close my eyes in a sigh.

He was up while my eyes were closed, hands putting my knees together so when his body moved, I wasn't flashing anyone. He danced behind me, and suddenly his hair feel over my face and body like an auburn waterfall. I was suddenly drowning in the vanilla scent of his hair.

He whirled around me, touching me only with his hair, then he had my hand in his and pulled me hard and fast out of the chair, so that I was forced against his body. It was like a move in a dance but more forceful, if you wanted your partner to stay on her feet. If he hadn't caught me, I might have fallen, but his body was there, and my hands were on that body, I couldn't help it. I just caught myself with his arm and chest, but the sight of me touching him like that sent more money onto the stage, and raised the frenzy of the women grouped around the stage.

His other hand had gone to the back of my skirt and tugged it down. He made it look like he was taking liberties when it was the exact opposite. Whatever they thought he was doing, they liked it.

The music had slowed, changed, and he was suddenly dancing with me. It was almost a waltz, and he did three quick turns across the stage, and we were back at the chair. He used my hand to whip me out from his body and have me facing the back of the chair. He put my hands on the curved back of the chair, then put his body as close to mine as he could. He was close enough that I could feel the tightness of him pressing against the back of my skirt.

He whispered against my hair, "This would be easier if you were wearing underwear."

I started to turn and ask what would be easier, but his hands covered mine, trapping them against the curve of the chair, and he suddenly started pressing that tight part of him against my ass.

I'd said he pantomimed sex before, but I'd been wrong, because he was doing it now.

He thrust against the back of my body, with his hands trapping mine against the chair, and his body curved over me. With my legs together he wasn't brushing up against anything that Requiem had hurt. With my legs together, the angle would have been wrong if we were actually trying to have sex, but that wasn't what the show was about. As he'd said hours ago, it was an illusion, the illusion that they could have him. The illusion that he could bring someone up on stage and have them in front of everyone else.

The cloth of the G-string was satiny, but what lay inside that satin was hard and firm, and all I could think of was earlier in my office. Of the feel of him inside of me for real. Of him pushed inside me as far as he could go, of him sliding in and out of my body, of him stroking over that spot inside me, of the feel of him so careful, so delicate, so very strong, as he moved inside me. My imagination was suddenly not my friend. Because between one breath and another, the memory overwhelmed me, and suddenly that heavy warmth spread from low in my body to spill over my skin in a dance of goosebumps. I spasmed against the chair, against Nathaniel's body. His body was still bent over mine, and the weight of him rode me as I spasmed, as I orgasmed. It was a small one, no screaming, no clawing, just that helpless spasming, and not much of that by my standards.

He whispered against the side of my face, his breath almost hot. "Anita..."

But the next moment there was movement behind us, I felt it like a disturbance of air, and there was a sound I didn't know, and a sharp sound of something heavy hitting flesh. Nathaniel's body reacted to the blow, spasmed, almost like mine had. A second blow came, and this time words, Jean-Claude's voice, "Bad cat, very bad cat. Away from her bad cat, away from her."

Nathaniel's body responded to every blow, almost like it was a miniature orgasm. His body tightened around me, as if the feel of my body next to him while Jean-Claude whipped him was something he didn't want to lose. But Jean-Claude drove him off, with a joking voice, and Nathaniel made sure my skirt was in place before he let Jean-Claude drive him across the stage.

I was left holding the chair, so weak-kneed I didn't trust myself to move yet. Jean-Claude had a small many-tailed whip in his hand. Nathaniel crouched and crawled across the stage, and Jean-Claude beat him. It was like an odd version of an old-time lion tamer act, except the chair served an entirely different purpose.

"You are a very bad kitty-cat, very bad. How do we punish our bad kitty?" For a second I thought he was asking me, but he wasn't. The women around the stage started to chant, "Tie him up, tie him up, tie him up."

Jean-Claude smiled, as if that had never occurred to him, but what a good idea it was. At a gesture from him, chains descended from the ceiling. I hadn't noticed them in the welter of lights and cables. Oh, hell, I hadn't even looked up.

Two bare-chested waiters, wearing only leather pants, came up on stage and dragged Nathaniel to his feet. They chained his arms spread wide, wrists above his head.

Jean-Claude came to me, walking so that his hips rolled more than they should have. He touched my arm and whispered, with a smile that did not match the words, "Are you alright, ma petite?"

I nodded and whispered, because I knew he'd hear me. "Flashback."

"Not as strong as those that our Asher can give."

I shook my head.

"Interesting," he said, "are you well enough to finish this show?"

"I promised," I said.

His smile widened, and his voice was suddenly that room-filling, jolly sound, "Now, you may help us punish our bad kitty. You may make him pay for taking liberties." I got a shadow of what he was doing to the audience. When he said "punish," it was a sharp pull on the body; "bad kitty" made you think of very naughty things; "pay," and more money hit the stage; "liberties" had a lascivious lilt to it that made the audience do that nervous giggle, like what they were thinking was worse than anything they'd seen tonight.

I just nodded and let him take my hand. That one touch was both a mistake and a help. It made me feel less shaky, but it also opened me to him more. Touching just his hand was more distracting than touching so much more on most men. He led me a little dazed across the stage, until we were standing behind Nathaniel, facing the bareness of the back of his body.

Jean-Claude let go of my hand and went to him. He touched the bare back. "You may hit him here"--his hand slid down Nathaniel's back to his buttocks--"or here. He has been a bad kitty, but we don't want to damage him. He is far too pretty for that."

The audience agreed with him, most of them.

Jean-Claude handed the whip toward me. "I don't know how to use a whip."

"First, it is a what, my sweets?"

Most of the women yelled, "Flogger!"

"And second, it would be my pleasure," and that one word slithered over my skin, and apparently over the other women as well, for they squealed, "to show you just how it works." And every word seemed darker, more suggestive than it should have.

He tried to show me first by simply using it on Nathaniel. He made the heavy leather tails blur and blossom against Nathaniel's skin. Nathaniel reacted to every blow with a spasm that went from his fingers to his toes and everything in between. I could see enough of his face to know that those closed eyes and parted lips weren't from pain. Jean-Claude whipped Nathaniel, or I guess flogged him, until his skin was pink in places and the stage was littered with money at their feet.

He leaned close to Nathaniel's face, said something, and Nathaniel said something back, then Jean-Claude turned to me. He held the flogger out again. "He's such a bad kitty."

I shook my head.

"Shall I show her how it's done?" he asked the audience, and they yelled louder, and I wished I'd just taken the damn thing and tried, but too late now.

He put the flogger in my hand and pressed his body against the back of mine, with one arm around my waist and the other hand on the hand that held the flogger. It was the way lecherous men stand when they try to teach you how to golf or swing a bat. He swung my arm back and tried to make me give that sharp crack against Nathaniel's body, but it wasn't sharp, it was sort of flabby.

"You must relax and let me do the work, ma petite." Loud enough for the audience, he said, "Relax, my sweet, relax, and we will show him pain, and perhaps more." The "perhaps more" was like a whisper in the dark against your skin.

I let out the breath I was holding and tried to relax, never my best thing. But I also knew that if I didn't relax, this part of the show would last longer, and I wanted this part over. It was sort of demeaning, like I was a girl who couldn't swing at the ball without help. Okay, maybe I didn't know how to use a flogger, but I really didn't need this much help.

We got a couple of good blows in, enough to make Nathaniel shiver in his chains. Then Jean-Claude stepped away from me, leaving the flogger in my hand. "Give the bad kitty what he wants." And what he said was not what it felt like in my head, or on my skin, or deeper in my body. The women around the stage and farther into the room made small noises. Shit.

I threw the flogger at Jean-Claude the way you'd throw a baseball bat when you want someone to catch it. He caught it by the handle like I'd known he would. "I know what the bad kitty wants, and I am going to give it to him."

The women made "ooh" and "aah" sounds, and several said, "you go girl!" One yelled, "lucky bitch!" I walked to Nathaniel and stood in front of him. His eyes were only partly focused. He'd liked the flogger. I'd known sort of academically that he would, but seeing it in his face was different. It bothered me, and I wasn't sure if the entire thing bothered me, or if what bothered me was that this was something he liked this much, and I wasn't sure I was willing to do it for him. I let the doubts go, because what I was about to do was something I could do, and wanted to do, and had promised to do.

I looked up at the chains and just wasn't familiar enough with the concept to know, so I asked Jean-Claude, "Does this swivel?"

"It can," he said, "why?"

"Because they'll want to see his face."

The audience liked that, and they shouted more encouragement, but I didn't need it. I don't know why, but suddenly I was calm. I wasn't bothered that we were in public, or that we were on stage. It was very peaceful inside my head, very calm.

The waiters turned Nathaniel around so that he faced the audience. His eyes had gone back to almost normal. I could see his face reflected in the distant glass of the far wall. I'd never really noticed how much shiny surface there was all around until that moment, when I could watch Nathaniel's face and mine.

I grabbed his ponytail, grabbed it and wound it around my hand, tight, tight enough that he gasped. I think the audience screamed, but the sound of them was receding, pulling away, and leaving me in a well of silence, where the only noises were Nathaniel's breath and mine.

I pressed my body along his back, tucked him tight against me, so that his ass pushed against my stomach and my breasts pressed into his back. I kept my hold on his hair, and used it like a handle to keep him from moving, pulling harder if he shifted his weight, until he hung suspended, afraid to move, eager not to. I had to go on tiptoe to get the angle I wanted for the smooth expanse of his neck. I put my free hand around his upper chest, holding us tight together. I used his hair to stretch his neck to one side, to give me as much of that smooth, delicate flesh as possible. His breathing had already changed, already sped in anticipation.

I licked his neck, a quick flick of tongue, and he gasped for me. I licked harder, and he shuddered. I kissed his neck, and he made a small noise, not of protest, but of eagerness. I opened my mouth wide, and let my breath touch hot upon his skin, and then I bit him. No more foreplay, no more games. I bit him.

He struggled against me, he couldn't help it, and I used his hair and my arm around his body, and the press of my body against his back, to hold him in place. I felt his skin under my teeth, felt the meat of him in my mouth, and underneath that was that frantic beating pulse. I could taste his life underneath his skin, taste it, and know that it was mine, mine if I wanted it. Mine because part of him wanted to give it up to me.

The sensation of that much meat in my mouth was almost overwhelming, and I fought not to bite down and take away all that flesh. I fought not to take everything that he offered in that moment. I bit down, held him as he struggled, held him as his wrists jerked on the chains, as his body began to spasm, and still I sank my teeth into his flesh. The first sweet taste of blood like salt and metal and something so much sweeter filled my mouth, and I felt him convulse against me, heard him cry out. And I fed, I fed the ardeur, and hadn't even known it was coming. I fed on his blood, fed on the meat of his body, fed on his sex, fed on all of him. I fed, and when I looked up from his body, I saw my eyes reflected in the mirror. Black light, with that flash of brown light, my eyes drowned with power.

I let go with my mouth, abruptly, and saw blood on my mouth, on my chin, shining in the lights. I let go of his hair, his body, and stepped back, and I knew that my eyes were still full of that dark light. I was afraid for a second what I'd done, but found that other than a perfect set of my own teeth marks, set like a bloody necklace on his skin, I hadn't bitten through to his pulse. I hadn't hurt him, not more than he wanted to be hurt.

Jean-Claude was standing there, in front of me. "Ma petite," he whispered, "ma petite." But I knew what he was thinking, I knew what he wanted. Bound closer than we'd ever been, it cut both ways. He mouthed something about how did I feel, was I alright, but that wasn't what he was thinking. Not really.

"Say what you want," I said, "say what you want."

He stopped trying to be careful, and said, simply, "Kiss me."

I went to him, and he kissed me. He kissed me as if he were tasting me, as if with tongue and teeth and lips he could drain from me every last drop of Nathaniel's blood and the taste of me along with it. He licked the roof of my mouth and drew a sound from low in my throat. His eyes had bled to midnight blue light, as if the darkest of water held starlight in it.

I caught the glint of my own eyes, and they were still full of light, blind with the darkness of it, except it wasn't blind, it was anything but. It was like being hyperaware of everything, anything. I knew suddenly that as long as the light lasted, that every sense would be heightened. I remembered thinking in the cemetery that to make love like this would either be the most wondrous thing ever, or drive you mad. Staring up into Jean-Claude's drowning blue eyes, I was willing to bet on wondrous.

"We must see to Nathaniel first," he said, but his voice was hoarse and thick with need.

I nodded. "Yes, Nathaniel first."

"And then?" he asked.

"Say what you mean," I said, and my voice wasn't as hoarse as his, but it didn't sound exactly like me either.

"And then there is a couch in my office," he said.

"I was thinking the desk," I said.

He looked at me, and even with those drowning eyes, the look was very male. "Either will do for me, but it is you who will be on bottom, so it is your choice."

"I'll be on bottom?" I made it a question.

He nodded. "Yes."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because that is what I want."

"Okay," I said.