52
Hell is claws and teeth, and bodies fighting. I sank my teeth into someone's chest, took in as much meat as my mouth would hold, and began to bite down. I wanted meat. I wanted to feed, and the leopard was screaming that if we didn't kill them, they'd kill us. Let go, they'd said, I'd let go, and now instead of the beast being something struggling to get out, it was me that was small and trapped and couldn't get out.
That part that wanted meat and blood and found struggling somewhere between sex and food was in the front of my head. I'd always thought being an animal must be peaceful, but it wasn't peaceful. It was simpler, but it wasn't peaceful.
I remembered only pieces. The taste of blood in my mouth. The feel of my teeth sinking into flesh. My nails cutting through someone's body. I was on my stomach, and I couldn't move. Couldn't move. Someone was on my back, and someone had my hands, and I couldn't move. Teeth on the back of my neck. A moment of mind-numbing panic, then it was peaceful. Like what had happened earlier in my office, when Nathaniel bit me there. Peaceful.
Jason was kneeling in front of me, off the edge of the bed, holding my wrists. The left side of his face was a bloody mess, and distantly, I knew that my nails had done that. His eye blinked out painfully from the bloody furrows. His arms were traced with bites and scratches, so it looked like he was wearing red gloves all the way up to his shoulders. His chest and stomach were bloody, too.
Nathaniel's teeth on my neck bit down a little harder, and my eyes fluttered up, and when he growled against my skin, my body writhed under him, not struggling, but offering. Jason spoke, and a trickle of blood trailed from his mouth, as he did it. "Next time we do this, you get tied up."
Nathaniel growled, but I didn't think it was meant for me.
Jason looked past me, to meet the other man's eyes, and said, "Okay, okay. Give me your beast, Anita. Let me swallow it down." He leaned into me, and the blood that trembled on the edge of his mouth fascinated me. I tried to strain toward that trembling drop of red, and Nathaniel's teeth made me stop, forced me to wait for Jason's mouth to come to me.
His mouth stopped just out of reach. I tried to raise my hands and touch him, but his hands forced my wrists down tighter on the side of the bed. He laid his mouth against mine, and I didn't kiss him, I licked the blood from the edge of his lip.
He drew back, laughing. "You'd rather eat me right now, than kiss me." But he leaned in toward me, his mouth half-parted, and I could smell the blood inside his mouth. I'd bitten him. I remembered the feel of his lip between my teeth. I made a sound low in my throat, and he laughed again, a purely masculine sound with his lips so close to mine that my tongue could touch them. His voice held that masculine laughter, and an edge of growl, "God, she's eager."
Nathaniel growled again, with his teeth still tight on the back of my neck. The growl was low and deep and vibrated down my spine like my body was a tuning fork. It made me push my body against his. My mouth reached for Jason, but my body was offering itself to the hard weight against the back of my body.
"Alright, but if she bites my tongue off, I'm going to be pissed." And he pressed his lips against mine, but I didn't try to bite him, because his mouth was full of blood and tasted of meat. I'd already started this meal, all I wanted to do was finish it.
My beast was right there, under my skin, only Nathaniel's hold kept it peaceful. The taste of fresh blood, of meat, and the feel of Jason's mouth on mine, brought the beast like heat against my skin. I could feel my body cooking with the heat of it, as if my skin was a container for something so much hotter than human flesh. Something that was almost there, almost ready, almost...
Nathaniel raised his mouth, and only his weight and Jason's hands held me down. He whispered something against the wound in my neck, I think he said, "Now." But I would never be sure, because in that moment my beast rose.
It rose up the line of my spine like heat. It spilled out my mouth and into Jason's, in a scalding, burning wave of power. It tore his mouth off of mine, forced his head back in a scream, and Nathaniel's body bowed on top of mine, and he screamed, too. My beast was like a sword thrust through both of them. I poured my energy into their bodies, until their bodies burst with it.
I saw Jason's skin split, and I felt Nathaniel tremble above me. One moment they were there, and the next I was drenched in liquid, warm, so warm, like being dipped in fresh blood, but it wasn't blood. It was clear and viscous--that fluid that the shapeshifters leave behind when they pull their bodies from one shape to another.
I was covered in it, dripping with it, and because Jason's claws were still pinning my wrists, I couldn't wipe it away from my face. I blinked at the wolfman kneeling in front of me. His fur was dry, like it always is, like magic. I stared into wolf eyes the color of early spring grass. His fur was thick and shades of pale gray. He opened a jaw that was longer than a human's, and full of teeth that any wolf would envy. He ran an impossibly long tongue over those teeth and stared at me with eyes that held things that I'd only begun to guess at.
A claw curled into the wet sheets on one side, and that claw was a black-furred hand. I turned back and did that slow, horror-movie take, where you know what's behind you, but you just can't keep from looking. You have to look, even with the feel and press of fur against your naked body. I knew what I'd see, and still I turned and looked.
Nathaniel's face was a strangely graceful mix of human and leopard. The face shape was closer to human than the werewolf's, but when I met those gray-blue eyes, there was no one home to talk to.
I'd gotten rid of my beast by bringing theirs, and now I was suddenly covered in warm liquid that mimicked blood, with two freshly turned lycanthropes holding me down. Nathaniel put his furred hands against the bed on either side of me, and he flexed those hands, and claws like white knives sprang out from his fingertips. Just seeing them, lying there, unused, made my pulse speed just a little.
I knew they wouldn't hurt me. I trusted them. But part of me trusted Jason and Nathaniel more than I trusted their beasts. I tried not to be afraid, because fear is like spice for their meat. Fear excites a lycanthrope, it just does. So I lay very still and tried to calm my heartbeat, tried to think how to ask them to let me go, without sounding like a victim.
Nathaniel moved his hands so that they lay on either side of my body, with the fur of his thumbs caressing my skin. My heartbeat didn't like it. Neither did I. He flexed his hands again, and the claws vanished into the fur. He caressed that fur down the sides of my body, and that brush of warm, warm fur brought my breath in a shuddering line.
His voice was more growl than anything else, when he said, "I've never had hands before when I shifted." He put those "hands" back on either side of my body, so close that the edge of the fur touched the sides of my breasts. He pointed the claws downward, and I felt his muscles flex against the side of my body. His hands were right next to my breasts, and I felt his claws grip into the bed. He began to pull those claws downward. The sheet ripped, but it was the sound of the mattress tearing that brought a sound like a whimper from my throat. The mattress made a meaty sound, as his claws tore through it, easily. He moved his body so that he could trace the outline of my body against the mattress and sheets. He carved the outline of me with his claws. And I couldn't not be afraid.
Jason laughed, and strangely that masculine chuckle translated just fine through the wolf's throat. The sound made me look at him. He flashed fangs as he said, "Don't be afraid, Anita."
"Then let me go," I said, and my voice was nicely calm, barely a tremor. If they'd been human they wouldn't have been able to taste my speeding pulse, or smell my fear. But they weren't human.
Nathaniel collapsed his body on top of mine, and he was taller, broader, more muscled, or muscled in places he hadn't been before. It was like a different body pressed against mine, one I'd never touched. The fur was thinner on his chest, stomach, groin, but the skin was warmer, almost hot against my naked body, as if in this form his blood ran hotter.
He licked my shoulder, and a sound very like a small squeal came out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing, just my breathing. Not on the feel of his body, or of Jason's hands with their not-so-retractable claws tickling my wrists. I breathed, breathed while a tongue that was rougher than Nathaniel's licked in long, thick sweeps across my shoulders and upper back.
When I opened my eyes again, my pulse was normal, and I realized that Nathaniel was cleaning off the clear goop that he and Jason had gotten on me. He growled next to my ear, "We got you messy."
"Yeah," I said, and my voice was a whisper.
He settled his hips against my thighs and did a small, powerful movement, somewhere between a wiggle and a push. He was suddenly resting against my ass, and I could feel that he was different there, too. Bigger, it felt like, but I might just have been scared. Everything seems bigger when you feel threatened.
He made a sound by my face, sort of a snuff, not like he was sniffing me, but like it was a noise that I should have understood. "You're hungry. Hungry like we are. I can feel it."
I fought to keep my pulse nice and normal, my breathing even. I wasn't going to do anything to escalate this, not if I had a choice. "I'm not hungry," I said.
He leaned harder against me, sliding lower between my legs, not inside, but moving that way. The thought sped my pulse, I couldn't help it. He rubbed his furred cheek against the side of my face. "You need a shower."
"Okay," I said. At that point I'd have agreed to anything that would get me on my feet and out from under the two of them.
"We're not going to eat you, Anita," Jason said. "If that was really an option Jean-Claude wouldn't have trusted me with you, you should know that."
I raised my face and met those wolfish eyes. "Sorry, but you guys going all tooth and claw on me, makes me wonder."
"We won't hurt you," Jason said.
"Then let me go," I said, and my voice was even, normal, my pulse slowing down.
"Not yet," Nathaniel said, with his face still pressed against my face.
Jason looked at him. "Why not?" he asked, before I could.
"Because she still needs to feed the ardeur."
I wouldn't have thought that a wolf face could show that much incredulity, but Jason's did. "Anita doesn't do furry."
The leopardman on my back moved his hips another fraction of an inch down. He pushed against me, not inside, but knocking at that most intimate of doors. "You are empty inside, I can feel it. I couldn't feel it before."
Saying it once, was wishful thinking, twice, and I tried to look inside myself. Tried to see the ardeur without raising it. I needed some kind of metaphysical gas gauge, but all I could find was an emptiness in the center of me. A place where something should have been, and there was nothing.
"I feel it," I said.
"I don't feel tired, now, Anita. I feel new." He moved gently against me. "Say yes."
"Let me go, and maybe," I said.
"I like holding you down. I like us both holding you down," he growled against my skin.
"I thought you didn't like to be in charge," I said.
"I don't usually, but today I do. Today I love the feel of your body under mine. I love feeling you fight not to struggle, not to panic. I can taste your self-control on my tongue. I want to lick it away."
"Nathaniel," I said.
"Say yes, Anita, just say yes. Feed the ardeur, then you can shower, while we go looking for other things to eat."
"What other things?" I asked.
"There are supplies deeper in the underground," Jason said, "we've got too many wereanimals in here now not to be stocked up."
"Stocked up on what?" I asked.
He leaned in, hands still on my wrists. "Nothing human, nothing illegal, promise." He licked my face, a quick flick of the tongue, and then he laughed, and it wasn't masculine, it was just Jason making a joke. Jason who would make a joke on the way to hell, even if it meant extra time and a worse punishment. No matter what form he was in, he was still Jason.
That thought made a tension go out of my shoulders, out of my body, that I hadn't even realized was there. It was still Jason under all that fur and claws. It was still Nathaniel rubbing his cheek against me.
Once upon a time I'd begged Richard to show me his beast. But when he did it, I hadn't been able to deal. It took me a long time to realize that Richard had shown me his beast in the worst light possible, because part of him didn't want me to be able to accept the beast, because he couldn't. I'd run from him after seeing him eat Marcus. I'd run from him to Jean-Claude, because the vampire had seemed less the monster that night.
Was I still the same person who hadn't been able to deal? Was I still the person who could deal with the handsome prince, but not the beast? Was it beauty, more than love, that moved me?
Nathaniel pushed gently against me. "If you don't feed now, who will you feed from?"
"Graham really is just down the hall," Jason said. "He'll be in human form because Meng Die won't do him furry. She won't even sleep with him furry."
I didn't want Graham. Was it just the human form I was in love with? Was it some anthropomorphic idea that I loved? Shit. These were just not the kind of relationship questions that the magazines gave you answers to. Did Miss Manners have an answer for being freaked by your boyfriend's animal form? I doubted it.
Jason drew his claws delicately away from my wrists. "I'll get Graham and send him down."
"No," I said, and reached for his furred forearm. The fur was so soft, and his arm was so real. "No, I don't want Graham."
Jason gave me another of those looks, that said, you're joking. "You don't do furry, Anita."
"But I do Nathaniel, and I do you, on occasion."
He grinned, though it wasn't exactly the same coming from the wolf muzzle. "On occasion." He sank back down in front of me. "You want me to be your puppy tonight?"
"I was thinking more that we'd just fuck," I said.
His face was either more expressive than any wolfman I'd met, or it was still enough Jason that I could read his face. He was still under there, somewhere. I'd surprised him, not in a bad way, but I'd truly surprised him.
Nathaniel pushed against me, and he whispered against my cheek. "Is that a yes?"
"Yes," I said.
He made a sound that was half-growl, and half pure eagerness. He raised up just a little, and then plunged himself between my legs. I was screaming before he'd finished, and not in pain. He was bigger, thicker, more, and all those extra bits were plunging inside me.