Anita Blake 14 - Danse macabre (17 page)

"He began this fight," Requiem said, "let us finish it." His hands weren't shaking, but there was a thread of strain in his voice.

Jean-Claude looked down at Auggie. "Understand this, Augustine, we have never fed like this. I do not entirely know what will happen. Are you content with such a gamble, for it is you who will suffer if it goes badly?"

I slid my mouth over him, playing my tongue along the foreskin. He shivered, and simply said, "Yes."

"
Ma petite
, stop that, or he will not be able to think."

I went back on my knees, and stopped touching him. I put my hands in my lap and behaved. I guess it was cheating.

"Augustine, do you agree to this?"

He nodded, hands reaching for Jean-Claude. "Yes, yes, God, yes, the two of you both, yes, yes!" His grip on Jean-Claude's arm looked almost painful.

Jean-Claude stroked his hair, soothing him. "Then we will do as you ask." He looked at me, and it was as if a door opened in my mind. Some inner guard that he must have used almost constantly to keep the marks from being in full force was gone. It staggered me for a moment, made me reach out to Auggie's thigh to steady myself. The moment I touched him, the
ardeur
roared back, but this time I could feel Jean-Claude at the other end of his body. I could feel the two different
ardeurs
like different flavors of fire, and Auggie was our only wood. We'd burn him up, and he wanted us to do it.

I heard Jean-Claude in my mind, whispering, "I am letting go of my control,
ma petite
, are you ready?"

I nodded. He let go, and I fell screaming into the abyss. An abyss of skin and hands and mouths, and bodies. My own body was one huge throbbing need. And I didn't particularly care how that need got met.

I ended up on the floor with Augustine on top of me. All that curved hardness going in and out of my body, so that I screamed for him. Screamed my need, my pleasure, and my eagerness. He began propped on his arms so I could watch his flesh slide into mine, but then Jean-Claude joined us, and the angle had to change.

We had never put anyone in the middle of us when we both fed the
ardeur
. All these months with Asher, Micah, Nathaniel, Richard, and Jason, and I'd always been the one in the middle. Jean-Claude and I had fed from each other. He had fed from me while I fed at the man, or men, touching me, but never in all those nights had Jean-Claude been touched by someone other than me when we were all naked together. With the marks roaring open between us, I knew how much that had cost Jean-Claude. How horribly careful he had had to be in the middle of the one moment when you should be able to lose all control. So careful, so afraid of scaring me, disgusting me, making me turn away. So afraid of what the other men might say with a badly placed hand, or caress. So careful, so terribly careful, and now suddenly he didn't have to be careful. I felt the horrible tension in the center of his being relax, like a long-held breath released.

He explored Auggie first with fingers, and used the wetness of my body to lubricate other places that didn't normally lubricate themselves. The marks were wide open, so I got flashes of memory, of other men, and other times. Random images as they occurred to him, but even here he chased them away, still afraid of what I'd think. But Auggie's body was already inside mine, and I felt his eagerness at every probe, every touch. Everything that Jean-Claude did urged him on to more with me, so that all I could think was how would it feel to have Auggie thrusting inside me while Jean-Claude rode him.

Jean-Claude entered him slowly, and Auggie's body stilled above mine, as he concentrated on the sensation of it. It had been a long time for Auggie. As he'd said before, he preferred girls, which meant that even here, with both of us eager, Jean-Claude had to be careful, so careful. Nothing spoils great sex like unintentional pain.

But finally he had everything in he was getting in, and Auggie's body relaxed above me. Relaxed into the rhythm that Jean-Claude found on top of us both. They both found a rhythm, Auggie's body pushing in and out of mine, slowly, ramming home at the end, so that I made small sounds at the height of every stroke.

The two of them found a rhythm together so that the height of one stroke was the height of the other. So that Auggie and I cried out together, and Jean-Claude rode us both. I tried to move with them, but the combined weight pinned me to the floor, so that the best I could do was squeezing
Auggie as he came and went inside me. My legs were wrapped around them both, as much as I could, so that Jean-Claude's body brushed against my foot as he moved. I felt that heavy, delicious weight begin to grow between my legs. I knew that orgasm was coming and that this one couldn't afford to be a surprise. But I didn't have to tell Jean-Claude, he knew.

He stared down at me over Augustine's shoulder, his eyes all drowning blue fire, as if a midnight sky could burn. His hair had come loose, strands of it sticking to the sweat on his face. I knew that my eyes were dark brown flame, as if I were a vampire. It had happened before. We stared at each other over Augustine's shoulder, and I felt that weight growing, growing, growing.

Augustine whispered, "Your breathing's changed."

I came screaming, and it was as if that had been the moment both men had been waiting for, as if they had fought long and hard not to go, and suddenly they could.

Augustine shoved himself twice, three times as fast and hard as he could inside me. He brought me again, screaming and writhing on the floor, and only then did he go inside me. His body spasming above me, his body trying to dig deeper inside me, so that I cried out. Jean-Claude's head went back, eyes closed, his body bowed above us both, and we fed. We didn't just feed off Augustine, we fed off all his people in our territory. I felt Haven, the werelion, spasm against the floor, where he still lay in the fallen curtains. I felt Benny, behind the wheel of a car, lose control and have to screech to the side of the highway. Pierce fell against a wall and slid to the floor, his body spasming. Octavius collapsed on the stairs, choking, clawing at the stone, breaking his nails to bloody bits to try to keep it from happening. But nothing could save them, any of them. If we'd been in Chicago we could have fed off every beast and vamp that owed allegiance to Auggie, and he would have let us. For this pleasure he would have sold what was left of his soul and the souls of everyone who worked for him.

We drank them down, all of them; we fed, and fed, and fed, and while we fed Augustine's body kept spasming, and every thrust of pleasure brought me again, which brought Jean-Claude. We fed and orgasmed until Augustine went still between us, collapsed, body twitching. Jean-Claude looked down at me over Auggie's sweating body, a fierce smile on his face. He stared down at me with his eyes gone to blue fire so bright that the skin of his face glowed with it. He glowed with the power we had drunk. So much power, so very much power. I felt like a distant echo that Richard was leaning against a wall somewhere, staggered by the power we'd taken, and shared.

A thought was enough. Micah and Nathaniel were sitting just outside, one against the wall, the other sitting on the floor. Nathaniel laughed with the power rush of it all. We'd shared the power with all our people, all of them. Good, bad, indifferent, everyone with a connection to us was power drunk and glowing tonight. If there had been a metaphysical satellite up there in the sky, our territory would have glowed from orbit.

IT TOOK ABOUT an hour to get everyone separated to places where they could clean up. Claudia had sent for reinforcements, so that the wrecked living room was nearly a solid wall of black-shirted guards. Werewolves, wererats, and werehyenas, the people we had treaties with for guard work, all Stood around while Octavius had hysterics. If he'd had more guards with him, and we'd had less, it could have gotten violent, but when you're outnumbered, outmuscled, and your master is saying,
Let it go
, well, Octavius had to eat it. He didn't like it, neither did Pierce, but Haven, of the Cookie-Monster-blue hair, was voting with Auggie. They both liked us just fine. Jean-Claude and I lay back in his huge bathtub. My clothes were ruined
but I had my knife and gun on the edge of the tub. Nothing else had been salvageable. We'd scrubbed and cleaned, and now were just soaking in the hot water. Auggie had probably already finished in the showers down the hall, but Requiem and Asher were in charge of seeing that our guests didn't do anything unfortunate. They were both master vampires over four hundred years old, they could handle it. We'd handled everything I wanted to handle for one night.

Jean-Claude lay back against the edge of the tub, and I lay in his arms, the back of my body cradled against the front of his. He trailed his hand down my arm, and hugged me tighter against him. His body was quiet, pressed against my body. I think we'd both had all we could handle for one night.

His voice came lazy, with that edge that sleep can give it. "What are you thinking about,
ma petite
?"

"If you hadn't shut the marks down so tight, you might not have to ask." I snuggled my head into the hollow of his shoulder and chest. "You shut them down as soon as we were finished with Auggie. Why?"

His body tensed against me, even his arms where they were wrapped around me, not so comforting anymore. "Perhaps I was afraid of what you would find in my thoughts." His voice wasn't sleepy now, but had that bland emptiness that he used to hide behind.

"What would I have found?" I asked, but I wasn't cuddling now. Tension is contagious.

"If I had wanted you to know the answer to that question, I would not have shut the marks down."

I started to protest, but another thought stopped me. With the marks that wide open, it had only been chance that I hadn't thought of the baby question. Chance and the fact that the
ardeur
tended to wipe out anything that wasn't pertinent to the moment. Now the fear came crawling back, tightening my stomach, tensing my muscles.
Please, God, don't let me be pregnant
.

"What is wrong,
ma petite
?" he asked.

I let out a breath that shook around the edges and said, "You know, Jean-Claude, normally I'd push for honesty, but I think I've had all the revelations I can handle for one night. It's okay, whatever you thought, it's okay."

"It is okay without your ever knowing what the thought was?" he asked.

I settled back into his arms, willing the hot water and the touch of his body to take away that awful tension. "Yes," I said, "yes."

He moved me to the side, holding me in the water, so he could see my face. "Yes, just like that?" His face showed his skepticism.

I stared up into him; his hair was wet and slicked back from his face, so that nothing took away from it. Those eyes a blue as dark as blue could be and hold no touch of black. His lashes thick and black—it had taken me months in his bed to see his upper lashes by candlelight and realize that he had a double row of upper lashes. Him and Elizabeth Taylor. You only saw it if the light was just right, and his head turned just right. Until then, they were just this unbelievable lace around his eyes. I traced the lines and curves of his face, down to the grace of his lips. I let him see in my eyes what I saw, what I felt, gazing at him.