He smiled, and it was Richard"s smile. That smile that he sometimes gave that let you know he really did know how lovely he was to look at. He usually came off humble, but then he had that smile.
He leaned in toward me, his hands still chastely to himself. Our lips touched, his hair spilled along my cheek. Micah"s hand eased from around my waist, letting me know I could move where I wanted to move. Or that"s how I took it. I let my hand rest against the swell of Richard"s chest. His hand cupped the side of my face. We kissed, and his lips were still as soft, as full, as kissable as they had always been. My hand slid down the curve of his chest to his waist. He pulled me in against his body, and the kiss grew to something fuller, deeper. My body fell against his, my hand tracing across his back, not sure whether to touch lower. His body was already growing with need. I wanted to react to that need, but he"d said he didn"t want to have s.e.x with all of us in the bed, and no one was leaving.
He drew back from the kiss, breathless, panting, eyes laughing. "G.o.d, how do you do that to me?"
My own voice came breathy. "You, too."
He laughed, then his gaze slid past me to the other men. His eyes darkened for a moment. "I can"t, I can"t, not yet." "Truthfully, Richard, this is more than I ever thought you"d do with Micah and Nathaniel."
He nodded. "Me, too."
"Would it totally spoil things if I asked what changed your mind?" Nathaniel asked it. I"d wanted to ask it, but I wouldn"t have.
Richard looked across the bed at the other man. "It"s none of your business." "No, it"s not," Nathaniel said. Richard bowed his head, then nodded. "Okay, I love Anita. I"m trying to learn to love all of her, even the part that wants to live with two other men." His eyes were uncertain, a little angry.
Nathaniel said, "My therapist told me that if I"m an equal partner in our relationship I need to ask for what I want. Did yours tell you that you need to resolve your feelings about Anita?"
Richard ignored the question. "What did you ask Anita? What aren"t you getting from her?"
"I"ll answer yours, if you"ll answer mine."
Richard nodded, as if that was fair. "Yeah, my therapist says I have to either come to terms with Anita"s life, or move on." "You know I"m into the bondage and submission scene?" Nathaniel said.
I wanted not to be naked in the bed with them while they had this conversation, but if they could be honest, I could lie there and let them do it. "I know. Raina talked about you a lot." Raina had been the old lupa of the wolf pack. She"d taken Richard"s virginity and trained Nathaniel to be a good little pain s.l.u.t.
Micah and I looked back to Nathaniel. It was like a therapy tennis match.
Nathaniel nodded. "Anita won"t do it with me, and I want her to."
"She"s not much more comfortable with that side of herself than I am," Richard said. "I know," Nathaniel said. "Did she agree to do it?" "Not yet." "Are you going to leave her if she doesn"t come across with it?" Micah and I lay back between them, feeling superfluous. "I"ve asked permission to have someone else abuse me, but save s.e.x for Anita." Richard looked at me, finally, and I wished he hadn"t. "You really know how to pick them, don"t you?" "What"s that supposed to mean?" I asked, but it was hard trying to sound indignant naked in a bed with three men. Richard laughed, a good, open laugh. He kissed me hard and fast. I lay there and frowned at him. "It means let"s go to sleep."
He settled on his side, facing me. I hesitated a second, then turned onto my other side. It started a chain reaction with Micah and Nathaniel following suit. It took us a while, but finally we were all settled. Richard"s body spooned along the back of mine, Micah against me, and distant Nathaniel against him. My hand went over both of them, so I could still touch Nathaniel. Richard had the hardest time figuring out where to put his arm. He finally seemed to think, To h.e.l.l with it, because he let his arm follow the line of mine, so he was both holding more of me and helping me hold the other two men. For s.e.x, it would have been fun, but for sleeping, I thought I"d have trouble relaxing. But either it had been a long night, or the sensation of being held between Richard and Micah"s body was more comforting than I realized. Nathaniel went to sleep first, as he always did. Micah and Richard went at almost the same time. Sleep wrapped over me, Richard"s breath warm against my neck.
CHAPTER 12
I WOKE IN a tangle of bodies. I was on my back with Micah and Richard half on top of me, as if even in their sleep they had fought over who would touch the most of me. The scent of their skins had mingled into a rich perfume that tightened my body. But I was still pinned and not comfortable at all. I was so tangled that I couldn"t even rise enough to see Nathaniel on the far side of Micah. I thought the uncomfortable position had been what woke me; then I caught movement at the foot of the bed. I held my breath. Was it one of the guards? Somehow I knew it wasn"t.
The faint light from the half-open bathroom door didn"t really show me anything. It was almost as if the light were being sucked at by the dark, as if eventually the darkness would swallow the light completely. My pulse was thudding in my throat, so hard I could barely breathe past it, and swallowing hurt. I knew who was in the dark, and I knew I dreamed. But just because it"s a dream doesn"t mean it can"t hurt you.
"What is that?"
I screamed, a short, sharp scream. I was looking into Richard"s face. He was awake. He started easing up to sit, and I moved with him. He tried to shake Micah awake, but I didn"t bother. I"d had this dream before.
"Wake them up," he whispered, eyes searching the darkness.
"Her animals to call are all cats; they won"t wake."
"Who . . . Marmee . . ."
I stopped the words with fingers against his lips. "Don"t," I whispered. I don"t know why we were whispering. She would hear us. But there"s something about being in the dark when you know the predator is out there, that makes you whisper. You try to be small and quiet. You pray that it pa.s.ses you by. But this wasn"t a predator, exactly; this was the entire night, given life and substance, and a mind. I smelled jasmine and summer rain, and other scents of a land that I had never seen except in vision and dream. The land where Marmee Noir had begun. I had no idea how old she was, didn"t want to know. I was a necromancer. I could have tasted her age on my psychic tongue, but I didn"t know if I could swallow that many centuries. I feared I"d choke.
"Necromancer." Her voice eased through the night like a sweet-scented wind.
I managed to swallow past the beating of my heart. "Marmee Noir," I said, and my voice was only a little hoa.r.s.e. It was better with Richard beside me, awake. His arm wrapped around me as if he felt it, too, that together we were more here. Maybe our accidental sharing of dreams, Richard and me and Jean-Claude, had a purpose. One we just hadn"t understood until now.
I leaned into the curve of Richard"s body, and his arm tightened. My hand on his bare chest let me feel the beat of his fear against my palm.
The darkness gathered, almost the way light will narrow down to a point of brightness, except this was darkness compacted, squeezed down as if a small black hole were forming in front of our eyes. The black hole took on the vague shape of a woman in a cloak.
I thought, very carefully, in my head at Richard, "Don"t look at her face." "I know the rules," he said out loud. He had heard me; good, great. Mind-to-mind talking was still not my best thing in dream or out of it.
"Do you truly believe that not looking upon my face will save you?"
Great, she read minds, too. I"d had much lesser vamps be able to do it. I shouldn"t have been surprised.
"Tell me again why Micah and Nathaniel won"t wake?" Richard asked, his voice soft, but not a whisper anymore. It was too late for whispering. She"d found us.
"Necromancer," she said.
"Cats are her creatures to call, all cats, so she can keep them out of the dream. Jean-Claude was with me last time and she was able to keep him out, too. She doesn"t do wolves."
"Your wolf will not save you this time, necromancer."
"How about mine?" Richard said, and a low growl trickled out from between his lips. It raised the hair on my arms, and that part of me where the beasts waited, stirred. The best I can describe it is that the place is like a cave where my animals wait. They walk up a long corridor to get to me. Since they"re inside me, that can"t exactly be right. But it"s the visualization that works for me.
In dream, though, the wolf inside me could come out and play. My wolf was pale, white and cream with a black saddle and marks on her head. She crouched in front of me and joined her growl with Richard"s. I dug my free hand into her fur and found it like last time: soft, coa.r.s.e. I could feel the vibration of the growl through my hand, feel the muscle and meat of her body. She was real, my she-wolf. She was real.
Richard stopped growling and stared at the wolf. She turned eyes that were brown and glowing to him. My eyes when vampire powers had filled them. They stared at each other, then she turned back to the darkness. When Richard looked down at me, his eyes were the amber of his wolf.
"Your master has left you both with the last piece undone," she said. Her voice floated around the almost-body she"d formed from the shadows. She came to the foot of the bed.
The wolf crouched, and growled, that sound that was absolutely serious. It was the last warning sound before violence.
She didn"t try to touch the bed. She actually stopped moving. I remembered seeing her body in that distant room jerk when my wolf bit her in dream last time. Had it hurt her enough to make her hesitate? Had it hurt her enough to make a true threat? G.o.d, I hoped so.
"You can still be enslaved to any master stronger than he, and there is no one stronger than me, necromancer." I clung to the wolf"s fur and Richard"s body. "I believe that last part, Marmee Noir."
"Then why has your master left this door open?"
The question puzzled me.
"I do not know that expression on your face. I have been too long without humans."
"I"m puzzled," I said.
"I will help you not be puzzled, necromancer. I came tonight to make you mine. To shatter your triumvirate and make you my human servant. I do not need to share blood to own your soul." I was trying to breathe past my pulse again, and having trouble doing it. "You won"t touch her," Richard said, and his voice sounded gravelly, the beginnings of the change in the sound of his words.
"I think you are right, wolf. I think it would be a battle with you by her side. I am not ready for battle, not yet. But there are others who know what Jean-Claude has not done."
"Who?" I managed to ask.
"Do I need to say the word?" she asked.
I opened my mouth to say it, but Richard said, "It"s against your laws to say it out loud. A killing offense, Jean-Claude said."
She laughed, and the darkness tightened around the bed like a giant"s fist. You knew, could feel, that it could crush the bed and every one on it, if it wanted to. "That is not the trick I have come to play, wolf, but fine: Harlequin. They know you are not safe. They know that I am close to waking. They fear the darkness."
"Everyone"s afraid of you," I said. The wolf had begun to relax under my grip. You could only hold on to emergency mode for so long. Apparently, we were talking, not fighting. Fine by me.
"True, and I would have taken you tonight. I planned on it." "You said that already," Richard said, his voice a little more human, but sullen.
"Then let me not repeat myself, wolf." Her anger was not hot, but cold, as if an icy wind danced across my bare skin. Richard shivered beside me. I didn"t think I"d have to caution him to be nice. That flex of power explained it nicely. "By tomorrow they will be upon you, and I do not want them to have you."
"Have me, how?" I asked.
"I will allow Jean-Claude to have you, because you are already his. But no one else. I would prefer you were my human servant, but Jean-Claude is acceptable. No one else, necromancer. I will destroy you be fore I allow the Harlequin to make you their slave."
"Why do I matter to you?" "I like the taste of you, necromancer," she said, "and no one else can have you. I am a jealous G.o.ddess, and I do not share power." I swallowed past the lump in my throat. I nodded as if that made sense to me.
"A parting gift, necromancer, wolf." The shadowed form vanished, but she wasn"t gone. The darkness suddenly had weight and grew thicker, as if the night itself could become so thick it would eventually crawl down your throat and choke you. She"d done almost exactly that to me before. The scent of jasmine and rain was thick on my tongue.
The wolf growled and Richard echoed her. "Can you bite that which you cannot find?" Her voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "My mistake was trying to be too human for you. I do not repeat mistakes."
The wolf crouched, but Marmee Noir was right, there was no body to bite here now. I had to find a way to visualize a target for my wolf. I struggled to believe that my wolf could bite the night itself.
Richard grabbed my shoulders, turned me to him. His eyes were still amber and inhuman. He kissed me. He drew back enough to say, "I can taste her power in your mouth."
I nodded.
He kissed me again, and this time he stayed with our mouths pressed together. He poured that warm, rising energy that was shapeshifter into me. He pushed it into me through our mouths, his hands, our bodies. I kept my grip on my wolf, but the rest of me I gave to Richard, and gradually I could taste pine, and leaf mold, rich and thick and foresty. I smelled the musk of wolf fur. I smelled pack. I smelled home, and the last taste of jasmine vanished under the taste of Richard"s power, Richard"s wolf, and finally, at the end, simply the taste of Richard. The sweet, thick taste of his kiss. The dream ended with a kiss.
CHAPTER 13
I WOKE ON the floor of Jean-Claude"s bedroom with Nathaniel staring down at me. I glanced to my right and found Richard on the floor with Micah beside him. There were guards in the room, and the smell of burning.
Richard"s first words were, "You all right?"
I nodded.
His second words were, "What"s burning?"
"The bed," Micah said.
"What?" I asked.
"The cross in its bag that you have underneath your pillow got hot enough that it set the pillow on fire," Micah said. "s.h.i.t," I said. Claudia appeared above me with a fire extinguisher in her hands.
"What the h.e.l.l happened, Anita?"
I stared up at her, and there was a lot of her to stare up at. She was one of the tallest people I"d ever met, and lifted weights in a serious fashion. Her black hair was in its usual tight ponytail, her face free of makeup, and still strikingly beautiful.
"That b.i.t.c.h queen vampire came again, didn"t she?" Remus said. I tried to sit up, but if Nathaniel hadn"t caught me, I"d have fallen back to the floor. The last time I"d fought off the darkness, I"d been d.a.m.n near killed by my own beasts trying to tear their way out of my human body. Apparently today I"d just be weak. I could live with that.
Remus was standing scowling at the foot of the bed. He was tall, muscled, and blond, but his face was a crisscross of scars, as if he"d been badly broken and put back together again. When he was angry enough, his face mottled, and you could see the pale lines against the flushed skin of his face. He almost never made eye contact with any one. I think because he didn"t want to see in others" faces what they thought of his own. But when he got upset enough he"d meet your eyes, then you could see how lovely the eyes were, all green and gray with long lashes. Tonight I got a good dose of the eyes.
I leaned into the warm curve of Nathaniel"s body and said, "Yeah, it was the Mother of All Darkness." "At least your beasts aren"t trying to tear you apart this time," Claudia said. "Yeah," I said, "at least." Then I felt something stirring inside me, as if something big and furred had brushed the inside of my body. "Oh, s.h.i.t," I whispered.
Nathaniel leaned in and sniffed just above my face. "I smell some thing. Cat, but it"s not leopard." He closed his eyes and breathed in deep. "It"s not lion."
I shook my head.
Richard said, "She said it was a parting gift."
I looked inside myself, in that place where the beasts waited. There was a gleam of eyes, then a face came out of the shadows. A face the color of night and flame: tiger.
"Oh, s.h.i.t," I said louder, "tiger."
"c.r.a.p," Claudia said.
To my knowledge there was only one weretiger in the entire St. Louis area. Christine worked as an insurance agent and was miles away. She"d never get here in time for me to share my beast with her and keep it from tearing me apart. Either Marmee Noir had decided it was time for me to finally be a shapeshifter for real, and she"d chosen tiger, or she meant to kill me. If she couldn"t have me, no one could. Possessive b.i.t.c.h.
But I was better at controlling the beast than I had been the last time she tried this. I called the other animals. We could play meta physical tag for a while, at least. The black panther looked frail com- pared to the great striped beast. The wolf growled and flared its ruff of fur. The tiger stared at them, waiting. The lioness came from the darkness last, almost the same size as the tiger. They were animals that should never have met in the wild, never have tried their great strengths against one another. But the inside of my body was a lot weirder than any zoo. The beasts stared at the newcomer, and we waited. By calling them all at once, I kept myself from trying to turn into any single one of them. But eventually my body would choose, and when that happened there had to be a weretiger in the room.
"Call Christine," Micah said. He"d helped me learn this control. He knew what I was doing.
"Jean-Claude warned me that Anita might be collecting more kitty-cats," Remus said, "so we went shopping." He turned to one of the guards by the door. "Go get Soledad. We need her ASAP."
The man went out the door at a jog. Remus turned back to me. "She"ll do what needs doing."
"She"s a wererat?" I managed to say.
"She"s pretending to be one of Rafael"s rats, but she"s a tiger. We had to promise to keep her secret before she"d agree to stay in town." "She"s probably running from an arranged marriage. Tigers are weird about keeping it in the family," Claudia said.