Лорел Гамильтон - The Harlequin

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 slut.

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 sex 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 hell 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 sex, 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.

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 passes 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 hoarse. 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, coarse. 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.