Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

“I need to give my beast to my cat,” I said, and my voice was thick, slow. I tried to draw my hand out of Jason’s, but he held on.

He whispered into the bend of my neck, “I’ll be your cat.”

Nathaniel whispered against my other cheek, “I’m her cat.”

Jason’s voice against my skin, “I’ll be your doggy then.” He licked along my neck, and it made me writhe, but I shook my head, just a little, turning my head so I could see the side of his face.

“Not tonight, Jason.” This time when I pulled my hand, he let me go.

His blue eyes came into my vision, and he kissed me, long and deep, and my beast lay quiet. “You taste like blood and other men’s kisses,” he whispered, as he pulled away.

My beast woke inside me, as if it had only been napping. It woke and tried to spill upward. It filled my body like someone trying on a coat that was far too small. I could feel it stretching out inside me, feel it filling me, like hot water spilling up and up inside me until it filled every inch of me, and still there was more to come. It poured and poured, if water could have bones and muscle and anger.

Because when it found that there were limits, that my skin did not burst, my bones did not bend, my body did not give, the beast began to rage inside me. It slashed with claws and fought with muscles that should have been metaphoric but felt all too real. It was trying to tear its way free of the cage, and the cage was my body.

I screamed, screamed and struggled, but you can’t fight something that you can’t touch. Nathaniel was still on top of me, eyes wide and frightened. He started to slide off of me, but I grabbed his arms, and managed to say, “Kiss me.”

If it had been almost anyone else, they would have argued, but he didn’t. He put his mouth against mine, and the next scream was muffled into his mouth. I willed the thing inside me into him. I tried to force it, but it was panicked, and could not hear me. It was like a wild animal, cornered, it heard nothing, but its own fear.

I tore my mouth from Nathaniel’s and simply screamed. Jason was there, a hand on either side of my face, and the moment he touched me, the beast hesitated. The cat paused long enough to sniff the air, as if wondering what he was.

I looked up at Nathaniel with Jason’s hands still holding my head.

“Try again, kiss me.”

He kissed me, and this time I was able to kiss him back, but the beast didn’t rise. It sat inside me, sniffing, puzzling, but it did not rise. I broke the kiss and screamed not from pain, but frustration. “Richard said to share my beast with someone who can give it release, but it won’t go. It won’t leave.”

“Are you still fighting for control of theardeur?” Nathaniel asked.

I blinked at him and thought about it. Was I? Not consciously, but controlling it had become automatic. Now that I didn’t have to control it, but had to, instead, call it into being, was I still quashing it?

Was I still shielding? The answer was, yes.

“Yeah.”

“Stop fighting,” Nathaniel said, “just let everything go.”

“No,” I started, but he touched my lips with his fingers.

“Hush, Anita, you can feed off of both of us, and it won’t drain me that badly. It’s not a good idea, but it’s not a disaster. Stop fighting, and maybe the beast will stop fighting, too.”

I opened my mouth with his fingers still touching me. He slid his fingertips just inside my mouth, playing along the edge of my lips.

The movement stopped me from talking more effectively than anything else could have done. I just lay there and let his fingers play around the edge of my mouth, delicate, sensual. “Let go, Anita, just let go.

We’ll catch you.”

Jason leaned in against my face. “I’m here, Anita. I won’t let anything bad happen to Nathaniel. I promise.” He laid his face against my forehead. “We can do this, Anita, but you have to let go. You have to let us catch you.”

Let go. It sounded so simple. But letting go of anything was so not my best thing. I wasn’t even sure I knew how to do it. How do you let go? How do you open your hand and let yourself fall, and trust that other people will catch you? That they’ll catch you and not let you hurt them, or yourself. Did I trust Nathaniel and Jason that much?

Sort of.

Did I trust anyone that much? Maybe. Okay, not really. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and I let go. I let go, and trusted.

Trusted, even as a small voice inside me whispered, stupid, stupid, stupid.

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.