Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

I closed my eyes. Was that all I wished from them? No. Was that all I could stand right now? Maybe. It was a wonderful offer. It seemed to fix most of the problems that we’d raised with the new power, so why was I still hesitant? “You know, finding a wife that would be okay with you sleeping with another woman isn’t going to be easy.”

“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Richard said, “and maybe I’ll find that the white picket fence isn’t for me, after all. All I know is that right now, right this moment, I know what I want, and what I want is you.”

A lot of women would have run to him, thrown their arms around him, and said something like, “Oh, Richard.” But that just wasn’t me.

What I was thinking was that if Clair had been his little fuck-buddy, he wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t want me, now. I dropped the towel on the floor and was shaking my head. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

Richard was still holding his hand out to me. “Neither am I.”

“Then why are we doing it again?”

“Because we want to.”

“Doesn’t seem like a good enough reason.” But I moved, slowly, toward the bed.

“Because when I’m near you, all I can think about is the smell of your skin, and the way your hair spreads like black foam on my pillows. Because when I’m near you, all I can remember is how your body feels against mine. I have to be a bastard to you, so that I don’t fall down at your feet and beg you to take me back. Tell you that it wasn’t you I hated. It was me, and I’m sorry that I took that out on you. Sorrier than I can say. That you had the courage to make a life that worked for you, regardless of how far that life was from where you wanted it to be. Help me have the courage to do the same, Anita. Help me be who I am.” He moved his hands just a little closer to mine. His fingers brushed mine. I think I would have jerked away like you do when your skin brushes something so hot it will burn. But he grabbed my hands, wrapped them in the warmth of his hands. His hands that were so much bigger than mine, so that he could hide my hands in his, as if I were a child. I’d never really liked that about Richard. He was so much bigger than me, that sometimes I felt overwhelmed. Like now.

I’d learned a long time ago that if something sounds too good to be true, it is. If someone promises you everything your heart desires, they lie.

He drew me into the circle of his arms, so that the front of my body was pressed against his. He buried his face against my chest, still covered by silk, but the weight of his face against me made me close my eyes, and when I opened them, I was looking at Jean-Claude.

He looked not at Richard’s bare back, but at me, at my face. I watched him be afraid. Be afraid that I’d say, no.

Richard rubbed his face against the silk, and his breath came through the cloth like something that should have burned, but it didn’t. It made me shiver as if I were cold, but held in the circle of his arms with his breath hot on my skin, I felt as if I would never be cold again. I couldn’t stop my hands from stroking his hair. Still woefully short, but thick and heavy, and just… Richard’s.

Jean-Claude was on his knees. He didn’t raise his hands, but he put the wordplease into his face, those eyes. His voice whispered through my head, “Ma petite, we endanger everyone that depends on us by this hesitation. Everything we have worked so hard to build hangs upon the next challenge to my power, or to Richard’s. If we do not embrace our power as a triumvirate, there will come a night when someone sweeps over us and we will not prevail. The worst that could happen is not that Richard may come to your bed, then come no more, or that you may grow discontent with Micah and Nathaniel. The worst is that we are dead, and our people will be at the mercy of others that do not love them.” He held his hand out to me. “Come to us, ma petite, come to us, and let us build a fortress behind which our people, all of our people, may be safe.” That last he said out loud.

Richard raised his face enough to gaze up the line of my body.

“Please, Anita, don’t punish everyone because I’ve been a bastard.”

Jean-Claude was close enough that I could have taken his hand, while Richard still held me in his arms. “Please, ma petite, if there is word or deed that would move you, I would say it, or do it. Tell me only what to say, or what to do, and it is yours.”

I took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. I reached out and let his fingers brush mine. He came that fraction closer so he could take my hand, and that was the deed. He took my hand, and I knew that nothing he’d whispered in my head had been a lie. What would I do to keep my leopards safe? Anything. What would I do to undo the damage that Richard had done to his wolves? Almost anything. What would I do to keep Jean-Claude’s vampires from being at the mercy of masters like Belle Morte? Anything.

A night of metaphysical, or not so metaphysical, sex, with one man that I loved and another man that kept breaking my heart, so I must love him, too, or he couldn’t keep doing that, seemed a small enough price. Or maybe I just wanted to be with them both in a bed for the first time. Yes, the first time, contrary to all the rumors. Maybe I feared the chance would never come again, and I simply didn’t want to be the one who said no. Maybe.

We stayed on the corner of the bed, as if there was no more bed to use. I was still not sure it was a good idea. I think Richard was uncomfortable with Jean-Claude being in the bed. Jean-Claude was just being patient, biding his time, because he knew if he pushed, one of us would bolt. When Richard’s mouth first found mine, and I drank in the taste of him like some almost forgotten addiction, I thought I’d be the one to run screaming for the hills. But the third time Richard winced when Jean-Claude brushed his bare back, I began to think it wouldn’t be me that screwed this up.

He cursed in French, then said in English, “I put my hand on your shoulder to steady myself, nothing more. You are acting as if I am after your virtue. I assure you that I am afterma petite ’s virtue, not yours.”

Richard sighed and looked down so that even sitting in his lap I couldn’t see his face. “You keep touching me.”

Jean-Claude made a sound low in his throat. “How am I to touch her, if she is in your lap, your arms, kissing you, without at the very least brushing your body with mine? I am not such a magician that I can share a woman with another man and never once touch the other man’s body.”

“Trust me, he hasn’t been doing much more than holding me,” I said. I touched Richard’s chin, and he let me raise his face up to me.

I looked into those solid brown eyes, and all I saw was pain, confusion. “What’s wrong? You were the one who was all hot for this.

You talked me into it, remember?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He pressed his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Jean-Claude and I stared at each other over his bent head. I asked the question with my expression, what the hell is going on? “Tell us what is wrong, mon ami, and we will try to help.”

“The last time I was in a bed with another man and a woman, it was Raina and Gabriel.”

I’d known that Raina had been his first lover, but that he’d ever let Gabriel touch him, that I had not known. I was so astounded that I was glad he couldn’t see my face. Raina had been bad enough, but both of them, at the same time. Uckies, uckies, uckies.

Raina’s munin was usually quiet behind its metaphysical cage bars, but my reaction gave her a tiny opening. Raina had behaved herself for so long, that it caught me off guard. Made me a little less quick to squash her back down, and protect us all. Or maybe it was the fact that I was touching one of her pack, one that she knew in every way.