Лорел Гамильтон - Cerulean Sins

I let his balls slip out and sucked the rest of him back in my mouth hard and fast, pulling harder than I should have, sucking him as hard and fast as I wanted, no control now, no waiting, just the feel of him rolling in and out of my mouth, as I pulled on him.

He screamed my name, half pleasure, half pain, and the ardeur burst over both of us. The heat spread upward through me, and I felt it spread, thrust itself into Jean-Claude. So hot, so hot, so very hot, as if the water around us should boil. I had enough left of me somewhere in all that to let go of him with my mouth, so I didn't get too carried away. I convulsed against his legs, my nails digging into his butt, hips, thighs, as he rocked above me, and fought to keep his feet.

He finally half-sat, half-collapsed to the edge of the tub and sat there, propped on his arms, breathing too hard, and that he was breathing at all meant he'd fed his ardeur, as I'd fed off of him. Sometimes it was just an exchange of energy, sometimes it was a true feeding.

I climbed out of the tub enough to sit beside him, but didn't touch him. Sometimes right after the ardeur had been fed, touching of any kind could reignite it, especially between people who both held the ardeur. So it had been between Jean-Claude and Belle, so it was sometimes between us.

His eyes were still solid blue, like midnight skies when the stars have drowned. His voice was breathy, when he said, "You are getting better at feeding the ardeur without true orgasm, ma petite. »

"I have a good teacher."

He smiled the smile a man gives a woman when they've just finished such things, and it isn't the first time they've done them, and it won't be the last. "An apt pupil, as they say."

I looked at him, and he was pale alabaster with that black, black hair, those blue eyes. The folds and hollows of his body exposed to the overhead lights were as beautiful and familiar to me as a favorite path that I could walk forever and never tire of.

I stared at Jean-Claude, and it wasn't the beauty of him that made me love him, it was just—him. It was a love made up of a thousand touches, a million conversations, a trillion shared looks. A love made up of danger shared, enemies conquered, a determination to keep the people that depended on us safe at almost any cost, and a certain knowledge that neither of us would change the other, even if we could. I loved Jean-Claude, all of him, because if I took away the Machiavellian plottings, the labyrinth of his mind, it would lessen him, make him someone else.

I sat on the edge of the tub with my jeans and jogging shoes soaking in the water, looking at him laugh, watching his eyes bleed back to human, and I wanted him, not for sex, though that was in there, but for everything.

"You look serious, ma petite, what are you thinking about so solemn-faced?"

"You," I said, voice soft.

"Why should that make you look so solemn?" The humor began to leak away from his face, and I knew without being a hundred percent sure that he was thinking I was about to run away again. He'd probably been worried about that from the moment I shared a bed with him and Asher. I usually ran after I'd made some big breakthrough. Or would that be breakdown?

"A surprisingly wise friend told me that I hold back some part of myself from all the men in my life. He said that I do it to keep myself safe, to keep myself from being consumed by love."

Jean-Claude's face had gone very careful, as if he were afraid for me to read his expression.

"I wanted to argue, but I couldn't. He was right."

Jean-Claude looked at me, face still empty, but there was a tightness around his eyes, a wariness that he couldn't quite hide. He was waiting for the blow to fall, I'd taught him to expect it.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and finished, "What I hold back from you is sharing blood. We fed the ardeur off each other now, but I still won't let you take blood."

Jean-Claude opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it. He'd sat up straighter, hands clasped in his lap. It wasn't just his face he was fighting to keep neutral, even his body language was so very careful.

"I asked you to feed off me a few minutes ago, and you said not while the ardeur was riding me. Not while I was intoxicated." I had to smile at the choice of words, because intoxicated was a good description of the ardeur. Metaphysical liquor.

"I've fed the ardeur, we both have. I'm not intoxicated any more."

He'd gone very still, that utter stillness that the old vampires could do. It was like if I looked away, he wouldn't be there when I looked back. "We have both fed the ardeur, that much is true."

"Then I'm still offering blood."

He took a deep breath. "I want this, ma petite, you know that."

"I know."

"But why now?"

"I told you, I had a talk with a friend."

"I cannot give you what Asher gave you, gave us, yesterday. With my marks upon you, I may not be able to roll your mind at all. It will be only pain."

"Then do it in the middle of pleasure. We've proven more than once that my pain/pleasure sensors get a little confused when I'm excited enough."

That made him smile. "As do mine."

That made me smile. "Let's fool around."

"And then?" he asked, voice low.

"When it's time, take blood, and then let's fuck."

He gave a surprised burst of laughter. " Ma petite, you are such a sweet-talker, how can I refuse?"

I leaned into him, pressed a gentle kiss upon his lips, and said, "Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, and all is dross that is not Helena."

He gazed into my face with such longing. "I thought you said you could not remember more of the play."

"I remembered more," I whispered, "do you?"

He shook his head, and we were so close that his hair brushed against mine so that you couldn't tell where one blackness left and the other began. "Not with you this close to me, no."

"Good," I smiled, "but promise some night we'll get the whole play and take turns reading it to each other."

He smiled, and it was the smile I'd come to value more than any other, it was real and vulnerable, and I think one of the few things left of the man he might have been if Belle Morte had not found him. "I swear it, and gladly."

"Then help me peel off these wet jeans and leave the poetry for another night."

He cupped my face in his hands. "It is always poetry between us, ma petite. »

My mouth was suddenly dry, and it was hard to swallow past my pulse. My voice came breathy, "Yeah, but sometimes it's dirty limericks."

He laughed as he kissed me, then he helped me out of the wet jeans, and the wet socks, and the wet shoes, and the wet everything. When my cross spilled out of my shirt, it didn't glow. It just lay there glinting in the overhead lights. Jean-Claude averted his eyes, as he always did when he saw a holy object, but that was the only hint I had that the cross bothered him. I realized with a start that I'd never worn a cross around Jean-Claude and had it glow at him. What did that mean?

I'm usually pretty straightforward except in emotional areas, but I was trying to be different, change that, so I asked. "Does it really hurt you to look at my cross?"

He looked determinedly at the edge of the bathtub. "No."

"Then why look away?"

"Because it will start to glow, and I do not want that."

"How do you know that it'll start to glow?"

"Because I am a vampire, and you are a true believer." He was still staring at the water, the marble of the tub, anywhere, and everywhere except at my chest with the cross still hanging around it.