Лорел Гамильтон - Cerulean Sins

"I've never had a cross glow when you were the only vampire around."

He glanced up at that, then quickly down. "That cannot be true."

I thought about it some more. "I can't ever remember it happening. You look away, then I take the cross off, and we go on about our business, but it doesn't glow."

He shifted in the water enough to send little splashes against my legs. "Does it matter?" His voice held just how unhappy he was with the line of conversation.

"I don't know," I said.

"If you do not wish me to feed, then I will go."

"It's not that, Jean-Claude, honest."

He put a hand on the edge of the tub and stepped out.

"Jean-Claude," I said.

" Non, ma petite, you do not want this, or you would not cling to your holy object." He took a vibrant blue towel that matched the sheets on the bed and began to dry off.

"My point is… oh, hell, I don't know what my point is, just don't go." I put my hands back to unfasten the clasp of the chain, and the door opened. Asher stepped inside, coated in dried blood, all of it mine. That should have bothered me, but it didn't. His hair still fell around his shoulders like spun gold, and with Asher, it wasn't a euphemism for blond. His hair was like gold spun to thick, soft waves. His eyes a blue so pale it was like winter skies, but warmer, more… alive. He walked towards us, his long body nude and perfect. The scars didn't make him less perfect, they were simply a part of Asher, and nothing marred the godlike grace as he moved into the room. He was so beautiful it stopped my breath in my throat, made my chest ache to see him. I wanted to say, come to us, but my voice was gone in the sheer wonder as he glided towards us on narrow bare feet.

The cross flared to life, not the white-hot glow it had had in the Jeep, but bright enough. Bright enough to leave me blinking. Bright enough to help me think. Asher was still beautiful, nothing could change that, but now I could breathe, move, talk. Though I had no idea what to say. I'd never had a cross glow around him either, until now.

It was Jean-Claude who said it, "What have you done, mon ami, what have you done?" He had his back to the glow of the cross and was using the towel to help shield his eyes.

Asher had thrown up an arm to protect his own pale blue gaze. "I tried to roll her mind just enough for pleasure, but the ardeur was too much."

"What have you done?" Jean-Claude asked again.

I watched them both in the light of the cross, one hiding behind the blue towel, the other his own arm, and I answered for him, "He rolled me. He rolled my mind, completely and utterly." Even as I said it, I knew he'd done more than that. I'd been rolled before. I'd even been rolled once upon a time by Jean-Claude when first we met. But vampire powers to cloud the mind are a dime a dozen, most of them can do it. Most of the young ones have to capture you with their gaze, but the old ones can simply think at you. I was immune to most of it, partly natural ability as a necromancer, and part Jean-Claude's marks. But I wasn't immune to Asher. The cross kept glowing, the vampires kept shielding their eyes, and even with them hiding away from the white light, I still wanted them, both of them, but now I had to wonder how much of it was me, and how much of it was Asher's mind tricks. Damn it.

We ended up in the bedroom but not for anything fun. I'd dried off and thrown on extra clothes that I kept at the Circus. I had to put the wet shoes back on though. My cross was safely underneath my shirt again. Once it went under the shirt, it stopped glowing, but there was still a pulsing warmth to it.

Jean-Claude had knotted the blue towel around his waist, where it draped nearly to his ankles. He'd put a smaller towel on his hair and the blue of the cloth brought out the blue of his eyes. Seeing his face free of all hair made him look more like a boy to me. It was the bones of his cheeks that saved his face from being utterly feminine. He was still beautiful, but an inch closer to handsome without that black veil of hair.

Asher was still clothed in nothing but the dried blood and the spill of all his own hair. He was pacing the room like some kind of caged beast.

Jean-Claude had simply sat down on the edge of the bed with the blue sheets still stained with blood and other fluids. He looked discouraged.

I stood as far from them as I could, arms clasped across my stomach. I'd left my shoulder holster off, so that I wouldn't stroke my gun while I argued. I was hoping to tone the hostility down, not ramp it up.

Jean-Claude laid his face in his hands, all pale skin and blue cloth, towels and sheets surrounding him. "Why did you do it, mon ami! If you had only behaved yourself we would even now be together as we were meant to be."

I wasn't sure I liked how sure Jean-Claude was of me, but I couldn't really argue without lying, so I let it go. Shutting the fuck up is seldom a bad move on my part.

Asher stopped pacing and said, "Anita has felt me feed. She knew that I could roll her mind completely. She did not say not to do it. She said for me to take her, to feed from her, so I did. I did what she told me to do, and she was aware of how I would do it, because she has fed me once before."

Jean-Claude raised his face from his hands like a drowning man, coming up for air. "I know that Anita fed you when you lay dying in Tennessee."

"She saved me," Asher said. He'd come to the end of the big four-poster bed.

I watched the two of them framed against the blue sheets, where so recently we'd had a very good time. I stood there wanting them both, and my arms clung to me, as if by holding on tight I could keep it from happening.

" Oui, she saved you, but you did not roll her mind completely then, because I would have felt your touch upon her mind and heart, and it was not there."

"I tried to roll her mind because it seems to me that every vampire that takes blood from her is in some way under her sway, her power. It is almost as if when a vampire feeds from her, it is she who controls them, not the other way around."

I stayed where I was, but this I couldn't let go. "Trust me, Asher, it doesn't work that way. I've had vamps bite me and have me under their sway before."

He looked at me, with those pale, pale eyes. "But how long ago was that? I think that your powers have grown since then."

My gaze kept sliding down his body, tracing the blood pattern on that pale, slightly golden tinged skin. I closed my eyes to say the next because I needed to stop watching them. "Do you feel like you have to do what I say?"

He hesitated, and I fought the urge to look at him, to watch him think. "No." His voice was soft.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, opened my eyes, and fought like hell to stare at Asher's face and nothing else. "See, you're not in my power or anything."

He did a small frown. "Are you in my power then?"

"I can't stop watching the two of you. I can't stop thinking about what we did, what we could still do."

He gave a harsh laugh, and it hurt to hear it, as if it had struck a blow along my skin. "How can you not think about us, while we stand here in front of you like this?"

"Oh, you're not arrogant," I said, arms clinging to myself like it was the last safe place for them to be.

"Anita, I am thinking of you, too. The pale spill of your back, the curve of your hip, the mound of your ass, underneath me. The feel of me rubbing along the soft warmth of your skin."

"Stop," I said, and had to turn away because I was blushing and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

"Why stop? It's what we're all thinking."

" Ma petite does not like to be reminded of pleasure."

" Mon Dieu, why not?"