Лорел Гамильтон - Cerulean Sins

I looked in time to see Jean-Claude give that all-purpose Gallic shrug, which meant everything and nothing. Usually he made it look graceful, today it looked tired.

"Anita," Asher said.

I looked at him, and this time I could make eye contact, except that staring into those amazing eyes wasn't much safer than looking at his amazing body.

"You told me you wanted me inside you, as I remember. And when I bared your neck you said, 'Yes, Asher, yes. "

"I remember what I said."

"Then how can you be angry at me for doing what you asked?" He took three strides closer to me, and I backed up. The movement stopped him. "How can you blame me for this?"

"I don't know, but I do. How that's unfair, or maybe not unfair, I don't know, but I do."

Jean-Claude spoke then, his voice like the sigh of the wind outside a lonely door. "If you had but restrained yourself, mon ami, we might even now be together in the bath."

"I don't know about that," I said. My voice sounded angry, and I was glad.

Jean-Claude gazed at me with those blue black eyes. "Are you saying that you could refuse such bounty, once having tasted it?"

I didn't blush this time, I paled. "Well, it's moot now isn't it, because he cheated." I pointed at Asher for dramatic emphasis.

He stared at me openmouthed. "How did I cheat?"

Jean-Claude was back to holding his head in his hands. " Ma petite does not allow vampire trickery to be played upon her." His voice came muffled but strangely clear.

Asher looked from one to the other of us. "Ever?"

Jean-Claude answered without moving, head still in his hands. "For the most, oui. »

"Then she has never tasted you as you are meant to be tasted," Asher said, and his voice held a soft astonishment.

"That is her choice," Jean-Claude said, he raised his face up slowly, so I could meet that blue gaze, and there was something of anger in his eyes.

I didn't understand all of this conversation, and I wasn't sure I wanted to, so I ignored it. I've always been damn good at ignoring what makes me uncomfortable. "The point is that Asher used vampire wiles on me. He's done something to cloud the way I think about him. Now I won't know, won't ever know, if what I'm feeling is real, or a trick." There, I felt sure of moral high ground on this one, at least.

Jean-Claude did a sort of voilа gesture with his hands, as if to say, see, I told you.

Asher's face began to lose its anger and work towards that blankness they both did so well. "So it was just a lie."

I looked at both of them. "What was a lie?"

"That you wanted me to be with you and Jean-Claude."

I frowned. "No, it wasn't a lie. I meant it."

"Then this faux pas changes nothing," he said.

"You've messed with my mind, I don't think that's just a faux pas. I think that's damn serious." My hands were on my hips, better than clinging to myself to keep from touching anybody. I embraced my anger, because it made them less beautiful. Of course, it made everything less beautiful.

"So you did lie," Asher said, his face almost empty of any expression.

I hated watching him shut himself away like this, but I didn't know what to do to stop it. "Damn it, no, I didn't lie. You're the one who changed the rules, Asher, not me."

"I changed nothing. You said we would be together. You offered me your bed. You begged me to be inside you. Jean-Claude said that your sweet ass was not to be touched, and the deep pleasure of your body was full, where was I supposed to go?"

I fought not to blush and failed. "It was the ardeur talking, and you knew it."

He backed up until he came to the edge of the bed, and he half-collapsed on the blue sheets, grabbing the post to keep from sliding off the silk. His face was blank, but the rest of him acted as if I'd struck him, and I knew I'd said the wrong thing.

"I said that once the ardeur was cooled you would find a way to reject me, to reject this," and he gestured at Jean-Claude at the far end of the bed, and the bed itself, "and you have done just as I said you would do." He pushed himself up from the bed, clinging to the wooden post for a moment, as if he wasn't sure his legs would hold him. He took a tentative step away from the bed, almost staggered, then another, and another. Each step was steadier than the last. He was going for the door.

"Wait a minute, you're not just going to walk out," I said.

He stopped walking, but didn't turn around as he answered, giving a clear view of the perfection of the back of his body. "I cannot leave until Musette is gone. I will give her no excuse to take me back to the courts with her. If I belong to no one, she will do it, and I will have no grounds to refuse." He rubbed his hands over his arms as if he were cold. "When Musette is gone, I will petition for another Master of the City. There are those who would take me in."

I walked towards him. "No, no, you have to give me some time to think about what you did. It's not fair to walk off like this." I was almost to him when he whirled around, and the rage on his face stopped me like I'd hit a wall.

"Fair! What is fair in being offered everything you ever wanted and thought never to have again, only to have it torn from your grasp? Torn from your grasp because you did exactly what you were told you could do, what was asked of you." He didn't yell, but his anger filled his voice, so every word was like a red-hot poker flung at my face.

I didn't know what to say in the face of that anger.

"I will not, cannot, stay and watch you and Jean-Claude. I would rather be without the sight of either of you then so very close, but cast from your bed, your arms, your affections." He covered his face with his hands and gave a low scream. "To be with us as our lover is to be seduced by our powers." He tore his hands away from his face and let me see his eyes drowning blue, his anger making up for the lack of blood. "I had never dreamed that Jean-Claude had not done so." He looked at the other man, still sitting on the edge of the bed. "How could you be with her for so long and resist the temptation?"

"She is most adamantly against such things," Jean-Claude said. "At least you have had her willing blood, I have never been so blessed."

Asher frowned, and it sat badly on that lovely face, like an angel frowning. "That astounds me still, though I knew that. But she has bestowed her charms upon you, and now I will never know them."

This was all happening way too fast for me. "Jean-Claude understands the rules, and we both live by them." Of course, I'd been just about ready to change the rules, but I didn't think Asher needed to know right now.

Asher shook his head, sending that foam of gold hair gliding over his shoulders. "Even if I understood the rules, Anita, I could not abide by them."

That made me frown. "What do you mean?"

"Anita, we aren't human, no matter how much some of us pretend. But not all of what we are is bad. You have entered our world, but you deny yourself the best of us, while only seeing the worst. But most horrible of all, you deny Jean-Claude the best of his own world."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"He is celibate save for you, but he does not pleasure himself fully with you, or anyone else." He made a gesture that I didn't understand. "I see that look upon your face, Anita, that American look. Sex is not just intercourse, or even just orgasm, and that is especially true for us."

"Why, because you're French?"

He gave me such a serious look that my attempt at humor died in my chest like a cold weight. "We are vampires, Anita. More than that, we are Master Vampires of Belle Morte's line. We can give you pleasure that no other can give, and we can take pleasure as no other can experience it. By agreeing to limit himself, Jean-Claude has denied himself a great deal of what makes this existence bearable, even enjoyable."