Лорел Гамильтон - Jason

“Okay, then that would be a no,” J.J. said, with wide eyes; she pulled the sheet more up over her, as if suddenly cold.

I grabbed a piece of sheet from her and pulled it over me, too, because it was cold, or maybe the conversation was making me feel cold, who could tell.

“But what worked with everyone else was that you broke the bonds with their old master and replaced that master with you. What if you broke Damian’s bonds with you and replaced yourself with another vampire?”

“He’s tied to Nathaniel, too, remember? We’d have to cut Nathaniel free, too. I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything that metaphysically complex with these kinds of vampire marks.”

“Has anyone ever tried?” J.J. asked.

“No, because if it goes wrong, you can break the sanity of your people, or kill them outright, which is a pretty damn big incentive to not mess with shit.”

“Okay, okay, it was just a thought,” J.J. said.

“I’m sorry, I’m not mad at you, just the situation, I think.”

“But Damian has Cardinale, and they seem pretty happy together,” Jason said.

“She’s asked for Damian to not be on my feeding list for the ardeur , and I’ve respected that.”

“But would he have found Cardinale if you had been having sex with him as often as you did with Nathaniel?” Jason asked.

“If I’d been sleeping with him and Nathaniel like that, there wouldn’t have been room for Micah.”

“You mean in the bed?” J.J. asked.

“Or in your life?” Jason asked.

I frowned at both of them. “You know, the two of you are enough alike that’s it’s a little unnerving.”

“You feel double-teamed?” he asked.

“Didn’t we already do that?” J.J. asked, face and voice mild.

I rolled eyes at them again. I got the idea that being around them would entail a lot of that for me. I didn’t really mind.

“Now why didn’t that get another blush?” she asked.

“No idea, my blushing is sort of unpredictable.”

She fake-pouted at me.

Nathaniel came back into the room, his wet hair in a tight braid. He slipped under the sheets. “What did I miss?”

Jason and J.J. looked at each other. I said, “We don’t have to tell him, I can just drop shields and he’ll know what I know.”

J.J. looked at me. “Really?”

“Really,” I said.

Nathaniel said, “Can I cuddle in behind J.J., or do we need to switch things around?”

J.J. got an odd look on her face, and laughed. “I know we just had amazing sex, but I’d really rather cuddle with Jason.”

“That’s why I asked; sometimes sex is less intimate than holding afterward.”

I wiggled over and J.J. got on the other side of me, so that she and Jason could spoon, and Nathaniel and I did the same about three feet away. Nathaniel wrapped his arm around me and pressed our bodies close. It had felt good for Jason to hold me, but this felt better; it was the difference between friends and more. “So, what did I miss?” he asked.

I shivered for him, just a little bit, and then let down my shields just enough and thought about the last few minutes. He didn’t get the actual words, but he knew what I’d learned in the last few minutes, as if he’d been there the whole time. We’d all been getting better at sharing without overwhelming each other. Once I couldn’t have done this without blasting him with emotions, memories, all of it, but now I could just share knowledge, and let him, or Micah, or Jean-Claude, put their own emotions and thoughts on it without me coloring it much.

Nathaniel snuggled in closer against me. “I’m so glad you were willing to be closer to me than you were to Damian.” He kissed the side of my face, and then lower at the curve of my jaw, working down to my neck in soft, warm kisses.

“I saw Anita close her eyes, almost fluttery like during sex, and now you just know, that quickly?” J.J. asked.

“Yes,” Nathaniel said, and made another kiss lower on my neck.

“What did I tell her about Jade?”

He rose up from kissing me to say, “That Jade isn’t the girl for her, and she should dump her.”

“I never said it like that.”

“But that’s how Anita interpreted it, and I got her version of the last few minutes.”

“Wow, that’s just . . . eerie, useful, but a little . . . I don’t know, not creepy, but disturbing.”

“Sweetums,” Jason said, kissing her cheek, “that wasn’t even on the scale of our version of creepy.”

She turned enough in his arms to see his face. “Really?”

We all said “Really” in unison.

She looked around at all of us, and then smiled. “If I were the jealous type, it wouldn’t just be Anita I was jealous of, it would be the way the three of you interact.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You guys are so tight as friends. I don’t know if it’s because you also have sex as a threesome, or more-some, but you are all just close.”

“Why would you be jealous of friendships, or is it the sex?” I asked.

“Both, but Freda is jealous of my friends, and has pretty much cut me off from them. I understood the ex-lovers that I was friends with, but then she kept pushing until I really have only her in New York.”

“You have friends in the dance company,” Jason said.

“I did, before I spent two years with Freda; now they’re just work friends, and I’m isolated from them.” She looked so unhappy that I reached out and touched her arm.

She smiled at me.

“You know, it’s not just me who’s dating a woman that doesn’t make me happy,” I said.

She nodded. “We give the advice we need to hear sometimes; I heard it.”

I turned enough to see Nathaniel’s face. “Do you agree with J.J. about Jade?”

“I have some of the same issues you have with personal boundaries, so I’d say let’s see if we can incorporate her into our sex life more as a group, and if that will satisfy her need for a relationship with you, then great, but if she keeps pushing you to go out to movies and plays with just her, then say no. You barely have time to actually date Micah, me, and Jean-Claude.”

“You’re usually the more the merrier,” I said.

“Only with people who work their issues. It would be great to find a woman to add to us. It would make most of the other men incredibly happy, but Jade isn’t the woman to help make us all happier.”

“So even if she went to therapy and really worked hard at it, you veto her for more,” I said, turning so I could watch his face.

He looked very serious, and a little sad, but underneath that his eyes held almost anger. I wasn’t sure if he was angry at Jade, angry at the lost chance of another woman, or if he had to get angry to vote against her.

“She wants too much of you, Anita. You’re already committed to too many people you love, and who fit into our lives better, and who make things better. We don’t need someone who drags us down and just sucks energy. We need people who help lift everyone up and raise the energy level. Jade doesn’t help enough, and she needs too much emotional hand holding without giving enough in return.”

I cuddled Nathaniel’s arms around me tighter. “So I get to stop dating Jade, or having sex with her?”

“Did you hear what you said, just now?” J.J. asked.

I looked at her. “I said I was breaking up with Jade.”

“No, you said you ‘get to’ break up with her. That implies you don’t really want to have sex with her, let alone date her.”

“I guess I don’t.”

“Guess?” Jason said.

“I don’t want to have sex with Jade anymore, and I sure as hell don’t want to date just her, just the two of us, she’s too hard emotionally.”