Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

Nathaniel smiled and then said, ‘Did I do something funny?’

‘No,’ Micah said, ‘just God, you are … so …’

‘Beautiful,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Micah said.

Nathaniel blushed and gave us one of those big, bright, utterly happy smiles. It made his whole face glow with it, but the blush, that was the rarest of all.

‘I’ve never seen you blush,’ I said.

He actually ducked his head as if embarrassed, which I’d never seen either. It was Micah who got up first and went to him. I tried to stand up and the seat belt jerked me back to my seat, reminding me that I’d been a little too safety conscious. It meant I got to sit there and watch them hug each other. It started out as the good-friend guy hug, only upper bodies touching, that distinct hip distance kept, and then Micah moved back enough to look up at the taller man and I had a moment to watch them look at each other. With both of them in sunglasses, suits, hair back, I was treated to their faces in profile in a way I almost never got to see. If Nathaniel was carved marble, then Micah was something more delicate, like carved ivory, if ivory could tan dark and have an edge of curls framing its face even with the ponytail. His hair, like mine, was too curly to behave like Nathaniel’s.

They kissed, and I held my breath, watching their lips move, their arms tighten around each other, Nathaniel’s hands tensing against the back of Micah’s suit jacket so he could feel the muscles underneath the elegant conservative cloth.

They broke from the kiss and looked at me, both of their faces full front, nearly side by side, so that I got the full impact of those clean, sculpted lines, the half-parted lips, their arms still loosely around each other.

I’d like to say I said something profound, or poetic, but what I actually said was, ‘Wow.’

Nathaniel grinned. ‘I think she liked watching.’

Micah smiled and held one hand out to me, an invitation to join them.

I tried to get up and forgot my seat belt again, and then it was as if I’d forgotten how it worked. I had to fight with it, and the men were laughing as I said, ‘You have kissed me stupid and I wasn’t even part of the kiss.’

‘Do you need help?’ Micah asked, his voice full of laughter.

I got free and went to them. They opened up the circle of their arms to bring me in to them. I was suddenly in the circle of their bodies with their deeper masculine laughter, the warmth and weight of them around me, and it was better than almost anything I had ever imagined having. Once I’d thought I could only be in love with one person at a time, but I loved Jean-Claude, and I loved the two men in my arms. I loved them together; as a unit, we were three. Jean-Claude was his own entity, and he and I, even with all the other bed partners, were more a couple. I was in love with him, too.

I stood there in their arms and loving them, and their loving me, didn’t take away from Jean-Claude and me; it added to it. All of the relationships added to one another, until we were all happier than we’d ever been. I didn’t believe in happily-ever-after, but I did believe in happier-than-we’d-ever-been, because I was living it.

I raised my face and Nathaniel leaned down to kiss me, while Micah held us both, or we held him, and I knew once this kiss was done there would be another one from Micah. Life was great. We could get through this, whatever came when we landed in Micah’s old hometown; we could do this, because we loved one another. Love doesn’t conquer all, but it can help you conquer everything else.

Voices from outside the plane made us look up from the warm circle of us. I tried to look down the steps to see what was making people raise their voices, but I couldn’t see past Nathaniel’s broad shoulders and chest. He could see, and Micah had a better angle, so I asked, ‘What’s up?’

‘Nicky is blocking the stairs and the other guards aren’t happy about it,’ Nathaniel said.

‘Nilda isn’t happy about it,’ Micah added.

They moved to either side so I could see for myself. Nicky stood at the bottom of the foldout steps like a wall of blond muscle. He was just under six feet, so Nilda towered over him by five inches; at six foot four she was the second-tallest woman I’d ever met and she hit the gym seriously. It had given her long arms smooth tone and muscle, but she was one of those women who didn’t put on muscle easily. She looked strong and imposing, but Nicky’s shoulders were almost as wide as I was tall, a huge spread of muscle that nothing would give Nilda no matter how many weights she lifted. I muscled up faster than she did. It was just one of those genetic things. Her summer tan was a light gold that contrasted strongly with her white-blond hair and made her blue eyes stand out in the high cheekbones of her strongly Scandinavian face like an advertisement for Norwegian Vacations-R-Us. Her full name was Brunhilda, after one of the Valkyries, and yelling into Nicky’s face, her shoulders and arms straining with tension, her face enraged, she looked it. She was one of the Harlequin who had been the bodyguards, spies, assassins, judges, and executioners of vampirekind for centuries. So deadly that to even speak of them could get a vampire hunted down and killed. They had been the elite guards of the Mother of All Darkness, the legendary first vampire, the darkness made flesh, and she had used them to keep her control absolute. Then she grew bored, or old, and fell into a ‘hibernation’ for centuries and her control slipped, and the Harlequin began to fracture into those who believed in their original purpose and those who didn’t. Nilda was the animal to call of one of the master vampires who had been Harlequin, and she was now with us. There were days when I was pretty sure Nilda would have stayed on the other side with the Harlequin who were still pissed that we’d destroyed their mistress, but Nilda’s master was old-school, which meant it had never occurred to him to give her a choice. She was his animal to call, and to the old-school vampires that meant she was just an extension of the vampire, a walking, talking, fighting machine that he occasionally fucked, but sometimes I think he saw it more as masturbating, as if she weren’t real to him. No, I didn’t like Nilda’s master much, but I wasn’t particularly fond of her either. She was on this detail in an effort to merge the Harlequin guards into our own, but some of them fit better than others. I wondered what Nicky had done to set her off. Nilda had a temper, but this was off the charts.

I moved toward the open door and could see two of the other guards sort of off to one side. Dev, short for Devil, which in turn was a nickname for Mephistopheles, was standing there grinning like he was enjoying the show. His handsome golden face was shining with happiness, only his blue-hazel eyes were softer, more careful. I didn’t have to be closer to know that his body would be tensed and ready to do something if the argument got physical. He was halfway between the other two in height at six foot three; even his shoulders were halfway between Nilda’s and Nicky’s in width, though both of them had more muscle development than Dev. He was naturally big, naturally athletic, and it made him a lazy cat in the weight room. He worked out like a son of a bitch in weapons and hand-to-hand training, but he didn’t like lifting the way the other two did.

Ethan watched it all, face serious, body language unhappy. He was only five-eight, one of our shorter guards, but he seemed to work all the harder for it. He was always the last to leave the practice mat and first to volunteer for learning something new. His short hair was a soft mass of curls, longer on top, so that it almost did a natural pompadour. His curls were a blond that was almost white with what looked like gray highlights in it. There was one streak of dark red from the back of his head to his forehead as if he’d added it for dramatic effect, but it was all-natural color. His eyes were a soft gray that matched the highlights.