Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

“Bisexual and male doesn’t mean I want to fuck you, Micah,” Dev said, and he was finally getting angry, too.

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“How did you mean it, then?” Dev’s energy was starting to radiate out like a stove being slowly turned up.

“I’m as happy as I’ve ever been in my life, Dev. I don’t want that screwed up because of some ancient prophecy, or anything else. I’ve got two people that I love and that love me; we all want to marry each other, and I’m being forced to include another person that we’re not in love with, and it scares the shit out of me. What would you do if things were perfect between you, Asher, and Kane, but you were being forced to add a fourth person?”

Dev opened his mouth, closed it, and finally said, “I’d be pissed.”

“Exactly,” Micah said.

“But you’re the one who brought it up earlier,” I said.

“I did, because what if by refusing to risk screwing up my own happily-ever-after, I cause the Great Evil to rise again and destroy not only you, Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude, but everyone and everything? The destruction of civilization as we know it seems a high price to pay for not wanting to add another person to our commitment ceremony.”

Crispin pointed a thumb in Micah’s direction. “What he said.”

Dev’s energy had quieted. “I’m sorry, Micah, I didn’t understand it like that. I think if I were in love I might let the whole world go to hell rather than risk my own happiness.”

“I’ve seen you risk your life to save the day,” I said.

Dev gave me a smile that managed to be more sad than anything else. “But that was before I saw Asher after months apart from him and realized just how much I loved him. It was before I thought I had a chance at what you, Micah, and Jean-Claude have. I was raised being told my life was at the disposal of the Master of Tigers once he, or she, appeared, but no one ever explained what to do about love. I mean, they covered lust, because if one of the vamps from Belle Morte’s bloodline was our master, then sex would be a given, but love . . . No one ever talked to us about that.”

Crispin said, “So you’d lay down your life, but not your heart, for Anita?”

Dev shrugged those big shoulders. “I’ll do my duty, but if I had the level of commitment from Asher that Micah has from the people in his life, I’d make that my priority.”

“Love can unman you,” Jean-Claude said.

We all looked at him.

He gave that graceful almost-shrug that meant everything, nothing, or some emotion in between depending on his facial expression, or the timing. “I have loved people more than I loved my duty. It can be wonderful, and terrible.”

“How is it terrible?” Crispin asked.

“Because, mon ami , sometimes if you do not do your duty, then a kingdom can be lost, and you must weigh your love, or even your lover, against the lives of many more. It is a terrible choice.”

“That sounds like personal experience,” I said.

He looked at me with a pleasant but unreadable face. The shielding between us was as tight as he could make it. Whatever memory was behind his words, he didn’t want to share it. I had my own share of things that I’d rather not share, so I’d learned not to pry. Sometimes you really did want the sleeping dogs to keep napping, because once they woke up they tried to tear your throat out.

“Our choice isn’t that hard today,” Micah said. “Right now we just need to figure out if the power rush between Dev, Anita, and me works every time, or if it’s a special-occasion rush.”

“I’ve always admired how you try to keep everyone on track,” Crispin said.

Micah nodded. “Thank you, but let’s test Dev with us, and if that just works, we’ll try it with one of you.”

“It’s a plan,” Crispin said.

“Yes,” Micah said, “it is.”

JEAN-CLAUDE OBSERVED THAT the very first time we met Dev it had been the two of us and then Micah had joined us, so we tried it in that order again. Metaphysics wasn’t very science-like sometimes, but now that we knew the phenomenon could be duplicated, we could still use the scientific method to learn more faster.

What I hadn’t counted on was how neglected Dev was feeling and how much his skin hunger had grown. Newborns will die from lack of touch; it’s one of the causes of failure to thrive. The elderly will also begin to decline faster if they don’t have anyone to touch them. Patting someone’s hand, or shoulder, a hug, all of it is necessary to be happy and healthy for most people. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with sex; in fact, most of the touch that keeps us all going is as innocent as a newborn lamb frolicking on the spring grass, but Dev wasn’t a lamb. I tended to think of him as not harmless exactly, but not predatory either, and suddenly staring up into his blue-gold eyes I saw that his energy was very solidly big bad wolf. There was nothing innocent or lamblike about the way his arms wrapped around me, or how his big hands dug fingers into my back, just enough to let me feel the strength in them. I was struck again by how big he was: tall, broad-shouldered, just big , as if he filled out every inch of his six-foot, three-inch frame. If he’d been willing to lift weights like Nicky did, he’d have been massive. I was sort of glad he didn’t, as he pulled me close and I saw his eyes unveil themselves. I don’t mean they changed to tiger eyes, his eyes were always that, but suddenly I could see the need in him. People say that sex is a want, not a need, but for some of us I’m not sure that’s true.

Dev’s hunger was naked in his eyes, and I suddenly felt small in his arms. As he leaned over to kiss me, fingers digging deeper into my back, the promise of strength and pain sped my pulse and caught my breath in my throat. How badly had Asher neglected him to fill the mild-mannered and typically gentle Dev with such fierce need?

His lips touched mine and it was as if he drew my golden tiger up through my body, as if that one kiss had reached down through my body and touched the deepest part of me. The gold spilled upward like a shining flame, and the rainbow of my other tigers followed that shining yellow: red tiger the color of flame itself, black like the coals at the heart of the fire, white where some metals will begin to melt into incandescent puddles, and blue where the flame burns hottest of all. All that color, all the power, all that heat spilled up through me and into Dev everywhere our skin touched. The kiss should have looked like a carnival fire eater trying to blow out a plume of colored flame, then being kissed at just the wrong moment, so that the fire poured into the mouth of his lover.

I don’t know how much the rest of the men could see, but to our eyes it was like kissing in the middle of a burning color and power. It felt wonderful and frightening, like flame dancing across our skin, but not quite burning . . . not yet.

Then Micah’s hand was on mine and the power spilled out through my skin and into him like a river seeking a new way to the sea. His leopard spilled up my arm and brought mine to life so that the calm darkness of it mixed with the tigers and suddenly the heat wasn’t frightening. I knew that together we could tame it, control it, and with that thought all my beasts came to life in one woven knot of intermingled power. Lion came to join the tigers and leopards, and then wolf, and lastly hyena. It was the newest beast I carried; less than a year ago Ares had contaminated me with it while he died. He hadn’t meant to share the disease that forced him out of the marines. He hadn’t meant me to have to use the skills he’d taught me as a sniper to kill him before the madness drove him to harm civilians. Neither of us had meant a lot of things, but I carried a piece of his beast inside me and would until I died. I didn’t need anything else to remember my friend but that hot, wild energy spilling up through my body and into the men who touched me.