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I frowned at him. "So it doesn't bother you?"
"No. I'm not into men, but I don't seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do."
"Don't compare me with him," I said, and was all set to be angry.
"If it was another woman sleeping naked with you, you'd have the same problems that he does," Micah said.
"I've slept with some of the female wereleopards before."
"But never nude, either you or them," Micah said.
I started to deny it, then stopped. Was he right? "I don't know, I... I might be able to sleep nude, if it's just sleep, with another woman. I don't think I'd like it, though. I'd rather sleep pressed between two men."
"And that's fine," he said, "but if you knew for a fact that a woman saw you as a potential sex partner, you'd treat her differently."
"Yes, she'd go in the boy box."
"According to your thinking, Nathaniel and I should put Jean-Claude into a different box now, right?"
I thought about it, then nodded.
He smiled. "Anita, seeing him with Auggie wasn't the first clue I had that Jean-Claude liked men."
I looked from one to the other of them. "Have I missed something?"
"Not what you are thinking, ma petite." Jean-Claude sat more solidly on the corner of the bed, his back against the foot of it, his knees drawn up for his arms to wrap around. "I have not seduced either of your cats behind your back."
I hadn't really thought he had, but... "Then what is Micah talking about?"
"Anita," Nathaniel said, "pay more attention the next time that Jean-Claude feeds off one of us, or Asher feeds off me. You won't have to ask."
"But I've been in the bed while you guys did that. What did I miss?"
The three of them exchanged a look. "No, no looks, just tell me."
"You said you were tired," Micah said. "I think you don't want to know this, or you wouldn't have to ask."
"Don't want to know what?"
Again they exchanged that look.
"Stop that," I said, and I had to fight the urge to stomp my foot at them.
"Let us cuddle together, ma petite. Let us hold you, and give you the comfort that we all need tonight. It has been a long night, a good one in many ways, but long. You are tired."
I was tired, but the rush of anger, and confusion, had chased back the tiredness. "I am tired, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and let you hold me. But damn it, you're all looking at each other like there's an elephant in the room, and I can't see it."
Claudia spoke from the edge of the room, where she and the rest of the bodyguards were so quiet. We were close to kicking them out of the room. Okay, I was close to kicking them out. "I think I can catch this one," she said.
I looked at her. "Go ahead," I said.
"Jean-Claude feeds from a man the same way he feeds from a woman. Most vampires differentiate when they feed. Heterosexual vamps take more liberties with opposite-sex victims. Homosexual vamps take more liberties with same-sex vies. Jean-Claude doesn't differentiate, do you understand?"
"When have you seen him feed on other women?"
"Aha," Claudia said, "and that is exactly why he doesn't feed on women except at the clubs, in public. You'd be jealous of other women if he took them in private, but you aren't jealous of men. You don't see them as sexually competitive for Jean-Claude's attention."
My head was beginning to hurt. "You're giving me a headache, Claudia."
"Only because you don't want to think this one through."
"You're saying that Jean-Claude likes both men and women, but because I'd be jealous of women, he takes mostly men. I get it, I get it."
"Thank you, Claudia," Jean-Claude said.
"You're welcome."
"Do I apologize to anyone, everyone?" I asked.
"Just take off the robe and get in bed," Nathaniel said. "Silk is cold without another body to warm it up."
I smiled at him, shook my head, and started to undo my robe. I stopped, and said, "Everyone that's not getting in the bed, outside."
"If it's an invitation..." Graham started.
"Can it, Graham," Claudia said, and went for the door.
He hesitated, but he followed her. Lisandro was already going for the door. Claudia had sent most of the others out when things calmed earlier. Probably sent them to watch over our "guests." The bodyguards piled out. The door shut, and we were alone.
Micah crawled onto the bed, on the other side of Nathaniel, leaving room for me. "You're looking a little overdressed," he said.
I undid the sash and let the robe fall to the floor. I crawled up onto the silk with the help of their hands. They pulled me down between them, so their naked bodies pressed in against me. There was a moment where I had to close my eyes. The sensation of their warm, bare skin sliding against mine was almost overwhelming. It was like wrapping myself in a favorite blanket with my favorite stuffed toy in my arms, and my gun close at hand. Sandwiched between Micah and Nathaniel was the safest, best place I'd ever known.
Nathaniel kissed me. My arms slid around his shoulders automatically. He took that as an invitation to press his upper body against mine. Micah's hand slid across my hip, until his hand found the inside of my thigh. He stroked his hand back and forth, and without thinking about it, I moved my leg so he could reach other things if he wanted to.
My hands slid down Nathaniel's back, found the curve where his waist met lower things, traced the two dimples in his very lower back. The kiss had grown into something more, and his body responded to that promise, swelling where he lay trapped against my hip. The feel of him hard and firm against me made me shudder into his mouth.
He drew back enough to watch my eyes fluttering open and shut. "You are my most favorite toy."
It was more effort than I would have admitted out loud to focus on his face. Micah's hand kept stroking my thigh, as if he was coaxing me to open my legs for him, but I'd already done that. His fingers kept trailing on that last inch before he touched intimate parts. I wanted him to touch me. Wanted his fingers to finish that teasing promise.
"I thought you were tired," Micah whispered, but his mouth was just above my neck, so hot, so close.
"I was." My voice was thick, but not with sleep.
"What do you want?" he breathed against my neck. That alone made me shiver.
"Touch me."
"I am touching you." His fingers trailed just below where I wanted him to touch, back and forth, back and forth, but not the back and forth I wanted.
"Please, Micah. No more teasing."
His fingers slid over me, and that first touch drew small sounds from me.
"So eager," he said, and he rose up enough to see my face. His own face was eager, too, but there was also a soft wonder to his face. He raised his hand from between my legs to touch, lightly, along my face. "I love that look on your face," he said.
"What look?" I whispered.
He smiled. "That look." He leaned in for his own kiss. Nathaniel's hand curved over my breast, as Micah's mouth found mine. Nathaniel's touch made me more eager at Micah's mouth, so that the kiss was more than it would have been. I fed at Micah's mouth, my hand running over his body. I tried to use both hands, but Nathaniel caught my hand, pressed it to the bed, so he could lower his mouth to my breast. He filled his hand with my breast, pressing it until it was just this side of pain. His tongue flicked over my nipple. Micah's tongue slipped inside my mouth, tasting me. Nathaniel's mouth slid over more of me, and he sucked, hard and fast. It brought me screaming off the bed, screaming my pleasure into Micah's mouth. I tried to raise my other hand off the bed, but Nathaniel held it trapped. He bit my breast, and I raked nails down Micah's back. Nathaniel let go of my other hand, and bit me harder. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to dance that line between pain and pleasure. I put a matching row of scratches down his back, and they let me go.
I lay gasping on the bed between them, trying to focus my eyes around the white, cottony edges of the world. Micah said, "That was fun."
Nathaniel said, "Mmmm." He flicked his tongue across my nipple, quick and gone.
I writhed across the bed, my hands grabbing at the silk sheets. "Oh, God!"
A hand caressed my ankle. That one quiet touch opened my eyes, made me gaze down my body to find Jean-Claude kneeling there. He was still wearing the robe, belted tight. His face was neutral, pleasant. "Micah invited me to touch you, but I've found that it is your invitation I need." Translation: sometimes in the midst of all the men, I got pissy if someone touched me without my saying yes first. Just because one of the men was touching me didn't mean that everyone got to touch me equally. A girl's got to try to draw a line somewhere.
"You can't have intercourse until you've fed again," I said.
He smiled. "So American. There are other ways to pleasure a woman."
"But you won't be able to..."
His hand slid up my calf, the most delicate of touches. "I will be content, ma petite."
"We can stop now," Micah said, "if you want. This was fun."
I gazed down his body and saw just how fun he thought it was. He was long, and thick, and ready, and long and thick for Micah was very long and thick indeed. I glanced down at Nathaniel, and found him just as ready. No, he wasn't as big as Micah, but then the only one of the men who could compare was Richard. Though Richard didn't seem as aware of it as Micah.
Nathaniel was definitely more, just not as more as Micah. Not in length anyway, but in width, well, yeah. Men are hung up on length; trust me, girls pay attention to width, too. Frankly an inch or two less length wasn't always a bad thing; depended on what you wanted to do with it.
I ran fingertips over both of them, and just that light touch made them shudder, and me writhe. "So pretty," I said, "seems a shame to waste them."
"We'll get more," Micah said.
"I agree with Anita," Nathaniel said, grinning.
Micah smiled at him, a bright flash of teeth in his tanned face.
"I will join Asher." Jean-Claude began to slide off the bed.
"Don't go," I said.
He looked at me; it was a very searching look. "I do not have the patience of your two cats, ma petite. They have served blood for Asher and myself more than once, then watched us have our way with you."
"We had to save them for the ardeur the next day, or next night," I said.
"Oui, but I am not the voyeur that Asher is, and if I am not to join in completely, I would as soon leave. It is not a complaint, merely truth."
"I still think you shouldn't go that far away," Micah said. "I don't trust Belle."
Jean-Claude smiled. "Wise, and correct." He spread his hands wide. "If it were just sex between the three of you I could watch and be content to join the cuddling afterward. But it is the emotional content that makes it difficult to be excluded."
I frowned. "I don't understand."
"I know that you love me, ma petite, but my arms do not fill you with that last drop of something. I see you with Micah and Nathaniel and that last drop of emotion, or contentment, is there." He held up a hand as if someone had started to speak. "It is the truth. I do not begrudge it, especially with the news we have had tonight. You will need that bond, but it is"?he shook his head--"discomforting to watch, and know that I am not a part of it."
I didn't know what to say to that. I mean what do you say to the man you love when he's just told you that he realizes that you love two other men more?
"Besides, ma petite, you have expressed doubts about me now. You say you enjoyed our time with Augustine, but your actions state otherwise. I think your cats are what you need tonight, ma petite, not the memory of..." He gave that Gallic shrug, and got off the bed. He stood there adjusting his robe with smooth, nervous gestures. When he was nervous, and not policing his movements, he smoothed his clothes. It was one of the few truly human gestures that had survived centuries of being dead. I liked that he did it, and that he didn't realize he did it, because once he noticed it, his hands went still, as still as his face.
The little bit of sex I'd had with Micah and Nathaniel had helped me clear my head. "Do you think that I think less of you for having seen you with another man?" I asked.
"You have implied it," he said in a voice that was almost neutral.
I raised myself up on my elbows. "I guess I did, but I don't mean it. I think I thought it should bother me, but it didn't. I tried to talk myself into it bothering me, but the truth is--" I sat up, folding my legs tailor fashion. "The truth is, Jean-Claude, I liked seeing you kiss Auggie. I don't know how I feel entirely about the rest, but it didn't bother me at the time, so why should it bother me now?" I shook my head. "I'm not going to talk myself into an issue I don't have."
He gave a small smile, uncertain around the edges. Was it my reaction that had made him uncertain? Or was it that I'd trained him that after a major metaphysical or sexual breakthrough, I pulled back and ran? I guess either way, it was my doing, that uncertain smile. I didn't want him uncertain. I loved him; I shouldn't be the one making him insecure, not if I loved him. Sometimes the hardest thing about having so many men in my life wasn't the sex; the sex we could handle, but the emotional stuff... The emotional stuff was harder. I couldn't help Richard tonight, because his issues were things I couldn't really help him with, but this issue, this I could fix, or I could try to.
I smiled at him, and tried to put into that smile everything a man wants to see in a woman's smile. I watched his eyes fill up with that dark light that has nothing to do with vampires and everything to do with a man. His smile matched his eyes, confident, sure of itself, anticipatory.
"What would you have of me, ma petite?" His voice curled over my bare skin like the tickling edge of fingernails. It made me shiver.
"You're overdressed," I said.
"Are you certain you wish to do this, ma petite? You have never taken three of us before, and the ardeur will not rise again tonight, it has been too well fed."
He was offering me an out, but if I said no, then he'd leave the room. I'd already watched Asher and Richard walk out; I did not want to lose another of my men tonight. I needed as many around me as I could manage. Saying it made me almost want to call Asher back, but... I'd never done the full deal with three of my guys at the same time. Four would have to wait.
"I said, you are overdressed," and I made it a very firm statement.
Jean-Claude's smile widened. "Easily remedied." He undid the robe, and let it fall to the floor. He stood there pale and perfect. I had seen him nude a thousand times or more, but I never got over the shock of him. It was as if he were some amazing work of art, and I had stolen him away from the museum where they kept him roped off and safe, stolen him so I could run my hands over the smooth, flawless surface of him.
"You're too far away," I whispered.
He smiled wide enough to flash just a hint of fang. "That, too, is easily remedied." He crawled up on the bed, and I watched his body, small and loose, more than his face. Until he fed, he'd be small, which meant I could indulge in something that I didn't get to do much. By the time you get most men out of their clothes they're not as small as they can get--no, definitely larger.
"I know what you are thinking of, ma petite." His voice was chiding.
"Did you read my mind?"
"Non, ton visage."
He'd said he'd read my face. I was picking up a little French here and there in self-defense.
He hesitated at my feet, and I realized he was looking at Micah. "And you, Nimir-Raj, what do you say to this?"
Micah smiled at him. "I'm here to try to make things work better, not make them worse."
"I don't try to make things worse," I said.
"Shh," Micah said, "don't take it personally."
I opened my mouth, realized I was going to start a squabble if not a fight, and I didn't want to fight anymore tonight. "Fine, I won't take it personally."
"You're not going to argue about it?" Nathaniel asked.
I shook my head, and lay back against the pillows. "Nope."
Micah and Nathaniel exchanged looks.
"What?" I said.
They both shook their heads. "Nothing," Micah said.
"Nothing," Nathaniel said, but he was smiling.
"I don't argue about everything."
"Of course not," Micah said.
"I don't," I said.
"Not anymore," Nathaniel said.
I slapped his shoulder.
He grinned. "Hit me harder, if you want it to hurt."
I didn't hit him again. "You'd enjoy it too much."
He grinned wider.
"I am no longer the only one who is not ready," Jean-Claude said.
I glanced down at the other two men. He was right. They definitely weren't ready to go.
"We've talked too long," Nathaniel said.
I waited to be uncomfortable at the thought of three men and just me with no holds barred on the sex. I waited, but the discomfort didn't come. I lay there and waited to feel overwhelmed, or uncomfortable, but... I just wasn't.
"I think I can fix it," I said, and started to slide lower on the bed, turning toward Nathaniel as I did it. I started kissing my way down his body, then thought of something. I looked back at Jean-Claude where he knelt on the bed. "You didn't ask Nathaniel's opinion."
"Micah is your Nimir-Raj, Nathaniel is not."
"But he's still my sweetie."
"It's okay, Anita," Nathaniel said, petting my shoulder. "Thanks for thinking of me, but I'm okay with not being asked."
I looked up at his face with my face almost to his groin. If it seemed an odd time for a in-depth talk he didn't complain. "Why are you okay?"
"Jean-Claude is right, I'm not anyone's leader, and I'm okay with that. If we were all completely dominant our happy little domestic situation wouldn't work."
"But just because you're not dominant doesn't mean that your opinion doesn't count."
"No," he said, and gave a little laugh, "no, but it does mean that I don't have as many opinions."
"But..."
"You want me to be more dominant?" he asked.
"I'd like to know how you feel about this, yeah."
"Suck my dick, so we can fuck." He was smiling while he said it.
I blinked at him for a second or two, then shrugged, and said, "Okay."
