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NOEL SMELLED OF fear. He smelled like food, but not food for the ardeur. He smelled like meat that just hadn't stopped squirming yet. I pushed him onto the floor, raised his shirt to his shoulders. I stared down at his bare chest and stomach. He was breathing so fast, so hard, that his stomach rose and fell with it. I lowered my mouth over that pale, soft flesh. I stopped with my face just above his skin, so close that my breath came back warm against me. With that warm breath, came his scent, stronger, richer. It made me close my eyes. But I was too far into beast mind for sight to help or hurt that much. It was all about the smell of him, the sound of his breathing, and his heartbeat. I laid my ear against his chest so I could hear that frantic beating, so clear, so wonderfully afraid. I put my hand on his stomach so I could ride the movement of it, as he breathed.
"Slow your breathing, Noel," Micah said, "or you're going to hyperventilate."
"I can't help it," Noel said, voice breathless, "she's not thinking about sex."
"If you act like food, then you're food," Travis said from behind us.
I lay there on the floor, my head over his heart, my hand on the quick rise and fall of his stomach. So soft, so... tender.
The thought slid my face down his body, until I rested at his sternum, the upper edge of his stomach. So close now that I could not so much see the fast rise and fall of his body as feel it under my cheek. I rolled my face over, and kissed his stomach.
He jerked, as if I'd bit him, and made a wonderful whimpering sound.
I buried my mouth in the soft, easy flesh of his belly. I took as much of his flesh into my mouth as I could hold, and not draw blood. I bit him, hard and deep, and it took all my willpower to rise up from that flesh, and leave it whole.
I pushed back from him, crab-walked until the wall stopped me. The sensation of all that warm, tender flesh filled my mouth. I could still feel it, a sensory memory that would haunt.
"Talk to me, Anita." Micah's calm voice.
I shook my head. "Food," I whispered, "just food."
"Noel is just food," Micah said.
I nodded, eyes still closed.
"Get up, Noel." Travis's voice, unhappy, angry.
"I'm sorry," Noel said.
I finally opened my eyes, to watch him drag his shirt back over his body. He wouldn't meet anyone's eyes, as if he'd failed.
"It's okay, Noel. Auggie and Pierce are right, Joseph shops for bottoms."
"He's not a bottom," Nathaniel said. "If he had been he'd have enjoyed the biting, and the danger. It might even have been enough to push you from food to sex." Nathaniel shrugged. "He's too straightlaced."
Once I would have argued.
"I would ask one favor," Travis said.
We looked at him.
"Can you come to me, instead of making me crawl to you?"
I remembered what I'd forgotten to ask, and asked it. "Is the broken arm the worst injury?"
"At least two cracked ribs, maybe a small break. Dr. Lillian said she'd need X-rays to be certain. No concussion, too hardheaded for it, I guess." He tried to smile and almost made it.
I crawled toward him. Micah moved so I could do it. Nathaniel crawled beside me. I glanced at him. "I don't think Travis will want company on this."
"I'm the only submissive you've collected. Everybody else is a dominant."
That stopped me, made me think about it. I actually sat back on my knees. "Damian isn't a master."
"No, but he's submissive because he doesn't have the power to be dominant. I'm submissive because I like it."
I frowned at him. "If you have a point, make it."
"Ask if the pride has anyone who swings more like I do."
I thought about all the men. Was Nathaniel right? Was everyone else a dominant personality, except for him? Richard, yep; Asher, yes; Jean-Claude, way yes; Micah, yes; Jason, no.
"Jason," I said.
"You rang?" and it was Jason coming into the hallway. His short blond hair was cut neat and tidy like a junior executive. The body would have qualified, if the executive worked out in the gym enough. He was about my height, short for a man, and boyishly handsome most of the time. But he glanced at Noel getting shakily to his feet, Travis with his obvious wounds, Nathaniel and I so close together and him so very nude. Jason took it all in, and his face changed. I could never put my finger on it, but he looked suddenly older, more grown-up, and his eyes, the color of spring skies, filled up with a knowledge, a weight of intelligence. He hid it most of the time, but there was a very nice mind in that smiling, very nice body.
The look vanished, replaced by his usual smart-ass, flirting look, but I knew him too well, now, to be fooled.
"Jason subs if he wants to, but he's a top at heart," Nathaniel said, smiling up at his friend. We were never going to marry, Nathaniel and I, but if we did, I knew who he'd pick for best man.
"Tell me what position you want me in," Jason said, "and I'm your man." He wiggled his eyebrows and gave me that grin. That grin that said he was thinking cheerful nefarious thoughts. Most people made sex dark, but not Jason. He was a cheerful lecher.
I had to smile. He just had that effect on me. Hell, he had that effect on most people. "Sorry, I'm shopping for lions today, not wolves."
"Actually, ma petite, I think we are trying to establish how you react around all your beasts, but lions for now."
"Looks like I got here just in time," Jason said.
"You're not the only wolf in the hallway," Graham said, sounding sullen.
Jason gave him a look that wasn't entirely friendly. You didn't see that from Jason much. "I suppose not." His tone was dark, almost angry. I wondered what had been happening between the two of them to get that level of animosity from Jason. He was one of the most easygoing people I knew.
"As far as I'm concerned," I said, "Jason is the only wolf in the hallway."
"Why is he the only wolf that you fuck besides Richard?" Graham asked.
Ah, now I knew why Graham was pissed. Had he tried to bully the smaller man? Probably. Graham had this backward idea that size and strength were more important than anything else.
"I don't know, but comments like that are what help keep you off the list," I said.
"Step back," Claudia said to him.
He scowled at her, muscled arms folding over his chest.
She took a small movement toward him. "Are you challenging me?" Her voice was flat and empty as she said it; it made the threat all the more ominous.
Graham shook his head, and backed up until he was against the wall. He sulked, but he did what she asked. I hoped he got a girlfriend soon, because his little tantrums were really beginning to bug me.
As if the thought had conjured her out of the dimness, Meng Die appeared farther down the corridor. It was the first time I'd seen her since she'd sliced Requiem up. I did not want her here while I tested my beasts.
She was one of the few women who ever made me think, delicate. She was tinier than I was, so fragile looking. Maybe that was why she almost always wore black leather, very dominatrix. The clothes suited her though, catlike, skintight, scary, and sexy all at the same time. Yeah, scary, sexy, that summed Meng Die up perfectly.
She slinked on black, high-heel boots toward Graham. It was as if Claudia had seen this show before, because she said, "He's working, Meng Die."
Meng Die made that delicate triangular face pout, but it never reached those uptilted eyes. She changed direction without so much as a regretful glance at Graham. And that, that was why Graham wasn't devoted to her. Why she'd almost broken Clay's heart. She'd wanted Graham, but if she couldn't have him, that was fine. No man likes to know, for certain, that it doesn't matter to a woman if he's the man in her arms or not. Come to that, a woman doesn't like it when a man treats her that way either. Okay, no one likes knowing that they're utterly replaceable. We all like to be special.
Meng Die slinked toward Requiem. He backed away from her. Jean-Claude said, "You are not to touch him again, Meng Die."
She looked at Jean-Claude. "Never again?"
"Not unless he wishes it."
She turned that lovely face to Requiem. "Do you truly wish never to touch this body again?" She made her hands flow over her curves as she said it.
Some of the men in the hallway followed her hands down her body. Auggie and his men did. Requiem didn't. Jean-Claude didn't. None of the wereleopards did. Jason did, though. The view was nice if you didn't know the mind that went with it.
Meng Die walked past me, and the leopards, and the lions, like we weren't there. She went for Jason. He had looked, and he wasn't on the forbidden list.
She entwined herself around him, head on his shoulder. Even in the heels, she was shorter. "Come play with me, Jason."
He laughed, and shook his head. "I've got a report to give." I had no idea what report he was talking about.
"Afterward?" She made it a question.
He smiled, but said, "No. Thanks, but no."
