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"Yes, or underneath the bed, though pillow is better."
"What happens if the holy item touches vampire flesh?"
"Look at your own hand for that answer," he said.
"Are you saying that the cross burned me because of my own power, not Mommie Dearest?"
"You are a succubus, Ms. Blake; that has long been a power associated with the demonic."
"I've come up against demons. Vampirism is a contagion, not a demonic anything. It's a blood-borne disease. A doctor back in the 1900s sort of figured out how to cure it. You don't cure demonic possession with a blood transfusion."
"Cured it?" Merlin said. "With a blood transfusion, truly?"
"Well, yeah, but the vampirism is what keeps the dead body up and running, so you take the vampirism out of the blood, and the body dies."
"Ah, then not a cure that most would seek."
I shook my head. "No."
Damian leaned over and whispered against my cheek, "All interesting, but may I ask that you speed this up?"
"The mother cannot break through your protection on her own, except in dream. But she can follow the attack of another vampire inside your defenses. You are correct on that. Fear of her was one of the reasons for the laws governing combat between masters. But she has been asleep for so long that we have forgotten caution."
"Why does she need to follow someone else's attack?"
"Because she is still a creature of nightmare and the lands of Morpheus."
"She's still asleep, you mean?"
"Yes, that is what I mean." He smiled.
Damian's hand dug into my shoulder. I said, "I don't mean to be rude here, but I need to feed. So, if you'll excuse us."
"Can't we watch?" Elisabetta asked.
"No," I said.
"Come, Elisabetta," Merlin said. He went out the door with her behind him. Adonis turned in the doorway, and stared at us all.
"You don't get to watch either," I said. "This meeting is over."
He started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He finally shook his head, and left without another word. I'd learned more than he meant to tell, but less than there was to know. Somehow I knew I'd see him again. Just a feeling.
Claudia went to the door. "I'll make sure no one interrupts." She closed the door behind her.
I stood, and gently moved their hands off my shoulders. I took their hands in mine. "Nathaniel, take Damian to the workers' lounge or somewhere. Or find a table outside, I guess."
"Why can't we watch?"
I gave him a look, but he gave innocent, knowledgeable eyes. "It's been less than two hours, are you saying you'd go again?"
He smiled.
"I can't feed on you again this soon, Nathaniel, it's too dangerous. I don't know what the mother did to me, exactly, but I feel shaky. I don't know if I can guarantee that the ardeur won't spread through the room. Outside the door you'll be safe; inside, I don't know." I looked at Damian, who was clinging to Nathaniel's shoulders as if he'd fall down without the support. "If I fed on Damian right now, I think that would be bad."
"Who will you feed from then?" Asher asked from where he stood near the wall.
"If it's okay with you, you."
"A man likes to be asked."
I squeezed the others' hands, and said, "Nathaniel, Damian, go, please, and stay where someone can keep an eye on you, okay?"
"I promise," Nathaniel said, and they started for the door.
I turned to Asher. "Are you mad at me?"
"No one likes to be taken for granted, Anita."
"I don't take you for granted."
"You do, and so does Jean-Claude."
I didn't know what to say to that so I said that part out loud. "I don't know what to say to that."
He shook his head. "We do not have time to tend my emotional wounds. Forgive me."
The door closed behind us, Nathaniel and Damian were outside trying to find a place to wait while I fed enough to keep us all alive.
I reached for Asher's hand. He took it, but he wouldn't look at me. What little of his face he gave was that perfect profile, with the scars hidden behind the glory of his hair. I'd asked for sex and he was hiding from me. Not good.
"What is wrong?" I asked.
"Do you realize that this will be the first time we have ever had sex alone together?"
I started to argue with him but stopped myself. I could remember his body so intimately. So many nights and afternoons of his body against mine. Had there always been someone else with us? Had we never had a moment that was just us, just ours?
I touched his face, tried to get him to look at me, but he wouldn't do it. "It's not just Jean-Claude that you haven't gotten enough personal attention from, is it?"
He smiled then, but not like he was happy. "I spent centuries being desired by all that I touched, or wanted. Then I spent centuries being despised, ridiculed. Sex was a mercy or done as a torment to the ones Belle wished to punish."
I tried to hug him, and he kept me away, just holding my hand while he talked. I said the only thing I could think to say. "I'm sorry."
He finally looked at me with the perfect side of his face. He let me see the drowning beauty that had made people give up their fortunes, their honor, their virtue, for but one more night staring into this face. "You have healed some of my hurts. Being with you and Jean-Claude. I thought it would be enough."
I slid my hand underneath his hair, so I could touch the scarred side of his face. I cupped that which he hid, while I stared up into the face he let me see. "But you don't get enough attention from either of us."
"It sounds childish when you say it out loud, but it does not feel childish inside here." He touched his chest. "It feels like I am starving to death in the midst of a feast. But it is a feast that I share with too many. Neither of you watches only me. There is always someone else more beautiful, more desirable."
"There is no one more beautiful than you, Asher."
He jerked back, and exposed the scars on his face. "How can you say that to me?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want to be the center of someone's life again, Anita. Jean-Claude's center is you. Yours is beginning to be Nathaniel and Micah." He grabbed my arms and closed his eyes tight. "I am no one's darling, and I cannot bear it." He laughed, but when he opened his eyes there was a shine of unshed tears. "How stupid and childish. How selfish."
"It's not about being with men, or women, is it?" I said, "It's because none of the men I'm picking will ever put you at the center of their world."
"I want to be loved, Anita, as I once was."
"Julianna," I said, softly.
He nodded. "Once it was Jean-Claude, but he could never truly love another man the way he loves a woman. Belle's tastes and demands sent many of us to the arms of other men, but Jean-Claude could never be content with just men in his bed. He is a lover of women above all else."
"And you?" I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.
"I think if it were the right man, I could be in love, and content, but I think the same of a woman. It is love I seek, Anita, not the package around it. I have always been needier of attention than Jean-Claude. I sought a woman for my human servant when I realized that Jean-Claude would never be content with just men, with just me."
I didn't know what to say to the pain in his voice. An emotional burden he'd carried for two or three hundred years, and I was supposed to fix it, or at least make it better, how? How was I going to do that?
I felt Damian reach out for me. It made me stagger against Asher. He had to catch me. "I'm draining Damian."
"Then I must stop being an enfant terrible, and let you feed."
"I do want you, Asher. I do love you. But right now, I don't have time to..."
"To heal my wounds," he finished for me.
"To make love to you the way I want to."
He gave me a look, like he didn't believe me.
"We have to feed and get back to the party, but you are not just emergency food to me. You are not just someone I share with Jean-Claude. You are special to me, Asher, you, just you. I don't have time to make you believe me tonight, but I'll try to do better later."
He drew me in against his body, held me close, whispered into my hair, "Later you will have to feed upon someone else, for I will have had my turn."
I drew back enough to see his face, and said, "Remember one thing, that I didn't make love to you that first time because I had to feed the ardeur. I made love to you because I wanted to, because Jean-Claude and I wanted to."
"You did it to protect me from Belle Morte's agents."
"Yeah, we did it so that Belle couldn't call you home, so you'd belong to us by her rules, but you're still the only new man in my life that I had sex with because I wanted to take care of you, not because you were food."
"Take care of me?"
I nodded. "It's what you do when you love someone."
He smiled then, and it was that rare smile. The smile that made him look terribly young, and not at all like himself, as if that smile was all that was left of what he might have been centuries ago. "You can't possibly love all the men in your life, Anita."
"No," I agreed, "but I love you. I love Jean-Claude."
"And Micah, and Nathaniel," he said.
I nodded.
"And London, and Requiem," he said.
I shook my head. "No, not them."
"Why not love them? They are beautiful and perfect."
I grinned. "Not perfect; handsome, but not perfect. Requiem's too damn moody by half. London, I'm a little embarrassed about him."
"Why embarrassed?"
"Not sure, maybe because I'm not sure I even like him, and I had sex with him." I felt Damian slumping at the table where he sat. Nathaniel caught his arm, kept him in the chair. Asher had to catch me or I might have fallen.
"You need to feed," he said.
I nodded.
"Then we have talked enough. Tonight I will take care of you, because that is what you do when you love someone."
Heat rose up in my face, and I wasn't sure why.
He laughed, not a magical vampire laugh, but a very masculine laugh. That laugh that lets you know you've pleased them in some very guy sort of way.
"What?" I asked, and wouldn't look at him, because I knew that would make the blush worse.
"You blushed because I said I loved you."
I nodded, and tried to sound churlish, as I said, "So?"
"So, I know you love me."
That made me look up at him. "Just because I blushed?"
He nodded.
"I blush a lot."
He drew me into the circle of his arms. "Yes, but this one was for me." He laid a kiss upon my forehead. "I would like to feed while you feed."
"Haven't you fed yet?"
"No, the blood hunger did not rise."
"Isn't that unusual?"
"Very."
"Then feed." I thought about it. "Though I'm sort of running out of spots for fresh fang marks."
He touched the side of my neck where Requiem's bite lay. He traced his hand over the mound of my breast, dipping a little lower than the corset top until he caressed London's bite. He dipped his fingers lower, so that he touched my nipple. Just that brought my breath in a gasp.
He laughed again, that pleased sound. His hand slid up my thigh, forced me to move my legs apart so he could find Jean-Claude's bite in my very inner thigh.
My voice came breathy, "How did you know it was there?"
"I smelled it," he whispered. "Are you ready for me?"
I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice.
"Then look at me, Anita, look into my eyes."
I looked up slowly, and found his eyes full of light like blue ice, glittering in winter moonlight, all shadows and shimmers. His eyes dazzled me.
He was carrying me, and I hadn't remembered him picking me up. "Where are we going?" I whispered.
"The couch," he said.
"We have to be quick."
He laid me down upon the couch, my knees bent, and him kneeling between them. "We can be quick now, because I know that there will be long later."
"All because I blushed for you," I said.
"Yes." He laid me down on the couch. There wasn't room for him to lie beside me, so he stood, and began to take off his clothes.
"If we take off the corset it will take forever to get it back on."
"The corset can stay." He threw his shirt and jacket on the arm of the couch. He stood there for a moment nude from the waist up. I stared up at him, stupidly, that golly, wow look on my face. I couldn't help it. He was so beautiful, and I knew that the rest of him was just as beautiful. I could look at him with knowledgeable anticipation. It made me shiver just staring up at him like that.
"The look on your face, Anita, mon Dieu, the look on your face."
I had to swallow twice to say, "What do you want me to take off?"
"Panties."
"Just panties," I said.
He nodded, and started unfastening his pants.
My pulse sped up. I had to sit up to take the panties off. It also helped me look away from him while I did it. Was it just that we had never been alone before? Was that this incredible anticipation? Or was it more than that? I wanted him. I wanted him to touch me. My body ached with the need, not just to be touched, but for Asher to touch me.
His hands slid over my bare shoulders, where I sat facing away from him. The smoothing of his hands down my skin made me hold my breath.
He leaned down and whispered, "What do you want?"
"Your hands on my body."
"What else do you want?"
"You inside me."
"What else?"
My pulse was hammering in my throat so hard I could barely speak around it. "Bite me while you fuck me, make me come both ways while you're inside me."
"Inside you both ways?" he whispered.
"Yes."
He grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled until it hurt, just a little, just enough. "Say please."
"Please."
"I have to take blood to enter you. To bring you a second time with my bite, I will have to take blood again."
I tried to reason that out, and failed, but finally said the only thing I could think to say. "Please."
