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Hands caressed up my bare back and I knew it was Richard. He knelt behind me, legs straddling Nathaniel's legs, but putting no weight on them. He cradled me back against his body. I was suddenly aware that we were the focus of the pack. They surrounded us like a wall of faces and bodies.
Richard's hands slipped off the spine sheath and the blade down my back. His hands found my bra strap and undid it. I started to protest, started to hold it, and he kissed my shoulders, sliding his lips down my back and sliding the bra away. He whispered, "Bare skin is best for this." That prickling rush of energy filled the watching lukoi, filled them and spread into me. The energy of the munin fed on that power, grew until I thought my skin would burst with it.
Richard guided my body to Nathaniel's. My bare br**sts touched Nathaniel's chest, a brush of velvet skin against the torn flesh of his smooth chest. I shuddered against him, and that heat spilled from my bare skin. At first it was as if my na**d flesh rode above his skin on a pool of sweat, then I felt the flesh give. My body fell against his with a sigh, and it was as if our bodies became plastic, liquid. Our bodies melded together into one flesh, one body, as if I were sinking into his chest. I felt our hearts touch, beating liquid against one another. I healed his heart, closed his flesh with mine.
Nathaniel's mouth found mine, and the power flowed between us like breath until it raised the skin from my body, and there was nothing but his arms around me, his mouth on me, my hands on his body, and distant like an anchor I felt Richard, and beyond him the rest of the pack. I felt them offer their energy, their power, and I took it. And beyond that, distant as a dream, I felt Jean-Claude. I felt his cool power join with ours and strengthen; life from death. I took it all and thrust it into Nathaniel until he tore his mouth from mine and cried out. I felt his body give under mine, and his pleasure rushed over my skin, and I threw it out into the waiting pack. I took their energy and gave them back pleasure.
The munin left me in that rush of startled voices. Raina had never been able to take power from others. That was my doing. So even the bitch of the west had never pleasured this many people at once.
I sat up, still straddling Nathaniel. He looked up at me with his lilac eyes and smiled. I ran my hands over his chest, and there was no wound, only a healing scar. He still looked pale and awful, but he'd live.
Richard offered me the dress shirt I'd dropped. I slipped it over my br**sts and buttoned it. I didn't know what had happened to the rest of the clothes. Jason had my shoulder holster and knife. The important stuff.
When I tried to stand, I stumbled, and only Richard's arms kept me standing. He helped me through the crowd. They touched me as we moved through, running their hands along me. I didn't mind or didn't care. I put my arm around Richard's waist and accepted it for tonight. I'd worry about what it all meant tomorrow, or maybe even the next day.
Verne stepped out of the crowd. "Damn girl, you are good."
Roxanne was at his side. "I'm healed. How did you do that?"
I smiled. "Talk to Marianne." I kept walking.
The paramedics were rushing forward. I heard the woman say, "Holy shit! It's a miracle." And maybe it was.
Richard said, "I won't be looking for another lupa."
I hugged him. "No more auditions?"
"You are my lupa, Anita. Together we could be the most powerful mated pair I've ever seen."
"It's not just the two of us that make us powerful, Richard. It's Jean-Claude."
He kissed me on the forehead. "I felt him when you called the power. I felt him give his power to us."
We'd stopped walking. I turned to look at him in the moonlight. "We are a threesome, Richard, like it or not."
"A menage a trois," he said.
I raised my eyebrows. "Not unless you've been doing more than just talking with Jean-Claude."
Richard laughed and hugged me. "He hasn't corrupted me quite that far."
"Glad to hear it." We walked down the hill, holding each other. Charlotte was lying at the bottom of the hill on a stretcher.
She reached her hands up to both of us. One of the hands was thickly bandaged. She smiled up at us. "Why didn't you tell me, Richard?"
"I thought it would make a difference. I thought you would stop loving me."
"Silly ass," she said.
"That's what I told him," I said.
Charlotte started to cry softly, pressing Richard's hand to her lips. I just smiled and held her hand. Life wasn't perfect, but standing there watching Richard and his mother, holding their hands, it was close.
46
Daniel's nose was badly broken. The perfect profile isn't quite as perfect. He says the women love it, makes him look tough. Daniel has never spoken to me about what happened. Neither has Charlotte, but on the first Sunday dinner after they both got out of the hospital, she broke down and cried. I was the one who went into the kitchen first. She let me hold her while she cried, saying how silly she felt, that everything was all right. Why should she be crying?
If I could do resurrection for real, I'd bring Niley and all the rest back and kill them more slowly.
Richard's family thinks I can do no wrong, and they are not being subtle about their plans. Marriage -- we should get married. Under other circumstances, not a bad idea. But we aren't a couple. We're a trio. Hard to explain that to Richard's folks. Hard to explain that to Richard.
Howard Grant, the psychic, is in jail for fraud. He confessed to some things he'd done in the past. I told him if he didn't spend some time in jail, I'd kill him. His greed had started everything. He didn't touch Charlotte or Daniel. He was horrified at what Niley was and what was happening, but his lies set it all in motion. He couldn't get away scot free. I just gave him a choice of punishments.
The police think Deputy Thompson fled the state. They're still looking for him, and none of us are talking. I don't know what Verne's pack did with the body. Maybe it's hanging on their tree waiting for a Christmas that will never come. Maybe they ate him. I don't know, and I don't want to know.
The Vampire Council didn't send anyone to kill us. Apparently Colin overstepped his bounds. We were within our rights to kill him, and his people. He didn't survive his servant's death. There is no new Master of the City yet. Verne and his pack are in no hurry for Colin's replacement.
I wake from dreams that aren't my own. Thoughts, feelings, not my own. It is overwhelming enough to be in love, in that first heat of lust, but the marks are sucking me inside both of them. They're swallowing me up. Every act of sex makes it worse. So ... no more sex. I have to get control of the marks first.
When I was sleeping with both of them, Richard catted around. Now that I've gone celibate, so has he. Jean-Claude, I think, knows I'm still looking for a good excuse to say, "Hah, see, you don't really love me." So he's behaving himself like some dark angel.
I took a month off and went back to Tennessee to learn from Marianne. Learning to control the munin is helping me to control the marks. Jean-Claude as my only teacher is just not a good idea. He has too much invested in me. I'm learning to put up barriers. Barriers so tall, so wide, so solid, that I'm safe from both of them. Safe behind my walls.
But sex brings all the barriers crashing down. It's like drowning. I think if I allowed it, and they allowed it, we could become like one organism with three parts.
Richard doesn't seem to see the danger. He's still naive, or perhaps I just don't understand him. I love him, but even thinking his thoughts, feeling his emotions, he's still a mystery to me.
Jean-Claude knows the danger. He says he can keep it from happening, but I don't trust him. I love him, sort of, but I don't trust him. I've felt his chortling joy as the power of the triumvirate grows.
He told me once he loved me as much as he was able. Maybe he does, but he loves power more.
So, celibate again, damn it. How to be chaste with the two preternatural studs of all time at my beck and call? Be out of town.
I've taken every animating job out of town that I could for three months. I spend weekends with Marianne. I have a great deal of power inside me, not the marks, but me. I've avoided confronting that power as much as possible, but Jean-Claude has forced me to face it. I have to learn how to control the magic.
It sounds silly that someone who raises the dead for a living has been ignoring that she has magic inside her, but I have. I've always learned the minimum to get by. That's over.
Marianne tells me that I have the tools to survive in the triumvirate. Until I feel confident in those tools, I'm avoiding the boys. Three months of not touching either of them. Of no one sharing my bed. Three months of not being lupa. I had to leave the pack to leave Richard. But I couldn't leave the wereleopards. They don't have anyone else but me. So I'm still Nimir-ra. Marianne is even teaching me how to forge the leopards into a healthy unit. She and Verne.
