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Jean-Claude had knotted the blue towel around his waist, where it draped nearly to his ankles. He'd put a smaller towel on his hair and the blue of the cloth brought out the blue of his eyes. Seeing his face free of all hair made him look more like a boy to me. It was the bones of his cheeks that saved his face from being utterly feminine. He was still beautiful, but an inch closer to handsome without that black veil of hair.
Asher was still clothed in nothing but the dried blood and the spill of all his own hair. He was pacing the room like some kind of caged beast.
Jean-Claude had simply sat down on the edge of the bed with the blue sheets still stained with blood and other fluids. He looked discouraged.
I stood as far from them as I could, arms clasped across my stomach. I'd left my shoulder holster off, so that I wouldn't stroke my gun while I argued. I was hoping to tone the hostility down, not ramp it up.
Jean-Claude laid his face in his hands, all pale skin and blue cloth, towels and sheets surrounding him. "Why did you do it, mon ami!If you had only behaved yourself we would even now be together as we were meant to be."
I wasn't sure I liked how sure Jean-Claude was of me, but I couldn't really argue without lying, so I let it go. Shutting the f**k up is seldom a bad move on my part.
Asher stopped pacing and said, "Anita has felt me feed. She knew that I could roll her mind completely. She did not say not to do it. She said for me to take her, to feed from her, so I did. I did what she told me to do, and she was aware of how I would do it, because she has fed me once before."
Jean-Claude raised his face from his hands like a drowning man, coming up for air. "I know that Anita fed you when you lay dying in Tennessee."
"She saved me," Asher said. He'd come to the end of the big four-poster bed.
I watched the two of them framed against the blue sheets, where so recently we'd had a very good time. I stood there wanting them both, and my arms clung to me, as if by holding on tight I could keep it from happening.
"Oui,she saved you, but you did not roll her mind completely then, because I would have felt your touch upon her mind and heart, and it was not there."
"I tried to roll her mind because it seems to me that every vampire that takes blood from her is in some way under her sway, her power. It is almost as if when a vampire feeds from her, it is she who controls them, not the other way around."
I stayed where I was, but this I couldn't let go. "Trust me, Asher, it doesn't work that way. I've had vamps bite me and have me under their sway before."
He looked at me, with those pale, pale eyes. "But how long ago was that? I think that your powers have grown since then."
My gaze kept sliding down his body, tracing the blood pattern on that pale, slightly golden tinged skin. I closed my eyes to say the next because I needed to stop watching them. "Do you feel like you have to do what I say?"
He hesitated, and I fought the urge to look at him, to watch him think. "No." His voice was soft.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, opened my eyes, and fought like hell to stare at Asher's face and nothing else. "See, you're not in my power or anything."
He did a small frown. "Are you in my power then?"
"I can't stop watching the two of you. I can't stop thinking about what we did, what we could still do."
He gave a harsh laugh, and it hurt to hear it, as if it had struck a blow along my skin. "How can you not think about us, while we stand here in front of you like this?"
"Oh, you're not arrogant," I said, arms clinging to myself like it was the last safe place for them to be.
"Anita, I am thinking of you, too. The pale spill of your back, the curve of your hip, the mound of your ass, underneath me. The feel of me rubbing along the soft warmth of your skin."
"Stop," I said, and had to turn away because I was blushing and it was suddenly hard to breathe.
"Why stop? It's what we're all thinking."
"Ma petitedoes not like to be reminded of pleasure."
"Mon Dieu,why not?"
I looked in time to see Jean-Claude give that all-purpose Gallic shrug, which meant everything and nothing. Usually he made it look graceful, today it looked tired.
"Anita," Asher said.
I looked at him, and this time I could make eye contact, except that staring into those amazing eyes wasn't much safer than looking at his amazing body.
"You told me you wanted me inside you, as I remember. And when I bared your neck you said, 'Yes, Asher, yes.'"
"I remember what I said."
"Then how can you be angry at me for doing what you asked?" He took three strides closer to me, and I backed up. The movement stopped him. "How can you blame me for this?"
"I don't know, but I do. How that's unfair, or maybe not unfair, I don't know, but I do."
Jean-Claude spoke then, his voice like the sigh of the wind outside a lonely door. "If you had but restrained yourself, mon ami,we might even now be together in the bath."
"I don't know about that," I said. My voice sounded angry, and I was glad.
Jean-Claude gazed at me with those blue black eyes. "Are you saying that you could refuse such bounty, once having tasted it?"
I didn't blush this time, I paled. "Well, it's moot now isn't it, because he cheated." I pointed at Asher for dramatic emphasis.
He stared at me openmouthed. "How did I cheat?"
Jean-Claude was back to holding his head in his hands. "Ma petitedoes not allow vampire trickery to be played upon her." His voice came muffled but strangely clear.
Asher looked from one to the other of us. "Ever?"
Jean-Claude answered without moving, head still in his hands. "For the most, oui."
"Then she has never tasted you as you are meant to be tasted," Asher said, and his voice held a soft astonishment.
"That is her choice," Jean-Claude said, he raised his face up slowly, so I could meet that blue gaze, and there was something of anger in his eyes.
I didn't understand all of this conversation, and I wasn't sure I wanted to, so I ignored it. I've always been damn good at ignoring what makes me uncomfortable. "The point is that Asher used vampire wiles on me. He's done something to cloud the way I think about him. Now I won't know, won't ever know, if what I'm feeling is real, or a trick." There, I felt sure of moral high ground on this one, at least.
Jean-Claude did a sort of voila gesture with his hands, as if to say, see, I told you.
Asher's face began to lose its anger and work towards that blankness they both did so well. "So it was just a lie."
I looked at both of them. "What was a lie?"
"That you wanted me to be with you and Jean-Claude."
I frowned. "No, it wasn't a lie. I meant it."
"Then this faux pas changes nothing," he said.
"You've messed with my mind, I don't think that's just a faux pas. I think that's damn serious." My hands were on my hips, better than clinging to myself to keep from touching anybody. I embraced my anger, because it made them less beautiful. Of course, it made everything less beautiful.
"So you did lie," Asher said, his face almost empty of any expression.
I hated watching him shut himself away like this, but I didn't know what to do to stop it. "Damn it, no, I didn't lie. You're the one who changed the rules, Asher, not me."
"I changed nothing. You said we would be together. You offered me your bed. You begged me to be inside you. Jean-Claude said that your sweet ass was not to be touched, and the deep pleasure of your body was full, where was I supposed to go?"
I fought not to blush and failed. "It was the ardeurtalking, and you knew it."
He backed up until he came to the edge of the bed, and he half-collapsed on the blue sheets, grabbing the post to keep from sliding off the silk. His face was blank, but the rest of him acted as if I'd struck him, and I knew I'd said the wrong thing.
"I said that once the ardeurwas cooled you would find a way to reject me, to reject this," and he gestured at Jean-Claude at the far end of the bed, and the bed itself, "and you have done just as I said you would do." He pushed himself up from the bed, clinging to the wooden post for a moment, as if he wasn't sure his legs would hold him. He took a tentative step away from the bed, almost staggered, then another, and another. Each step was steadier than the last. He was going for the door.
