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This wasn't his need. I turned enough so that I could see Nathaniel, who had gone to lean against the wall. He wasn't close enough to project like this. He gave me innocent lavender eyes. I couldn't feel him in my head. It was just Jean-Claude and me, but even with only two of us connected, it still felt like Nathaniel's need, or Damian's skin hunger.
I looked back into those dark, dark blue eyes and whispered, "You've inherited their neediness."
Aloud, he said, "I fear so."
"What can we do?" I asked.
"Let me in, ma petite, let me through those wonderful shields. Let me in," and his voice spilled over my skin as if he'd covered me na**d in satin and drawn it along my body.
I shivered, and only the cool touch of his hands kept my knees from buckling. I stared into those eyes, that face, and I whispered, "Yes."
His face filled my vision, then his lips brushed mine. I expected him to take me in his arms and kiss me with the desperation I felt in his need, but he didn't. He touched me only with his mouth, and even that was the barest pressure of his lips against mine. I actually pushed against him, raised a hand to touch him, and he put a hand on my shoulder and held us apart. A second after he'd done it, I understood why, because it was as if my soul spilled up into my lips, as if the very essence of me was a taste upon my lips. My power, my magic, my heart, my soul, everything was there for the taking in one soft brush of lips. I'd thought we'd fed the ardeur upon each other before, but I'd been wrong. He sipped from my lips, delicate, so much more he wanted. I could feel it. Feel his need. But he held me back with his hands on my shoulders, while I struggled to close that distance. But I knew with his knowledge that bare skin was bare skin, and all of it could drink me down.
It was the most careful kiss I'd ever been given, and one of the most frustrating. I was making small noises deep in my throat, because I wanted more. I wanted so much more.
When he drew back, he held a spot of my lipstick like a crimson stain in the center of his lips. There was the tiniest bit of color to his cheeks. He was like the cold of winter touched by the barest breath of spring, so that warmth was only a promise, not real, not now, but a distant hope. But hope is better than the alternative.
He swallowed convulsively, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment, before he straightened and his hands on my shoulders were firm. "That is but a taste of what I need, ma petite."
"Don't stop," I said.
He smiled, but it was sad. "Let the effects wear awhile, then give me an answer about more."
I shook my head. What was he talking about? Of course, of course he could have more.
"It is my fault, ma petite. I asked you to let me in your shields. I did not mean for you to drop all the defenses in your considerable repertoire. It was nearly overwhelming for both of us." He looked at me as if he saw something new there, or someone new. "I must attend to our fair audience." He almost came to me again for a good-bye kiss, but he pushed away, and he called to someone, "Attend her until she recovers. No, not you, not until she is herself again. I fear what she would do if you touched her now."
His voice when it came again, filled the club, echoed into the shadows of it, and yet, seemed intimate, as if he whispered it against your skin, and only your skin. "Primo has walked through fire and blood to be reborn for you tonight. Transformed before your eyes from the warrior of nightmares to the lover of dreams."
"They're too scared, they won't believe it." It was Nathaniel's voice.
I turned toward that voice, but met a different face. Nathaniel was standing just beyond, out of reach, but Byron was standing so close that it startled me. He wasn't quite three hundred years old, and I normally heard him move as if he were human. He wasn't powerful, and never would be, but tonight, I hadn't even known he was standing nearly touching me. That helped sober me up more than anything else. I hadn't heard one of the weakest of the new vamps that Jean-Claude had welcomed to town. Bad necromancer, no cookie.
"You've never seen him after he's fed like this," Byron said in that nicely accented British voice, "watch."
I fought not to look at Jean-Claude. I looked at the audience instead. Their eyes were wide, their faces pale, or flushed. Some of them were still hiding under the tables. If the fight hadn't taken place between them and the most obvious door, they'd have probably fled. All they needed was a sign above them that said "scared shitless." It was probably the most spilled blood that any of them had ever seen. Scary stuff.
As long as I looked at the audience I agreed with Nathaniel, but when my eyes drifted to Jean-Claude's back as he spoke with them, well... I had to look away. I had to not look, because the craving was still there. I'd been told that my desire to touch him had been part of the same craving that any servant felt for their master, but I hadn't really believed it. This, this was craving.
I found myself staring at Primo, who was still on his knees, looking confused, a half-circle of black-shirted security guards standing around him. He looked up at me, and his eyes held something like pain. He spoke, and no one at the tables heard him, just me and security, and the vampire and wereleopard at my back. "You have trapped me."
I opened my mouth to say, "I didn't mean to," but someone touched my left wrist, and it hurt. A sharp immediate pain. I whirled and found Byron touching me. "Let go of me."
He opened his hand and just let my arm fall back. He whispered, "You're bleeding. Jean-Claude told me to attend to you. Let me tend your wound." Here was a face younger and more innocent seeming than Nathaniel's. He'd been in his late teens when his master had brought him over. His hair was a soft brown that fell in loose curls just past his ears, leaving his slender neck bare and showing the V of white skin at the neck of the robe he wore. I remembered that someone had said the college students were heckling Byron. He must have been the one on stage.
He was shorter than I was, and slender, not preadolescent, but young, unfinished, and he'd be unfinished forever. Whether his shoulders would have broadened, or he'd have gotten taller, we'd never know. He could lift weights and add definition, in fact, he had, at Jean-Claude's insistence, but he'd never have the body he might have had if the vampire that killed him had waited a year or two.
His eyes were gray and seemed to take up most of his face, huge, soft gray. The color that fog can have when it's at its thickest, that close suffocating wall of mist.
I had to shake my head and draw back. Shit. Byron had almost rolled me with his eyes. That shouldn't have been possible. Jean-Claude had said that I'd let down all my defenses. I hadn't meant to. It was more as if Jean-Claude had taken down all my defenses. But Byron was no Jean-Claude. Him I could keep out.
I actually closed my eyes and did the deep-breathing exercises that I'd learned. Draw yourself to the center of your body. Draw yourself in and center yourself down a line that goes into the earth itself. Marianne called it grounding, and it was. Grounding, as in being grounded, solid on your feet, secure.
But it was hard to stay focused, because Jean-Claude's voice was still there, and closing my eyes didn't get rid of it. "Who among you has not wished to tame a savage heart, to take a man and change him beyond reckoning? To make him into what you wish him to be? Primo kneels before your beauty, and he is what you will make of him. He will rise and fall to your desires."
I felt Jean-Claude walk between me and Primo. Even with my eyes closed, even with me trying to anchor myself, I felt him like a hand sweeping all my concentration away. I looked up and saw him touch Primo's face, the lightest of touches. "Show them that magnificent body."
Primo shook his head. He did not want to play.
I felt Jean-Claude's will flex, like a muscle squeezing around Primo. I felt that flare of warmth spill out from him to the bigger man. I had actually stepped closer to them, when Byron pulled me back.
"I wouldn't advise that," he said, and again I felt the pull of those soft gray eyes, like being wrapped in the warmest of blankets.
Primo stood, and that turned me back to them. The big man balled his hands into his black, blood-soaked shirt, and tore it like it was paper. Naked from the waist up, he was magnificent, if you were into giants. It wasn't the hugeness that came from weight lifting. It was just how big he was.
"Who will be his first kiss?" Jean-Claude asked.
I felt the movement before I turned and saw the audience. There was no fear now, Jean-Claude's voice had taken their fear. All I saw now was eagerness, at worst, uncertainty, as if they just weren't sure. The first few hands went up with money in them, and once that happened, more followed. No one wants to be first, but no one wants to be left out, either.
