Crimson Death
Page 88

   Nathaniel traced his fingers along my arm, the lightest of touches, but it was enough to make me open my eyes and drown in that violet gaze. I was better than this, damn it! I knew how to escape vampire gaze, but then he wasn’t really a vampire and I’d never met a wereleopard who could capture me with his eyes.
   I squeezed my eyes shut tight and shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. He caressed my arm again, but I was able to keep my eyes closed this time. I’d played this game with Jean-Claude for years. Of course, that had been back when he wasn’t sure I wouldn’t tell him to go to hell and mean it. It had limited what he would risk, how far he would push. Nathaniel didn’t have those kinds of doubts. Nothing gives you courage like believing someone loves you absolutely.
   He ran his fingers along my arm again, and another hand echoed him on the other side of me. It made me open my eyes. Nathaniel was still kneeling in front of me, but Damian was kneeling beside him now. It was his hand caressing my right arm, while Nathaniel stroked the left. I opened my mouth to protest, but I wasn’t sure what I was protesting. We were all lovers already, and the pilot had informed Jean-Claude, who had informed me, that we had a couple of hours more before we could take off.
   As if he’d read my thoughts, Nathaniel said, “We have at least two more hours before we need to be at the plane. We had sex, but you didn’t feed the ardeur, because I didn’t know how.”
   I had to cough to clear my voice before I could say, “Jean-Claude wishes Rafael were here so I could feed on all the rats through him before we leave.”
   “Rafael won’t get back in time to feed you,” he said, rising higher on his knees so he could bring his face closer to mine.
   I straightened up so that I wasn’t half-bending over toward him.
   Damian leaned in to lay the brush of his lips against my arm, too delicate to even be called a kiss. It made me shiver and wrap both my arms around myself as if I were cold, but it wasn’t cold that had made me shiver. I should walk out, leave . . . now.
   “Let us be your food,” Damian said, and I was suddenly staring into the green of his eyes as if I’d never seen them before, never realized how fair of face, how . . .
   I shook my head a little more forcefully and took two steps back so I wasn’t between the two of them. “I’m going to . . . go somewhere . . . else.”
   “Why?” Nathaniel asked.
   “I . . . You’re trying to bespell me again.”
   “We’re engaged. We’d marry if you could legally take more than one spouse. I’m not trying to force you to do anything we haven’t already done. You have to feed the ardeur before we get on the plane. You can’t risk feeding hundreds of miles in the air.”
   “I’d be too nervous,” I said.
   “That means it’s more likely to get out of control, not less.”
   “What’s that supposed to mean?” I tried to call up some anger to protect me from his so-reasonable voice and the two of them kneeling so close to me.
   “What if you lost control on the plane and it spread to everyone?”
   “I’ve only lost control like that once, and that was because the old vampire council was fucking with us.”
   “Emergencies happen, Anita; let’s not make the ardeur one of them.”
   “This doesn’t even sound like you, Nathaniel.”
   “Maybe it sounds like me,” Damian said. “I’m afraid to go back to Ireland, but I’ll do it for you.”
   “You’re not doing it for me. You’re doing it to help the police save lives.”
   “You can believe what you want, but if it had just been Edward asking me, I wouldn’t be going. I’m going because my master wants me to go and my leopard is going with me to hold my hand. I want to help save lives and make up for some of the things I’ve done in my existence, but I am going for you, Anita.”
   I wanted to say, Don’t go for me. Go for yourself, but I was afraid he’d change his mind, and we needed him. “I don’t know what to say to that, Damian.”
   “Say you’ll make love to us. Say you’ll let us be your food.”
   They were right about one thing—I did need to feed before I got on the plane, but I was forgetting something. It was something important. Nathaniel’s fingers played with the edge of his T-shirt, and began to slowly lift the cloth to bare the flatness of his abs an inch at a time.
   I backed up a step. If I was going, it was time to leave, but why did I want to go? I loved Nathaniel. We had sex on a regular basis. There was no reason to run away, so why was I wanting to run? It was like I was forgetting something that I really needed to remember. Whatever I had forgotten was the reason why this wasn’t a good idea, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of it, just this nagging feeling that there was something.
   I closed my eyes and turned around so I couldn’t watch them slowly taking their shirts off. “There’s something we’re forgetting,” I managed to say, “something important.”
   “You’re missing the show that we’re putting on just for you,” Nathaniel said, in a voice that had more honey in it than I ever remembered, as if his words could drip down my skin in thick, sweet lines.
   “This is wrong. It’s the power talking. It’s making us forget something important. A reason that we shouldn’t feed now,” I said.
   Nathaniel said, “Turn around, Anita, please.”
   I started to do it, and had to catch myself, clenching my hands into fists.
   “No, Nathaniel, she’s right. We’re both drunk on the new power. It’s like when you’re first in love. It makes you forget things.”
   “What sort of things?” Nathaniel asked, his voice sounding more normal.
   “All sorts of things,” I said.
   “Important things,” Damian said.
   I opened my eyes and turned cautiously to them. They were both shirtless, which wasn’t helpful, so I closed my eyes again. All I wanted to do was go to them and start touching all that bare skin.
   “Everyone take a deep breath and ground and center,” I said with my eyes still closed. I tried to follow my own advice, and found it much harder than it should have been. I knew how to control my breathing, and once you controlled that your pulse and heart had to follow. Either everything sped up, or nothing did. I knew all that, but I could still feel my pulse in my throat.
   “We’re going with you to Ireland,” Damian said.
   “That’s the plan,” I said in a voice that was still slightly breathless.
   “Then you’ll need to keep us for food there. If you feed on us now, we won’t be any good to you for at least twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight. Two days where you’ll have to find other food.”