Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [1004]
She laid me back against the sheets and began to kiss her way down my body. I watched her eyes roll up, watching my face, as she licked, and bit, and drew small pinpricks of blood where dainty fangs pierced too close. It wasn’t my memory that made me writhe at the sight of her over my groin. At first, it felt wrong, because I was expecting a different sensation, but Belle had spent two thousand years learning about pleasure, and she knew this pleasure, too. I gazed down at her with her mouth between my legs, and her tongue found me, traced me, licked me, and finally she sucked me, lightly at first, then deeper and deeper, until fangs bit deep as she sucked me, and I wasn’t certain if it was the pleasure that brought the orgasm, or the pain. The ardeur fed, and fed, and fed.
I screamed, and writhed, and clawed at the pillows, and only after I lay back boneless, eyes fluttering blind with pleasure, did she raise her face from my body.
She stared up at me with eyes that glowed so bright, she looked blind with power. She laughed, and the sound trailed down my body and made me cry out again. “I do see what he sees in you, ma petite, I truly do. I have fed you enough to keep you all alive, but Mercia and Nivia, and any of the Harlequin that took part in this, will have to kill you before you can testify against them. They will not know that I know.”
I tried to say, tell people, but my mouth couldn’t work quite yet. Hell, if there’d been an emergency I couldn’t have rolled off the bed, and it wasn’t the medical emergency part that kept me lying there. It was a few thousand years of practiced sex that made me lie there and look at her, or try to look at her. The world was still white-edged with orgasm.
“I believe that they have allies for their illegal activities among the council, so I must go slowly here, but you need to be well there.” She smiled at me, and it was the smile that Eve must have used in the Garden of Eden; Want a bite of apple, little girl? “I will send a call out to my bloodline in your territory. Jean-Claude is still too hurt to stop it. I will talk to them as of old, before they had Jean-Claude’s new power to hide behind. When you wake, you will need powerful food for the ardeur. You must share that power with Jean-Claude and your wolf.”
I managed to whisper, “I don’t know how to do that.”
“You will,” she said, and she came to straddle my body, leaning in until our lips met. I could taste my body on her mouth. We kissed, and the dream broke, and I woke, with the taste of her kiss on my lips.
24
I WOKE GASPING in a room that was too bright, too white. There was something in my arm that hurt when I tried to move it. I couldn’t think where I was, couldn’t think about anything but the smell and taste and feel of Belle Morte. I woke crying her name, or trying to. My voice was a harsh croak of sound.
Cherry’s face appeared beside the bed. Her ultrashort blond hair and overly dark Goth makeup couldn’t quite hide the fact that she was pretty. She was also a registered nurse, though she had lost her job at the local hospital when they found out she was a wereleopard. “Anita, oh my God, oh my God.”
I tried to say her name, and couldn’t make words.
“Don’t try to talk. I’ll send for the doctor.” She got me water and one of those bendy straws, and let me take a minute sip. I heard a door open and close, running feet getting farther away. Who had she sent for the doctor?
Cherry’s eyes were shiny, and only after her eyeliner began to run in black tears down the pale makeup did I realize she was crying. “They say it’s waterproof, but they so lie.” She let me have another sip of water.
I managed to croak, “Why does my throat hurt?”
“I…” She looked solemn again. “We had to intubate