Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [112]
Jason’s great shaggy head came around my seat and rubbed against my shoulder, the ruff of his face tickling along my cheek. I reached up and petted that great head without thinking, the way I would have done if he’d been a dog. The moment I touched him, the hunger thrilled through me from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. The hair on my body stood to attention, and it felt like something was trying to crawl up the back of my skull, because the nape of my neck was prickling so badly.
The wolf and I turned as one to stare at Caleb. If my eyes could have bled to wolf, they’d have done it then.
Caleb looked terrified. I think if he’d just stayed still we’d have been okay, but he didn’t. He unfolded his arms from his nearly bare chest and eased across the seat.
Jason growled, and I was out of my seat, on the floorboards in the back, before I had a chance to think, unseatbelted in a speeding car, bad idea. I think that would have put me back in my own head space, but Caleb ran. He spilled over the backseat, and Jason and I spilled after him. It was like being water, following the natural course.
We didn’t pin Caleb, so much as kneel and sit around him. Caleb was pressed tight in the corner of the cargo area, his hands tight against his chest. He tried to take up as little space as possible. I think Caleb knew that touching either of us would be bad. Jason sat on his haunches, flashing fangs and letting the trickle of growl slide out. You didn’t need words to know what it meant, don’t move, don’t fucking move. Caleb didn’t move.
I was on my knees in front of Caleb, and all I could see was the pulse in his neck, thudding, thudding, against the skin, trying to break free. I wanted to help it.
I could suddenly smell forest, trees, and the scent of wolf fur that wasn’t Jason. Richard breathed through my mind like a sweet-scented cloud. I saw him in my bathtub all those miles away. An arm darker than the tan Richard carried most of the year was across his chest, propping him up in the water, holding him. Jamil being a good Hati, making sure his Ulfric didn’t drown. It was what Jason had done for me earlier, minus the sex. Richard was a little homophobic. He didn’t like men who reminded him they liked men, especially if that man was himself. I couldn’t throw stones on that one; I was pretty much the same way around women. No matter how sophisticated I was supposed to be, I kept forgetting that another woman could find me attractive. Always caught me by surprise.
Jamil’s face hovered on the edge of Richard’s, but it was as if in this dream vision all that was truly clear was Richard. I caught glimpses of his body through the water and the faint candlelight. Lycanthropes sometimes had light sensitivity problems, so there were no bright overheads, but the candles made the water dark, and hid more of Richard from view than I wanted. I felt like a metaphysical Peeping Tom. But the hunger was so easily turned to a different kind of hunger, it always had been.
Richard looked up at me, and the sight of his face, shorn of hair, caught at my throat. I wanted to ask, why? but he spoke first. It was the first time we’d spoken mind-to-mind like this, and it startled me. I’d known Jean-Claude and I could do it, but not Richard and me.
“The hunger’s mine, Anita, I’m sorry. Something that creature did to me stripped most of my control.” For a second I thought he meant the Mother of All Darkness, then realized he meant Belle.
I gazed down at Caleb’s frightened eyes, and my eyes were drawn again to his neck, then down the line of his chest to his stomach. He was breathing hard enough, scared enough that there was a pulse low in his belly, vibrating through that line of hair that led down into his pants. The stomach was soft and tender, lots of flesh there.
“Anita,” Richard said, “Anita, hear me.”
I had to blink the image of Caleb’s quivering