Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [281]
I wrapped my arms around Damian’s shoulders and back, got one leg free to wrap around his waist. I held him to me and said, “No, Gregory!” If he pulled him off I’d end up hurt as bad as Richard. “You’ll tear me up worse.”
The leopardman hesitated, growling. He said in that thick voice they all had in half-human form, “He’s hurting you.”
Damian snuggled his mouth deeper into my flesh, forced a sound that was not happy out of my mouth. But I said, in a breathy voice, “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”
I could tell Gregory was puzzled even through the fur. I wasn’t always good at facial expressions once my friends went furry. But this one even I could read.
“Damian,” I said, my voice was soft. I wanted to see that he was in there before I said the words. His eyes were closed, but he relaxed against me by inches, until he wasn’t so much pinning me to the floor as lying on top of me. It was more my arms and leg that held him pressed to me. “Damian,” I said again.
I felt him come back into himself as if a switch had been thrown. One moment, monster, the next, Damian. Even before he opened his eyes and looked at me, I knew he was in there again. He was back from wherever he’d gone. Relief flooded through me until my arms and leg started to slide off of him. Weak with relief wasn’t just an expression.
He was still sucking at the wound, but it was gentler now. It had stopped hurting. He drew, slowly, from the wound, his mouth crimson with my blood. I was suddenly aware in a way that I hadn’t been before that we were both nude, and he was male, and he had fed. His body was thick and heavy against my thigh, where a moment ago it hadn’t been. Blood pressure is a wonderful thing.
If I had not put a leg over his body to help hold him against me, it wouldn’t have been quite so compromising. If Gregory hadn’t tried to help me, I wouldn’t have . . . oh, hell. I was suddenly afraid in a very different way. Afraid to move, afraid of making things worse, or better. Afraid of how my body pulsed in his arms. It was as if all the blood in our bodies was pulsing in time. It was hard to breathe. I was almost choking on . . . power. Magic. I’d bound him once before and it hadn’t been like this.
His hand slid slowly, tentatively down the side of my body, and it wasn’t so much a caress for sex, as just for touching. He used his whole hand, getting as much of his skin against mine as he could. I felt him marveling at the grace of our bodies so close, so completely without barriers. His skin hunger was there like some new kind of beast. A need so intense and so long denied that it was a kind of madness of its own.
I felt his loneliness like a great echoing thing. It brought tears to the edges of my eyes and made me want to fix it.
I moved my hands along his back, so that I was no longer holding him, but closer to an embrace. “Blood of my blood,” and he moved upward to bring his mouth to mine for the kiss that would seal the words, but that small movement slid his body against the front of mine, so that the swell of him brushed against me, and that brief touch made me writhe underneath him, and it suddenly wasn’t a kiss I wanted to seal this bargain with.
The thought helped me pull back. Helped me realize that what I was thinking was not entirely me. I gazed up into his emerald eyes and knew who was doing the thinking.
Nathaniel knelt beside us. I reached out a hand, and the moment he touched me, I could think a little, and Damian’s pull was a little less. Damian snarled at him, and those green eyes wavered, as if sanity wasn’t permanent in them, not yet.
Jean-Claude was in my head, and I felt a tiny thread of fear from him. “You must finish binding him, ma petite, and you must start from the beginning of the words.”
I wanted to ask, “Why are you afraid?” And I must have thought it