Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [416]
That made him laugh, and then wince as if the laughter hurt. “I think, m’lady, I should be asking that of you.” He eased me off his body, and himself to the floorboard, so that I was sitting on the seat, and he was kneeling in front of me. It was almost exactly how we started.
He moved down, until he was sitting flat in the floor, with his back against the opposite door from where Graham was still kneeling. “Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said, but even as I said it the endorphins began to fade, and the first ache began. It was suddenly harder to find a comfortable place to sit on the seats.
“I have hurt you,” he said, “and I am a clumsy fool.”
I eased until I was sitting more on one hip. “Fool, I don’t know you well enough to answer, but clumsy, that I know is a lie. You may be a lot of things, but clumsy isn’t one of them.”
“You compliment me, even as I see your discomfort.”
“Why didn’t you just take off the pants and fuck her?” Graham asked. His face looked more in pain than either of ours.
“I told her to let down her shields, and she did it. She trusted me, but she did not understand what my power can do.”
“You told me that it was lust,” I said, and my voice still sounded lazier than normal, almost sleepy.
“Yes, but it is not seduction as Jean-Claude and Asher can do. It is simply lust.”
“It was like hours of really good foreplay all at once. It felt wonderful.”
“But it is purely physiological, purely of the body. My gift does not touch the mind, only the flesh.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Graham asked.
“If a woman’s body reacts to my power, but her mind does not, I see it as little better than rape, and I have never been interested in such things.” He sighed. “Anita did not want to have intercourse with me, she made that clear. She’d offered me blood once tonight, but she needed to keep the rest for herself. I was hoping to be able to stop sooner, but you kept demanding more. The ardeur did not quiet as I had hoped.”
“I could feel it,” Graham said, “it was amazing, like what you did to me earlier, but more. It felt like if I could have just touched you, it would have been more.”
Requiem said, “More, yes, it would be more.”
“What could be more than orgasm?”
He looked at me, and I looked at him, and neither of us looked at Graham.
“I knew it,” Graham said, “I fucking knew it.”
“I obeyed Anita’s wishes. We did not have intercourse, we saved her vampire servant, and the ardeur has been fed.”
I looked at him as he sat on the floorboard. He still looked elegant, but sort of dissipated, like an elegant rake. If he’d unfastened those leather pants and made it intercourse, I wouldn’t have said no, because truthfully, I’d thought that was all that would save Damian. Or maybe I was just too American, and only intercourse meant sex. Maybe. But whatever the reasoning, Requiem had behaved himself in circumstances where most men wouldn’t have. He got a lot of brownie points for that. If I’d had a gold star, I would have pinned it on him.
I did the next best thing. I kissed him on the cheek and said, “Thank you.”
43
GRAHAM DOUBLE-PARKED IN front of Guilty Pleasures and said he’d valet the car for me. I let him do it, which said just how well I was feeling. I was better, but I’d shoved a lot of the last feeding into Damian, and apparently, not kept enough for myself. The learning curve on the new version of the ardeur was going to take some getting used to.
Requiem offered me his hand to help me out of the Jeep, and I took it. I was stiff and more than a little sore, and since he’d helped get me that way, it seemed fair he help me out of the Jeep. Besides, I couldn’t just flounce out of the Jeep like normal. I had no underwear on, and one of my great goals in life was not to flash anyone tonight by accident.
Clay, the new blond werewolf, was at the door. A trio of women were chatting him up. A man in coat and hat slipped past his