Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [422]
“You are a very bad kitty-cat, very bad. How do we punish our bad kitty?” For a second I thought he was asking me, but he wasn’t. The women around the stage started to chant, “Tie him up, tie him up, tie him up.”
Jean-Claude smiled, as if that had never occurred to him, but what a good idea it was. At a gesture from him, chains descended from the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed them in the welter of lights and cables. Oh, hell, I hadn’t even looked up.
Two bare-chested waiters, wearing only leather pants, came up on stage and dragged Nathaniel to his feet. They chained his arms spread wide, wrists above his head.
Jean-Claude came to me, walking so that his hips rolled more than they should have. He touched my arm and whispered, with a smile that did not match the words, “Are you alright, ma petite?”
I nodded and whispered, because I knew he’d hear me. “Flashback.”
“Not as strong as those that our Asher can give.”
I shook my head.
“Interesting,” he said, “are you well enough to finish this show?”
“I promised,” I said.
His smile widened, and his voice was suddenly that room-filling, jolly sound, “Now, you may help us punish our bad kitty. You may make him pay for taking liberties.” I got a shadow of what he was doing to the audience. When he said “punish,” it was a sharp pull on the body; “bad kitty” made you think of very naughty things; “pay,” and more money hit the stage; “liberties” had a lascivious lilt to it that made the audience do that nervous giggle, like what they were thinking was worse than anything they’d seen tonight.
I just nodded and let him take my hand. That one touch was both a mistake and a help. It made me feel less shaky, but it also opened me to him more. Touching just his hand was more distracting than touching so much more on most men. He led me a little dazed across the stage, until we were standing behind Nathaniel, facing the bareness of the back of his body.
Jean-Claude let go of my hand and went to him. He touched the bare back. “You may hit him here”—his hand slid down Nathaniel’s back to his buttocks—“or here. He has been a bad kitty, but we don’t want to damage him. He is far too pretty for that.”
The audience agreed with him, most of them.
Jean-Claude handed the whip toward me. “I don’t know how to use a whip.”
“First, it is a what, my sweets?”
Most of the women yelled, “Flogger!”
“And second, it would be my pleasure,” and that one word slithered over my skin, and apparently over the other women as well, for they squealed, “to show you just how it works.” And every word seemed darker, more suggestive than it should have.
He tried to show me first by simply using it on Nathaniel. He made the heavy leather tails blur and blossom against Nathaniel’s skin. Nathaniel reacted to every blow with a spasm that went from his fingers to his toes and everything in between. I could see enough of his face to know that those closed eyes and parted lips weren’t from pain. Jean-Claude whipped Nathaniel, or I guess flogged him, until his skin was pink in places and the stage was littered with money at their feet.
He leaned close to Nathaniel’s face, said something, and Nathaniel said something back, then Jean-Claude turned to me. He held the flogger out again. “He’s such a bad kitty.”
I shook my head.
“Shall I show her how it’s done?” he asked the audience, and they yelled louder, and I wished I’d just taken the damn thing and tried, but too late now.
He put the flogger in my hand and pressed his body against the back of mine, with one arm around my waist and the other hand on the hand that held the flogger. It was the way lecherous men stand when they try to teach you how to golf or swing a bat. He swung my arm back and tried to make me give that sharp crack against Nathaniel’s body, but it wasn’t sharp, it was sort of flabby.
“You must relax and let me do the work, ma petite.” Loud enough