Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [462]
“Are you still fighting for control of the ardeur?” Nathaniel asked.
I blinked at him and thought about it. Was I? Not consciously, but controlling it had become automatic. Now that I didn’t have to control it, but had to, instead, call it into being, was I still quashing it? Was I still shielding? The answer was, yes.
“Yeah.”
“Stop fighting,” Nathaniel said, “just let everything go.”
“No,” I started, but he touched my lips with his fingers.
“Hush, Anita, you can feed off of both of us, and it won’t drain me that badly. It’s not a good idea, but it’s not a disaster. Stop fighting, and maybe the beast will stop fighting, too.”
I opened my mouth with his fingers still touching me. He slid his fingertips just inside my mouth, playing along the edge of my lips. The movement stopped me from talking more effectively than anything else could have done. I just lay there and let his fingers play around the edge of my mouth, delicate, sensual. “Let go, Anita, just let go. We’ll catch you.”
Jason leaned in against my face. “I’m here, Anita. I won’t let anything bad happen to Nathaniel. I promise.” He laid his face against my forehead. “We can do this, Anita, but you have to let go. You have to let us catch you.”
Let go. It sounded so simple. But letting go of anything was so not my best thing. I wasn’t even sure I knew how to do it. How do you let go? How do you open your hand and let yourself fall, and trust that other people will catch you? That they’ll catch you and not let you hurt them, or yourself. Did I trust Nathaniel and Jason that much? Sort of.
Did I trust anyone that much? Maybe. Okay, not really. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and I let go. I let go, and trusted. Trusted, even as a small voice inside me whispered, stupid, stupid, stupid.
52
HELL IS CLAWS and teeth, and bodies fighting. I sank my teeth into someone’s chest, took in as much meat as my mouth would hold, and began to bite down. I wanted meat. I wanted to feed, and the leopard was screaming that if we didn’t kill them, they’d kill us. Let go, they’d said, I’d let go, and now instead of the beast being something struggling to get out, it was me that was small and trapped and couldn’t get out.
That part that wanted meat and blood and found struggling somewhere between sex and food was in the front of my head. I’d always thought being an animal must be peaceful, but it wasn’t peaceful. It was simpler, but it wasn’t peaceful.
I remembered only pieces. The taste of blood in my mouth. The feel of my teeth sinking into flesh. My nails cutting through someone’s body. I was on my stomach, and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t move. Someone was on my back, and someone had my hands, and I couldn’t move. Teeth on the back of my neck. A moment of mind-numbing panic, then it was peaceful. Like what had happened earlier in my office, when Nathaniel bit me there. Peaceful.
Jason was kneeling in front of me, off the edge of the bed, holding my wrists. The left side of his face was a bloody mess, and distantly, I knew that my nails had done that. His eye blinked out painfully from the bloody furrows. His arms were traced with bites and scratches, so it looked like he was wearing red gloves all the way up to his shoulders. His chest and stomach were bloody, too.
Nathaniel’s teeth on my neck bit down a little harder, and my eyes fluttered up, and when he growled against my skin, my body writhed under him, not struggling, but offering. Jason spoke, and a trickle of blood trailed from his mouth, as he did it. “Next time we do this, you get tied up.”
Nathaniel growled, but I didn’t think it was meant for me.
Jason looked past me, to meet the other man’s eyes, and said, “Okay, okay. Give me your beast, Anita. Let me swallow it down.” He leaned into me, and the blood that trembled on the edge of his mouth