Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [478]
“Do you?” he asked.
I didn’t owe him the answer, but maybe I owed myself one. I’d only admitted it to myself seconds ago. “Yes, being in the middle of two men just flat does it for me. Just the feel of them on either side just flat does it for me.” I waited for the blush to start, or at least the embarrassment, but it didn’t. It was true, and it was okay. I was okay. I had men in my life that thought it was okay.
Richard looked at the floor, as if whatever he saw in my face he didn’t want to see. Or maybe there was something in his face he didn’t want me to see. “I could never do that.”
“No one’s asked you to.”
He looked up then, and his anger lashed out, almost like he’d laid a hot whip across my skin. I jumped from the feel of it. “Ow,” I said.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, but the hell you say, no one’s asked me.”
“Alright, to my knowledge no one’s asked you.”
“Everyone, everyone in the preternatural community, whatever animal, or thing they are, thinks that I was doing Jean-Claude and you. That we were some happy little ménage à trois.”
“I’ve run into that rumor,” I said. “You know what you were doing, and who, so what does it matter?”
He let out a shadow of that inarticulate scream he’d done before. “Anita, how do you think I feel when almost every leader in this town that I have to do business with thinks I’m shagging the Master of the City?”
“Are you saying that people thinking you’re bisexual hurts your standing as a leader?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t seem to hurt Jean-Claude’s,” I said.
“That’s different.”
“I don’t think so.”
He made fists, and that hurt, and he made that sound again. “You don’t understand, Anita. You’re a girl, and you don’t understand.”
“I’m a girl, and I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
“It means it’s still more socially acceptable for a girl to be bisexual than it is for a man.”
“Who says?” I asked.
“Everyone!” His anger flared outward like hot water, and it was about waist high, and rising.
“You’re homophobic,” I said.
“I am not.”
“Yeah, you are. If it didn’t bother you so much that people thought you were bisexual, then you wouldn’t care what they said. You’d know the truth, and it would be enough.” I moved closer to him, pushing through the heat of his power, his anger, his frustration. “Besides, what’s wrong with being bisexual, or homosexual, or whatever? What does it matter, Richard, as long as you’re happy and no one is getting hurt?”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
I was standing close enough to touch. Standing so close that his power bit and sizzled almost against my skin, as if the robe wasn’t there. God, he was so powerful, more than the last time I’d touched his power. He’d gained from Jean-Claude and me, just like Jean-Claude had, like I had. If we could get our triumverate to truly work the way it was meant to, no one would touch us, no one would dare.
That one thought wasn’t my thought, not exactly. Jean-Claude wasn’t awake yet, I’d have felt it, but the thought was more his than mine. I remembered last night at the club, and how we’d been joined tighter, closer, than ever before. I’d done things last night that hadn’t been possible before. I’d reached new levels of power both with Jean-Claude and with my own abilities. I’d also had sex with a vampire I’d known less than two weeks, and only Requiem’s gentlemanly ways had kept it to one. That wasn’t like me, and standing this close to Richard’s pain, I was thinking about the power and not the cost to him. That wasn’t like me either. But they were both very like Jean-Claude.
“What’s wrong?” Richard asked. “You’ve thought of something.”
“Just wondering what other parts of Jean-Claude I’m carrying around inside myself.”
“You told me, the ardeur, the blood lust.”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been very