Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [496]
It wasn’t just the body, it was Richard looking down at me. The weight of him in his eyes. Him staring down the line of his own body, while I lay between his thighs. I used to think that only death would take someone away from me. But I had learned that so many lesser things can steal someone away, just as completely, just as forever. They live, they breathe, but you never get to touch them, you never see them nude, you never wake to their smile, the smell of their skin on your sheets. There are things so much less dramatic than death that are just as permanent. If I never got to be here like this with Richard again, I wanted it to last. I wanted to take my time.
Where was Jean-Claude? Sitting in the far corner of the bed opposite us. He was nude, but sitting with his back against the wall, one knee drawn up so that he was covered, for the most part, even if you looked directly at him. He looked like a great pale cat curled on the pillows. Once I would have said he looked utterly relaxed, but I knew him too well now. I saw the way he held his shoulders, the tension in one leg. He was holding himself in check, being oh, so careful.
I settled my cheek against Richard’s thigh, the way a cat will scent mark you, rubbing back and forth. Just that, nothing more, but it made him writhe. His legs tensing around me, so that his legs flexed on either side of my body. The feel of even that much made me close my eyes and rest my cheek between his legs, so that my face was cradled, oh, so gently against the soft warmth of his testicles. I nestled my mouth against that silky skin. The tiny stiff hairs tickled along my face as I licked that soft, moveable skin. More hair to tickle along my lips. I preferred smoother skin, a little less fuzzy. But of course, I could have that by simply moving up.
I went up on my knees and licked along the front of his shaft, licked it like it was a big piece of candy, and I didn’t want it to melt. Licked it back and forth, up and down, just on the front of the shaft, until he cried out, and his hands convulsed on the red sheets.
“Anita, please, no more teasing.”
I raised up so I was kneeling between his legs. “Teasing, that’s not teasing, that’s foreplay.”
He swallowed, and it looked like it was an effort, or maybe his throat was dry. “Then less foreplay, at least for me. I don’t need it.”
I looked down at him, the eagerness in his eyes, his face, his whole body. I could feel what he wanted, feel it almost like he was yelling it in my head. I looked at Jean-Claude. “Some men like a lot of foreplay.”
Jean-Claude gave that Gallic shrug. “But it is not me that you are pleasing now.”
“I thought you said we had to all three be touching for this to work?”
“I thought I would give you and Richard a chance to reacquaint yourselves before I joined you.”
I climbed over Richard’s thigh, so I could kneel beside his hip. “Sometime during all this sex, the boundaries between us will come crashing down. If we aren’t all three touching when it happens, we may miss our window to bind ourselves closer.”
“Perhaps,” Jean-Claude said, “what do you propose?”
“Come hold Richard’s hand.”
“Anita,” Richard began.
I wrapped my hand around the base of him, and found that he wasn’t quite as hard as he had been a moment before. The thought of Jean-Claude joining us did not do it for him. I was sorry that it bothered him, but I hadn’t crawled into this bed for just sex. It was an all-or-nothing deal. Sex and more metaphysical muscle, not just sex.
I squeezed him, one quick pulse, and it stole his words, made his breath shudder from between his lips. “Richard’s going to need something to hold on to soon, and there’s no headboard.”
Richard found his voice. “That was oversharing,” and he sounded a little angry.
“You know you like to hold on to something solid while I do this.”
He gave me sullen eyes. It was not