Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [498]
I watched Richard’s body while I did it. His whole body writhed, his frantic breathing making everything from his stomach to his shoulders move. Both his hands were clasped in Jean-Claude’s hands now. Richard’s hands convulsed, until the muscles in his arms bulged, and he came up off the bed, crying a sound that was both a moan and scream that ended with my name. He settled back to the bed, his eyes closed, and I had a moment to look into Jean-Claude’s face without Richard watching. For an instant Jean-Claude let me see how much this meant to him. The feel of all that strength in his hands, that Richard’s struggles had pressed more of his body up against Jean-Claude’s legs, that he was able to be here while Richard gave himself over to such abandon. For an instant it shone in his eyes, and I knew in that moment that as patient and careful as he’d been with me, it was nothing to how careful he had been with Richard.
“Stop,” Richard said, “stop, or I’ll go. Oh, God, stop.” He raised his head up, laughing, breathless, and the look on his face was joyous, free in a way that he seldom looked these days.
I slid him out of my mouth, while I watched his face. He let his head fall back to the bed, his arms, shoulders beginning to relax, beginning to slide away from Jean-Claude’s hands. I licked the head of him, and he convulsed again, muscles cording in his arms and chest, his hands crushing around Jean-Claude’s. If there’d been a headboard, it might not have survived. But vampires are made of sterner stuff than wood, or metal.
“Please, Anita, please, stop. Let me catch my breath, or I won’t last.”
I stroked my hand up the wet, thickness of him.
He shuddered, and said, “Hand, too, God, just stop, please!”
The last please did it, an element of franticness. I took my hand away and knelt beside his body, my hands in my lap. It’s hard to be demure when you’re naked in a bed with two men, but I did my best.
Richard let himself relax into the bed, let the tension of pleasure slide away. His head rested against Jean-Claude’s thigh, his hands still loose in the other man’s hands. Either he was too high on sex to think about it, or he didn’t mind. As a shapeshifter he shouldn’t have minded mere physical contact with someone. Hell, the shapeshifters slept in big naked puppy piles, but Richard had always made a very clear line between vampires and shapeshifters. Vampires didn’t get the up-close and personal stuff, period.
He turned his head, found that he needed a better angle, and used Jean-Claude’s thigh like a pillow, to raise his face up enough to look at me comfortably. He moved his hands out of the other man’s, but he kept his head propped there, and the two of them were framed against the dark of the wall and the crimson of the sheets, both nude, both so terribly right. It was as if I’d waited a long time to see them like this. If we hadn’t been shielding so tight, I’d have wondered if it was my thought, or someone else’s.
“Give me a few minutes, or the next thing we do will be the last thing we do, and it won’t last long. God, you were good before, but not like that.” He rolled his head back so he could look up the line of Jean-Claude’s body to his face. “Did you teach her that?”
“Why is it that all men assume that only men can teach a woman how to have good sex?” I said.
Richard turned back to me and smiled—a smile more relaxed than any I’d seen in so long from him. “Are you saying you learned this from another woman?” He was teasing and let it show in his voice.
The teasing tone made me smile. “No, I figured it out on my own, thank you