Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [695]
My hands stroked his bare chest, not for sex, but for comfort. All the lycanthropes were like that; touch was good, touch was even necessary to stay sane. It was as if they had the normal human skin hunger except more, orders of magnitude more. His arm was raised along the line of my body, his hand playing with my hair, which had begun to dry in tight, frizzy curls. Jean-Claude’s hand played along Richard’s raised arm, stroking up and down the muscled length of it.
There were no words, just the comfort of the touching. Jean-Claude’s other hand was stroking my shoulder and arm, almost mirroring what he was doing to Richard. I think we’d all been surprised that Richard let Jean-Claude touch so much as a fingertip to him, after the way he’d entered the room. I’d seen plenty of lycanthropes pet each other regardless of sexual orientation—a cuddle was a cuddle to most of them—but Richard had issues with Jean-Claude that he didn’t have with the people I’d seen him be so casual with.
Richard’s eyes shifted and I knew he was looking past me to the other man. “Your hair is almost as curly as Anita’s.”
The comment made me turn so I could see his face more clearly, too. Richard was right, Jean-Claude’s hair was a mass of black curls. Not the relaxed, almost wavy curls that he always had, but something closer to mine. But his hair drying naturally was about where mine was with hair care products, not the black foam mine had turned into. “Have I never seen your natural hair texture?” I asked, staring at all those curls.
He smiled, and if it had been almost anyone else I’d have said he was embarrassed, but it just didn’t quite fly for Jean-Claude. “I suppose not.”
Richard moved his hand from my hair to Jean-Claude’s. He rubbed the curls between his fingers, then went back to mine, comparing. “Your hair is still softer textured than Anita’s, or mine, for that matter.” He knelt, and took a handful of both of our hair, as if he were testing how much it weighed. “Normally your hair just looks silkier, but now, you have to touch it to feel how much difference in texture there is between you and Anita.”
Jean-Claude had gone very still against my body. I think he stopped breathing, and the heartbeat that had been chugging along like any human’s heart slowed. I knew he’d gone still because Richard was touching him voluntarily, and he didn’t want to spook him. But I also think that in that moment he didn’t know what to do. A man who had been a great lover for over four hundred years did not know what to do because someone was playing with his hair.
He didn’t want to be too bold and raise that anger again, or frighten him with a homophobic possibility. If Richard had been a woman, he’d have taken it as foreplay. If Richard hadn’t been a shapeshifter, he might still have taken it as an invitation of sorts. But shapeshifters were tactile junkies; touching didn’t mean sex to them, any more than it did when a dog started licking the sweat off your skin. You tasted good, and they liked you, nothing sexual. But it is personal. If they didn’t like you, they wouldn’t touch you.
He sat pressed against my body, and I knew by his very stillness how much it meant to him that Richard was touching him. The stillness also told me he had no idea what to do about it. What does it say when a vampire who has been a great lover and seducer for centuries chooses, as his metaphysical sweeties, maybe the only two people in his territory who are going to puzzle him?
There was a knock at the door. Those of us with a heartbeat jumped. Richard’s hands fell away from both of us as he turned to face the door, still on his knees.
Movement came back to Jean-Claude