Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [727]
“Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself.” His face held a hint of humor now.
I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. “Stop it, all of you.”
“Stop what?” Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
“Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?” Jean-Claude’s neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.
“No,” I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.
“Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?” Micah’s mouth was twitching at the edges.
I glared at them all. “Maybe.”
“Anita—” Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. “Anita, remember I thought I’d have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true ménage à trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj.”
I frowned at him. “So it doesn’t bother you?”
“No. I’m not into men, but I don’t seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do.”
“Don’t compare me with him,” I said, and was all set to be angry.
“If it was another woman sleeping naked with you, you’d have the same problems that he does,” Micah said.
“I’ve slept with some of the female wereleopards before.”
“But never nude, either you or them,” Micah said.
I started to deny it, then stopped. Was he right? “I don’t know, I…I might be able to sleep nude, if it’s just sleep, with another woman. I don’t think I’d like it, though. I’d rather sleep pressed between two men.”
“And that’s fine,” he said, “but if you knew for a fact that a woman saw you as a potential sex partner, you’d treat her differently.”
“Yes, she’d go in the boy box.”
“According to your thinking, Nathaniel and I should put Jean-Claude into a different box now, right?”
I thought about it, then nodded.
He smiled. “Anita, seeing him with Auggie wasn’t the first clue I had that Jean-Claude liked men.”
I looked from one to the other of them. “Have I missed something?”
“Not what you are thinking, ma petite.” Jean-Claude sat more solidly on the corner of the bed, his back against the foot of it, his knees drawn up for his arms to wrap around. “I have not seduced either of your cats behind your back.”
I hadn’t really thought he had, but…“Then what is Micah talking about?”
“Anita,” Nathaniel said, “pay more attention the next time that Jean-Claude feeds off one of us, or Asher feeds off me. You won’t have to ask.”
“But I’ve been in the bed while you guys did that. What did I miss?”
The three of them exchanged a look. “No, no looks, just tell me.”
“You said you were tired,” Micah said. “I think you don’t want to know this, or you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“Don’t want to know what?”
Again they exchanged that look.
“Stop that,” I said, and I had to fight the urge to stomp my foot at them.
“Let us cuddle together, ma petite. Let us hold you, and give you the comfort that we all need tonight. It has been a long night, a good one in many ways, but long. You are tired.”
I was tired, but the rush of anger, and confusion, had chased back the tiredness. “I am tired, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and let you hold me. But damn it, you’re all looking at each other like there’s an elephant in the room, and I can’t see it.”
Claudia spoke from the edge of the room, where she and the rest of the bodyguards were so quiet. We were close to kicking them out of the room. Okay, I was close to kicking them out. “I think I can catch this one,” she said.
I looked at her. “Go ahead,