Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [730]
I didn’t know what to say to that. I mean what do you say to the man you love when he’s just told you that he realizes that you love two other men more?
“Besides, ma petite, you have expressed doubts about me now. You say you enjoyed our time with Augustine, but your actions state otherwise. I think your cats are what you need tonight, ma petite, not the memory of…” He gave that Gallic shrug, and got off the bed. He stood there adjusting his robe with smooth, nervous gestures. When he was nervous, and not policing his movements, he smoothed his clothes. It was one of the few truly human gestures that had survived centuries of being dead. I liked that he did it, and that he didn’t realize he did it, because once he noticed it, his hands went still, as still as his face.
The little bit of sex I’d had with Micah and Nathaniel had helped me clear my head. “Do you think that I think less of you for having seen you with another man?” I asked.
“You have implied it,” he said in a voice that was almost neutral.
I raised myself up on my elbows. “I guess I did, but I don’t mean it. I think I thought it should bother me, but it didn’t. I tried to talk myself into it bothering me, but the truth is—” I sat up, folding my legs tailor fashion. “The truth is, Jean-Claude, I liked seeing you kiss Auggie. I don’t know how I feel entirely about the rest, but it didn’t bother me at the time, so why should it bother me now?” I shook my head. “I’m not going to talk myself into an issue I don’t have.”
He gave a small smile, uncertain around the edges. Was it my reaction that had made him uncertain? Or was it that I’d trained him that after a major metaphysical or sexual breakthrough, I pulled back and ran? I guess either way, it was my doing, that uncertain smile. I didn’t want him uncertain. I loved him; I shouldn’t be the one making him insecure, not if I loved him. Sometimes the hardest thing about having so many men in my life wasn’t the sex; the sex we could handle, but the emotional stuff…The emotional stuff was harder. I couldn’t help Richard tonight, because his issues were things I couldn’t really help him with, but this issue, this I could fix, or I could try to.
I smiled at him, and tried to put into that smile everything a man wants to see in a woman’s smile. I watched his eyes fill up with that dark light that has nothing to do with vampires and everything to do with a man. His smile matched his eyes, confident, sure of itself, anticipatory.
“What would you have of me, ma petite?” His voice curled over my bare skin like the tickling edge of fingernails. It made me shiver.
“You’re overdressed,” I said.
“Are you certain you wish to do this, ma petite? You have never taken three of us before, and the ardeur will not rise again tonight, it has been too well fed.”
He was offering me an out, but if I said no, then he’d leave the room. I’d already watched Asher and Richard walk out; I did not want to lose another of my men tonight. I needed as many around me as I could manage. Saying it made me almost want to call Asher back, but…I’d never done the full deal with three of my guys at the same time. Four would have to wait.
“I said, you are overdressed,” and I made it a very firm statement.
Jean-Claude’s smile widened. “Easily remedied.” He undid the robe, and let it fall to the floor. He stood there pale and perfect. I had seen him nude a thousand times or more, but I never got over the shock of him. It was as if he were some amazing work of art, and I had stolen him away from the museum where they kept him roped off and safe, stolen him so I could run my hands over the smooth, flawless surface of him.