Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [801]
Requiem rested above me, pressing every inch of his nakedness against the front of me, but he laid his body on top of mine, not inside it. He pressed me down into the bed, kissing me as if he would eat me from the mouth down, and only luck kept us from cutting our lips on his fangs. The feel of him, swollen and hard, made me spread my legs and try to wrap my legs around him, but he moved away. Moved above me, holding most of his weight away with his arms and legs, as if he were afraid to touch too much of me. It had all seemed to be going so well, and then he’d climbed back into himself, regained control somehow. Requiem in control went back to being a gentleman. In a situation where I would not have blamed him about taking full advantage, he still seemed painfully aware that he wasn’t my first choice, or even my seventh. He tried to feed the ardeur without crossing that last barrier, because he knew, or thought he knew, I didn’t want him.
“Requiem, please, please, finish it.”
“Finish it,” he said, voice showing the strain of his control. “Your words betray you, Anita. You use me only because you must, not because you want me.”
Anger flared through me. “My body wants you, Requiem.”
“But your heart does not.”
I screamed, half from anger, half from the need in my body that he’d raised, and wasn’t going to satisfy. The thought came that I could make the ardeur stronger, that I could overwhelm him with it. An old thought from Belle’s memories, I think. But in his way, Requiem had made it clear he did not want to be food, or my fuck buddy. When push had come to shove, he wanted to be more than that. I understood that, but I couldn’t give it to him. This was one thing I could not do. I could not love him.
“I need food, Requiem. If you aren’t food, then get off.”
I watched emotions struggle across his face. I think he was fighting his own body’s need, but finally that so-refined sense of self won, and he slipped to the side, burying his face in his arms. He did not leave the bed, but he wasn’t touching me.
The ardeur was still there, but faded under the anger and frustration of the riddle that was Requiem. I reached outward for Damian, and he was still fragile. The energy I felt in him now would never wake; it wasn’t enough to bring him back to life for the night. If he tried to wake now, and failed, would he die? Would that fragile spark rise, and fall, never more to burn with life?
I yelled, “Jean-Claude!”
He came to stand by the bed on the other side of Requiem’s softly weeping form. I reached out to him, but he stepped back, just out of reach. “I make all the other vampires of this city wake at dusk. We cannot risk trading one life for many.”
I screamed, wordless, my hand reaching skyward, reaching for anyone. In that moment I used the ardeur to call food, not deliberately, because I’d never purposefully used it to call a victim to me. Jean-Claude had said that the ardeur was calling food of its choice; now I knew he had been right, because I could feel it. I felt the ardeur spread not randomly like some sort of shrapnel bomb, but like a high-tech heat-seeking missle. I felt the ardeur brush Asher; I knew the taste of him, but his energy signature was weak. He still hadn’t fed. The ardeur brushed against a dozen lesser fires, but finally it found one it liked.
I knew only three things about the energy it called; it was vampire, it was no one I’d ever touched, and it was powerful.
A hand grabbed mine, and that one touch stabbed through me, a hard, tight thrust of energy that tightened my body, and tore a cry from my mouth. So much need, God!
It was London who crawled over the footboard of the bed. London whose hand in mine had already fed me more energy than all of Requiem’s touches. I didn’t know why, I didn’t care. It was too late to care. He pressed his fully