Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [222]
He laid his hands on either side of my face almost as if he were going to kiss me. Our faces were so close that his next words seemed intimate, even though they weren’t. “I could force my gaze upon you, Anita, but it would be an expenditure of power that I might regret before dawn. You have injured Liv twice this night. I am healing her, but that too takes power.”
He stepped back from me, hugging himself as if he’d gotten more from touching me than just the feel of skin. He took three gliding steps to put himself face to face with Jean-Claude. “Her power is a heady thing. Something to wrap around your cold skin and warm your heart for all eternity.”
Jean-Claude let out a slow breath. “She is my human servant.”
“Indeed,” said the Traveler. “A hundred years ago I could invade you without touching your fair skin. Now I cannot. Has she given you this power?” He reached towards Jean-Claude’s face as he had mine.
I pulled Jean-Claude back, out of reach, and stepped between them. “He’s mine, no sharing.”
Jean-Claude slid his arm around me, holding me loosely at his side. “If you would leave us in peace, I would let Balthasar and any person you chose use me, but I will not willingly be your horse ever again, Traveler.”
Willie’s brown eyes stared up at Jean-Claude. There was a shrewdness, a frightening intensity, in those familiar eyes. “I am council. You are not. You will have no choice in the matter.”
“Are you saying that if he took the council seat, then you couldn’t hurt him?” I asked.
“If he is powerful enough to hold a council seat, then I should not be able to invade his lovely body, even were my lips pressed to him.”
“Let me test my understanding here. If he takes the council seat, you’ll still try and force yourself on him, because if you can force him, then he’s not powerful enough to be council? But if he doesn’t take the seat, you’ll do it anyway.”
The Traveler smiled beautifully at me, delight shining from his eyes, Willie’s eyes. “Quite true.”
“Why is everything with you people a freaking Catch-22? You don’t do business. You just do torture,” I said.
“Are you judging us?” he asked. His voice was suddenly lower and deeper than Willie’s throat should have been able to hold. He took that last step forward, and I was suddenly touching them both. Their power flared over me; it was like being in the middle of two different fires, but it didn’t burn. The Traveler’s power was like Jean-Claude’s, cool and swimming, a breath of mortality, the touch of the grave.
The power pulled a gasp from my throat and raised every hair on my body. “Back off!” I tried to shove him away from us, but he grabbed my wrist too quick to stop, almost too quick to see. The feel of his bare skin on mine sent a wave of numbing cold through my body, like a spear of ice. He jerked me away from Jean-Claude.
Jean-Claude caught my other wrist. The moment his hand touched my skin, the cold faded. His power swept through me like a flood of warm water, and it wasn’t his power. I knew the taste of this warmth. It was Richard. Jean-Claude was drawing on Richard’s power as I’d done earlier.
He chased the Traveler’s power out of me like summer heat on ice. It was the Traveler who released me. He stepped back rubbing his hand on his coat, as if it hurt. “Jean-Claude, you have been a very naughty boy.”
Jean-Claude drew me against him, one hand resting against my neck so that his fingers touched my skin. That electric warmth was still there playing over his skin and mine, and I knew in that moment that Richard had felt our urgency, our need.
15
A NOISE TURNED us all to the far hallway. I didn’t recognize the man. He was tall, slender, dark-skinned, maybe Hispanic, maybe something more exotic. He wore nothing but a pair of black satin pants with silver embroidery along the legs. He was dragging Willie’s lady love, Hannah, by one arm.
Her mascara had run in black tears down her face. Her expensive