Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [931]
“I didn’t call you,” I said.
“The power did.” He dropped to his knees beside the bed. “You did this?”
I nodded.
He reached out towards me, as if to touch my face, then jerked back. It was like he’d touched something in the air in front of me that had startled him. He raised his hand to his face and sniffed it, then licked it, as though there was something there to taste.
“May I taste your pomme de sang?” It was French for apple of blood, and it was a nickname for a person that was a regular donor to a particular vampire. Part of me wanted to argue with the phrase, but I had fed off of Nathaniel, even tasted his blood. To demand a different phrase was splitting hairs a little too finely for my conscience. We’d call a spade a spade.
“Define taste.” I said.
“Lick the wounds.”
The suggestion should have bothered me, but it didn’t. I lowered my face enough to see Nathaniel’s eyes. “Is it okay with you, Nathaniel?”
He nodded, face still pressed to the bed.
“Help yourself.”
Asher lowered his mouth to Nathaniel’s back, to a wound just above his waist. He kept those ice blue eyes rolled up towards me, the way you would watch someone on a judo mat—afraid that if you look away, they’ll hurt you. It reminded me of watching lions drink from pools, with their eyes rolled up, watching for danger while they drank.
Nathaniel made a small sound as Asher licked the wound. It had stopped bleeding, but as the vampire traced the wound with his tongue, I saw blood well to the surface again. Vampires have an anticoagulant in their saliva, but I’d never seen its use demonstrated quite so well before.
It made me wonder. I curled closer to Nathaniel’s body, one leg entwining over his. I didn’t ask permission, because he was mine, and I knew him well enough to know he would not only not mind, but he would welcome it. I lowered my mouth to another of the wounds that had nearly stopped bleeding and licked. There was the sweet copper taste of blood, and the thick, rich taste of his skin, and a taste of . . . meat. As if I could tell what he would taste like if I ate him one bite at a time.
The beast flared over my skin like something trembling and alive. Nathaniel’s beast responded to it, flaring, rolling, as if I could see it just below his skin, just below his ribs, as if I could feel where it lay in the heart of his body. In that moment I knew I could call his beast, could coax him to change when the moon was far from full. I was his Nimir-Ra, and that meant so much more than merely being his dominant.
Asher’s eyes had drowned in pale blue fire, so he looked blind as he licked at the wound. He gazed into my face, directly across Nathaniel’s body, our eyes at the same level as we tasted the wounds. My wound bled a little bit more, but not as much as Asher’s did. I was not truly a blood drinker—I fed on other things—and staring across Nathaniel’s body, feeling his breathing quicken as the two of us touched him, I knew that those other things were here for the taking.
Asher’s hand slid over Nathaniel’s body, until he touched my thigh where it curved over Nathaniel’s leg. The moment he touched me something rushed between us. It was as if the ardeur recognized him, as if it had touched him before.
It made me raise up from the wound, drew me back into myself a little. Something on my face made Asher take his hand back.
Jean-Claude entered then. He was wearing a black robe with black fur at collar, lapel, and sleeves. His black hair melted into the fur, so you couldn’t tell where one blackness stopped and the other began. The last time I’d seen him in the robe, I’d told him there better be something under the robe besides skin. Now, I hoped there wasn’t.
Seeing him brought the ardeur boiling over me again. It made me catch my breath, things lower than my stomach clenching tight enough to draw a sound from my throat.
“She holds your incubus,” Asher said, and his