Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [948]
I stared up into his beautiful face and understood what he was offering—comfort, but not honesty. Comforting lies, because I didn’t want to hear the truth. “I don’t want you to lie to me, but I’m about at my limit for hard truths for the day. I need a breather.”
“You want a space of calm to think about everything. I understand that. I can even give it to you for a few hours, but you have to confront Richard at the lupanar tonight, and I fear that more hard truths await you there.”
I put my face against his chest, cuddled into the smoothness of his skin, caught between the furred lapels. “Your bringing up Richard isn’t going to make me feel better.”
“My apologies.” He was rubbing my back with his hands, over and over. The movement made the fur on the sleeves rub up and down my body, from my butt to my shoulders. It was soothing and not soothing at the same time. I looked up at him and didn’t know whether to cry or scream. “I thought I fed the ardeur.”
His hands went still against my body. “You have, and you have fed it well, but it is always just below the surface. Like being full but still admiring a beautifully made dessert.”
I didn’t really like the analogy, but couldn’t think of a better one. I pressed my body into his robe, let him cradle me against his body, and listened to the comforting beat of his heart.
I spoke with my face pressed against his chest, the black furred edge of the lapels tickling my lips. “Why didn’t you warn me that she could do that?”
“If you were a vampire of my line, then I would have warned you, but you are not vampire, you are human, and it should not work that way for you.”
I leaned back enough to see his face. “Can she enter any of her . . . children?”
“No, her ability to look in upon her children only lasts for a few nights. Once the new vampire is strong enough to control its own hunger, then she is unable to enter, as if some door closes that was held open before.”
“She called my beast, or beasts, or whatever the hell is going on with me. She called it to the surface like she knew what she was doing.”
“Her animal to call is all great cats.”
“So, leopards,” I said.
He nodded. “Among other things.”
“I thought only the Master of Beasts could call more than one animal.”
“It was the ability he came with from almost the beginning, but many of the oldest grow into a variety of powers. She began, as I understand it, able to call only leopards, then one by one the other great cats answered to her.”
“If I really am a wereleopard, will she be able to control me—if she meets me?”
“You cast her out, ma petite. You can answer your own question, can you not?”
“You’re saying I kicked her butt once, I can do it again.”
“Something like that, oui.”
I pushed away from him, my fingers trailing down his arms under the heavy robe until our hands touched. “Trust me, Jean-Claude, one victory doesn’t guarantee you’ll win the war.”
“This was not a small victory, ma petite. Never in all her two thousand years of life has any of her line defied her as you just did.” He’d bent at the waist just a little to kiss my hands, showing a long, thin triangle of his chest and upper stomach. My gaze followed that line of pale flesh down into the shadow that hid the rest of him. For once I didn’t want to undo the robe. Part of it was that I was well . . . satisfied, and part of it—most of it—was that I had just had sex with four men at once, and my discomfort level was just a little too high to think about any sex for a while.
“I knew that vampires could make the bite pleasant, but I never dreamed it felt like that,” I said.
“It is one of Asher’s gifts to make his bite orgasmic.”
I looked at him.
He nodded. “Oui, ma petite, I can make it pleasant, but not that pleasant.”
“Asher bit me once, and it wasn’t orgasmic.”
“He drew back when he realized he had rolled your mind without intending to. He . . . behaved himself.”
I raised my eyebrows at that. If tonight was the real thing,