Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [120]
Richard’s voice came, clear and oddly calm. “I’m all right, let me up.”
I saw Shang-Da and Jamil exchange a look together, and then almost in unison they moved back and let Richard sit up. Jason crawled forward, abasing himself beside him. Richard touched his shoulder, but he looked at me. I expected to see the anger in his face, the resentment, but for the first time in a very long time, Richard looked up at me. His face, his eyes, held the Richard I’d fallen in love with, the one who had been too squeamish to kill the old Ulfric and take control of the pack. There was gentleness in his face that hadn’t been there in so long that I’d almost convinced myself it had never been.
“It’s okay, Jason,” he said, “it’s okay.” He stood up, leaving his wolves on the floor to peer up at him, wariness plain on their faces.
Alex held a hand up, not exactly moving in his way, but not out of his way either. “You’re calm now, Ulfric, but what we just saw wasn’t calm.”
Crispin moved closer to me, but I motioned him back. Richard was being reasonable; I didn’t want another man to touch me right now, especially the only man in the room who was as naked as I was. Crispin took the hint and stayed where he was; he really did take directions well, that was nice.
Richard’s white T-shirt was so badly ripped it looked like something one of the dancers at Guilty Pleasures would have worn partway through their act. His hair had slipped free of the ponytail, so he came to me with all that thick hair in a tangle around his face. He looked, as he could look, like some walking wet dream, but the smile on his face was gentle and had less to do with sex and more to do with softer emotions.
He touched my face, staring down into my eyes with that gentle smile and his brown eyes full of something more tender than I’d seen in months from him.
“Thank you,” he said.
I touched his hand where it lay against my face. “It was my anger. I just took it back.”
He let his hand cup the side of my face, and I let myself rest against the warmth of his hand. “I thought it was mine to keep.”
“It may leak over again,” I said, softly.
He leaned down, and I knew he meant to kiss me. I wanted that kiss, and didn’t want it, all at the same time. I’d cut him out of my heart, this new angry, hurtful Richard, but the look in his face now, that was the old Richard. Richard before he’d been forced to make so many hard choices. Richard before he had become permanently angry with me.
He kissed me, his lips soft and full. It was a good kiss, but chaste by our standards of late. I realized as he drew back, eyes searching my face, that lately when we were together it had become nothing but sex. Harsh, fun, but harsh. He had come to me rough, because he knew I could take it, and like it, but even the sex had been more about anger than love. Makeup sex can be good, but not if it’s all you do.
“I feel more myself than I’ve felt in months, Anita. A lifetime of therapy couldn’t have done what you just did.”
“If I’d known I could have taken it back, I would have, Richard.”
“I know,” he said. He took my hand in his as he turned back to the waiting wolves. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d simply held my hand. He’d even stopped doing it in church, so that the only touch we gave each other was in private and all about sex. I’d actually begun to think I needed to go back to my old church, so that he and his family could keep theirs. If we broke up for