Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [121]
I forced the thought away. I’d given up on Richard and me having the white picket fence a long time ago. He was just the one man who made me wistful about not having it. Holding his hand in that moment made me wonder yet again if I had missed the boat. Had he been the one man who might have made it all work?
The moment I thought it, I knew it wasn’t my emotion, or my thought. Richard wasn’t the only man in my life who made me wonder if he could have been the only one, if the ardeur weren’t there. But holding his hand, sensing all that emotion, I did regret. The regret was mine.
“We need to find the charm,” Richard said.
The three werewolves looked at him, as if they didn’t trust this new Richard either. “Ulfric, are you well?” Shang-Da asked.
“Better than I’ve been in a long time,” he said. His thumb began to rub across my hand.
“The charm isn’t on the floor with the clothes,” Jamil said. He looked past Richard to me. “Though we did find two of Anita’s knives. One of them had blood on it.”
Crispin spoke from behind us. “Mine.”
Richard turned to look at the weretiger, my hand still in his. “Why did Anita cut you?”
“She didn’t,” Crispin said. He was looking at us, but his gaze wasn’t on either of our faces, or my body. He was looking at our clasped hands.
“I did,” Jason said.
Richard turned back to Jason, moving me minutely with him. “Why?”
“Can I plead the fifth on this one, Richard? You’re not mad at me anymore; I’d like to keep it that way.”
“And you think just answering the question will make me angry with you all over again?”
Jason nodded. “It might.”
Richard turned to me. “What do you think?”
I squeezed his hand and said “Let’s just say we all made friends eventually.”
He frowned. “Did the tiger attack you?”
“He attacked Jason,” I said, “and I took offense.”
Richard stared down at me, searching my face. “Yet you ended up in bed with him.”
I frowned at him and tried to take my hand back, but he held on, and I let him hold on rather than struggle. “Let it go, Richard, please.”
Crispin said, “She wants you to let go of her hand, Ulfric.”
“It’s okay, Crispin,” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re a queen. Queens don’t have to be touched if they don’t want to be.”
Richard drew me in against his body, never letting go of my hand. I put a hand on his chest, to keep us from cuddling as close as we could. “I do not need to be fought over, by either of you.”
“According to our culture, you do,” Alex said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know that the little wolf shares well,” Crispin said, “and so does the red tiger, but your Ulfric smells of monogamy and ownership.”
“Crispin,” Alex said, “you can’t hold them to tiger law, if they don’t know the rules.”
“Explain the rules to us,” Richard said. He tried to draw me in against his body again. I kept one hand on his chest to keep us a little apart, because I had another flash of certainty. I just needed to get everyone else out of the room. I needed only Richard. We didn’t need anyone but each other. What had I been thinking with all the others?
I gazed up at Richard, and he looked down at me. The moment I stared into the perfect brown of his eyes, all I could think of was getting closer to him.
The arm I’d been using to keep us apart slid around his waist. He bent down toward me, and all I could think of was how much I wanted him to kiss me.
His skin was so warm where it touched my body; warm and smooth and simply…perfect. It was as if our bodies were meant to be together, always.
I rose up on tiptoe with my nakedness against the front of his clothes and shredded shirt. I rose up to help our lips meet, as Richard bent down. So tall, so far to reach, for the touch of his mouth, but oh so worth it.
The kiss grew from something chaste to a feeding at each other’s mouths. Richard picked me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pressing my most intimate parts against