Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [128]
I stepped back, eyes still closed, and nearly knocked the bedside lamp over. We both grabbed for it, and it put his body next to mine. His hand over mine around the lamp. We had one of those frozen, awkward moments.
I looked up at him, and he was so close, too close. He bent in to close that distance and kiss me. I threw myself backward onto the floor, knocking the trash can over, as I crab-walked back until my back hit the bathroom door hard.
“Richard, please, please, don’t you feel that something’s wrong? We’re always attracted to each other, but not like this.”
“I think if I touch you now, that you’ll just say yes.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“I want you to say yes.”
“Yes to what, Richard?”
“Everything,” he said.
“So now that you have enough metaphysical abilities to roll me, you’ll just do it. You’ll roll over my free will and just make me into your little pet?”
He frowned. “It’s not like that, Anita. I’m not making you feel things you don’t feel. The emotions are real.”
“Maybe, but they aren’t the only emotions I’m feeling. You’re trying to take away my choices, Richard.”
He knelt in front of me. My heart thudded against my chest, and I pressed myself tighter against the bathroom door. He reached out toward me, and I said the only thing I could think of to stop him. “Aren’t you trying to do the very thing that you keep accusing Jean-Claude of doing?”
His hand hesitated so close to my face that I could feel the heat from his skin. It wasn’t just the warmth of his body this time. His power was there like something alive and almost separate from him, pulsing above his skin. Playing along my cheek like something smooth and warm and…I waited for it to raise my wolf, but it didn’t. It was as if it wasn’t that kind of power. It felt softer than his usual electric rush. It felt more like…Jean-Claude.
I opened my eyes, looked up at him, and found what I’d feared. His eyes were solid brown, glowing with the light of his own power. It was what his eyes would have looked like if he’d been a vampire. The way my own eyes looked from time to time.
“Your eyes,” I whispered.
His hand touched my face, and the touch was too much. One breath, I was trying to fight; the next, I fell into the brown fire of his eyes. There was nothing but the need to touch him. Nothing but the feel of his mouth on mine, his hands on my body, my hands on his, and the absolute rightness of it all.
His hand went between my legs and grabbed me through my jeans. Normally, it would have been exciting, but tonight, it hurt. The pain was immediate. It helped me swim back up to the top of my mind. I could think again, rather than just feel.
“Richard, stop,” I said, and it was almost a yell.
He touched my face. “You don’t want me to stop.”
I stared at the floor, as if the stained, clothes-strewn carpet were all-important. “I do want you to stop.”
“Look at me, Anita.”
I shook my head and started to move away from him, still on my knees. He grabbed my arm. The feel of his bare skin on mine almost undid me, but whatever was happening was a type of vampire power and I’d spent years fighting that. I breathed through the almost crazed desire to have more of his skin touch mine. It was like a mixture of the ardeur and vampire gaze. Shit.
“Let go, Richard, now.” My voice was breathy, but clear. Point for me.
“I can feel how much you want me to touch you,” he said, and his own voice was tight with power, or desire, or both.
I felt his body, not just through his hand, but all of it. It was as if I could feel every inch of him, so warm, so alive, so…yummy. I did want to touch him. I wanted to strip off and roll around on top of him. Again, it felt like the ardeur, but different. But this time I was on the wrong end of it. It was as if Richard were the one projecting the ardeur at me, not the other way around. Jean-Claude held the ardeur, but he’d always behaved himself. In this