Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [19]
I tugged at my hand.
He smiled, and kissed my hand, the way it was supposed to be done. A bare touch of lips, not open mouth, no tongue, chaste. “I’ll behave if you insist.”
“I insist.”
“The extra touching made you feel better, too, Anita. I could sense it in the way your hand felt, the way your body smelled less like prey. Seriously, why not have sex? Why not feel better?”
I frowned at him, because I realized he really was serious. “One, the pilot might walk in on us. Two, we’re on a plane, Jason, I couldn’t possibly. I’m too freaked.”
“Can we have sex when we land?”
I frowned harder. “You mean when we touch down?”
“No, hotel, I guess.”
I wasn’t offended anymore, I was too puzzled. He wasn’t teasing. He was dead serious. It wasn’t like him. “Won’t you want to go to the hospital or your old house before we get all messy?”
He smiled, but it left his eyes worried. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. I don’t want to go to the house. I don’t want to do any of it.”
I held his hand tight, not because of my fear, but because of the pain in his voice. Strangely, worrying about him helped me be less afraid about where we were. Who knew therapy for someone else was the answer all along to my own fears?
“I don’t think having sex is going to make this visit easier.”
He smiled then, and a look ran through his eyes so quick I almost didn’t catch it. But it was similar to a look that Nathaniel had, so I knew it, all too well. It was a look that said I was naïve. Jason was years younger than me, and he hadn’t had all the bad experiences that Nathaniel had had, but he’d had his share.
“I am not being naïve,” I said.
“You read me that fast?”
“Nathaniel has a look pretty close to it,” I said.
“Of course, it couldn’t just be me you knew that well.” He sounded bitter.
I began to worry that I was in a much different problem than I thought with this favor. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“I want someone to want me the way you want Nathaniel. I want someone to love me the way you love the men in your life.”
“Perdy loved you that way,” I said. Was it mean to say that, or just true?
He gave me an unfriendly look. “Are you trying to be mean?”
I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and tried to be honest, but not mean. “I am on a plane, which means I am not at my best. Let me try this: you’ve told me before that you want to be consumed by romance, by love. You want to burn with it. Since I spent years fighting against anyone who wanted to love me like that, I don’t quite get why that is your goal, but you say it is, so it is.”
“What am I supposed to say now, Anita? That I threw away someone who wanted to consume me with her love? I guess I did.”
I shook my head and tried one more time. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean Perdy’s idea of love and your idea of love aren’t the same. You want to be consumed, not smothered. A fire needs air to burn bright. She took your air away, and the fire died.”
He studied my face. “That was actually smart.”
“Gee, Jason, thanks, you sound surprised.”
He smiled. “I don’t mean that. I mean, that makes sense, that makes me feel less stupid about not wanting Perdy to love me. I do this big thing about wanting someone to be obsessed with me. I get it and I don’t want it. I thought I was being fickle.”
“Obsession isn’t love, Jason. It’s possession.”
“I want to belong to someone, Anita.”
“But you want closer to what Nathaniel has, than a traditional marriage.”
“You mean I want to belong but not be monogamous.”
I shrugged. “Technically, Nathaniel is monogamous. He doesn’t have sex with anyone but me.”
Jason grinned, blue eyes shining. “He so has sexual contact with other people.”
“He’s a stripper. Sexualized contact with other people is part of the job description.”
“I didn’t say sexualized. I said sexual. At our jobs we cut it pretty fine, but actual sex is illegal.”
I closed my eyes, but that made the purr of the engines seem louder. I opened my eyes wide and tried to think of what I’d been saying. “What