Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [54]
“That is unfair; he has been very patient.”
“I know that.” I struggled to keep the impatience and near anger out of my own voice.
“Now you are angry.”
“It’s a lot of stuff to digest, Jean-Claude, and the reporters going berserk today was a little weird. And what’s up with Gretchen?”
“She is being punished.”
“The last time you put her in a cross-wrapped coffin, she came out even crazier than she went in; I don’t think she can survive another round of it.”
“I am open to suggestions, ma petite.”
“You can’t kill her, because it was too public, there’d be too many questions.”
“If it had not been so very public?”
“It’s not just me and the men that make you look weak to the other masters, Jean-Claude. Most of them would have killed Gretchen and Meng Die, already.”
“I could kill Meng Die; she has not made a public display.”
“I don’t mean kill her, but they have both behaved badly and most master vamps wouldn’t tolerate it. I love that you feel guilty about taking their humanity away. I love that you feel guilty that you never loved them, but only seduced them. I love that you are that…human. But the other vamps see it as weakness, don’t they?”
“They see me as weak for the very reasons you love me.”
“Well, most of them are men, they can’t help being a little…male.”
He laughed, and it slithered across my skin as if he’d trailed a feather across my body. “Oh, God, Jean-Claude, don’t do that again. We’re being good over here.”
“You are being very, very good.” He made the very, very sound utterly suggestible.
“Stop that,” I said.
He laughed again, and I clung to the pillow like a lifeline. I said, “Do you want to raise the ardeur in me and force Jason and me to have sex?”
“You will have sex either way, ma petite, I know you and our Jason. Sex for the two of you is only a matter of when, not if.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
“Why should a healthy appetite for carnal knowledge be a bad thing, ma petite? It is good to know what you want and need, and to have those needs met.”
“Have I been keeping you from meeting some of your needs?”
“We have spoken enough of difficult things. When you have finished giving the truth to Mr. Griswold, then enjoy yourselves.”
“We were planning to, but I don’t like that you seem to be rooting for it.”
“Would you enjoy it more if I did not give my permission?”
“No, I would never cheat on you.”
He was quiet for a moment then he said, “Je t’aime, ma petite.”
“Je t’aime, Jean-Claude.”
He hung up, and I did the same. He always had an excellent sense of when a conversation was over. I, on the other hand, was always trying to beat a dead horse. He’d learned long ago to just leave the conversational mazes with me. Conversational mazes only worked when you had someone to talk to, but wait, Jason was still here. I could always talk the two of us into a corner after we stopped spilling our guts to Irving. Yeah, the night was young; there were all sorts of unpleasant topics we could cover.
23
I HADN’T TALKED to Irving Griswold in months, ever since he told me that my “exclusives” to him, and him alone, were beginning to make people question his humanity. He was a werewolf and a member of our local pack, but he was deep in the closet. His choice, but when he told me to back off, I did.
I could picture him on his end of the phone: short, a little round, built sort of like a square, not fat, but just that body build that if he’d been taller would have made him a great linebacker. He had curly hair and a bald spot starting, but apparently that had begun before he became a werewolf, and being a werewolf meant it would never go further. I’d seen him in wolf form and the animal didn’t have a bald spot on its head. Interesting.
“Anita, I know I told you to leave me alone about the exclusives, but I didn’t expect you to vanish off the planet for me.”
I had expected a lot of things