Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [60]
I thought about that for a second. “I guess I feel like I don’t get naked with people I don’t trust.”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
I settled back against the pillows and said, “So, clarify.”
“I can find women to sleep with, or fuck. I’m a stripper. They’re always trying to give me their numbers, persuade me to go beyond what’s legal. I’m Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang; a lot of women want to sleep with me just for that. To get close to the vampires. The whole werewolf thing gets you a different type of groupie.” Then he flashed me that grin that filled his eyes with sparkle for a moment. It made me smile to see it. “And, I get my share of women who don’t know any of that, and probably could be persuaded.”
I waited for him to continue, but had to watch the shine fade from his eyes, and the grin fade. His face was caught between his usual charm and this new, serious side.
“But…,” I finally prompted him.
He took a breath and said, “But only you will tell me the truth. Only you will tell me exactly what you want, or don’t want. You said it yourself, you don’t fake anything here. You don’t protect my ego. Either I’m good, or I’m not. You don’t want to trap me into anything. You don’t have an agenda beyond the pleasure. You aren’t worried about what we’re going to do afterward, or what we did a moment before. You are completely and utterly into the sex, almost from the moment you touch a man. It’s relaxing, you don’t know how relaxing.”
“Doesn’t everyone do it that way?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, no, they don’t. Most people let their day get in their head and in the way of the sex. A lot of women just can’t turn off their heads long enough to relax to even begin to enjoy themselves.”
“I’ve known some men that way, too,” I said.
He smiled, again. “Me being one of them.”
“Not usually, but sometimes. You usually save the analyzing for after the sex, as if the sex clears the way for you to have the big heart-to-heart.”
He grinned. “That’s not it. I want the sex more than I want the talking.”
“But not tonight,” I said, softly.
His eyes held onto the humor a little longer, but his face began to slide toward that more serious, older version that I realized was probably going to start peeking through more and more as the years went by. Maybe we were all growing up, even Jason.
“No, not tonight. But I’m done with the talk. I want to touch you, and I want you to touch me. I want to drown in the scent of your skin, the taste of your body. Sex has been my addiction since I was a kid, and it’s still my escape of choice.”
“Actually addicted to sex?” I asked.
“Therapy-speak again?” he said.
I had to smile. “You know, Nathaniel is in therapy.”
“I know that he is diagnosed as a sex addict, or was, if that’s what you mean?”
“Then you know how bad it got for him?”
“I know,” Jason said, “and no, if you’re really going to make me give a definition, then no, I’m not a sex addict. I was close in high school, and really close in college. But Raina nearly killing me during sex sort of cured me of the risky behavior, better than any therapy could have.”
Through a metaphysical accident I’d shared that memory with him once. It had been horrible, because I’d been in Raina’s head, and I knew for a fact that the ex-lupa of our werewolf pack hadn’t given a damn whether Jason lived or died. He’d agreed to be tied up and have her change on top of him, and have that as his way of being brought over to the pack. What he hadn’t understood was that she would slice him up with no care. It had been about violence more than sex for her, true serial killer mentality. I think the only thing that had kept her from having a higher body count was that the lycanthropy saved her victims’ lives. Though, in honesty, I couldn’t find anyone else she’d brought over as violently as Jason. I pushed the thought away. I was still able to channel her, sometimes, and this was not the time.
“So, because you could stop the behavior through a shock, you weren’t a true addict?”
“Something like that, though it depends on what therapist