Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [79]
Strangely, the one person who wasn’t projecting anything at me was Jason. He was like a blank. I might have risked sending the ardeur into his psyche on purpose, but I wasn’t feeling confident enough to risk it. I might accidentally touch his inner beast, too, and that might bring on mine. That would be bad.
Jason caught my eye, and I toasted him with my Coke. He extracted himself from the other women and came to sit on the arm of my chair. He put his arm across my shoulders. “You okay over here?”
I put my arm around his waist because it seemed like the thing to do. He snuggled into the hug. “You mean am I getting pissed that you’ve been flirting your ass off for the last hour and completely ignoring me?”
He laughed, then kissed me on the cheek. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”
I smiled up at him. “You’ve done about what I thought you’d do, except for not checking on me sooner.”
He let himself slip down into the chair so that he just ended up on my lap. He took my Coke out of my hand with a practiced move of his hand. Probably something he did at the club to keep customers from spilling their drinks on him. He took a sip of the Coke without asking, and leaned in close enough to kiss me as he murmured, “I’m sorry.”
I pushed him back enough to see his face clearly. “I admit the flirting has been a little more than I thought it would be, but it’s okay. You flirt, you just do. It took me a long time to realize that flirting for you and Nathaniel, and even Jean-Claude, doesn’t always mean a damn thing.”
He nuzzled my cheek. “But when you flirt, you mean it.”
“Most of the time,” I said.
He nibbled his lips along the side of my neck. It made me shiver. “Stop that, it tickles.”
He did it some more, making me wiggle again. “It’s supposed to tickle.”
I put a hand against his shoulder and pushed him away enough to look up in his face. Whatever he saw there didn’t make him happy. I saw that in his own face.
“You’re mad,” he said, softly.
Trish said, “My cue to leave. Have fun.” She got up and walked away in her spike heels to join the other ladies.
I thought about what Jason had said, then shook my head. “You know how you said that you hated being invisible to me as a guy, and loved me reacting to you now?”
“Yes.”
“I think I just realized that you react to all women the way you react to me. You complain that you’re not special enough to me in comparison to the other men in my life, but Jason…what do you do different with me that you don’t do with other women?”
He frowned, clearly puzzled.
I tried again. “What did you do with Perdy that was different, special?”
He frowned harder. “She restricted the sex to a point that made it not fun anymore. Her idea of straight was too straight for me.”
I nodded. “But what I mean is, that you react, or interact, with all women the same. Watching you with them, I can’t tell the difference between the early foreplay with them and what you do with me. It’s not flattering to realize that you don’t differentiate.”
He sat in my lap, my Coke still in his hand, thinking at me. He was thinking so loud I could almost hear it. I actually watched the light dawn in his eyes.
“Nathaniel acts differently around you than the women at the club. Jean-Claude, too.” He seemed to think about it a little more, then nodded. “Even some of the men who aren’t in love with you treat you differently. They want different things from you than from anyone else, like Requiem and Asher.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
He leaned in to whisper, “I thought one of my charms was that I didn’t want to be anything more than fuck buddies.”
I had to smile. “Elegantly put, Jason, but watching you with the women just now, I realized that I like to be special. I don’t tolerate being part of a crowd. If you want to tell them that I’m just a front to please your family, then do it, tell them the truth. They seem close