Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [126]
He gasped, spine bowing underneath me, hands grabbing my arms, fingers convulsing against my bare skin.
It was like smoothing out the imperfections in a zombie except this flesh was warm and alive, and I couldn’t see what I was fixing with my eyes. But I could feel it. I could feel his body smooth and firm, caressing places that no hand was meant to touch. Rolling them between my fingers, filling him up with the rising, rushing heat inside me. It spilled down my arms, my hands, into him. The heat spread through his body, through my body, until it was like fever, running over the skin, through the body, forming our bodies into a single thing of heat and flesh, and a rush of power that just kept building. It built until I closed my eyes, but even the darkness was shot with brightness, white flowers exploding on my vision.
My breath came in pants, too quick, too shallow. I opened my eyes and watched Nathaniel’s face. His breathing matched mine. I forced us slower, forced his breathing to slow. I could feel his heart as if I caressed it, held in my hands. I could touch any part of him. I could have any part of him. I could smell the blood under his skin and wanted a taste.
He was healed when I lowered myself on top of him, pressed my mouth to his. I turned his face to one side and ate down the side of his neck until I felt the pulse under his skin. I licked the skin, but it wasn’t enough. I laid my mouth over the beating pulse, bit gently into the skin until I could hold the throbbing of him in my mouth. I wanted to bite down harder and harder until blood flowed. I wanted it. Dimly, I knew that Jean-Claude had awakened for the day. It was his hunger that I felt, his need. But it wasn’t his need that had me straddling Nathaniel’s body. It wasn’t even mine.
I remembered Nathaniel’s body, and I’d never met him before. I knew the taste of him. The feel of him as only an old lover can. Not my memories. Not my energy.
I slid off Nathaniel, tried to crawl out of the bed, and fell to my knees. I couldn’t stand, not yet. Richard had said as long as the pack existed, Raina wasn’t gone. I hadn’t understood what he meant, until now. I was channeling the bitch from hell, channeling her, and having a very good time doing it.
But I knew something else, something that Raina hadn’t done. Couldn’t blame her for this one. I knew how to heal Nathaniel’s body, but I also knew how to tear it apart. Anything that you can fix, you can break. When I held his heart in my metaphysical hand, I’d had a split second, a dark urge, to close that hand, to crush that pulsing, throbbing muscle until blood flowed and his life stopped. A moment, the blink of an eye, of an urge so evil, it scared even me. I’d have liked to blame the bitch from hell, but something told me that this little bit of darkness was all mine. Stephen’s hand on my mouth was all that kept me from screaming out loud.
38
STEPHEN’S HAND HELD the screams to a whimper. He held me against his body, hard, as if afraid of what I’d do if I got loose. I wasn’t so sure myself. Running seemed like a good idea. Running until I outran the thought of it, the feel of it, all out of me. But like Richard, I couldn’t run from myself. That thought made me stop struggling and just sit in the circle of Stephen’s arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
I nodded.
His hand slid away from my mouth, slowly, as if he wasn’t sure I’d heard him or understood him.
I sagged against him, almost sliding to the floor.
He stroked my face, over and over, like you’d comfort a sick child. He didn’t ask what was wrong. None of them did.
Nathaniel knelt beside us. He didn’t just look healed, he looked healthy. He was smiling, handsome in a boyish, unfinished sort of way. If you cut the hair and changed the eyes, he looked like he should have been playing half-back on the high-school football team and dating the homecoming princess.
The fact that I’d almost gone down on him two minutes ago brought a rush of heat that made me hide my face against Stephen’s shoulder. I did not want to look into that youthful,