Cerulean Sins - Laurell K. Hamilton [153]
He looked up, face barely clear enough through the shadows and uncertain light for me to see he was puzzled. “Nasty?”
“Having sex,” Jean-Claude said. “It is a quaint American slang term for it, to do the nasty.”
“Ah,” Asher said, though he didn’t look any less puzzled.
I plowed on. I’m nothing if not determined once I’ve made up my mind. “My point is this, we were already having sex. You hadn’t rolled my mind when I agreed to everybody taking their clothes off. You hadn’t rolled my mind when we had foreplay. You hadn’t rolled my mind when I was licking the back of your knees, and other things.” I forced myself to meet his slowly calming eyes. “I volunteered for all that. If I could have figured out a way for you to be inside me that didn’t include fangs I would have, but I wanted you both inside me.”
I had to close my eyes, because I suddenly had a visual so strong that it nearly made my knees buckle. With the visual came the wave of sensation. It didn’t make me claw the air this time. But I was left with a death grip on the mantelpiece, and my breath coming in gasps.
“Ma petite, are you well?”
I shook my head. “Compared to the first time I flashed back on the orgasm, yeah, I’m peachy.”
“Quelle?” Asher asked.
“She has experienced the pleasure of us earlier today.”
Asher looked even less happy. “She has every symptom. I did not believe she would. I thought her necromancy would protect her.”
“I should also tell you that I think Belle Morte had something to do with how sick I was. She was feeding on me and Richard through you two.”
Jean-Claude leaned against the wall, arms crossed. “Jason had told us that ma petite. But I still believe that your power has struggled with Asher’s power all day. It is the old question of what would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object.”
“Asher being the irresistible force and me the immovable object,” I said.
“Oui.”
I’d have liked to argue with the division of labor, but it was too damned appropriate. “So what does that mean for us being together as a ménage à trois again?”
Jean-Claude had a moment of something showing on his face, then he went to his blankest of blank faces. It was Asher who spoke, “You would be willing to do this again?”
I started to let go of the mantelpiece, decided not to, just in case, and said, “Maybe.” I looked at Jean-Claude, his careful beautiful face. “I think Jean-Claude has finally found something that he won’t compromise on.”
“Whatever do you mean, ma petite?”
“I mean if I cost you Asher, it will drive a wedge between us.”
“So I am something that you will take to your bed to be with Jean-Claude!” He was suddenly enraged, eyes full of liquid blue fire. His humanity folded away before my eyes to leave him pale and still beautiful, but it was the beauty of carved rock and jewels, a hard, bright beauty with no life to it, no softness, nothing human. He stood before me with his golden hair moving around his face like a halo, blown by the wind of his own power. He was wondrous and horrible, a terrible beauty, like the angel of death come to find you.
I wasn’t afraid of him. I knew Asher wouldn’t hurt me, on purpose. I knew more that Jean-Claude wouldn’t allow it. But I’d had enough. Enough of Asher and of me. In some perverse way Asher and I were well matched in a bad need-therapy sort of way. We both had so many issues about personal intimacy and so many hoops that people had to jump through, that even I was tired of it.
I unbuckled my belt and started sliding it through the loops, when it was far enough back; I slid the belt out of the loop on my shoulder holster.
Asher asked in a voice that echoed through the room, crawled down my spine, “What are you doing?”
I finished taking my belt off, then shrugged out of my shoulder holster. “I’m getting undressed. I assume that Jean-Claude’s got some clothes around here somewhere for me, too. Though I am so not wearing an outfit that matches yours if it has like petticoats and stays and stuff. You can’t move in that shit.