Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [274]
58
WE STAYED ON the corner of the bed, as if there was no more bed to use. I was still not sure it was a good idea. I think Richard was uncomfortable with Jean-Claude being in the bed. Jean-Claude was just being patient, biding his time, because he knew if he pushed, one of us would bolt. When Richard’s mouth first found mine, and I drank in the taste of him like some almost forgotten addiction, I thought I’d be the one to run screaming for the hills. But the third time Richard winced when Jean-Claude brushed his bare back, I began to think it wouldn’t be me that screwed this up.
He cursed in French, then said in English, “I put my hand on your shoulder to steady myself, nothing more. You are acting as if I am after your virtue. I assure you that I am after ma petite’s virtue, not yours.”
Richard sighed and looked down so that even sitting in his lap I couldn’t see his face. “You keep touching me.”
Jean-Claude made a sound low in his throat. “How am I to touch her, if she is in your lap, your arms, kissing you, without at the very least brushing your body with mine? I am not such a magician that I can share a woman with another man and never once touch the other man’s body.”
“Trust me, he hasn’t been doing much more than holding me,” I said. I touched Richard’s chin, and he let me raise his face up to me. I looked into those solid brown eyes, and all I saw was pain, confusion. “What’s wrong? You were the one who was all hot for this. You talked me into it, remember?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He pressed his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Jean-Claude and I stared at each other over his bent head. I asked the question with my expression, what the hell is going on? “Tell us what is wrong, mon ami, and we will try to help.”
“The last time I was in a bed with another man and a woman, it was Raina and Gabriel.”
I’d known that Raina had been his first lover, but that he’d ever let Gabriel touch him, that I had not known. I was so astounded that I was glad he couldn’t see my face. Raina had been bad enough, but both of them, at the same time. Uckies, uckies, uckies.
Raina’s munin was usually quiet behind its metaphysical cage bars, but my reaction gave her a tiny opening. Raina had behaved herself for so long, that it caught me off guard. Made me a little less quick to squash her back down, and protect us all. Or maybe it was the fact that I was touching one of her pack, one that she knew in every way.
I saw Gabriel like a technicolor ghost, with his black curls just long enough to touch his pale gray leopard eyes. The silver ring through his nipple glinted in the lamplight. I was lying back in the middle of a big bed, and Gabriel crawled from one side, and Richard crawled from the other, both moving in that graceful stalk as if they had muscles in places that humans did not. It was a younger Richard, less muscled, face a little less sure of itself, his hair cut neat and clean. Richard when he was twenty, before I ever met him. His face so open, eager, laughing. We’d told him it was a game. Raina wanted to have two men ravage her. A little rape fantasy among friends.
He pinned my wrists, her wrists, and as requested, there was no foreplay. It was supposed to be rough. I could see through her eyes, as she watched Gabriel come in behind Richard’s back. It was a rape fantasy, alright, but Raina wasn’t the victim.
Richard screamed, and stood up, dumping me to the floor. He took two shaking steps, and collapsed to his knees. Something about what Raina’s munin had done, had torn down his shields. I wasn’t getting the memory, just his reaction to it. Shame, anger, rage. I got glimpses of Gabriel and him fighting. Not struggling, but beating the hell out of each other. Both of them nude, slick with each other’s blood. Raina watching from the bed, her mouth wet, her tongue playing along her lips, enjoying the show.
Richard tried to shield, but he couldn’t. It was as if the emotions had stripped him of his shields. It was Jean-Claude’s cool touch in my head