Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [50]
I was okay with my tuxedo jacket going bye-bye. I was okay with Damian’s green coat sliding to the floor, even if it did leave his upper body pale and naked, with the fine muscles gliding under skin the color of fresh, white sheets. Nathaniel was the problem, or rather my confusion about him. I ran my hands up the unbelievable warmth of his skin, but the look in his lavender eyes was too much. I did not love Nathaniel, not the way I needed to, but the look in his eyes left no doubt how he felt about me. This was wrong. I could not take this from him, if he were in love with me, and I was not in love with him. I could not do it.
I pulled my hands away, shaking my head. Damian was molded against my back, but the moment I pulled away from Nathaniel, his eager hands slowed. “Shit,” he whispered, and leaned his face against the top of my head.
Nathaniel’s eyes went from shining with love, to something darker, older. He put his hands on either side of my face, cradling me. “Don’t pull away,” he said.
“I have to.”
“If it’s not sex, it will be blood, Anita, can’t you feel it?” Damian asked.
I could feel something. It was as if this time it was I who put up the shields. But there was still something large and frightening on the other side. Something that I had put in process, but not on purpose, something that was hungry. It didn’t care what it fed on, but it would, eventually, feed on something.
Damian’s hands were still on my shoulders, but he’d leaned his body back enough so we no longer touched anywhere else. “Anita, please . . .”
I turned in Nathaniel’s hands, so that I could glimpse Damian’s face. “It’s wrong, Damian.”
“The sex, or who the sex is with?” he asked.
I took a breath to answer him, but Nathaniel’s hands closed round my face. He turned me back to look at him, and I was suddenly almost painfully aware of the strength in his hands. A strength that could have crushed my face rather than cradled it. He was so submissive that he rarely reminded me of how very strong he was, how dangerous he could have been, if he’d been a different person.
I started to say, Let go of me, Nathaniel, but only got as far as, “Let go,” before he kissed me. The feel of his lips on mine stopped my words, froze my mind. I couldn’t think, couldn’t think about anything but the velvet feel of his mouth on mine. Then something seemed to break inside of him, some barrier, and his tongue thrust into my mouth as deep and far as it could go. The sensation of him thrusting that much of himself that deeply into me tore my shields away, and since no one else was fighting, the ardeur roared back to life. It roared back to life on the edge of Nathaniel’s lips, his hands, his need.
There was a confusion of ripping cloth, buttons snapping and raining down on us. Hands, hands everywhere, and the sound of clothing ripping. My body jerked with the force of my clothes being ripped away, and my hands were ripping at their clothes. It was as if every inch of my skin craved every inch of their skin. I needed to feel their nakedness glide over mine. My skin felt like a starved thing, as if I hadn’t touched anyone in ages.
I knew whose skin hunger I was channeling. It wasn’t just sex that Damian had missed. There are needs of the body that can be mistaken for sex, or lead to sex, but it isn’t sex that they are about.
There was one leg left of my pants, pooled around my ankle. My vest flapped open, and the shirt was in shreds. It was Damian’s hand from behind that grabbed a handful of my panties and pulled, ripping them off my body, leaving me nude from the waist down. I might have turned around to see how much clothing he still had on, but Nathaniel was in front of me. His shorts had been shredded. By me, I think. He knelt on the floor in front of me, naked. I almost never let Nathaniel be nude around me. It had been one of the reasons I’d been able to resist taking those last steps with him. Just keep your clothes on and nothing too bad will happen.
Now, he knelt in front of me, and all I could