Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [75]
A hand wrapped around my wrist and jerked me up and away. Damian’s nails ripped through my skin as he tried to hold on. Richard tore me away from Damian’s hands, his horror, his memories, and his fear.
The moment Damian couldn’t touch me, the panic faded, a little. I could breathe again. The fear was still there, pulsing through me, but it was diminished some. It was like the difference between drowning in the ocean and drowning in a fish pond. Better, less frightening, but just as dead.
I looked back at Damian, and he lay on the floor, his hand outstretched, and even from a distance, I reached back for him. I could feel his need.
Richard pulled on my arm, sharp, sudden. It threw me off balance, and he used that momentary stumble to swing me in against his body, my arm behind my back with his hand still on my wrist. I should have been more interested in the pain, but it was the sensation of being suddenly pressed against his naked body that overwhelmed me. It was not just being pressed against a man’s body, even a lovely body, that unnerved me, it was as if my body remembered him. Remembered what it was like to be pressed against this flesh, these arms, and with the skin memory . . . it was as if the emotional scars tore open and spilled my heart out into my skin. You fight so hard, so long, to cut someone out of your heart, but it’s not always your heart that betrays you.
But in among the emotional debris I felt Moroven pull back. We hadn’t needed the ardeur to confuse her, all we’d needed was how Richard and I felt about each other. Just as Moroven didn’t understand pure lust, she didn’t understand love, no matter how broken. I don’t know if the emotion frightened her, or if she simply couldn’t understand it. She wasn’t the only one.
We were touching, and the triumverate was working just fine. We’d both thrown down our shields to help Jean-Claude raise the ardeur and save us, but shields protect you from so many things. What is love? What does it feel like in its rawest form? Lust, need, desire, and that aching want, as if the center of your body was carved out and hollow, and the only thing that can fill it is the person that you’re touching.
I loved Richard. I couldn’t hide how I felt, couldn’t deny it. I was laid bare in his arms in every way. For a moment, I felt him feel the exact same way, then I felt something else . . . shame. He was ashamed, not that he loved me, but that part of him was angry that Moroven had fled. He’d wanted to drink my fear while he fucked me. That was the thought that came, not in words, but in confused images. I felt that to him my terror was almost the same as the terror of the deer he’d chased down and killed. Fear, even a little fear, made everything better—food and sex.
He let me go, stepped away so we wouldn’t be touching. He clanged his shields tight into place and left me standing alone. I was shaking and couldn’t understand why.
Richard’s face got that angry look he used to hide what he was thinking. He grabbed his pants and went for the door. “You’re as horrified by it as I am,” he said, and was gone.
I wanted to say he was wrong, but in a way he was right. I wasn’t horrified by the fact that he liked a little fear with his sex, a little rough play, most of the shapeshifters did. I think it had something to do with them being programmed to chase animals and kill them. If they didn’t get off on the fear, their human sides might come to the forefront and cripple them for the kill. Or maybe, that wasn’t it. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was that Raina and Gabriel had been attracted by latent talent. I don’t know, but I wasn’t horrified with what Richard had wanted. The fact that he thought of taking me while Moroven’s fear rode me hadn’t bothered me. It was mild compared to some of the things that my wereleopards liked. Just because I didn’t participate didn