Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (7 page)

BloodNoir

Page 46 of 287

I had more guns and holsters in the luggage, but I figured for the hospital visit I’d try to be lowkey about my job and the whole violence thing. Frankly, I never thought about going home to meet anyone’s folks, let alone Jason’s. But I’d play by the rules. Rule one had to be not to scare the prospective in-laws. Yeah, Jason and I both knew that we had no plans for marriage, but I was the first girl he’d brought home, to my knowledge. People would assume a lot, and I wasn’t sure how much Jason wanted them to assume. My only goal was not to lie outright to anyone; beyond that it was all game. Jason let me keep a death grip on his hand, and complained only once that he was losing feeling in his fingers. He was too worried to tease, which made me worry about him. Jason teased the way he breathed. Solemn wasn’t his thing.

I tried to comfort him. He finally turned to me with a smile so sad it made my throat tight. “It’s okay, Anita. I appreciate the effort, but I can’t think of anything you can say that will make me feel better.”

He raised my tense hand to his face and rubbed his cheek against my knuckles. The horrible tightness inside me eased just a touch.

He smiled, and it was almost his old smile. His eyes sparkled with it. I knew that look. He was about to say something I wouldn’t like.

“A little more touch made you feel better, too.”

I nodded.

The smile was pure Jason when he said, “We could do the whole mile-high club; that might make me feel better.”

“Mile-high club?” I made it a question.

He kissed my knuckles, soft, a little more open mouth than would be polite in public. “Sex on a plane.”

I shook my head and laughed. It was almost a normal laugh. Points for me. “Now I’m not so worried,” I said.

“Worried about what?”

“You, if you can flirt and tease, you’ll be all right.”

He pressed my hand to his face, and his eyes went from teasing to too serious. “Who says I’m teasing?”

I gave him the look the suggestion deserved. “I could not possibly have sex on a plane. I can barely keep myself from running up and down the plane screaming.”

The lascivious look changed instantly to that sparkling, teasing look. “Might take both our minds off our problems.”

I tugged at my hand.

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BloodNoir

Page 47 of 287

He smiled, and kissed my hand, the way it was supposed to be done. A bare touch of lips, not open mouth, no tongue, chaste. “I’ll behave if you insist.”

“I insist.”

“The extra touching made you feel better, too, Anita. I could sense it in the way your hand felt, the way your body smelled less like prey. Seriously, why not have sex? Why not feel better?”

I frowned at him, because I realized he really was serious. “One, the pilot might walk in on us. Two, we’re on a plane, Jason, I couldn’t possibly. I’m too freaked.”

“Can we have sex when we land?”

I frowned harder. “You mean when we touch down?”

“No, hotel, I guess.”

I wasn’t offended anymore, I was too puzzled. He wasn’t teasing. He was dead serious. It wasn’t like him. “Won’t you want to go to the hospital or your old house before we get all messy?”

He smiled, but it left his eyes worried. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. I don’t want to go to the house. I don’t
want
to do any of it.”

I held his hand tight, not because of my fear, but because of the pain in his voice. Strangely, worrying about him helped me be less afraid about where we were. Who knew therapy for someone else was the answer all along to my own fears?

“I don’t think having sex is going to make this visit easier.”

He smiled then, and a look ran through his eyes so quick I almost didn’t catch it. But it was similar to a look that Nathaniel had, so I knew it, all too well. It was a look that said I was naïve. Jason was years younger than me, and he hadn’t had all the bad experiences that Nathaniel had had, but he’d had his share.

“I am not being naïve,” I said.

“You read me that fast?”

“Nathaniel has a look pretty close to it,” I said.

“Of course, it couldn’t just be me you knew that well.” He sounded bitter. I began to worry that I was in a much different problem than I thought with this favor. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“I want someone to want me the way you want Nathaniel. I want someone to love me the way you love the men in your life.”

“Perdy loved you that way,” I said. Was it mean to say that, or just true?

He gave me an unfriendly look. “Are you trying to be mean?”

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BloodNoir

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I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and tried to be honest, but not mean. “I am on a plane, which means I am not at my best. Let me try this: you’ve told me before that you want to be consumed by romance, by love. You want to burn with it. Since I spent years fighting against anyone who wanted to love me like that, I don’t quite get why that is your goal, but you say it is, so it is.”

“What am I supposed to say now, Anita? That I threw away someone who wanted to consume me with her love? I guess I did.”

I shook my head and tried one more time. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean Perdy’s idea of love and your idea of love aren’t the same. You want to be consumed, not smothered. A fire needs air to burn bright. She took your air away, and the fire died.”

He studied my face. “That was actually smart.”

“Gee, Jason, thanks, you sound surprised.”

He smiled. “I don’t mean that. I mean, that makes sense, that makes me feel less stupid about not wanting Perdy to love me. I do this big thing about wanting someone to be obsessed with me. I get it and I don’t want it. I thought I was being fickle.”

“Obsession isn’t love, Jason. It’s possession.”

“I want to belong to someone, Anita.”

“But you want closer to what Nathaniel has, than a traditional marriage.”

“You mean I want to belong but not be monogamous.”

I shrugged. “Technically, Nathaniel is monogamous. He doesn’t have sex with anyone but me.”

Jason grinned, blue eyes shining. “He
so
has sexual contact with other people.”

“He’s a stripper. Sexualized contact with other people is part of the job description.”

“I didn’t say
sexualized
. I said
sexual
. At our jobs we cut it pretty fine, but actual sex is illegal.”

I closed my eyes, but that made the purr of the engines seem louder. I opened my eyes wide and tried to think of what I’d been saying. “What do you mean then?”

He gave me another of those looks that said I was being either naïve or obtuse. Since I wasn’t being either on purpose, I didn’t know what he meant.

“Don’t give me that look, Jason. I honestly don’t know what you mean.”

It was his turn to frown. “You don’t, do you?”

“No, I don’t.” I couldn’t help but sound grumpy.

“What do you consider sexual contact, Anita?”

“I don’t know, sex.”

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BloodNoir

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“Anita, I’ve seen Asher feed on Nathaniel. Hell, I’ve had him feed on me. You’d have to be a hell of a lot more homophobic than either Nathaniel or me not to understand that when Asher feeds, it’s sexual.”

One of Asher’s abilities was to make his bite orgasmic. It wasn’t just mind tricks either. It was like a special ability. When he’d been a bad little vampire he’d used that ability to get money, land, protection from his victims. People had begged him for one more night, even when they knew it would kill them.

“I know what Asher can do, better than you do, Jason.”

“Oh, geez, I’m an idiot. How could I forget that?” He hugged me. “I’m sorry, Anita, I’m so sorry.”

Asher and I had had sex and blood alone for the first and only time. He’d nearly killed me with pleasure, because I asked him to. Begged him to. We weren’t allowed to be alone anymore, because I’d admitted to Jean-Claude that I still craved what we’d done. Of all of Jean-Claude’s vampires, Asher was the one I feared the most. Because he was the one who made me want him to do deadly things to me.

Jason hugged me and said, “I’m scared and that’s making me stupid. I’m sorry.”

The pilot’s voice came over the speakers. It made me jump and make that girl
eep
. Jason kissed my forehead.

“We’re about to land, Ms. Blake, Mr. Schuyler. If you could take your seats, that’d be good.”

“I’m okay, Jason, neither of us is at our best.”

“Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive,” I said.

Jason nodded, but not like he believed it. I wasn’t used to him being like this, emotional, forgetful. His father was dying. His mother was blackmailing him, emotionally. I guess he was entitled to be a little off his game.

I tightened my grip on the seat and his hand. I’d be better when we landed. It would all be better when we landed. I tried to believe that, but part of me knew if Jason was already having problems, it was only going to get worse.

How did I end up holding his hand for this? Oh, right, Nathaniel volunteered me. I was so going to make him pay for this. The plane bounced a little on the runway, and I gasped a little. But we were on the ground. Things were looking up, at least for me.

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BloodNoir

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9

I SAT IN
my swivel seat for a second relearning how to breathe and fighting down the nausea. I told my stomach to stop being such a baby. We were on the ground, for God’s sake. I could always insist on renting a car for the ride home—though I knew I wouldn’t. I’d never be able to live with myself if I let my fear get that much of an upper hand. Fear was like cancer in remission. If you gave in to it, even by an inch, it would flare up again and eat you alive. Jason stopped at the open door and looked back at me. “You are coming, right?”

I nodded. The nausea was past. I could breathe again. It was cool. Okay, that was a lie, but it was the best I could do.

Jason came back to stand and look down at me. I couldn’t quite read his expression. “It really scared the shit out of you to do this, didn’t it?”

I shook my head, then shrugged. I finally said in a voice that was way too breathy for comfort,

“The runway is kinda small, don’t you think?”

He bent down and kissed my forehead again.

I looked up at him. “What was that for?”

“Being brave,” he said, and he looked serious when he said it. He offered me his hand. There was a time when I wouldn’t have taken it, when I would have seen it as a sign of weakness, but I’d grown up a little since then.

I took his hand. He squeezed it and gave me a smile. This smile was one of the reasons I was on the damn plane—the smile that said he understood how much it had cost me, and that he understood me in a way that a lot of people didn’t. We would never be real boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d never be each other’s sweetie, but Jason got me in a way that some of the men I was dating didn’t. And I tried my best to understand him.

I realized as he led me down the narrow aisle hand in hand that it wasn’t just Nathaniel who considered Jason one of his best friends.

Jason went first down the little folding steps, bent sort of backward, to help me. That was a little more help than I probably needed, but then I was wearing heels. A man met us at the bottom of the steps. He was average height, more bald than hair, in a nice suit. Not as nice as the one Jason was wearing, but it wasn’t a bad suit.

“Mr. Summerland, I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.” He was smiling until Jason helped me down the little stairs in my heels.

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BloodNoir

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“I’m not one of the Summerlands,” Jason said. He said it as if the confusion wasn’t unexpected. The man looked at Jason, then at me, as Jason helped me down from the plane. The man winked at him. “Of course not, you’re Mr…. Smith?”

I was finally on solid tarmac, yea! “Why don’t you make it Mr. Allbright, it’s more original,” I said. I thought I was making a joke.

The man began to scribble down
Allbright
on his clipboard. “Of course, Mr. Allbright, we’re glad to have you with us.”

Jason sighed. “She was making a joke. The name is Schuyler, Jason Schuyler.”

The man crossed out
Allbright
and wrote in the right name. “Whatever you say, Mr. Schuyler.”

“Crap,” Jason said under his breath.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“If I was a Summerland, why was I coming in tomorrow?”

The man looked puzzled, but he played along in whatever game he thought we were playing.

“Your bachelor party, of course. You’re getting married at the end of the week. Your brother arrived yesterday with his fiancée.”

“Look, I am a distant cousin of the Summerlands. I got mistaken for the twins all through school. My name really is Jason Schuyler. This is my friend Anita Blake. I’m here to visit my family.”

“Of course you are.” It was clear he didn’t believe Jason, but at the same time very clear that he would repeat whatever lie Jason spouted, and swear to it in court afterward.

“I take it the Summerlands are big shots around here?” I said.

“The biggest,” Jason said.

The man with the clipboard looked from one to the other of us. “The bride-to-be is already in town. Her bachelorette party is tonight.”

“You invited?” I said.

He looked flustered. “Of course not.”

“Then how do you know so much?”

“I’ve been helping get the guests settled,” he said, and sounded indignant.

“Fine, but we are not guests.”

“Of course not, and if asked, I haven’t seen Keith Summerland. He will arrive tomorrow as planned.” The man seemed pleased with himself as if he’d said a smart thing. Then he walked away with another wink.