Cravings (6 page)

He didn't want to be saved. No, that wasn't true. Nathaniel already thought
he had been saved. I'd saved him. I'd been treating him like a prince who needed
to find his princess, but that was all wrong. Nathaniel was the princess and he
had been rescued, by me. As far as Nathaniel was concerned, I was the prince in
shining armor, I just needed to come across, and then we could all live happily
ever after.

Trouble was, I was no one's prince, and no one's princess. I was just me, and
I was all out of armor, shiny or otherwise. I just wasn't the fairy-tale type.
And I didn't believe in happily ever after. The question was, did I believe in
happily for now? If I could have answered that question, then all the worry
would have been ended, but I couldn't answer it. So as Micah drove us towards
home in the October dark, I still didn't know what I'd do when the ardeur
finally rose for the night. I didn't even know what the right thing to do was
anymore. Wasn't right supposed to help people, and wrong supposed to hurt
people? Didn't you make the right choice because it was the right thing to do?

I always felt squeamish about praying to God about sex, in any context, but I
prayed as we drove, because I was out of options. I asked for guidance. I asked
for a clue as to what was the best for everyone. I didn't get an answer, and I
hadn't expected one. I have a lot psychic gifts but talking directly to God is
not one of them, thank goodness. Read the Old Testament if you don't think it's
a scary idea. But worse than no answer, I didn't feel that peace that I usually
get when I pray.

 

WHEN we reached our house, Micah and Nathaniel got out of the Jeep first. I
followed behind, slowly, still not sure what I was going to do.

The living room was dark as I entered the house. The only light was from the
kitchen. One or both of them had walked through the pitch-dark living room and
only hit a light switch when they went to the kitchen to check messages on the
machine, which was on the kitchen counter. Leopards' eyes are better in the dark
than a human's, and Micah's eyes were permanently stuck in kitty-cat mode. He
often walked through the entire house with no lights, just drifting from room to
room, avoiding every obstacle, gliding through the dark with the same confidence
I used in bright light.

There was enough light from the kitchen, so I, too, left the living room
dark. The white couch seemed to give off its own glow, though I knew that was
illusion, made up of the reflective quality of the white, white cloth. I was
pretty sure the men had both gone to change for the night. Most lycanthropes,
whatever the flavor, preferred fewer clothes, and Micah didn't like dressing up,
not if it included a tie. I walked into the empty kitchen not because I needed
to, but because I wasn't ready to go to the bedroom. I still didn't know what I
was going to do.

The kitchen held a large dining room table now. The breakfast nook on its
little raised platform with its bay window looking out over the woods still held
a smaller fourseater table. Four had been more chairs than I needed when I moved
into this house. Now, because we usually had at least some of the other
wereleopards bunking over due to an emergency, or, often, just the need to be
close to more of their group, their pard, we needed a six-seater table. Actually
we needed a bigger one than that, but it was all my kitchen would hold.

There was a vase in the middle of the table. Jean-Claude had sent me a dozen
white roses a week, after we started dating. Once we had sex, he'd added one red
rose so it was actually thirteen. One red rose like a spot of blood in a sea of
white roses and white baby's breath. It certainly made a statement.

I smelled the roses, and the red one had the strongest scent. Hard to find
white roses that smelled good. All I had to do was call Jean-Claude. He was fast
enough to fly here before dawn. I'd fed off of him before, I could do it again.
Of course, that would simply be putting off the decision. No, it would be
hiding. I hated cowardice almost worse than anything else, and calling on my
vampire lover in this instance was cowardice.

The phone rang. I jumped back so hard that the roses rocked in their vase.
You'd think I was nervous, or guilty of something. I got the phone on the second
ring. It was for Micah, a Furry Coalition emergency.

One of the shifters had had an accident. He was in the hospital emergency
room right now. But the cops were making noises about taking him to a so-called
safe house.

They were actually prisons for lycanthropes. Once you went in, they never let
you out.

Someone had to go and get him before that could happen.

Micah got on the phone long enough to take the address and name of the
hospital down, then hung up. He looked at me, face careful, neutral with an edge
of concern. "I'm okay with you and Nathaniel being here alone for the ardeur.
The question is, are you okay with it?"

I shrugged.

He shook his head. "No, Anita, I need an answer before I leave."

I sighed. "You need to get there before the wolf loses it. Go, we'll be all
right."

He looked like he didn't believe me.

"Go," I said.

"It's not just you I'm worried about, Anita."

"I will do my best for Nathaniel, Micah."

He frowned. "What does that mean?"

"It means what it says."

He didn't look happy with the answer.

"If you wait around for me to say, Oh, yes, it's fine that I'm going to feed
the ardeur and fuck Nathaniel; the wolf in question will have shapeshifted, been
shot by the cops, and maybe taken some civilians with him before you even leave
the house."

"You're both important to me, Anita. Our pard is important to me. What
happens here tonight, could change… everything."

I swallowed hard, because I suddenly didn't want to meet his eyes.

He touched my chin, raised my face up to meet his gaze. "Anita."

"I'll be good," I said.

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not sure, but I'll do my best, and that is the best I can offer. I won't
really know what I'm going to do until the ardeur rises. Sorry, but that's the
truth. To say anything else would be a lie."

He took a deep breath that made his chest rise and fall nicely. "I guess I'll
have to settle for that."

"What exactly do you want me to say?" I asked.

He leaned in, and laid a gentle kiss against my lips. We rarely kissed so
chaste, but this close to the ardeur, he was being careful. "I want you to say
you'll take care of this."

"Define take care of it?"

He sighed again, shook his head, and stepped back. "I've got to get dressed."

"Are you taking your car or the Jeep?"

"I'll take my car." He smiled at me, almost sadly, and left to go get
dressed. He made a soft exclamation as he went around the corner. He spoke in
low voices with another man. The cadence was wrong for Nathaniel.

Damian glided around the corner. "You must be very distracted not to have
sensed me sooner." He was right, I was good at sensing the undead. No vamp
should have been able to get this close without me knowing, especially not
Damian.

Damian was my vampire servant, as I was Jean-Claude's human servant. The
ardeur was Jean-Claude and Belle Morte's fault, something about their line had
contaminated me. But Damian as my servant, that was my fault. I was a
necromancer, and apparently mixing necromancy with being a human servant had
some unforseen side effects. One of them was standing across the kitchen staring
at me with eyes the color of green grass. Humans didn't have eyes like that, but
apparently Damian had, because becoming a vamp doesn't change your original
physical description. It may pale you out, lengthen some of the teeth, but your
hair and eye and skin color remain the same. The only thing that was probably
more vibrant was his hair. Red hair that hadn't seen the sun for hundreds of
years, so that it was almost the color of fresh blood, a bright, fresh scarlet,
so that he moved in a swirl of crimson hair. All vamps are pale, but Damian
started life with that milk and honey complexion that some redheads have, so he
was even paler. Or maybe it was the quality of his paleness, like his skin had
been formed of white marble, and some demon or god had breathed life into that
paleness. Oh, wait, I was that demon.

Technically, my power, my necromancy, made Damian's heart beat. He was over a
thousand years old, and he would never be a master vampire. If you aren't a
master, then you need a master to give you enough power to rise from the grave,
not just the first night, but every night.

Damian must have come straight from work, because though he, like most of the
vamps fresh over from Europe, almost never wore jeans and tennis shoes, he also
didn't like dressing up as much as Jean-Claude insisted on.

He was wearing a coat I'd seen before. It was a deep pine green, a frock coat
like something out of the 1700s, but it was new, designed to gape open to expose
the pale gleam of his chest and stomach. Embroidery nearly covered the sleeves
and lapels, putting a little glitter of color near all that white skin. His
pants were black satin, poofy, like there was way more cloth there than was
needed for Damian's slender legs. He wore a wide green sash for a belt, and a
pair of black leather boots that folded over just above the knee. The outfit was
very pirate-y.

"How was work?" I asked.

"Danse Macabre is the hottest dance club in St. Louis." He kept walking
towards me, gliding rather. There was something about the way he looked at me
that I didn't care for.

"It's the only place where people can go and dance with vampires. Of course
it's hot." I looked at him, and I knew he had fed tonight, on some willing
woman. Willing blood feeding was considered the same as willing sex. Just be of
age, and you could feed the undead, and have bite marks to show your friends.
I'd ordered Damian to only feed from willing victims, and because of our bond
together, he could not disobey me. Necromancers of legend could boss around all
types of undead, and they had to do your bidding. The only undead I could boss
around was Damian, and frankly, I found even that unsettling. I didn't like to
have that kind of control over anyone.

But then, Damian had a kind of control over me. I wanted to touch him. When
he entered a room, I had an almost overwhelming urge to touch his skin. It was
part of what it meant to be master and servant. This attraction to your
servants, this need to touch and tend them was one of the reasons that most
servants were treasured possessions. I think it also kept even the craziest,
most evil of vamps from killing their servants out of hand. For often a vamp
didn't survive the death of his servant, the bond was that close.

He walked around the table, fingers trailing on the backs of the chairs. "And
I am one of the vampires that they have been pressing their bodies up against
all night."

"Hannah is still managing the club, right?"

"Oh, yes, I am merely a cold body to send into the crowd." He was around the
table now, to the island that separated the working area of the kitchen from the
rest of the room. "I am merely color, like a statue, or a drape."

"That's not fair. I've seen you work the crowd, Damian. You enjoy the
flirting."

He nodded, as he came around the end of the island. Nothing separated us now
but the fact that I was still leaning against the far cabinets, and he had
stopped at the end of the island. The urge to close that distance, to wrap my
hands around his body, was almost overwhelming. It made my hands ache with the
need, and I ended with them pressed behind me, pinned by my body the way
Nathaniel had leaned against the Jeep earlier.

"I enjoy the flirting very much." He traced pale fingers along the edge of
the island, slowly, tenderly, as if he were touching something else. "But we are
not allowed to have sex while we work, though some of them beg for it." The
emerald of his eyes spread and swallowed his pupils, so that he looked at me
with eyes like green fire. His power danced along my skin, caught my breath in
my throat.

My voice started out a little shaky, but I gained firmness as I talked, until
the last was said in an almost normal voice. "You've got my permission to date,
or fuck, or whatever. You can have lovers, Damian."

"And where would I take them?" He leaned against the island, arms crossing
over that expanse of pale chest.

"What do you mean?"

"I have a coffin in your basement. It is adequate but hardly romantic."

He could have said a lot of things that I'd expected, but that wasn't one of
them. "I'm sorry, Damian, it never occurred to me. You need a room, don't you?"

He gave a small smile. "A room to use for my lovers, yes."

Then I realized something. "You mean like bring strangers here. People you've
just picked up, and have them like sleep over, be at the breakfast table in the
morning?"

"Yes," he said, and I understood the look on his face now; it was a
challenge. He knew I wouldn't like the thought of strangers coming into the
house, much less facing a strange woman that he'd simply brought home to fuck,
first thing in the morning.

I had a tiny spurt of anger, and that helped me think. Helped push back that
need to touch him, that had nothing to do with the ardeur, and everything to do
with power. "I know you had a room at the Circus. Maybe we could arrange
something with Jean-Claude, so you could take lovers back there."

"My home is here, with you. You are my master now."

I cringed a little at the master part. "I know that, Damian."

"Do you?" He pushed away from the island, and came to stand just in front of
me. This close the power shivered between us. It made him close his eyes, and
when he opened them they were still drowning emerald pools. "If you are my
master, then touch me."