Crimson Death (11 page)

“There are no notches on my bedposts,
ma petite
.”

I grinned at him. “The bedposts couldn't survive all your conquests.”

“There are not so many as that.” And then he laughed.

I felt a bubble of eagerness in my stomach, like happy butterflies. It wasn't me. “Nathaniel is almost here,” I said.

The bodyguards gave a businesslike knock and opened the door for our other half, or would it be our other third, or our fourth? Nathaniel walked in wearing a pair of silky lavender sleeping shorts that fit him very nicely, so nicely that the view from the front distracted me for a minute from the rest of him, but I recovered, because it was all a
nice view. His shoulders were wide, his arms well muscled, his chest deep, and his stomach flat and fit. He'd started to get a six-pack of abs, but every time he got truly cut across his abs, he lost too much of that great ass of his, and Nathaniel just didn't look right below a certain weight. He had the Adonis belt where the line of his waist did that soft square line down along the hip, now hidden inside the silky shorts. The muscles of his thighs were impressive and so were his calves. He'd actually had to cut down on his weight lifting because he'd started to muscle up more than he wanted to for dancing onstage. Genetics would have let him muscle up in a way that the other two men in the room couldn't. Jean-Claude and Damian both looked great, and Jean-Claude hit the gym for the same reason Nathaniel did, so he'd look great taking his clothes off onstage, but he was built long and lean like a long-distance runner or a basketball player as opposed to a football player.

Damian didn't hit the gym as hard as the other two, but then he got to keep all his clothes on at Danse Macabre when he danced with customers, or his dance partners. Knowing you're going to get nude in front of strangers was a great incentive for working out more.

Nathaniel's hair was still damp from the shower, so it was a darker brown than its true red auburn color. He'd tied it back in a braid still wet, because when your hair reaches to your calves you have to braid it to sleep or you strangle yourself and your partners by the end of the night. He had an even-better-than-normal smile, so for once that dominated his face rather than his eyes. His driver's license listed blue as his eye color, but that was only because they wouldn't let him put down lavender or purple. The normal color was pale like lilacs, but depending on his mood, the lighting, and the color near his face, they could darken to the true purple of violets. They were almost that dark now, which meant his emotions were running high, but happy; if they'd been grape dark it would have meant he was angry. His eyes rarely got that dark.

His happiness was contagious, or it was to me. I felt myself smiling back at him like a mirror, and maybe there was more to that analogy than I wanted to think about since he was my
moitié bête
, my animal to call. He nearly bounced across the room to wrap his arms around
me and lay a very thorough kiss on my mouth. I responded to that eagerness with some of my own so that the kiss grew into my hands tracing the warm muscled smoothness of his back. His hands smoothed over the silk of my robe and pressed hard enough that he probably knew what I was wearing underneath it.

“I'll give you all a few minutes alone,” Damian said, and started to move toward the door.

We broke from the kiss and Nathaniel said, “Why do you want to leave?”

“Not everyone is as comfortable with physical affection as you are,
notre minet
.” Which meant “our kitty,” or “pussycat.” It was a term of endearment, though you had to be careful which French word you used for “cat,” because some of them in French slang meant a very different kind of pussy.

“I thought you might want some privacy,” Damian said.

Nathaniel looked genuinely puzzled.

“Nathaniel is an exhibitionist and a voyeur, Damian. He's not going to understand why the kiss made you uncomfortable.”

Damian gave a smile that was more sad than happy. “I guess that's true, but if you want to have sex, then I can come back.”

“I always want to have sex,” Nathaniel said, laughing a little as he said it, because it was pretty much true, “but I can control myself even around Anita. We're here for you tonight, Damian, and what you need.”

Damian smiled, then almost laughed, and shook his head. “That means a lot to me, Nathaniel, because I know you mean it.”

Nathaniel stepped away from me, just trailing his hand down my arm so he kept our fingers entwined as he moved toward Damian, trailing me behind him by just our fingertips. “Of course I mean it, Damian. You're the other third of our triumvirate. Just tell me what I can do to help you feel better.”

Damian gave a little laugh that seemed more nerves than anything. “If I asked you to wear something else to bed tonight, would you understand what I meant?”

I didn't have to see Nathaniel's face to know he was frowning. I
could feel his confusion. “I can take off the shorts and sleep nude, but I thought you'd be more comfortable if I slept in something.”

Damian shook his head and smiled. “That's not what I meant, Nathaniel. I don't want you to wear less to bed. I'd prefer if you wore more.”

“More?” Nathaniel asked.

I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind so I could lay a light kiss on his bare back. “He means that he'd like you to wear more than just the shorts to bed tonight.”

He turned in my arms so he could see my face, and his expression was completely
There must be some mistake
. When he realized I was serious, he turned back to Damian. “I'm sorry. I don't have anything that covers more of me that's pajamas.”

“If you are protesting Nathaniel's shorts, then you must be deeply offended by what I am not wearing,” Jean-Claude said from the bed, where he lounged like some sex god waiting for the cameras to roll. I'd have said that was just the fact that I was in love with him talking, but he really was as sexy as I thought, so said everyone else.

Nathaniel called out, “Jean-Claude,” as if he'd just noticed him there. He let go of me and ran to the bed. He literally launched himself into the air and landed on top of Jean-Claude, catching himself on his hands and toes so that he didn't smack into the vampire, but was almost in a push-up over him. Only someone with Nathaniel's dexterity could have done it without the romantically exuberant gesture going horribly wrong. I couldn't have done it with practice runs.

I got to see Jean-Claude look genuinely surprised as he gazed up at Nathaniel. That alone made it worth it. “You look amazing tonight!”

Jean-Claude laughed, but it was a good laugh. “Thank you, pussycat. You look good enough to eat, as you always do.”

“If you want to take a bite out of me, just ask.” Nathaniel's face was serious, and why not? He had become one of the master vampire's regular feeds, just like I had. But this was the first time that Nathaniel had offered to feed him while he hovered just above the other man's body, their faces almost touching. Nathaniel's body was in what amounted to a plank like you did in gym, except he was doing it on a soft
mattress, so that the muscles in his back, legs, and arms showed the strain of it. His ass was tight and firm, helping hold his body in place above Jean-Claude.

“We are supposed to be getting ready to sleep, pussycat. If I feed on you, it will not make me want to sleep.”

Nathaniel smiled down at him. “I'll be good.”

“Of that, I have no doubt,” Jean-Claude said.

Nathaniel lowered his face just enough to kiss Jean-Claude. It was a chaste kiss compared to the one that he and I had just done, but there was something very erotic about them doing it with Nathaniel's body held just above the other man's. Jean-Claude raised a hand to caress the line of Nathaniel's bare back, tracing the muscles that kept him so still above him. Nathaniel rolled over to one side of the bed to lay his head against Jean-Claude's chest. The vampire did the natural movement that went with that, which was to put his arm around Nathaniel's shoulders and hold him. He cuddled closer to Jean-Claude, snuggling into the hug. I wasn't sure what had gotten into Nathaniel tonight. He was in a good mood, but it was mercurial, so that even I didn't know what was coming next.

“As I said, before I was so delightfully interrupted, I can wear more to bed if it will help your comfort level.”

“If the king wants to wear nothing to bed, then that is the king's pleasure,” Damian said, but he was uncomfortable with the pair of them cuddled up in the bed. It showed in the way he held his shoulders and how he didn't stare too long at them. Was Nathaniel trying to make our so-heterosexual vampire more uncomfortable? That didn't seem like something Nathaniel would do to Damian, unless I'd missed the redheaded vampire making Nathaniel uncomfortable elsewhere. Nathaniel was usually one of the nicest people you'd ever meet, but occasionally if something hit him wrong, his payback was very tit for tat.
You do this to me and I will do it to you in spades.
What had Damian done to make Nathaniel want to pull on this issue so hard?

“I do have pajamas if it would make you more comfortable tonight,” Jean-Claude said, still holding Nathaniel in the crook of his arm.

“You said you were sleeping on the other side of Anita.”

“I am.”

“Then what you wear, or don't, isn't as . . . pressing,” he said at last.

“They will be too long for him, but I could lend Nathaniel a pair of pajama bottoms,” Jean-Claude said.

“I usually sleep nude,” Nathaniel said, rubbing his cheek against Jean-Claude's bare chest like a cat scent-marking its person.

“We both do,” I said.

“Show him what you are wearing,
ma petite
. Perhaps that will make our crimson-haired guest more willing to come to bed.”

I didn't hesitate about it, because the way Damian was standing said in every line from shoulder to feet that he was debating leaving. I gave Damian all the eye contact I could as I dropped my robe beside Jean-Claude's and revealed a lacy blue camisole and boy shorts that were the same royal blue as the robe.

“Beautiful,” Nathaniel said.

“Very nice,” Damian said.

“Thanks. Jean-Claude picked it out,” I said.

“I chose the color, but it is your body that turns a bit of silk and lace into something extraordinary,” Jean-Claude said.

I turned and started walking toward the bed, and maybe I put a little extra sway to my hips in the lacy boy shorts. I wanted Damian to want to come to bed. The men were being strangely uncooperative about it, or seemed to want to feed his straight-guy nervousness about sharing a bed with extra men. I wanted to appeal to the part of him that wanted to crawl into bed beside me, regardless of what the men were doing.

I looked back at Damian and did my best to put the smile he wanted to see on my face. He looked stricken, as if I'd slapped him instead of just walked away in lacy pajamas. Apparently, I looked even better in the outfit than I'd thought, or at least my ass did. I grabbed hold of one of the bedposts to help me climb up on the tall mattress. I very deliberately crawled the long way across the bed toward the other two men so that Damian got a good view.

“Come to bed, Damian,” I said, and turned to look over my shoulder at him, and the look on his face was everything I'd wanted it to be. Was it unfair since we weren't going to have sex? Maybe, but if we
were going to see if sleeping between Nathaniel and me could fix the whole sweating-blood-and-nightmares thing, Damian needed to get in bed with us and sleep.

Damian took off his robe last, laying it at the far foot of the bed, where we'd never accidentally touch it unless we grew several feet taller. When I say it's an orgy-size bed, I'm not joking.

Damian was wearing pajama bottoms that looked as silky as my robe, but they were a deep red and made his upper body look almost translucently pale, as if you should have been able to see his bones move as he walked, or as if the red brought out a shine to his skin that I hadn't noticed before.

“Nice color on you—the red, I mean.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Come up on the bed so we can get some sleep,” I said.

“I hope I don't sleep. I hope I just die at dawn,” he said. I had a moment of wanting to ask if he meant die at dawn to wake the next night, or just die. He'd talked about it in his office, and that was never a good thing for a person to begin to speculate about. But I didn't ask, because some things you do not ask before bedtime, and you certainly don't ask about death and suicide when you're about to curl up between two walking corpses that may die with the rising of the sun.

Damian climbed tentatively onto the other side of the bed from us. He had to crawl a ways to reach us, and then we had another awkward moment as he stared at the three of us. The men were still cuddled up, but I was leaning against them almost like they were the back to a lounge.

Jean-Claude kissed Nathaniel on the forehead. “You need to sleep beside Damian,
mon minet
.”

Nathaniel kissed just above his nipple, and for a moment I know he was debating whether to kiss on it, but he just came to his knees and kissed me lightly on the mouth and moved across the bed to make room for Damian.

I lay down next to Jean-Claude; this would be a sort of test for me, too, because I generally put one of the other men between me and the vampire. I loved Jean-Claude to pieces, but the fact that he did usually
die at dawn was unnerving to me. His body cooled as the hours passed, and sometimes I would wake from nightmares of being trapped in coffins with other vampires. I'd been a little claustrophobic thanks to a diving accident, but that first time waking up trapped in a coffin built for one but holding two, one corpse and me trapped in the dark, the other body cold and dead, and knowing that if I screamed no one was coming to help me, and I'd screamed anyway, had put the scary cherry on my phobia. So I'd earned my issues about sleeping beside vampires, but Jean-Claude and I were going to get married, so I needed to try.