Crimson Death (37 page)

“Feed on me tonight. If your putting me in the ‘nephew' box is really hurting Anita's ability to love me, then it should help change that. If it doesn't change anything, then that's not it.”

“It is a dangerous experiment, nephew.”

“If it doesn't change her feelings toward me, then you don't have to take blood from me again.”

“It may not be that simple, Cynric,” Jean-Claude said.

“You've called me Cynric at least three times. You never forget that I prefer to be called Sin.”

“Perhaps I am trying to distance myself even more?
Sin
is a rather provocative word to use as a name.”

Sin frowned. “Have I missed something here?”

“What do you mean?” Jean-Claude asked.

Nicky shook my hand in his. “I think I got this one.”

I glanced up at him, because I was still a step behind.

“Sin was only seventeen when he came to live here. He's grown over half a foot taller, hit the gym, and started filling out all that height.”

“What's your point?” I asked.

“He's not just handsome. He's borderline pretty, a beautiful man who is over six feet tall, and athletic.”

I wasn't following for a second, and then I caught up all at once. “Oh . . . crap,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“I'm still lost,” Sin said.

“Jean-Claude only started calling you his nephew in the last year or so, right?” Nicky said.

“I guess so.”

“Until about a year ago you hadn't gotten that secondary muscle development or filled out your face and the rest of you.”

Sin blinked and then the light dawned all across his face. He looked surprised, then went pale, and then he blushed. He got control of himself and finally was able to look at Jean-Claude, who was wearing as careful an expression as I'd ever seen on him. “You've been so good, honorable, and I come in here and step all over it. God, Jean-Claude, I'm sorry for that.”

“And if my efforts to be honorable have kept Anita from giving you her heart, then I am sorry for that.”

“Now that we're all sorry, do I stay, or do I go?” Nicky asked.

I kept holding his hand, but I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Don't give me the look, Anita. You need to feed before you get on the plane and we are running out of time.” He squeezed my hand to take some of the seriousness out of his words.

“Practical and correct, as usual, Nicky,” Jean-Claude said, “and I may have a compromise.”

“What kind of compromise?” Sin asked, and sounded positively suspicious. It sounded like my tone of voice. Had he learned it from me, or had he inherited it through the metaphysics between us? We'd never really know, but it made me wonder what else he might have picked up from me, or me from him. Maybe I'd finally be able to throw a decent spiral football since Sin was Mr. Quarterback.

“I would like you to see me take blood from Nicky, before I do so from you, Sin.”

“Sometimes it's good to see what you're asking for beforehand,” Nicky said.

“Are you saying that it weirds you out to donate blood?” Sin asked.

“If I didn't have qualms about it, I'd have done it sooner.”

Qualms
so didn't sound like a word that Nicky would have chosen
to use when he first came to us. I guess we were all learning from each other.

“So you take blood from Nicky, and then what?” Sin asked; those big dark blue eyes were narrowed and again it was my expression on his face.

“If
ma petite
approves, then she will feed the
ardeur
from you, and we will share her as you have with the other men.” Jean-Claude met that suspicious expression with one that was elegant, calm, and as unreadable as the dark side of the moon.

They both looked at me. Nicky squeezed my hand gently. I glanced up at him and then back at the other two men. “So it's going to be a foursome?” I asked.

“It would seem so,” Jean-Claude said, still in that careful, pleasant voice.

“Just so you know, Sin, normally you'd want to make sure you negotiated how much the other two men touch you while everyone's touching the girl,” Nicky said.

“You and I already had this talk.”

“But you didn't have it with Jean-Claude yet.”

Sin looked at the vampire and there was no suspicion on his face now; in fact, he looked very certain, almost arrogant. In that moment I realized that he was a handsome man who knew he was handsome. That was a change from when he first came to us, and maybe not a change for the better, but there it was on his face in the way he stood so tall and strong. There was suddenly a nearly touchable sense of physicality around him. It was part natural athlete and part his inner beast peeking out.

“I don't have to have the talk with Jean-Claude. He's more nervous of me than I am of him.” The look he gave the other man then was pure predator, and suddenly I wasn't so worried about Sin's delicate sensibilities.

“Then perhaps we should discuss my boundaries, rather than yours,” Jean-Claude said.

“Perhaps we should,” Sin said, and walked toward us all like he walked onto the football field, or went up to a starting block for track,
like he owned it, and he knew he would win. Victory wasn't a question; it was a given. When I'd met Cynric he'd been a shy, uncertain sixteen-year-old boy, but he had survived the Mother of All Darkness trying to do the darkest of magic on us. He hadn't just survived physically, but mentally, and emotionally he seemed to have come out of it better than some of the other, older weretigers. I should have understood that kind of strength grows into more. Watching him walk toward us, toward Jean-Claude, I finally realized that the scared boy I remembered wasn't Cynric anymore. He was Sin, and he'd chosen the name. It had been another clue about who he had become. You have to have a certain level of machismo to choose and carry a name like that. Looking at him now, I realized it suited him. How had I missed it?

N
ICKY STRIPPED HIS
shirt off first. He wasn't much for a slow reveal when he was in the room with me and other men. I wasn't sure if it was that he didn't want to compete with men who took their clothes off onstage professionally, or if once he revealed that massive, muscular upper body he didn't feel like he had to compete with anyone. I'd seen men move or stop lifting weights next to him in the gym when he was working out. Anyone who wouldn't even lift next to him was never going to get naked in bed with him, but lucky for us none of those men were in the bedroom with us. Nicky had helped teach Sin how to lift weights and Jean-Claude had no desire to bulk up as much as the werelion.

In fact, Jean-Claude came up behind him and trailed his hand across those muscular shoulders and made an appreciative sound, something he'd never done before with Nicky. In fact, he put his arm around the other man's shoulders and neck; the inches of extra height allowed him to lean his face against the side of Nicky's head, black curls against the
straight blond hair. They were opposites in almost every way, which wasn't a bad thing, just a thing.

Nicky stiffened, and Jean-Claude leaned in and whispered something in his ear; as his lips moved the werelion relaxed. Whatever Jean-Claude was telling him reassured him, or pleased him, because he smiled.

Jean-Claude laid the softest of kisses against the other man's cheek.

“You don't have to put on a show for me,” Sin said.

“I am not putting on a show for you, Sin. I am admiring what I will be plunging my . . .” And he hesitated just long enough to let Nicky's mind fill in the blank before saying, “Fangs into tonight.”

Sin looked at them, eyes narrowing.

Jean-Claude wrapped both arms around those oh-so-broad shoulders. Nicky gripped the vampire's arm and rubbed his face against Jean-Claude's hair as if he were scent-marking. The vampire laid his lips against Nicky's cheek even more delicately than before so that he put a line of the gentlest of kisses from cheek to neck. Nicky closed his eyes and turned his head to the other side so that the strong line of his neck was stretched bare and waiting. All that strength of that muscular upper body was suddenly turned in Jean-Claude's arms into something submissive, takeable. I'd never seen anything like that between them before.

Sin looked at me, and again it was my suspicion on his face, or maybe now it was his own. “They're trying to scare me off. It's not going to work.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, and walked to the other men. It wasn't that the two men didn't touch when Jean-Claude fed on Nicky, but they didn't touch quite like this, so it was a show for Sin, but if the men were willing to do it I wasn't going to ruin it for them. Besides, I was sleeping with all of them and I liked to see my men enjoying each other. I slid my hands around Nicky's bare waist. The touch made him open his eye, and I was gazing up into their faces as I caressed the narrowness of his waist until I touched Jean-Claude's shirt and the firmness of his body underneath it. I rose up on tiptoes to offer a kiss. Nicky's arm pressed against my back, and Jean-Claude unfolded one arm from around his shoulders to push his hand
underneath my hair to caress the back of my neck so that when I kissed Nicky it was his hand pressing my chest against Nicky's naked upper body, but it was Jean-Claude's hand that pressed my face tighter into the kiss.

I kissed him until my pulse was in my throat, and I drew back, breathless, to turn to Jean-Claude, who bent over Nicky's shoulder. I had to stretch to meet him with Nicky's body between us, but his height in the boots and me going nearly on pointe let us kiss. Nicky put his hands around my waist. I felt him dip like he'd bent his knees a little, and then he lifted me up so that Jean-Claude and I could kiss more. Either my feet could dangle in the air or I could do the airborne version of popping one foot up behind me, which was what I did. Jean-Claude kept his hand at the back of my neck, but this time he pressed me in against his own lips. I wrapped one arm around the vampire and the other one around the werelion. My tongue slid between his fangs, and he kissed me harder. Nicky put one arm around my waist and held me pinned against his chest, freeing up his other hand to grab my ass.

“I've shared Anita with Nathaniel and Micah at the same time. Unless Jean-Claude is planning to mouth-kiss Nicky next, I've seen the show.”

Jean-Claude and I pulled back, looked at each other, then at Nicky. Nicky turned his head not to me, but to the other man, offering a kiss, which he'd never done before with any of the other men in my life. Jean-Claude looked at him, smiled, and then leaned into the kiss. I was still in their arms held close and tight, so that I got to watch the kiss so close that I could have joined it, if I could have figured out where my lips would go.

Nicky's mouth worked, putting more into the kiss than just a touching of lips. Jean-Claude responded to the eagerness, his other hand playing in the blond hair as he kissed him back. Seeing them kiss excited me, but being this close to it tensed things low in my body so hard and so tight it was a pleasure bordering on pain. It stole my breath, parted my lips as if I'd drawn a breath to blow out a candle.

Another hand touched my face, made me turn to find Sin there. He kissed me while the two men were still kissing each other. Sin's kiss
was as eager as ever; if he was bothered by anything the others were doing it didn't show, as he wrapped his arms around the three of us. I didn't fight the eagerness of his mouth on mine as Jean-Claude transferred his hand from the back of my neck to wrap around Sin and draw him in tighter against the side of Nicky's body and me. Nicky flexed his arm around my waist, almost crushing me against his chest, and the extra force was enough to draw eager noises from me that Sin licked and finally bit gently away.

I felt Jean-Claude's power like an early-spring wind with that edge of winter's cold still riding it, but the promise of warmth and flowers to come. Once it would have been only the chill of the grave, but the more wereanimals I connected to, the warmer his energy had become. I drew back from Sin, and the other two men had drawn back from each other. There was a crimson dot on the edge of Nicky's lower lip. Jean-Claude's eyes had bled to solid shining blue.

My voice sounded breathy as I said, “You have to be careful French-kissing vampires, Nicky.”

He licked the fresh blood from his lip and said, “I'm not used to the fangs yet.”

“Bloody kisses like sweet copper pennies in my mouth,” Jean-Claude said.

“Pretty talk,” Nicky said.

“Jean-Claude always knows just what to say. I think it's something about being French,” I said.

“
Non, ma petite, mon lionne
, I am inspired by such bounty before my eyes.”

“You know that Nathaniel likes to bite, right?” Sin asked.

We all looked at him.

“I've seen kisses that ended with lips bleeding a lot more than this.”

“Then we will have to do better, won't we, Nicky?” Jean-Claude said.

“Yeah, we wouldn't want the kid disappointed.”

“Don't call me
kid
.”

“Prove that you aren't one and I'll stop.”

“How do I prove it?”

Nicky smiled, a damn-near-evil smile. “I've got a few ideas.”

N
ICKY TRIED, BUT
in the end Sin saw it all as a sort of competitive dare, so nothing that Jean-Claude was willing to do was enough to scare him off. I think Nicky would have been willing to personally do things that would have freaked Sin out, not because he wanted to have sex with him, because I was pretty sure he didn't, but because Nicky was just that competitive. If it was a game of chicken, Nicky was not going to be the one who flinched. Once I would have said the same of Jean-Claude, but something about Sin hit issues for him that I didn't even know he had. Maybe the idea that his issues were part of what had kept me from being in love with Cynric was true, but if so, how the hell did we prove it, or fix it? Hell, did we want to fix it?

All the clothes were gone, the four of us nude in the newly delivered double king-size bed with the red silk sheets from the even bigger bed tucked in and around the bed, so that we were still on top of the sheets rather than fighting to get them free. Jean-Claude's skin was so white against the crimson sheets. Sin's summer tan looked even darker against them. Nicky looked paler when his skin was next to Sin's tan, but he didn't look pale at all next to the nearly pure white of Jean-Claude's body. Nicky's eye seemed like an even brighter blue no matter if his face was next to Jean-Claude's midnight blue or Sin's blue tiger's eyes.

I kissed Nicky's face, laying my lips over the scar where his other eye would have been, and he put his arms around me as I lay on top of him and took my kisses to the scars, the same as my lips touching the closed lid of his other eye. I'd convinced him a while back that to me the scar was just another texture of his body to kiss and caress.

Someone started kissing along my back while I was kissing Nicky, and I wondered for a moment, but I didn't have to look to know the feel of Jean-Claude's lips against my skin. He spoke with his mouth
against my lower back, his hands smoothing over my hips so that I writhed against the front of Nicky's body. “I need you on top, Nicky.”

“All you have to do is ask,” he said, and he rolled us over so fast that I made that high-pitched “eep” sound that was such a girl sound. I was just suddenly staring up at Nicky above me. I laughed a little nervously, because I could feel his weight above me. Muscle weighs more, and so did Nicky. We weren't having intercourse yet, so it was just all that heaviness pressing me against the bed. I had a moment of realizing that if he wanted to trap me, I was trapped. It sped my heart, raced my pulse, and made me swallow hard. If Nicky hadn't topped me in the bedroom, would that moment have scared me for real? I don't know, because he did and I let that little flash of fear grow, because I knew he'd like it.

He leaned over my face, sniffing loudly along my skin. “Fear makes the meat taste better,” he said in a voice that held an edge of growl. When he raised his face, his eye had changed to lion amber. He let a trickle of growl slide out from between his human lips. I trusted him utterly, but the game was to be afraid in that safe roller-coaster-ride way, so I didn't fight that moment of terror that thrilled through my body. It was instinctive, hardwired into that primitive part of the brain that remembered what a growl like that meant against the skin of your throat.

Sin crawled across the bed from the right side of us. He lowered his head and sniffed the air near me. “She's never afraid of me like this.”

“You don't know how to be scary yet,” Nicky said.

The weight was suddenly crushing and I said, “Too heavy.”

Jean-Claude appeared over Nicky's shoulder and I realized I was pinned under their combined weight. If Nicky hadn't been raised just a little above my chest, they might have been heavy enough to keep me from breathing. I managed to say, “If we were fucking this would be fun, but it's just heavy now.”

Jean-Claude laid his head on Nicky's shoulder, settling even more of his weight on top of the other man and on me. “Nicky, do you want to be inside her when I feed?”

“Yes, let me make her come at least once before you feed, because once you do I won't last.”

“As you like,” Jean-Claude said; he smiled down at me and then slid out of sight, but I could tell by the weight that he wasn't on top of Nicky anymore. Nicky was free to move his body enough for me to feel that he could pretend for Cynric that he was into sex with Jean-Claude, but some things couldn't be faked. He wasn't completely soft, but he wasn't that eager hardness that he usually was when we got to this point. I expected him to change positions, or ask for a hand or maybe a mouth from me, but he didn't. He moved his hips so that I had the choice of spreading my legs or him grinding himself into my pelvis. I wanted to make love to him, so I helped. By the time he'd settled himself between my legs, he was harder than he had been just seconds before, but still not hard enough. With most men, if they weren't hard when they started, you needed to back up and do some more foreplay, but Nicky raised himself on those amazing arms, his upper body rising above me so that I caressed my hands along all that hard work in the gym carved into the body above me. I gazed down the line of his body past the ridged hardness of his stomach until I could see that part of him that he was pushing against me. Even only partially erect, the sight of it tightened my body, and I threw my head back with a small cry so that I was suddenly staring up into his face.

His hair had spilled forward so I could see all of his face. There was no way for him to hide. The first time I'd seen him like this he'd ducked his head and let his hair fall back in front of his scars, but now he just looked at me bold as brass, his face and that one blue eye so confident, so Nicky, now that he knew that I wouldn't look away or flinch. He wasn't going to see anything in my face except how much I wanted him.

He smiled down at me and began to push his hips as if he were already inside me. It made that part of his body rub against my opening and other things. I could feel him growing harder, bigger, and the sensation of it drew small, eager sounds from me, so that I raised my hips to meet him, but he was still not quite hard enough. He put all his weight on one arm and reached down to use his hand to angle the crown inside me. I almost protested, but as soon as the head penetrated I couldn't speak for just a second and he was already pushing himself in and out of me. With every thrust he grew firmer, longer,
until he was as hard as he needed to be to start fucking me. We made love, but I made love with all my men. Nicky liked to fuck; there was no other word for what we both enjoyed together. He drove himself in and out of me fast and faster, driving himself deep so that he hit every sweet spot inside me over and over and over again. If Jean-Claude hadn't been with us Nicky would have pinned my wrists and made it rougher, but that didn't work for my raven-haired fiancé. So I got to look down the long line of Nicky's body and watch his body work in and out of mine, until in between one stroke and another I orgasmed, screaming my pleasure into his face. It startled him, I think, but he kept his rhythm so the orgasm built and fed into another one and another. I gripped his arms where he held himself above me, and if it had been most of my other lovers I would have raked my nails down his arms, but we'd had this discussion before so that even while I screamed my pleasure I didn't forget that some night soon he'd be in charge of me and if I bled him now he'd bleed me later. I didn't like being bled during sex any more than he did. Well, except for one type of bloodletting.

Nicky's voice was clear, but full of the effort he was putting into fucking me and not going himself. “Jean-Claude, feed now. I'm not going to last much longer.”

Jean-Claude came up behind him again, but this time their combined weight only pushed against Nicky's hips, burying him deeper inside me, which made me cry out again. Nicky shuddered above me, eye closing for a moment, and then he said, “Do it, Jean-Claude.”

Jean-Claude smoothed Nicky's yellow hair to one side to bare the strong, thick line of his neck. He whispered in French against Nicky's hair, and I felt some tension go out of Nicky. He was still thick and hard inside me, still holding that impossibly muscular chest up off me on the swell and curve of his arms, but I knew the vampire was inside his head now. Jean-Claude raised his head. “Are you ready,
mon lionne
?” he whispered.

“Yes, Jean-Claude, do it. Just do it!”

Jean-Claude opened his mouth wide, so that I caught a flash of fangs, his eyes a solid burning blue, as if the night sky had caught fire, and then he struck. I could see his mouth locked on the side of Nicky's
neck, watch his throat swallowing, his mouth sucking. Nicky's body reacted, beginning to pump inside me again. He was already buried as deep inside me as he could go, and Jean-Claude's body pinned his hips so he didn't have much movement, but what he had was enough. He began to move faster in and out, in and out, hitting deep and hard, so that I screamed out again for him, fighting not to close my eyes so that I could see Jean-Claude drinking him down, Nicky's eye closed, face almost slack as if he'd already gone, but I could feel him harder than ever, so hard, so thick, so . . . He brought me screaming again, and this time he yelled with me, his body shoving one more time deep inside me. I could feel him quivering inside me as he came, and his body shuddered above me as the vampire rode him.

Nicky finally collapsed, throwing his chest to one side so that he didn't bury my face against his pecs. I appreciated it, not just because I didn't have to eat my way to freedom through his chest, but because I could still see Jean-Claude at his throat. I was looking at him with my body still thrumming with all those orgasms as the vampire rose up. His mouth was still open wide enough that I saw him lick along his fangs; his face for that instant was as bestial as any wereanimal's and then it was gone, hidden behind that beautiful face. Only the eyes shining with blue-black fire showed what was inside and had gotten to come out for a few minutes.

He helped Nicky roll to one side where he just lay there, eye closed; only the rise and fall of his chest let me know he was alive. A thin line of blood trickled from the neat fang marks in the side of his neck. For them to bleed that much meant Jean-Claude had gotten a little carried away. We'd all enjoyed ourselves.

Jean-Claude was on all fours above me, his body hard and ready, and just the sight of him above me like that made me cry out again. I reached for him, but he caught my hands and said, “Sin, help me move her to the edge of the bed.”

“Why?”

“So you can join us. You need a little encouragement to be able to feed the
ardeur
for Anita.”

I didn't know what he meant at first, but Sin pulled-half-carried me to the edge of the bed and I could suddenly see what Jean-Claude
meant. Sin wasn't hard, or ready. He was soft, hanging loose against the front of his body. He hadn't enjoyed watching the three of us together. I didn't know what about it had bothered him, but something had—his body told me that.

Jean-Claude moved me to the edge until my head spilled over the side and I was looking at Sin's body upside down. It wasn't one of my favorite positions for giving oral, but with him still soft, it would be good. I'd change positions when he got hard enough, or that was my plan. Sin was almost too tall for the lower bed, all that long leg so that he had to lean in, so he was almost doing a standing push-up just so I could reach him. Jean-Claude's hands cupped my hips, and I cupped the backs of Sin's thighs and sucked him down, so soft and warm. I loved sucking on a man when he was this soft. There was no fight to breathe, no choking, just the sensation of him in my mouth. Jean-Claude's hands caressed my hips and I felt the tip of him brush my opening. It made me pause with my mouth buried as tight to Sin's body as I could get. Jean-Claude entered me and I was so wet, so ready from everything that Nicky and I had done. It was amazing feeling Jean-Claude's body slide inside me. It made me moan with Sin's body in my mouth. He was already growing harder. Jean-Claude found his rhythm quickly and brought me to climax with Sin still inside my mouth, so I screamed my orgasm around him. He shuddered and when I came up shallow on him he was thicker and he started moving himself inside my mouth with me sucking him, so that we started to find a rhythm of him inside my mouth as Jean-Claude found one between my legs.

“Unleash the
ardeur
,
ma petite
; unleash it so you will feed on both of us when we go.”

I called the
ardeur
, unleashed it, uncaged it, and let it roar over all three of us so that the two men both cried out. Jean-Claude brought me again with the feel of him inside me, sliding over and over on that sweet spot just inside. It made me scream around Sin's body as he thrust deeper inside my throat. I didn't have to fight my gag reflex now, because with the
ardeur
I didn't have one; it was great and made oral sex even more amazing than it was. I used my hands on Sin's body to urge him to fuck me harder and faster, shoving all that hard length
down my throat deeper than I could ever take it without the
ardeur
riding me, riding all of us.

“Close,” Sin gasped out.

“Hold until I bring her one more time.” And he caressed himself over that spot three more times to match those three words. The weight grew and spread and I was nothing but pleasure, shaking and shrieking between the two of them.

“Oh, God, please,” Sin yelled.

“Almost!” Jean-Claude answered him and shoved himself faster and faster inside me, not trying to caress that spot near my opening, but places deeper inside me.

Sin had stopped moving; I think he was afraid to keep fucking my throat or he'd go before Jean-Claude, so he stayed almost frozen above me. I started sucking on him again since he wasn't moving for me. He said, “Anita, please, I'll . . .”