Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(51)



He should have been at my side tonight. He would have helped me control things, because we’d worked our issues together, unlike Rodina and Ru.

Jean-Claude breathed through me, “Happy thoughts, ma petite, we will see your lion later tonight, but in this moment I need you to feel my hand in yours and be joyful of it.” He squeezed my hand as he said it, and I squeezed back. I let him see that I was happy to be with him; I chased back the next thought, which was not happy with the metaphysics going wrong and having our only wolf option be Graham. He’d grown as a person, but he still wasn’t one of my people, our people. The stray thought came, But he could be. I didn’t know if it was from Graham, Jean-Claude, or one of the audience.

Jean-Claude was driving the bus, because I had no idea how to do this. I was powerful, but I was a better battery than a witch, and whether you called it psychic ability or magic, what Jean-Claude was doing took training and practice that I didn’t have.

I thought of running my hands over Jean-Claude in nothing but the thong and boots and that was a happy thought. It helped chase back the stray thought about Graham. Jean-Claude raised my hand and laid a gentle kiss on the back of it to let me know he appreciated me getting into the spirit of things. I did want to run my hands over him and a lot more once we had privacy. He planted images in the audience’s mind of me flirting and teasing with the men as they’d come up onstage for the first time.

He made me more suave and debonair than I was capable of with strangers onstage. I’d been Nikki for Nathaniel and Jean-Claude here, but never to a bunch of people I’d never touched before.

He swung us around so that the entire audience could see us like we were being presented to them.

They screamed Graham’s name, or just screamed in excitement. They called out Jean-Claude’s name, too, because he was showing more skin than they’d seen from him in years. A few even called my

stage name and I waved and smiled like that made me happy. I could pretend to get off the stage sooner.

“Our new werewolf is overdressed, is he not?” The women screamed and called out agreement.

It was one thing to plant Graham being sexy and dancing onstage, and it was another for him to do it, so Jean-Claude thought of something simpler for all of us. Graham knelt in front of us, and the moment he stopped touching Graham the energy felt wrong. He touched the side of Graham’s face, and it was as if his power got a boost. I was supposed to help Graham take his shirt off, but that left Jean-Claude not touching either of us, and that seemed like a bad idea.

Jean-Claude moved me like we were dancing so that I was in front of Graham where he knelt, and he came in at the werewolf’s back. Then he let go of both of us for moment and it was as if the world contracted so fast and hard I was dizzy. I reached out and he gave me his hand, the other back on Graham. Touching made the energy expand again; it was as if Jean-Claude’s area of control was expanding and contracting, which wasn’t possible. He was the king of all the vampires in this country.

They were blood-oathed to him, which meant he gained power from all of them.

“What was that?” Graham whispered.

I gave a bare shake of my head because I didn’t know. Jean-Claude smiled and flirted with the crowd, but in his head was the thought, “The other vampire has left something behind.”

What? I mouthed.

He thought, “Power.”

That didn’t answer the question, but before I could ask a better question, he called out to the audience, “Shall Nikki and I help our wolf strip?”

“Yes! Please! God yes!” And more enthusiastic encouragement from the crowd so that the noise was almost too much. It made me wish I’d worn ear protection like I did when I went to the gun range.

Jean-Claude helped me kneel in front of Graham and then went gracefully to his knees behind him.

Graham was simultaneously excited to see me and a little apprehensive about Jean-Claude at his back. Not a lot, but a little. Jean-Claude laughed and pressed himself to the other man’s back as he drew me closer, so we hugged him together. The crowd loved it, but Jean-Claude whispered to Graham, “Your virtue is safe tonight, lupe.”

Graham was embarrassed then that he’d let his momentary fears show. He forced himself to relax between us and not be a big baby about it, his thoughts or mine, I knew they weren’t Jean-Claude’s. I slid my fingers underneath Graham’s shirt. His skin was so warm, his body heat caught underneath his shirt, so it was like warming my hands as I caressed upward, tracing the smooth firmness of his stomach while Jean-Claude did the same to his back. I had a confused moment where I wasn’t sure if I was touching the softer flesh of his stomach or the firmness of his back. Graham shuddered between us as if we’d done a lot more than just touch his stomach and back.

Jean-Claude looked at me over the other man’s shoulder and we stared into each other’s eyes as we ran our hands up his body, forcing his shirt to bunch around our arms, slowly exposing his upper body to the crowd. They went wild, screaming and catcalling. I sensed security moving into place around the stage just in case, but they didn’t rush us because Jean-Claude was in charge of the energy

this time and he didn’t want violence, he wanted lust. Safe, teasing promises of lust, which is what a good strip club is, the promise but never the fulfillment of the fantasy.

Jean-Claude smiled at me over Graham’s shoulder, and I smiled back; we could feel each other’s hands on his body. Graham’s breath came out in a long sigh, his pulse speeding from being in the middle of our power exchange. The shirt lifted, revealing his nipples; the small tips of them were hard with excitement. It made me speculate about how hard other things might be, and I got the pleasure from Jean-Claude that we had made him excited. Part pride in workmanship, part dominance; I almost never felt that way about people I wasn’t emotionally connected to, but for Jean-Claude that was always a high. No wonder he enjoyed being onstage here.

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