Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(55)

Nathaniel reassured me that he’d made it clear it was an ardeur emergency and anyone not cleared for it needed to stay away, except for the wolves. We needed the few we had on staff too badly. As each wolf gathered around Jean-Claude, his energy grew stronger and filled the room and the alien energy inside the audience began to push back, as if it finally recognized a threat.

“I would that I could come with you, but I must stay here and control the crowd. Go, feed, and grant me all the energy you can, so we may cleanse them of the other’s taint.” He let me go and I was less sure, until Nathaniel took my hand and suddenly I felt solid again. Graham started to hang back, but Jean-Claude said, “One wolf must go with you, ma petite.”

I looked out at the smiling crowd who were sitting so quietly in their seats. He had calmed their minds, would mess with some of their memories, but if he couldn’t find enough power to save them from what the other vampire had done to them, they were all dead, they just didn’t know it yet. He, or she, or whatever, would call to them in the middle of the night, and they would go like sleepwalkers unknowing and unresisting to be food. If they were lucky they’d survive the three times it took for the last draining bite to turn them into vampires. Unwilling vampires, which was still classed as murder, or at least manslaughter. If they were unlucky the vampire would just slaughter them, or turn them into a Renfield, a person with one or two bites that the vampire controls utterly, some with the promise of immortality eventually, and some just too weak-willed to fight the mind control. A Renfield had put the cross-shaped burn scar on my arm with a brand, so I’d look like a vampire who’d survived an attack, and because it was torture while we waited for his master to wake for the night. These people had come to Guilty Pleasures for some safe flirting, a chance to cut loose and be a little wild, not be enslaved to the newest master vampire in town, because that’s what it was, a new master. One powerful enough to roll Jean-Claude and me with us surrounded by other supernatural bodyguards, and none of us had sensed what was happening until it was too late. Once we saved these people who had trusted us with their safety, then we had to find the new master in town and kill his, her, their, or its ass.

Graham was trying to control his expression and not seem eager, but the tension of it rode down his arm and into our clasped hands. Nathaniel took my other hand, and he didn’t try to hide his eagerness. Voyeurism was one of his major kinks, and apparently we’d put on a really great show, because he was almost bubbling with excitement. I frowned at him, and he leaned in for a kiss, smiling. I smiled and kissed him back. “Why aren’t I angry with you?”

“Because you knew I was kinky as fuck before you fell in love with me.”

It made me laugh, because he was right, and because he could make me laugh in the middle of something potentially dark and horrible. Nathaniel had dragged, pushed, and just loved me into owning parts of myself that I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with. He was supposed to be the most submissive of my men, but he’d been the one who pushed when the others backed off, even Jean-Claude. If Nathaniel hadn’t forced me to confront certain things about myself, tonight would have sent me running for the hills and away from Jean-Claude. I was polyamorous for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was that without all my people in my life, I might not be with any of them.

Graham was very still as he held my hand like a rabbit freezes when the fox is near. No, he’d frozen like the fox hiding just outside the henhouse waiting for his chance to go inside and eat his fill.

He was sorry for the emergency, but he wanted to go with us and help feed the ardeur. He’d wanted it for years. It was part of what would make him a high-energy feed for me. I squeezed Graham’s hand a little tighter and let Nathaniel lead us toward the staff-only door. Looked like Graham was finally going to get his wish; he was going to be food.





22

BY THE TIME we got to the office I wasn’t exactly getting cold feet, but I was unsure how to transition from not having sex to Hey, baby. I was good on beginnings, and great once the clothes came off and things were happening, but I had a lot of trouble with the transition between the two. No amount of experience seemed to make me better at it. If it had been one of the loves of my life, or even a regular friend with benefits, I would have just said something awkward and it would have been over and things would have progressed, but Graham wasn’t either of those things.

Nathaniel raised my hand in both of his and looked longingly into my eyes. “I love you, but we don’t have time for you to figure this out and be all stubborn and cute and awkward.”

I fought not to frown at him. “I love you, too, and I know we don’t have time to ease me through my usual issues.”

“Then can I help smooth this over and get us going?”

I nodded.

He flashed me one of those smiles that lit his face up with joy. It made me smile back just to see it.

“You were so incredibly hot onstage tonight.”

My smile turned into a frown.

He shook my hand as if to get my attention. “You know I loved watching you with Jean-Claude and Graham tonight, and in front of an audience—I found it incredibly hot.”

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths because I wanted to be angry at him. Why? Because anger was my go-to emotion. It was what I felt when I was embarrassed, uncomfortable, scared, frightened, in love when I didn’t like the way it was going, or just about any damn thing I was feeling that didn’t make me utterly and completely happy with the emotion and myself for feeling it. Months of therapy to figure just that out, not why I did it, or what traumas it was attached to; just that anger was my shield for everything. It’s a great weapon when you need it, but it’s a lousy one when what you need is something closer to compassion, or patience, or lust.