Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(57)

“Richard, what are you doing here?”

“You need a wolf to feed on,” he said.

“We haven’t seen each other in almost a year, and you just march in here expecting sex?”

His dark brown eyes that could look so friendly narrowed. “Would you prefer sex with Graham?”

I glanced at the man whose hand I was still holding. Graham put his free hand up as if to show he was unarmed. “You don’t want me, Anita, I can smell that I leave you cold without Jean-Claude to help things along.”

“I don’t want anyone right now,” I said, and that was true. Minutes ago, it had been hot and wonderful onstage, but I now knew that Jean-Claude had been very deliberate with me and Graham.

He’d chosen what he saw as the lesser evil when it came to sharing me with yet another person. I couldn’t even argue with the division of labor, but the choice of someone I wasn’t attracted to, or an ex who had broken my heart more times than I could count? Surely there was a third option?

Jean-Claude’s thoughts were suddenly loud in my head. “You must feed, ma petite.”

“On Richard?” I said.

“He felt our distress and came to help, and this is the help I need, ma petite.”

Richard stepped farther into the room. “I left a date tonight because Jean-Claude let me feel what he’s sensing in the audience. No vampire could have rolled Jean-Claude and the audience like this, Anita. Jean-Claude has the energy of all the vampires in the country that are blood-oathed to him; nothing should be able to touch him, especially not when he’s in his element here at Guilty Pleasures.”

“They screwed with me, too, until I had a wolf to touch.”

Richard took another step toward us. “Let me be the wolf that you and Jean-Claude need tonight.”

Nathaniel’s hand tensed in mine. It made me look at him. I realized he was shielding about as hard as he ever did from me, so that even holding his hand I couldn’t feel what he was feeling or thinking.

“You were encouraging me to have sex with Graham.”

“I was.”

“I’m UIfric leader of our pack; by wereanimal law I don’t need to get anyone’s permission except for Anita’s, but we aren’t just animals, and before you sleep with another man’s girlfriend in a poly relationship you have to have his permission, too.”

Nathaniel looked startled and didn’t try to hide it. “I don’t know what to say, that’s . . . I appreciate you treating me like Anita’s partner and asking my permission.”

“You’re welcome, and do I have your okay for this?”

Nathaniel let out a breath I hadn’t known he was holding. “I hate the way you’ve treated Anita and me in the past, but if tonight has proved anything it’s that Jean-Claude needs his own wolf to call, so if Anita is okay with it, then so am I.”

“Ma petite, I am close to needing you to release the ardeur and simply feed without all the civilized niceties.” He let me feel that whatever was inside the audience was trying to spread, and where it wanted to go was back inside him. He’d been powerful enough to cast out the compulsion the first time, but that had been with me at his side. Now he had more wolves, but he didn’t have my hand in his and he was the king of us all; he shouldn’t have needed my hand to hold in the dark.

“We’re out of time,” I said.





“You have to wear a condom,” Nathaniel said.

Richard started undoing his tie. “Then I need to be out of my clothes and wearing one before we release the ardeur.”

I didn’t argue with him, but I wanted to.





24

THE CLOTHES CAME off without any preliminaries, and I got to see that Richard hadn’t been hitting the weight room as much as the last time I’d seen him nude. It made his body smoother, closer to the way he’d looked when I first started dating him. When he’d left us, he’d also had to leave our gym that was set up for supernatural strength and abilities. There were other gyms in the area that had facilities for supernaturals, but they were all public gyms and Richard was still in the closet. To most of the world he was a mild-mannered college biology professor, and Clark Kent couldn’t go to Superman’s gym.

Graham kept touching my hand, or arm, or back while Nathaniel helped me undress, because every time I lost touch with the werewolf that other power tried to do bad things tonight. I was down to just the high heels when Jean-Claude’s power pushed at us. “I need you now, ma petite, leave the shoes and grant me more power. Something is very wrong out here.”

Nathaniel stood and offered me his arm, while Graham kept my hand. The two of them walked me toward Richard, and it reminded me of the discussion we were having about who was going to walk me down the aisle if my father bailed on me. Nathaniel and Micah were one of the ideas for escorting me. Yes, we were nude, and it was very not a wedding, and it was Richard and not Jean-Claude, but once the man in front of me had proposed and I’d said yes. We’d spent years trying to force each other to meet in the middle. Him wanting white-picket-fence monogamy, me wanting black-barbed-wire polyamory. Now here we were.

“You’re beautiful,” Richard said.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” I said; then Nathaniel squeezed my arm, and I tried again. “You’re gorgeous.”