Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(65)
“That’s their issue, not mine.”
He looked at my face and there was a depth of feeling in his brown eyes that once would have made my heart sing but now forced me to look down so he couldn’t read the uncertainty in mine.
“I’m tired of their issues,” he said, then added, “and so tired of my own.” He bent down and I looked in time to see him kiss Jean-Claude softly, tenderly, the way most women like to be kissed. He drew back and Jean-Claude’s eyes were still closed, the black lace of his lashes making him look like Snow White in some gender-switch porn. I had sex on my mind but after what we’d just done together and gazing at the two of them nude knowing I could just reach across and touch them . . . who could blame me?
Jean-Claude opened his eyes and gazed up at Richard. “I feel like I am dreaming, and I do not wish to wake, but we must clean up enough to be presentable and use our combined energies to send the audience home safe and sound.”
“Just tell me what to do,” Richard said.
Jean-Claude sat up, then got to his feet like he was dancing onstage. I was not going to be anywhere near that smooth standing up in my heels. Maybe he read my mind, or maybe he just knew me well enough, because he offered me a hand up, which I happily took, because I actually needed it.
Richard stood up with us. There was a moment of awkwardness when it was like he didn’t know whose hand to take.
“Ma petite needs the most help in those delicious shoes.”
Richard moved so he could take my other hand, and we walked toward the door, and then I stopped so they had to stop. “Not everyone in the hallway gets to see me naked on a regular basis; I need my dress.”
“I should put on my clothes, too,” Richard said.
“And I have a robe,” Jean-Claude said.
“Someone hand me my dress, so I don’t have to bend down for it.” Jean-Claude bent in the boots, and I admit to admiring the view while he did it, so that I was grinning happily when he handed me my dress. He smiled back as if he knew exactly what I’d been admiring. I wrapped my arms around
him with the dress in one hand so that we could kiss. We drew back at the same time to smile into each other’s eyes. I suddenly felt better like everything would be all right; no matter what anyone else did, we would be good.
Richard stopped with his clothes in his hands. “If we’re going to clean up, I’d rather do that before I get dressed.”
“If we tend to the audience before we shower, then I might have something for you to wear onstage,” Jean-Claude said.
I watched Richard hesitate. “I teach at a college, which is more forgiving than when I taught junior high, but I don’t have tenure yet and stripping might make sure I never get it.”
“If we hide your face and get you out of your conservative clothes I doubt any of your fellow faculty will dare admit they recognize you except in their fantasies,” Jean-Claude said.
“What will you be wearing?” I asked.
“I have a robe that matches the boots.”
I grinned and shook my head. “Of course you do.”
“If you have clothes that will fit me and that someone is willing for me to borrow, I’m game,”
Richard said.
“We will find something,” Jean-Claude said with a smile, and we did.
27
JEAN-CLAUDE HAD THE audience sitting in their chairs perfectly still again, eyes wide and staring at nothing, I couldn’t even see them blink. I wondered how long you could keep eyes open before they began to dry out. Of course, they hadn’t been sitting here like this the whole time.
Nathaniel had brought Graham onstage and had an impromptu dance lesson, which the audience had loved, and then after Ethan had knocked on our door the audience had gone still like they were now.
Jean-Claude had been able to concentrate on them again. Our lovemaking and the ardeur had given Jean-Claude back his control and power, but his attention had returned only after the door knock.
Now Richard and I stood onstage holding his hands and waiting for him to wake the audience. He’d warned us not to voice our doubts or that we found the frozen, unblinking audience creepy, because like patients coming out of anesthesia they could remember what was said over them. We didn’t want to go to this much trouble and then have them remember us saying things that didn’t match the new memories Jean-Claude had created.
Though admittedly my greatest danger was tripping in the five-and-a-half-inch heels because I was gawking at Richard in his borrowed clothes. I wasn’t sure what it was about the outfit that distracted me so; maybe it was the shiny pleather boy shorts that hugged the back of him on purpose and were having some difficulty holding all of the front of him. There were even matching shiny combat boots, but they didn’t distract me like the shorts. I’d just seen him nude and had sex with him only minutes ago, so why was I having such trouble not staring at the front of the shorts? Because I hadn’t gotten to go down on him or have him inside me in any way. I loved and was still totally shocked that he’d managed to cross the great divide with Jean-Claude, but it had still been a long time since I’d been with Richard. Sex had been the only area where he and I had always been good together.
He looked at me across the stage. The mask he was wearing wasn’t shiny, but real black leather. It was all one piece, handmade, and the most expensive part of the outfit. It had delicate points up above his hair that could be horns, but there were two equally delicate points on the bottom of the mask, so they framed his lips and even drew attention to the dimple. Nathaniel had helped him with his hair backstage so that it was a mass of foamy waves completely hiding the string that held the mask in place. The stage lights caught hints of copper and gold in the brown of his hair, like strong sunlight could do. I stared into his brown eyes surrounded by the leather and finally realized that I liked the mask, or him in the mask. It hid the high cheekbones and all the parts of his bone structure that made him so utterly masculine and left bare the full kissable lips and the softer triangle of his lower jaw