50
The t-shirt and undies went in the first rash of hands, but I'd never tried to touch him when it wasn't a metaphysical necessity. I'd never just turned to Nathaniel because I wanted him. It wasn't that I didn't find him attractive. God knows I did, but I hadn't realized until those first few moments how much I'd come to rely on the ardeur. I'd thought of it as only a curse, but I appreciated for the first time that it greased the wheels for me. It got me over the embarrassment, the awkwardness, the good-girls-don't-do-this attitude. Without the ardeur, it was just me, and the inside of my head was ugly.
Nathaniel noticed, because he notices everything. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at me. "What's wrong?"
I wasn't sure how to say it, and that must have shown on my face, because he said, "Just say it, Anita, whatever it is."
I looked up at him and fought the urge to gaze down the length of his body. I had to close my eyes, and finally said, "Without the ardeur, it's just me. It's just me, and I'm..." I sat up. "I'm not comfortable."
"With me?"
I started to nod, then stopped, and said the real truth. "With myself."
He moved forward on the bed so that he rested his face against the small of my back. He was so warm. "What does that mean, exactly?"
How did I explain something to someone else, that I didn't really understand myself? "I don't know if I can explain it," I said.
The bathroom door opened, and we both looked up. Jason was there with a towel around his waist. He wasn't wet, but he was wearing a towel. I'd been around the shapeshifters long enough to think that was odd.
"I can't stand it," he said, "I just can't stand it."
"What?" I said.
"You're going to fuck this up."
I looked at him, and it wasn't a friendly look.
"Don't glare at me." He came to stand at the end of the bed, hands on hips. "I've told you that I'd give almost anything to have someone look at me the way Nathaniel looks at you."
"Yeah, but..."
"But nothing," he said, "I thought you were growing, changing, but what you just said blames it all on the ardeur. You didn't do any of it. Not your fault. If you fuck everything that moves while under the sway of the ardeur, you're still blameless."
I started to argue with him, but couldn't think how to do it. I finally said, "I sort of agree with what you said, what of it?"
"God, Anita, it's not about blame. You act like it's a sin."
Something must have shown on my face, because he made a sound in his throat that was part growl, and part exasperation. I had to look away from the expression in his eyes, the anger in them. "I was taught that it was a sin."
"They also taught you that Santa Claus was real, and you don't believe that anymore, do you?"
I crossed my arms across my body, which lost some of its intended sullenness, because I was naked, and it's never easy to be sullen when you're nude. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He went down on his knees by the bed. "It means, look at him."
I looked stubbornly at Jason, and not at Nathaniel.
"Turn around and look at him, or I'll turn you around."
"You'll try," I said.
"Fine, you want to wrestle, we can wrestle, but wouldn't it be less embarrassing, and less childish, if you just turned around?"
I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and turned around.
Nathaniel was lying there on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. His face was what you noticed first. Those amazing lavender eyes with the remnants of the eye makeup still there, making them look darker, larger, as if they needed any help to be amazing. His eyes held such patience, a calm surety that I'd fix this. That it would be alright. I didn't like anyone looking at me like that, because life had taught me that it usually wasn't alright. That I couldn't save everyone. That I couldn't fix anything. His lips held a slight smile. There was no anxiety in him. No fear that I'd run. He looked at me with the calm face of a saint staring into the face of God. Secure in his faith, safe in his knowledge, trusting in a way that I had lost so long ago. How could he look at me like that? Didn't he know better? He'd lived with me for four months. Didn't he know by now that I was screwed six ways to Sunday, and he shouldn't depend on me?
He ducked his head, almost a bashful movement, but it drew my gaze across the sweep of his shoulder, down the curve of his back. I'd only allowed myself to touch him below the waist once. When the ardeur was very new. I'd covered his back and buttocks with bites, and he'd loved it, and I had fed, and I'd never let myself touch him that much again, until the last two days. That first time had been about feeding, and I hadn't taken time to really see him, really enjoy him, because I'd looked at it as an evil necessity. Looking at him now, I felt guilty for ever thinking of him like that. He deserved better.
I'd made him put clothes on for months, at least shorts, even in bed. But he was entirely too comfortable nude for me not to have caught glimpses of him. Even last night, at the club, I hadn't really let myself look at him, not really. Because if I'd allowed myself to linger on his body, I'd have lingered on the part that seemed to fascinate me most, and, no, it wasn't what you think. His back had a slight sway to it, a curve that spilled to a lovely ass, but at the farthest line of his back, before it became not his back, were dimples. Maybe dimple wasn't the right word for them, but I had no other word to use. I stared at him now, let my eyes linger, rather than glance and look hurriedly away. I let myself see not that he was nude, but see his body.
I reached out to him and let myself do something that I'd wanted to do for months. I traced my hand down the curve of his back and came to rest just there, just at the end of his back, before the swell of his ass.
He shivered just a little under the touch of my hand, even though all I had done was lay my hand flat against his skin. Let the weight of my hand rest between those two dimples so low on his body. It was as if when the clay had been wet, God had placed his thumbs just above the swell of Nathaniel's rump, as an extra sweetness, like the idea that a dimple near the mouth is the kiss of an angel before the baby is born, so those dimples on his body were like some extra grace.
I kissed, ever so gently, each of those smooth hollows, like tiny shallow cups in his skin. Each mark was the size of my lips, as if they were meant for me to kiss them. I laid my head in the curve of his back, rested my cheek on those marks of grace, so that my face was slightly up tilted with the swell of his body, leading my eyes down the curve of his rump and his distant legs and feet, but for the moment I was content where I was.
I used his body as my pillow, and just as my mouth fit to those kissable dimples, so my head fit neatly in the curve of his body, as if I were meant to rest there. Nathaniel's breath went out in a long sigh, and his body seemed to settle into the bed, as if some tension that I hadn't even seen had run out of him and left him able to rest.
I trailed my hand across the curve of his ass, and he made a small sound for me. I trailed my fingers lower, tracing the line of his thigh. It wasn't that his legs were off-limits in the way that other areas had been, but I realized that I'd divided his body along a line at his waist, like some boundary in a war. Above the line was us, below the line was forbidden. His thigh was lush and smooth-skinned, and firm with muscle.
I brought my hand back up his leg and allowed my fingers to trace circles on his derriere. Those small movements drew small, quick, sounds from him, almost sounds of protest.
I asked, and my voice was as lazy and soft as my touch, "You're almost making pain noises, does it hurt?"
"No," he said, and his voice showed a strain that his body didn't even hint at. "It's just that I've wanted you to touch me for so long. It feels... amazing to have your head resting on me, your hands on me. God, it feels so good."
I let my hand trace, very delicately, along the crack of his ass, so that if there had been any little hairs I could have played with them, but he was smooth, utterly smooth. It made me wonder if other things were as smooth.
I brushed my fingers down the line of his ass again, tracing the separation between the cheeks, until I found that first line of warm flesh that was neither ass nor more, but a line of soft, silken skin.
I put a finger on either side of that skin, the softest of pinches, and slid my fingers up and down. Nathaniel writhed under the touch. His hands struggling against the sheets as if he wasn't sure what to do with them.
I raised my head from his back and kissed my way up his cheeks until I could lay my head one side of him, like a pillow. I caressed my hand down his thigh again, and this time I made circles behind his knees, and kept going, until my fingertips could play with his ankles.
He laughed and struggled against the bed again, like he had when I touched much more traditionally intimate places. There are so many more erotic areas on the body than the small list that most people make. I raised up from the pillow of his body, so that I could pay more attention to his ankles, drawing my nails lightly across that apparently sensitive skin. He writhed for me, his upper body coming off the bed, and his breath shaking out in something between a sigh and a laugh. I sat up so I could run my fingers across the bottoms of his feet, and he sighed, "Oh, God." I touched the front of his feet, very lightly, and he kicked his feet, as if it were almost too much. Not everyone's feet are that sensitive for foreplay, but when someone's feet are, they really are.
I gazed up the line of his body, while he lay gasping against the sheets. I'd barely started. So many choices, I bent over his ankles and licked along the round bone, tracing the skin with my tongue, in thick, wet, circles.
He made protesting noises and started to kick his feet, but I grabbed his foot with both my hands and held him against my mouth. He made a sound that was almost a scream and gazed down at me, along the length of his body. There was something in his eyes that was wild, and tender, and amazed.
I bit down on that shallow flesh, not hard, just a graze of teeth, but it rolled his eyes into his head and folded his shoulders onto the bed, as if he'd swooned.
I moved back up the bed, so that I could lay my head, not on one cheek, but across that part of his body, so that it was indeed my pillow. The feel of his cheeks spreading under the side of my face made me close my eyes, and have to relearn how to breathe for a moment. I spilled my hand down the line of his body, until I found that silken skin again. But this time I used it like a line to trace to something else. I found what I wanted, and the skin was so soft, softer than anything else I'd touched on his body. His testicles were trapped underneath his body, thick, and round, and delicate. Only part of them were trapped where I could touch them, and the combination of his body weight and the excitement had made them swell, so that the skin wasn't as loose as it would have been otherwise. I'd wanted to play with all that fragile loose skin, but it was already pressed tight around him. To pull on it now might be more pain than pleasure. No matter what Nathaniel liked in that area, I wasn't ready for it.
I slipped my body over his legs and pushed them farther apart, so that I lay between them. I laid my mouth against the inside of his thigh, but stopped before I could decide whether I was going to kiss him, lick him, or bite him. I stopped because I could see Jason over the slope of Nathaniel's thigh.
Truth was, I'd forgotten he was there. Was that a bad thing to say, or a good thing? Did it mean I was getting more comfortable with myself, or that I was falling into the pit of whoredom? Whatever, but I was suddenly frozen, gazing over Nathaniel's body into those pale, blue eyes. It was what I saw in them, that made me freeze. Lust would have been embarrassing, but logical. But that wasn't what I saw. Jason watched us with something in his face that was close to sorrow, and his eyes held a longing, a sense of loss. I didn't know what to do with that look, so I stopped, and raised my face up from Nathaniel's body.
Jason realized I saw him, and he ducked his head. When he looked back, he had his face under control. He almost pulled the joke off, when he said, "Don't stop on my account. I'm enjoying the show." His voice was fine, but his eyes, the lightness never quite reached his eyes.
"Liar," I said.
He gave me an unhappy smile. "I thought you were too busy to notice me. I should know that without the ardeur you pay better attention."
"What's wrong?" Nathaniel asked.
"I'm not sure," I said.
"Don't worry," Jason said, "I'm not pining for you, Anita, or Nathaniel for that matter. But I am pining for someone to take that much time and attention with me."
I frowned at him.
"You can have sex, and it can be good, but I'd give almost anything to have someone touch me the way you touch Nathaniel. We'll probably have sex later, and it will be great, but you won't look at me like that."
I sighed. "I think I remember us having this conversation before. You want to be consumed by love, and my goal in life is never to be consumed at all."
"Ironic, isn't it," he said, "I want just once for someone to look at me the way you look at Nathaniel, and you've been scared to death of it. You keep saying that the ardeur is a curse, but if the ardeur had never come along, you wouldn't have Nathaniel, or Micah. I'm not even a hundred percent sure you'd be double dating with Asher and Jean-Claude."
I laid my arms across Nathaniel's cheeks and rested my face on my arms and looked at Jason. I looked at him and tried to hear what he was saying. "Maybe, about Asher, I mean. Once you've crossed enough lines, one more doesn't seem that big a deal."
"Exactly," Jason said.
"So the ardeur is what, a blessing?"
"Look at what you're propped up on, and tell me it isn't? I heard you earlier, Anita. If the ardeur hadn't come to you, you'd still be stuck where you had been. You'd still be fighting what you want, and what you think you're supposed to want."
I looked at him, while I rested against Nathaniel's body. Nathaniel had propped himself up on his elbows and was looking at Jason. We both seemed utterly comfortable with him there. Was that wrong? It didn't feel wrong.
I wanted to argue, but I couldn't, well, I could, but I would have sounded silly. If the ardeur hadn't come, where would I be? I thought, I'd still be with Richard, but as soon as I thought, I knew better. Richard had used the ardeur as another excuse to run from me, but he hadn't liked any of my life. He hadn't liked the police work, the zombie raising, my comfort with the vampires and shapeshifters. Strangely, the thing he'd liked less was that I seemed willing to accept him and his beast. I'd seen too far into his head in that one moment in my own bathroom. Damian had said it best; Richard loved his shame more than he loved anything else.
So, where would I be without the ardeur? No Micah, no Nathaniel, no Asher. My life still nothing but murder cases, zombie raisings, and vampire slayings. Hell, without the ardeur would I have stayed with Jean-Claude, or would I have found another reason to run from him, too? Maybe. It sounded like something I'd do.
I looked at Jason and settled more solidly against Nathaniel's body. He sighed, and laid his head down on the bed.
"So what, the ardeur is the universe's way of getting me where I needed to go?"
"Maybe," he said, then grinned, "I can't speak for whole universe. All I know is that I envy you, and I don't envy many people."
I frowned.
"Are you jealous?" Nathaniel asked.
Jason looked surprised, either at the question, or at who had asked it. He finally shook his head. "Not jealous of you or Anita, like in love with you jealous, no. Jealous of what you have together, hell yes. Jealous of not having that many people in love with me, hell, yes, again." He smiled, and then grinned, and it reached his eyes this time. "Besides, I'm not Anita's type for a relationship."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"I'm not submissive enough, or dominant enough for you. I'm certainly not domestic enough. I'm also not willing to take on all the responsibilities that Micah seems to embrace so easily. You've found another person who thrives on his job and taking care of other people's crises. Not my idea of fun." He spread his hands wide. "You and Jean-Claude, well, that's something else. I know I can't compete with it."
"It's not a competition," Nathaniel said.
"You don't see it that way," Jason said, "but I'm just dominant enough, and guy enough, to see it that way."
"If any one of them saw it as a competition, it wouldn't work," I said.
"I know," Jason said. He shook his head. "I'm going into the bathroom again, and this time I'm staying there until I'm called, or until I feel the ardeur rise. You guys have fun. Sorry, if I flattened the mood."
"My mood's fine," I said.
"Mine, too," Nathaniel said.
Jason stared at us both. "No ardeur, and I've made you talk and think too hard, and you're still okay with this?"
"Yes," I said.
"Why?"
"Because a very wise and dear friend told me I was going to fuck this up, and I don't want to do that."
He smiled and his face softened. "If you do ever pick one of them to actually marry, and it's Nathaniel, I get dibs on being best man."
"I don't think that's going to come up," I said, "but if it does, you'd be our first pick."
"You didn't ask Nathaniel," he said.
"She didn't have to," Nathaniel said.
Jason walked toward the bathroom, shaking his head. "Too dominant by half."
I called after him. "You know I have to be the better man in any relationship, Jason." I meant it to be a joke.
He turned at the bathroom door, and said, "Fuck, Anita, you are the better man. Just because you don't have the right equipment, doesn't change what you are." He closed the door behind him, firmly, until it clicked.
We were left alone in the bedroom. Nathaniel raised up and looked down at me. "You don't have to finish tonight, Anita. Jason's right, the way you touched me, I know if not this time, then next. The sooner you feed the ardeur the better you'll feel."
I smiled at him, then unfolded my arms and slid my face down, until I was as far between his legs as I could get. He wasn't as excited now, and the skin was loose. I licked that most delicate of skin and heard his breath go out in a long sigh. I drew the loose skin into my mouth, pulling it gently out and away from his body. The skin didn't stay loose for long, and when it was tight and I could lick the balls inside that skin, I told him, "On all fours."
He did it without being asked twice.
I drew his balls into my mouth, one at a time, carefully, so carefully. I rolled them in my mouth with tongue and lips, until they were wet and slick. I caught glimpses of the rest of him, just in front, but not all, and not well. I'd only seen him nude from the front three times. Once when I first met him, once when I made the triumvirate between him and Damian, and earlier in my office.
"Roll over," I said, and he spilled himself over onto his back. He lay thick and quivering against his stomach, pointing like an exclamation mark against his own body. "I don't remember you being this big the first time I saw you nude."
"I was in a hospital. Someone had almost killed me. I wasn't at my best."
I gazed down at him, and said, "I can see that." I reached for him, slowly, and laid my hand against the warmth of him. But I was losing my patience. Another time I'd be slower, but now I wrapped my hand around him, let the thick round hardness of him fill my hand. His upper body spasmed, raising a little off the bed. I slid one hand to his balls and massaged them, while I stroked the thick velvet warmth of him. "So soft, and so hard, all at the same time."
I stroked him, until his eyes lost focus and his neck spasmed, so that he was closed eyed, and didn't see me bend down. I slid my mouth over the tip of him while he wasn't looking, and he cried out, as I worked my mouth down the length of him. I knew what I wanted. I wanted all of him inside my mouth, down to his balls, at least once. Next time I'd start with him smaller, now I had to fight for it. I'd gotten better at deep-throating, because sharing a bed with Micah, it was either get better at taking more, or stop doing one of my favorite things. Practice paid off, I sealed Nathaniel inside my mouth in one hard, clean line, until my lips touched the top of his testicles. I could only stay for a moment, then I had to come up. Up to breathe, up to let the wetness from my mouth trail down the shaft of his body.
I raised up on my knees, between his thighs, and the look on his face was worth all the effort. In fact, worth so much, that I had to do it one more time. Then I came up more shallow on him, so I could move better, thrusting him in and out of my mouth. Licking him, rolling him, sucking him, and when he was making enough noise, very lightly, I used teeth.
"Oh, God, yes, yes, please."
I moved off him enough to ask, "Please, what?"
"More teeth, please."
I frowned at him. "Most men think that hurts."
"I'm not most men," he said, and there was something about the way he said it that made me press my mouth back over him. I sucked him, pulling hard and firm, then forced my mouth down on the shaft, not as far as before, and bit him, not too hard, but harder than I'd bitten any other man I'd done this with. I kept my eyes on his face, so I could see if it hurt him. The look on his face had nothing to do with pain. His eyes were wild, and he said, "Harder."
I looked at him.
"Please, Anita, please, you don't know how long I've wanted this."
It wasn't my bits being bitten, but I was reminded that Nathaniel had once had no stopping point, no danger-do-not-cross sign. I could do what he wanted, but it was up to me to make sure it didn't go too far. I was finally doing what he'd always wanted. I was topping him.
I went down on him fast and hard, and this time I bit him hard enough that my teeth closed around that thick, meaty flesh. I had a momentary flash of not the ardeur, but of the beast, and its craving for flesh between teeth. I pushed it away, but I also came off of him and didn't do it again. But I'd done enough, because his eyes were rolled to whites, and he was writhing on the bed. His hands had grabbed mounds of the sheet, and his body strained, and bucked against the bed.
I waited for him to lie still, though his eyes stayed like butterflies, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. When I caught a glimpse of lavender eyes between the fluttering, I stroked him gently. I stroked him with my hands, until I had his eyes looking at me instead of the inside of his own eyelids.
He looked up at me, his lavender eyes lazy, and his smile was like the cat who got the cream. I wrapped my hand around that warm, thick, length. Wrapped my hand and squeezed. "I want this inside me."
When his eyes opened, he said, "You haven't had any foreplay."
I squeezed him again, watched his spine bow, and his head throw back, sliding the long braid of his hair off the bed, like something escaping off the edge. "Trust me, Nathaniel, I've had foreplay."
When he recovered enough, he said, "You're not the only one who hasn't gotten to touch someone below the waist."
I closed my eyes. "Please, Nathaniel, please, just make love to me. I want you to finish what you started in the office, please."
He looked at me, and there was something in that look that was very male and very grown-up. "You liked that, did you?"
I gave him a look, then said, "You were there, what do you think?"
He sat up, and I was suddenly surrounded by his legs, his arms. He kissed me, and the kiss was gentle, but not chaste. He explored my mouth the way I'd explored his legs, and ass, lightly, delicately, savoring it. But one hand was sliding down the front of my body, until his fingers slid over me. My body reacted to that light touch, but his hand didn't stop. He traced a finger around the opening to my body. "You are wet."
"I told you so."
He slid the finger inside of me and stole my breath. Then he pushed two fingers inside of me, and with the tips of his fingers found that spot. He flicked the tips of his fingers, just the tips, flexing them fast, and firm against that spot. And it was as if that part of my body had been waiting for him, as if all the work he'd done earlier, was still there, because those quick, firm touches, brought me. Brought me screaming, nails digging into his shoulders, and back.
He caught me with his other arm around my waist, or I would have fallen back to the bed. He slid his fingers out from inside me, and said, "Now, you're ready."
Since all I was seeing was the inside of my eyeballs, and speech was not an option, I tried to nod, but I really don't think I needed to. As they say, actions speak louder than words.