Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice (70 page)

We ended with Jean-Claude turning to Dev and giving a gentle but thorough kiss. He turned to Asher and said, “A male lover who does not wish bondage, but is in my bed in every other way, is a precious gift to me. One I would not throw so lightly away.”

“As I have done, you mean?”

“I do not understand your infatuation with Kane, but love is like that, is it not?”

“The five of you have consulted each other, but Richard and I are left out of the requests and permissions.”

“Don’t drag me into this, Asher,” Richard said from where he’d sat back down on the couch.

“But do we not have rights, as well?”

“I wouldn’t start complaining that you haven’t been consulted about changes in your BDSM and poly, after the lack of communication you’ve given all of us,” he said.

“I will endeavor to do better in the future.”

“Well, it’s hard to do worse,” I said.

“You will take Dev in to punish me?”

“Oh, for the love of God, Asher,” Micah said, “not everything is about you. Jean-Claude and Nathaniel miss having a male lover who does the whole ball of wax, and is separate from their BDSM relationships, and thanks to you Dev is looking for new relationships. Dev and Nathaniel will be friends with benefits. Jean-Claude and Dev will be lovers and he’ll become a regular blood donor. Everyone gets something they’re missing.”

“And you, Richard, are you so logical about Dev being added?”

“Fine. I’m about as far into being what Jean-Claude needs as I’m comfortable with, which isn’t close to enough. If Dev can meet those needs that I won’t, great, as long as I’m not expected to share the bed, or Jean-Claude and Anita, with Dev as a group thing. You, Jean-Claude, and Anita is about as much guy-guy as I want to deal with. Nathaniel and I are nothing to each other except that we share you, Anita, and Jean-Claude sometimes, so what he does is really no business of mine. I see everyone about once a month, maybe twice, and that’s it, so it really is up to them as long as our relationships remain as they are.”

“So logical. I am afraid my heart is not so easily reasoned with.”

“Why does it bother you that we are picking up what you discarded?” Nathaniel asked.

“Dev means nothing to me.”

“Thanks, Asher, thanks for that,” Dev said.

“I know how to make you happier,” Nathaniel said.

Dev looked sad, but said, “How?”

“Brace, literally.”

Dev looked puzzled, but I saw him set his body as if he were about to lift something, or do something physically. Nathaniel threw his arms around the taller man’s shoulders and jumped up, wrapping his legs around Dev’s waist, and kissed him. Dev seemed startled, but then relaxed into it, his hand coming up to cup the back of Nathaniel’s head, and then playing his hand along the braid of hair, the other arm around his waist helping hold him in place, though I was pretty sure Nathaniel didn’t need the help.

I watched them kiss long and deep, more and more body English in it, and my body clenched so tight that I had to catch myself against the fireplace. Everyone had their kinks and I loved watching my male lovers together; I just did.

“I wish I found that as exciting as you do,” Micah said, hugging me.

“Me, too,” I said.

Nathaniel broke from the kiss to say, “Me, three.”

“I don’t,” Dev said, “because then Nathaniel wouldn’t need me.”

“Micah’s too well endowed for giving anal, so you’d still have your uses,” Nathaniel said, smiling inches from Dev’s face.

Dev looked like something hurt, but I don’t think it hurt. I think he’d just had a reaction similar to the one that had made me grab the fireplace. “Do you just like receiving?”

“I like giving, too.”

“Hard limit either way with me,” Micah said, “sorry.”

“Me, too,” I said, and hugged him.

The two vampires and Richard stayed very quiet. Once upon a time I’d have asked why, but I’d learned that while ignorance may not be bliss, sometimes you really don’t need to know.

Dev helped Nathaniel stand again, and Nathaniel gave me that smile, the one that let me know that whatever he was about to say was going to either be wonderful, or make me cringe that he’d said it in front of this many other people.

“I love that you enjoy watching me have sex with other people.”

“I like watching my lovers with other lovers, as long as I get to do more than watch eventually.”

“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Dev said, and he held out his hand to me, smiling.

Micah kissed me on the cheek. “Go on.”

I went to the other men and let Dev and Nathaniel draw me in between them. Nathaniel picked me up around the waist and lifted me so I could kiss Dev, while he nuzzled his face across my breasts, still covered by all my clothes, but it was still almost too much for this much crowd.

“Is there a way for a straight guy to get in here somewhere?” Sin asked.

“If we had another girl or two, we’d have a hell of a daisy chain going,” Dev said.

There was movement among the guards. I turned, still held between Dev and Nathaniel, to find three of the Harlequin guards dropping to one knee near us. Echo bowed her short black hair, Fortune with her short blue curls beside her. They didn’t surprise me, because they’d shown up to the tiger get-together as lovers earlier, but Magda the werelion took a knee, too. That, I hadn’t seen coming.

Echo spoke, “If it meets with your approval, mistress, we would gladly try to help fill out your chain of daisies.” She raised her face so I got the full force of those deep blue eyes framed by all that pale skin and black hair. Her face was a delicate oval, and she wasn’t much bigger than me, but something about her coloring evoked Jean-Claude; it was probably just the hair-eyes-skin combo, but still . . . it wasn’t a bad thing.

“I don’t know what to say, I mean, gentlemen?”

“None of us are going to say anything until you do,” Micah said. The other men nodded.

I sighed. I was the girl and the one most likely to not want more women. I had Nathaniel and Dev put me down, so I was at least standing on something solid.

Domino stepped forward and said, “Sorry, but do you need to talk to Jade about adding more women?”

“I told her weeks ago that I was looking for women who liked both men and women, that it didn’t work for me to be with someone who dislikes men.” I had; I just hadn’t expected to have so many potential choices this soon.

Fortune looked up at me with a smile almost visible on her broad mouth. Her blue-on-blue eyes were shining as if she knew a joke that I didn’t. Echo watched me out of those dark blue eyes. I looked at Magda with her thick blond hair cut just above her shoulders. She so needed a new hairdresser, but if we took her into our bed then Jean-Claude would help her, like he’d helped me. She stared up at me with those gray-blue eyes. They were almost completely gray against the unrelieved black of the guard’s typical clothes.

“Okay, with Echo and Fortune I guess we can do what I did when the tigers first came to town.”

“Kiss them,” Dev said.

“Unless you have a better idea,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Magda, before we even get that far, I need to know why the hell you’re beating up Kelly, when it gains you nothing.”

“I have stopped challenging her. She can retain her place in the pride.”

I frowned, and asked, “Why the change of heart?”

“I was doing it in hopes that she would ask you to intervene.”

“You wanted me to do what? Punish you, fight you, what?”

“Pay attention to me; I had done my job flawlessly, worked at practice to the best of my ability, but you had not noticed.”

“I noticed, you’re great in the gym.”

“I could not tell that you had noticed.”

“Sorry, I should have given you an ‘atta girl.’ Next time you need something from me, just ask, don’t beat the shit out of anyone trying to get my attention, okay?”

“Once I was able to sleep beside you and help heal you, then I knew you had noticed me.”

I didn’t know what to say; she seemed to think I’d requested her to sleep with me, and not that Lillian had just offered her name out of a hat, so to speak. Kelly was safe and that’s what counted. I turned to Nicky. “You okay with this? You’re Rex.”

“I’m not sleeping with her, so her sex life is her business.”

“Okay, cool.” I turned back to Magda and the others. I motioned them to stand and then had the weird moment of having three women in front of me and having to decide how to decide if I wanted to include them not just with me, but with the other men in my life. Weird did not cover it, and only one of them was a tiger, so it didn’t even help much with the whole commitment thing.

I turned to Jean-Claude. “Some help here.”

“What would you have of me,
ma petite
?”

“I think they need to kiss everybody, not just me, to see if there’s a spark, because I do not want to have another woman in my life who doesn’t work with the men in my life.”

“But you must kiss them first, because I do not want another woman in my life who doesn’t want to sleep with you. Envy was enough of a lesson.”

“Okay.” I turned to the women and thought,
where to start
?

“We could do it by height,” Fortune said, smiling, “shortest to tallest, or the reverse.”

“I know you’re kidding, but I don’t have a better idea.” I moved down to Echo, who was only a couple of inches taller than me. I stared in her face and again there was that jolt of recognition, as if I should know her face from somewhere, but it was more one of those memories that makes me think that past-life memories aren’t just silliness.

I moved in closer to her and felt incredibly awkward. I touched her face and moved in for a kiss. She moved toward me, and our lips touched. It was a soft brush of lips, and I thought what I usually thought about kissing women, what small mouths they had. I drew back from her, not sure what to think. It wasn’t a bad kiss, but I’d learned I was a lot pickier about women than I was about men when it came to sex.

“Fortune next,” Echo said.

I moved a step over. Fortune was at least five-eight, so I stepped into her like I did for Nathaniel. She put her arms around me, and it seemed natural to do the same, as she bent down and I went up on tiptoe to meet her kiss. Our lips touched, a soft kiss like Echo had done, but then Fortune pressed her mouth against mine harder, more insistent, and I responded to it, so that our hands dug into each other’s backs, lips and finally tongues exploring, so that when we parted Fortune laughed, excited and nervous.

I was a little breathless, but smiling. “That worked,” I said.

“May I try again, after Magda?” Echo asked.

“Sure,” I said, and stepped down to the last woman. She was taller, at least five-ten; in the boots she was wearing she had to be six feet. I looked up at her, one hand on my hip.

“You don’t like tall women?” she asked.

“I haven’t been with enough women to say I have preferences yet, but I think I like shorter. I don’t know.”

She dropped to her knees so she was gazing up at me, her head at chest height. “Is this better?”

“Yes, actually.” I stepped to her, and my arms went around her shoulders easily, like I knew what I was doing, and hers went around my waist. She raised her face up to me, as I lowered mine and her mouth met mine. It was a teasing kiss at first, lips touching and gliding away, as if we were both playing hard to get, and then she slid her hand through my hair and pulled just a little. It made me catch my breath, and she used that little
O
of surprise to slip her tongue inside, and she kissed me eagerly, biting lightly at my lips, and I melted into her kiss the way I would have with any man. We parted with her eyes bled to lion amber, and me smiling a little dazedly.

“I think we have a winner,” someone said; I wasn’t sure who.

“There’s no winner, no losers,” I said. “We share well, remember.”

Echo came to me. “May I?”

I nodded, and this time she wrapped herself around like she wanted to be there, so that I could feel our breasts pushing against each other, as she kissed me eagerly, hungrily, my tongue running lightly between the delicate points of her fangs. The smaller mouth made French kissing between them more of a challenge. I found myself wondering what her breasts looked like out of the shirt, and just like that I realized I wanted to know. I had a moment to wonder how much of this was bleed-over from the men, but I didn’t care. It worked for me, too.

The three of them went to the men to see if it worked for more than just me. Fortune kissed Sin like she was going to climb into him through the kiss. Micah looked just right kissing Echo, because the height matched better. Magda took a knee before Jean-Claude first. He drew her to her feet and they kissed. He had to caution her that she was going to cut her mouth on his fangs if she wasn’t careful, but he didn’t look unhappy. Fortune left Sin breathless and looking dazed, and went to Dev. There was a lot of laughing in their kissing, but it worked. Echo turned from Micah to Nathaniel and kissed him, but ended by licking the side of his neck until he shivered for her. Magda and Micah weren’t sure about each other. She wasn’t as sure about Nathaniel. Jean-Claude and Echo were strangely careful of each other, but Fortune went to him smiling and that worked better. Magda and Dev kissed like they were fighting to see who was going to be on top, but it seemed to work for both of them. Fortune seemed to like everyone, and everyone liked her.

Richard never offered to join in, and neither Jean-Claude nor I called him over. He wasn’t here enough to be a part of this, and apparently he agreed. It was good to agree. The rest of us were starting to negotiate a time to negotiate for what we might be doing with each other in the bedroom, when my phone rang.

It was Special Agent Brent. “Live event scheduled in one hour; we need you here before that.”

“I’m on my way.” I hung up and turned to all of my lovers and potential lovers. “I am sorrier than I can say that I have to go, but I have to go.”

“You are a police officer, your duty must come first,” Magda said.

“We understand duty,” Echo said.