Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (25 page)

“Doesn’t it bother you that Jason is flirting like that?” Trish asked, sipping her drink. I glanced over at the group on the couch. At the moment, Lisa was draped in his lap, almost prone, while he stroked her hair. Kris was behind him, cuddled so close she was in danger of spilling her drink over him and Lisa. They’d all had their turns of hanging all over him. I shrugged, and sipped my Coke. I never did drink, and almost for the same reason Jason couldn’t drink, neither could I.

“One, it’s Jason, he flirts like he breathes. Two, he’s a stripper, which has sort of encouraged his natural tendencies in this area. Third, he wants them to see him as attractive. He wants to flirt with his old girlfriends.”

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“Wow,” Trish said, “that is like way more secure than I would be right now.”

I smiled, and tried to think if I’d feel the same if it were Nathaniel, or Micah, or Jean-Claude. I really tried to think about it. Micah almost never flirted. But Nathaniel did for many of the same reasons that Jason did, and Jean-Claude flirted when he wished to, to perfection. Would I have been more jealous of them than I was being of Jason? Maybe. Probably. I just didn’t know. But it was more than the fact that Jason wasn’t my main squeeze. My version of the
ardeur
gave me the ability to see people’s desires, sometimes—if the
ardeur
was very active, or the people’s desires were that strong.

Jean-Claude had worked with me so that I could sense things with the
ardeur
but not have it rise for feeding. I was getting better. Tonight let me know how much better. I could feel that most of the women hanging all over him didn’t mean it. They were flirting, but not with intent. The flirting and the physical contact was an end in itself for most of them. The exception was the bride-to-be. Lisa was desperate. It was the only word I had for her energy. She was desparate to fuck someone. It didn’t have to be Jason. Her need was the strongest of any over there, and it had an edge of panic to it.

I had not reached out with the
ardeur
on purpose, but the energies from the couch were strong enough that they leaked around me, like whiffs of perfume. The bodyguards were the biggest problem for sheer lust. Not all of them, and I tried not to pay attention to which ones were basically thinking thoughts that would have gotten them slapped if the women had known. I didn’t read minds, especially of strangers, but I caught touches of their desires. Not feelings exactly, because the
ardeur
didn’t work on emotions except those that had to do with desire, love, and the associated stuff. Marianne, my metaphysical tutor, psychic, and witch, said that I was like an empath, someone who could read emotions, but only a very limited list of emotions. Fine with me; I had enough trouble with the short list. The long list that Marianne waded through was beyond me. Strangely, the one person who wasn’t projecting anything at me was Jason. He was like a blank. I might have risked sending the
ardeur
into his psyche on purpose, but I wasn’t feeling confident enough to risk it. I might accidentally touch his inner beast, too, and that might bring on mine. That would be bad.

Jason caught my eye, and I toasted him with my Coke. He extracted himself from the other women and came to sit on the arm of my chair. He put his arm across my shoulders. “You okay over here?”

I put my arm around his waist because it seemed like the thing to do. He snuggled into the hug.

“You mean am I getting pissed that you’ve been flirting your ass off for the last hour and completely ignoring me?”

He laughed, then kissed me on the cheek. “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

I smiled up at him. “You’ve done about what I thought you’d do, except for not checking on me sooner.”

He let himself slip down into the chair so that he just ended up on my lap. He took my Coke out of my hand with a practiced move of his hand. Probably something he did at the club to keep file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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customers from spilling their drinks on him. He took a sip of the Coke without asking, and leaned in close enough to kiss me as he murmured, “I’m sorry.”

I pushed him back enough to see his face clearly. “I admit the flirting has been a little more than I thought it would be, but it’s okay. You flirt, you just do. It took me a long time to realize that flirting for you and Nathaniel, and even Jean-Claude, doesn’t always mean a damn thing.”

He nuzzled my cheek. “But when you flirt, you mean it.”

“Most of the time,” I said.

He nibbled his lips along the side of my neck. It made me shiver. “Stop that, it tickles.”

He did it some more, making me wiggle again. “It’s supposed to tickle.”

I put a hand against his shoulder and pushed him away enough to look up in his face. Whatever he saw there didn’t make him happy. I saw that in his own face.

“You’re mad,” he said, softly.

Trish said, “My cue to leave. Have fun.” She got up and walked away in her spike heels to join the other ladies.

I thought about what Jason had said, then shook my head. “You know how you said that you hated being invisible to me as a guy, and loved me reacting to you now?”

“Yes.”

“I think I just realized that you react to all women the way you react to me. You complain that you’re not special enough to me in comparison to the other men in my life, but Jason…what do you do different with me that you don’t do with other women?”

He frowned, clearly puzzled.

I tried again. “What did you do with Perdy that was different, special?”

He frowned harder. “She restricted the sex to a point that made it not fun anymore. Her idea of straight was too straight for me.”

I nodded. “But what I mean is, that you react, or interact, with all women the same. Watching you with them, I can’t tell the difference between the early foreplay with them and what you do with me. It’s not flattering to realize that you don’t differentiate.”

He sat in my lap, my Coke still in his hand, thinking at me. He was thinking so loud I could almost hear it. I actually watched the light dawn in his eyes.

“Nathaniel acts differently around you than the women at the club. Jean-Claude, too.” He seemed to think about it a little more, then nodded. “Even some of the men who aren’t in love with you treat you differently. They want different things from you than from anyone else, like Requiem and Asher.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

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He leaned in to whisper, “I thought one of my charms was that I didn’t want to be anything more than fuck buddies.”

I had to smile. “Elegantly put, Jason, but watching you with the women just now, I realized that I like to be special. I don’t tolerate being part of a crowd. If you want to tell them that I’m just a front to please your family, then do it, tell them the truth. They seem close enough friends. But if you are going to tell them that I am your girlfriend, a good enough girlfriend to bring home to the family, then you can’t cuckold me with them.”

He smiled. “Cuckold?”

I frowned at him. “Pick a different word, but you know what I mean.”

“If it was Nathaniel, or Jean-Claude, you wouldn’t have sat here for an hour and watched, would you?”

“They wouldn’t have made me.”

He set my Coke on the table the lamp was sitting on. It forced him to turn his body awkwardly, but he made it look vaguely promising, as if to say,
Look how flexible I am
. But I had Nathaniel’s flexibility to compare with, so I was less impressed than I might have been. Jason turned back to me and gave me very serious eyes. “I’ve hurt your feelings.”

“Yes, but more than that I came here under cover for you, in a role that is not comfortable for me, and you just made all your old friends think that I would allow any boyfriend of mine to ignore me for an hour as he was pawed by old lovers. I wouldn’t. The only thing that kept me in the chair was that I couldn’t decide what to do. If we are just good friends and nothing more, then have at it, Jason. But if I’m still supposed to be this serious girlfriend, you can’t do shit like this.”

“Even if it’s only pretend that you’re my serious girlfriend?” he asked. I nodded. “Tell them the truth, and crawl all over them, have at it. But if you don’t tell them the truth, then you cannot humiliate me like this, not if you want to maintain that I am in any way a serious girlfriend to you.”

I watched him think some more. He opened his mouth, closed it, and glanced at the crowd of people behind us, all trying to pretend they weren’t there. He got off my lap and took my hand with him, drawing me to my feet.

He led me toward the bedroom. Rowe and Shadwell peeled away from the section of the wall they were holding up and tried to follow. Jason stopped them at the opening. “No, and I’m going to move the screen so we have some privacy.”

“Our orders…,” began Shadwell.

“I’m wearing more weapons than you are, Shadwell. I think we’ll be all right.”

He and Rowe exchanged glances, and then finally Shadwell nodded. “If you’re in there too long I’m coming in, no matter what kind of sounds I hear. Just so you’ll know.”

“I think we can behave ourselves,” I said.

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Jason pulled me into the room and let go of my hand to move the metal screen over so it hid us from view, if we were on the bed. It was the best we could do without a door. Jason sat on the end of the bed and held his hand out to me.

I went to him, let him pull me to sit on the edge of the bed with him. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Me, too, but you need to decide.”

“If I tell them the truth, what will you do?”

“What I want to do is go home, but I won’t leave until I know what has the bodyguards all freaked. I think there’s been some kind of threat against Keith Summerland, and I’d never forgive myself if you got hurt by mistake.”

His hand came up and cupped the side of my face, ever so gently. “You care for me, and I return the favor by making you feel bad about yourself. I’m sorry, Anita, really, I wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh, you were thinking, just with the little head instead of the big one. As much as I enjoy both, I like you to make decisions with the top end.”

He gave a small laugh, and moved our faces so he could kiss me. The kiss started to get out of hand, but I drew back, so that it didn’t; drew back enough to look him in the eyes, his hand still against my face.

“That look,” he said, “I know that look, that look of iron resolve. I don’t know what it means in this instant, but it makes me a little nervous.”

I smiled. “Iron resolve, huh. It’s just this, Jason: I don’t share. Unfair or not, if you want to break our cover story, then you are free to try to sleep with whoever you want. You’re a big boy, but don’t come dragging yourself from some stranger’s bed into mine.”

“You have to feed the
ardeur
at least one more time before we can go home,” he said. I nodded. “I’ll figure something out. Jean-Claude can help me feed from a distance, maybe. I’ve been catching little bits of emotion from the women and the bodyguards and it hasn’t raised the
ardeur
. I’m getting more control.”

“You haven’t perfected the technique, Anita. Not of feeding from a distance, or control.”

“It’s time we did. Maybe it will all work out for the best. If I could feed the
ardeur
through JeanClaude, then I could take more out-of-town jobs without having to bring along lunch.”

He grinned at me. “Lunch, huh?”

I nodded, and smiled at him in spite of myself. I was never sure why he could make me smile when I wanted to strangle him, but he could. It was one of the reasons we were still friends.

“What am I going to do with you?” I asked.

He spilled himself back against the bed, giving me that lecherous grin. “I can think of something.”

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I stared down at him framed against the bedspread. I knew that I could have touched him and done nearly anything I wanted. He’d let me. The knowledge made things low in my body react, but…

I was beginning to realize that maybe that was true of most of the women in this room tonight. Somehow that took some of the shine off it for me. “I bet you can, but if it’s one of the blondes you’re wanting tonight, you need to ’fess up to them.”

“The last time I had sex with any of them was high school, Anita. It was fun, and a few times were very fun, but I have no idea how good they are at anything. The only person who’d do nonstandard for sure would be J. J., and that would be complicated. I mean, recapturing the glory days usually goes badly.”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“But you’d let me go out there and confess and flirt with intent.”

I smiled. “Flirt with intent, I was thinking exactly that earlier, but yeah, tell them the truth and you can have all the intent you want.”

“But if I don’t tell them, then I have to behave myself better?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid so. I feel sort of guilty asking that of you, but I can’t bear it. I can’t let them think that any man I might marry would be allowed to diss me this badly.” I added, “It sets a bad example to the other women, Jason. I mean, if even one woman seems to put up with shit like this, then it makes the other women more likely to put up with it for real. I just can’t endorse it.”

He clasped his hands across his stomach, looking serious. Only Jason could manage to look this serious and winsome on a bed at the same time. It was a gift.

“I guess I understand that.”

“They think I’m like almost your fiancée and they are all over you like white on rice, right in front of me. Jason, that is lack of respect, from you
and
them.”