Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (18 page)

“They see me as weak for the very reasons you love me.”

“Well, most of them are men, they can’t help being a little…male.”

He laughed, and it slithered across my skin as if he’d trailed a feather across my body. “Oh, God, Jean-Claude, don’t do that again. We’re being good over here.”

“You are being very, very good.” He made the
very, very
sound utterly suggestible.

“Stop that,” I said.

He laughed again, and I clung to the pillow like a lifeline. I said, “Do you want to raise the
ardeur
in me and force Jason and me to have sex?”

“You will have sex either way,
ma petite
, I know you and our Jason. Sex for the two of you is only a matter of when, not if.”

“Well, thank you very much.”

“Why should a healthy appetite for carnal knowledge be a bad thing,
ma petite
? It is good to know what you want and need, and to have those needs met.”

“Have I been keeping you from meeting some of your needs?”

“We have spoken enough of difficult things. When you have finished giving the truth to Mr. Griswold, then enjoy yourselves.”

“We were planning to, but I don’t like that you seem to be rooting for it.”

“Would you enjoy it more if I did not give my permission?”

“No, I would never cheat on you.”

He was quiet for a moment then he said,
“Je t’aime, ma petite.”

“
Je t’aime
, Jean-Claude.”

He hung up, and I did the same. He always had an excellent sense of when a conversation was over. I, on the other hand, was always trying to beat a dead horse. He’d learned long ago to just leave the conversational mazes with me. Conversational mazes only worked when you had someone to talk to, but wait, Jason was still here. I could always talk the two of us into a corner after we stopped spilling our guts to Irving. Yeah, the night was young; there were all sorts of unpleasant topics we could cover.

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23

I HADN’T TALKED
to Irving Griswold in months, ever since he told me that my “exclusives” to him, and him alone, were beginning to make people question his humanity. He was a werewolf and a member of our local pack, but he was deep in the closet. His choice, but when he told me to back off, I did.

I could picture him on his end of the phone: short, a little round, built sort of like a square, not fat, but just that body build that if he’d been taller would have made him a great linebacker. He had curly hair and a bald spot starting, but apparently that had begun before he became a werewolf, and being a werewolf meant it would never go further. I’d seen him in wolf form and the animal didn’t have a bald spot on its head. Interesting.

“Anita, I know I told you to leave me alone about the exclusives, but I didn’t expect you to vanish off the planet for me.”

I had expected a lot of things from Irving, but not hurt feelings. “Are you really upset I stopped talking to you, or did you just miss what the exclusives were doing to your career?”

“That is cold, Anita, very cold.”

“Just a question, Irving.”

He laughed then, and his laugh was so nicely ordinary after the magic of Jean-Claude’s that it made me smile. “Couldn’t I miss both you and the career opportunities?”

“I suppose. Jason filled you in on the problem.”

“That’s you, Blake, all business.”

“We’re in deep shit, Irving, so yeah.”

He sighed, and his voice was serious when he said, “Yes, Jason explained the problem. Though someone here at the paper made sure I saw the segment about you. They said my old girlfriend was on the news.”

“Girlfriend?” I made it a question.

“Apparently, no man can be seen too often with you without it ruining his reputation.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“You didn’t need to know.”

“So it wasn’t just about your career, was it?”

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“No, I’m dating someone here at the paper pretty seriously. She was a good sport, but the office gossip was pretty virulent.”

“
Virulent
, huh, that’s a big word, and a serious one.”

“Heh, they won’t let me trot my vocabulary out in my articles; I’ve got to prove I’ve got that college education somehow.”

I smiled again. I’d missed Irving more than I thought. “Can we fix this mess?”

“Articles by me can help minimize the damage, but a good rumor is really hard to kill once it hits the major media.”

“What can we do?”

“I was thinking a series of articles about what it’s like to be part of Jean-Claude’s life. You know, talk to Jason about what it’s like to be his
pomme de sang
. What it’s like for you to be his girlfriend. We’ll start with a denial of the rumor, but maybe our Master of the City is overdue for some good press.”

“Press that makes him seem in control of his city.”

“Yeah, Jason hit the highlights that I’m not allowed to write about. If I weren’t afraid of being outed, this would be such a better story.”

“Being outed would be the least of your worries if you wrote everything you know, Irving.”

“Is that a threat?” he asked.

I thought about it. “No, not consciously, but I am still Bolverk for your pack, the evildoer.”

He lowered his voice. “Yeah, you punish the bad little werewolves, I know.”

“But no, it wasn’t a threat, just an observation. I think Richard would get to you long before I could.”

“Yeah, our Ulfric seems to have acquired a temper.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Is it true he’s inherited part of your temper?” Irving asked.

“Seems so.”

“Then my compliments for your self-control all these years.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of the compliment, so I ignored it. “Thanks, now what do you need from me?”

“We’ll run the first article about Jason’s dad and the cancer, and how his master couldn’t travel on such short notice so you came with him for moral support. It’ll play very sentimental.”

“Won’t that make Jean-Claude look weak in the eyes of the other masters?”

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“Anita, there are only so many ways to explain this rumor away. Showing Jean-Claude as generous to his people may make the other masters think him weak, but trust me, us underlings will read it and go,
Wow, he’d be a great master to work for. I wonder how I get to move to St. Louis.
Revolutions start from the bottom up, Anita, rarely top down.”

“Are we starting a revolution?”

“The way Jean-Claude runs his territory is revolutionary, Anita. I’m not the only reporter who’s in deep cover. There are a couple of us who sit around and bemoan the great stories we could write if we weren’t pretending to be normal.”

I leaned back against the headboard, the pillow still in my lap. “I guess I thought you were the only reporter in that deep a cover.”

“No, there’s one swanmane, and another werewolf, and even a weretiger.”

“And you’ve all managed to hide what you are?”

“Yep.”

“Must be hard,” I said.

“It’s hard to hide, but you’re seeing how hard it is not to hide.”

I sighed. “You got that right.”

“Though you being his human servant isn’t going to be part of the articles, just the dating.”

“I’ve looked it up, and me being his human servant isn’t legal grounds for my dismissal as a federal marshal, or even an ordinary cop, if I were one.”

“You saying I can use it?”

“No, but I’m saying it’s not legalities, but perceptions that I’m hiding from.”

“Okay, I’ll write up the article saying how misguided my fellow reporters are, and then we’ll start with Jason’s article. Then yours, and then we’ll see who else wants to talk; my editor is going to love it.”

“How about your girlfriend?”

“I’ll talk to her when I get off the phone. She’ll be okay. She’s in the business.”

“Okay.”

“You sound tired,” he said.

I leaned my head against the wall behind the headboard. “Maybe.”

“I’ll go hunt up my editor and get this started. You guys be careful.”

“I’m always careful, Irving.”

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He laughed then. “If this is your version of careful, then be reckless; it’s gotta work better.”

We hung up, both laughing. I put the phone in its cradle and went back to leaning against the wall. I even closed my eyes. I was tired. I couldn’t even decide why I was this tired. I felt the bed move and opened my eyes to find Jason kneeling in front of me. His eyes were very close to mine. He was also still nude, because other than the pillow in my lap, neither of us had thought to get robes.

“We’ve done the best we can, Anita,” he said.

I gave him a smile to match how I felt, which wasn’t all that much of a smile. “Sometimes it would be nice not to have to do my best. Sometimes it would just be nice not to have a crisis to deal with.”

He grinned. “I know what you mean.” The grin went from his normal to his I’ve-thought-ofsomething-naughty-to-do grin.

“What?” I said, and the one word held a wealth of suspicion.

He laughed, and it made his face look even younger than he was, like a glimpse into a Jason I had never met. Jason before Raina nearly killed him, making him a werewolf. Jason before he became Jean-Claude’s morning snack. Jason before life rubbed all his edges away. The laughter leaked away and his eyes were serious as he gazed down at me. “The look on your face, what are you thinking?”

I shook my head. A dozen thoughts ran through my mind; that I was tired, that he’d given a story to the media that would spoil our cover story with his family, that he was being very brave, that I knew he must be hurting, that he was my good friend and I wanted him to know that. What I finally said was, “Kiss me.”

He had a moment of looking startled, and then he smiled, and the smile was worth the careful choice of words. That smile that said I had asked first; without the
ardeur
loose, I had asked for a kiss from him.

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24

THE KISS GREW
until he pressed me back to the bed, and his body grew eager against the front of me. Eager enough that I wrapped my legs around him, and the most intimate part of him was suddenly pressed tight against the most intimate part of me. He drew back with a shaky laugh.

“We need a condom.”

I closed my eyes and had a moment of embarrassment. “Of course, we do, I’m sorry I got carried away.”

He leaned down and kissed me quick and hard, and let me see the delight on his face that I had forgotten myself that much with him. “Jean-Claude gave me very few restrictions, but this was one. No unprotected sex.” He kissed me again, then slid off the bed to hunt for condoms in the luggage. I lay there thinking about the fact that I might have forgotten enough to have unprotected sex with Jason. I was on the pill, so technically, it wasn’t exactly unprotected. I’d been so careful since the pregnancy scare a few months back. How could I have been so careless? Irving’s words came back to me, about how my caution hadn’t worked, so maybe it was time to be reckless. Was that it?

Was I just tired of my best efforts going so wrong, so why try? No, no, just carried away with a handsome man in my bed. Jesus, that didn’t sound any better.

Jason came back with a little string of unopened condoms in his hand. I counted at least four.

“Aren’t we being ambitious.”

He glanced down at the condoms, then laughed again. “In case one gets put on inside out, or has a hole. I don’t want to leave the bed to look for another one.”

I had to smile at him, and that was one of the best things about being with Jason. He always made me smile. No strings, no love on the line, just good friends who had managed to be lovers and still be friends. It was good.

He put the condoms on the bedside table, then climbed onto the bed, still smiling. The smile changed as he moved closer—his eyes growing more serious, the smile sliding away to leave his face almost empty of expression except for the intensity of his eyes. His eyes were all blue skies, spring skies, but as he leaned in toward me the blue had deepened, so that his eyes were the color of summer, and nothing as soft as spring.

He hesitated, then half-leaned in for a kiss, his body still to the side of mine. “The look on your face, Anita,” he breathed.

“What look?” I asked.

He smiled, but it left his eyes that serious, deeper blue. He leaned in and answered with his mouth just above mine. “That look.”

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He kissed me. Gentle at first, then it grew, and as the kiss grew, he let his body fall against the side of mine, so that the nude front of him was pressed against the long, bare line of my side. The sensation of his groin against my thigh made me thrust into the kiss with hands and arms and mouth. Either he understood, or his body simply responded, because he grew harder, and pushed against my thigh, while he thrust deep into my mouth and I thrust back. The kiss became another way of fucking, gaining its own rhythm as if we both knew what we were mimicking. Our bodies grew with the kiss, so that he began to thrust against my thigh in time to our mouths. He drew back, laughing breathlessly, pulling his body inches away so that he was no longer touching my thigh. “If we don’t stop, I’m going to go like this.”

I had to try twice to find enough air to say, “Then we have to stop, because that’s not how I want you to go.”