Kiss the Dead (35 page)

Nicky put his hand on the back of my head, and I had enough of me left in there somewhere to look up and say, “When I go down, hold me against you.”

“You can’t breathe,” he said.

“I’ll tap out, then you let me go. I’ll breathe again, then go down again.”

“You want me to hold you, force you to stay down on me?” He made it a question.

“Yes.”

He raised an eyebrow, and looked totally suspicious.

It made me laugh. “I want you to mouth-fuck me, Nicky, and the
ardeur
will help me do that.”

He frowned at me. Naked, wet in the shower, body hard and ready, but he wanted to make sure this wouldn’t come back and bite him later. I guess I couldn’t blame him.

“I’ve done it with Nathaniel, and Asher, and Richard.”

That made him give me a wide-eyed expression. “Richard, really?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, fuck, if you can do it with him…”

“Yep,” I said.

He still looked a little doubtful, but said, “Okay.”

I let the
ardeur
rise back up, like heat spilling over my skin, down my fingertips to find Nicky’s thigh and pour over us both. I used my other hand to help guide him into my mouth, down my throat, then had to move my hand so I could go all the way down, until my lips were pressed tight to the front of his body. His hand pushed against my head,
and I used my free hand to push his hand harder against the back of my head.

He didn’t question it this time; he just pressed his big hand against the back of my head and used all that strength to hold me against his body. At first it was exactly what I wanted; it felt so good to be able to just stay there with him impossibly far down my throat, but even with the
ardeur
riding me, eventually I needed to breathe. I tried to come up off him, but his hand pushed harder and I was trapped. Part of me enjoyed that I was trapped, that he could, if he wanted to, keep me there, keep me there until I choked, until my body made me fight for breath. I pushed against his body with my hands, but he pushed back, holding me, forcing me to stay down. I stayed as long as I could, before panic chased back the
ardeur
, and then I tapped against his thigh. There was a moment where I had to trust, utterly trust, that he’d respect the tap-out. I’d admitted to myself a couple of years ago that part of what I enjoyed was that moment of trust, that instant where the person you were with could do something really bad to you, and only their choice to be good kept the bad thing from happening. I liked that moment of not knowing if it was all going to go horribly wrong this time. I hadn’t liked that this did it for me, that this kind of moment really, really did it for me, but I’d made peace with it. I’d made peace with myself, and I fucking loved it.

Nicky let me go; he let me draw back off his body. I took a deep, shaking breath.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and he sounded worried.

I nodded, and finally was able to say, “Yes.” I looked up at him and said, “We can do this a little more, but the not being able to breathe makes the
ardeur
back off, eventually. It does that when self-preservation is on the line.”

“Then we fuck, so you can feed.”

“Or we mouth-fuck; with the
ardeur
I can do that, and I enjoy it, too.”

He had a moment of indecision so plain on his face it was almost painful, but then he said, “We’ll see how we feel when we get there.”

I agreed, and we went back to our game of deep-throat bondage,
because you don’t need ropes and chains for it to be bondage, just to be held and not be able to get away. This game had that in spades.

When we’d done it as long as my throat could take it, even with the
ardeur
, Nicky said, “I want to fuck you again. I love that I’m on your short list of the men you don’t make wear a condom.”

It hadn’t been a front-of-the-head decision; he was just with me when I was with Micah and Nathaniel and Sin so much, and they were on my fluid-bonded list, too, so… it had been a recent change to not make Nicky put on that extra layer of protection. I was on the pill, and I was a carrier for lycanthropy so I couldn’t catch that even if the rough sex bled me, but I still made most of the other men wear condoms, just in case. I remembered the moment I hadn’t made Nicky put one on; Nathaniel and Sin had both been there, but Micah had been out of town. It had just seemed natural, but his mentioning it like that made me think about it. I wasn’t always good when I thought about things. I tended to start tearing at my relationships, as if I were trying to break free of some sort of trap. Did I still see love as a trap? Was I still that unhealthy, that once a man reminded me how much he meant to me, I had to fight my way free of it until I destroyed everything? Wasn’t that what I was doing with Sin? Was I about to do the same with Nicky?

“I can’t hear your thoughts, only feel your emotions, but I don’t like that look. It’s never good. What did I say wrong?”

I looked up at him. His hair was still slicked back from his face, leaving it bare and wonderful. His body was naked and covered in water, so lickable and yummy. I could still feel the happy ache of him in my throat. He’d been at my side for two years. What did he have to do to prove himself? What did anyone have to do to prove themselves to me? Some of the men in my life would have said a hell of a lot.

I realized that the
ardeur
had receded again. Once I’d been at its mercy, but not now. I controlled the
ardeur
so well that I had to remind myself to feed sometimes. If I didn’t feed, my ability to heal was compromised, and I would eventually begin to draw energy off Nathaniel and Damian first, and then move on to Jean-Claude and Richard, but
only after Nathaniel and Damian were dead. Jean-Claude had explained that metaphysical math to me when my control got this good, because I’d thought control meant victory. I’d forgotten the
ardeur
was like your stomach; just because you could teach yourself not to want to eat didn’t mean your body didn’t need the food.

I still needed to feed, but it wasn’t the overwhelming control-stealing thing it had been. I had more choices now. I couldn’t blame the
ardeur
for the sex I was having. The
ardeur
put some of the men on my plate, but what I did with them was me now. I tried to decide how I felt about that.

“Anita?” Nicky made it a question. His face was closing down, drawing away from me, putting his defenses back in place. He’d been made into a sociopath, which meant some of the emotions were in there. I didn’t want him to put them away again. I liked the glimpses I got of his heart.

“Fuck me,” I said it softly.

“What?” he asked, like he was having trouble hearing above the pounding water.

“Fuck me,” I said, louder.

A smile curled the edges of his mouth, and filled his face with an almost disturbing happiness. There was always the sense that there was darkness inside Nicky that he got to let out thanks to me, but it was still in there, and it always wants out, the dark. It can be controlled, harnessed even, but in the end it just wants to come out and play dark games.

He let me see the happy monster inside him. It had nothing to do with his beast; what I saw in his face wasn’t animal, it was all human, just most people didn’t like to admit it. Nicky didn’t mind. Nathaniel didn’t mind. Dev didn’t mind. And because they didn’t mind, I was beginning not to mind either.

“Fuck me,” I said, again.

He didn’t make me ask again.

N
ICKY PICKED ME
up again, and I wrapped myself around him like a monkey, legs at his waist, and arms around those wide shoulders. He pushed me up against the wall out of the way of the water, while it pounded, hot and steamy, behind us, spraying on the back of his body only when he moved back far enough to try for the hardest, deepest thrust he could get from this angle.

Not every man could do good wall sex. You had to be long enough, and strong enough, and have stamina, not just the regular sex kind, but legs, arms, hips, in a way that regular intercourse didn’t demand. He found a hard, fast rhythm, going in and out of me, so that I didn’t have time to enjoy one wave of pleasure, before he was thrusting into me again, and one sensation led to the next so fast, so completely that I lost track of everything but the pounding of his hips, his body thrusting into mine. He was going so hard and fast that my body began to bump and scrape against the wall. The tiles were smooth, but it was still a near-bruising rhythm, and I loved it. My eyes started to close, and I had to fight the pleasure to keep my arms and legs tight around him. His hands were on my thighs and hips, but I had to work in this position,
too. I had to hold on, and as the pleasure built, that became harder and harder to do. I wanted to give myself over to the feel of his body in mine, the strength of his hands holding me against the wall, the feel of my body rubbing against the wall from the power of his body shoving me against it.

His voice came thin with strain, growling, with effort. “Feed when I go, Anita. I won’t have another time in me.”

That he admitted it said just how much effort even Nicky was having to expend to do wall sex this forcefully.

“Yes,” I said, and my voice sounded breathier than his did.

“Is that yes, yes, great sex, or you heard me?” he asked, in that deep, exercise-rich voice.

“Yes, I heard you,” I gasped.

His hips hesitated for a second, and then he went back to that fast, pounding rhythm. I fought between the amazing sensations of him fucking me, and holding on to him, helping him fuck me against the slick cool/warmth of the tiles.

His body shuddered, hesitated, and he gasped, “Soon, real soon.”

“Heard you,” I whispered, or maybe I shouted above the pounding water, the heat of it, and the cool brush of the tiles as my back rocked up and down on them. I couldn’t tell anymore, it was all I could do to keep my grip at his shoulders and waist.

I realized that I’d put the
ardeur
away again, that it had just been me and Nicky against the wall. I had to raise the
ardeur
again, had to call it, and suddenly I was all heat and need, and Nicky cried out, “Oh, God, that feels…” Whatever he was about to say was lost between one thrust and the next, but he went in one long, solid thrust between my legs. His body shuddered against me, inside me, as he pinned me to the wall, and I fed.

I fed on the feel of him inside me, the spill of him inside me. I fed on the strength of his hands on my thigh and hip. I fed on the feel of him in my arms, the feel of my legs around his waist. I fed on his eyes closed, head slightly back, and being able to see his face bare and lost to the
moment of release. I fed on all of him, and the power rush poured over my skin in a wave of heat like nothing I’d ever felt before.

He put one hand on the wall, and then we were sliding down to his knees. I thought it was just the exhaustion of amazing sex, and then his head bowed, and he began to slump to the side, and I knew something was wrong.

I was able to uncurl myself from him, but he fell completely limp to the floor. I touched his shoulder, and his skin was cool to the touch. I searched for the big pulse in his neck, and couldn’t find it. I screamed for help, because I had no idea what was wrong with him.

C
LAUDIA CAME FROM
one entrance and Domino came from the other. He ran a hand through his short black-and-white curls and asked, “What happened?”

I was straddling Nicky’s body, pumping on his chest, trying to get his heart to beat. I said, “I don’t know.”

Claudia used her cell phone to call for the doctor on call. She turned off the water as Domino checked Nicky’s neck for a pulse. “Shit,” he said.

“I know,” I said, and I was on the verge of tears. I screamed his name, and rose up above his body, hands wrapped together to make one bigger fist, and pounded down on that big barrel of a chest. “Breathe, damn you, breathe!”

If it had been any of the other people that I was metaphysically connected to, I could have shared energy with him, but he was my Bride, which meant the energy only went one way. I could draw off him, but I couldn’t give him energy automatically. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

I opened my link with Jean-Claude. I got a confused glimpse of him and Asher on the bed. He was stroking Asher’s hair, cuddling after the
sex. I opened myself wide, and I asked wordlessly, letting him feel what was happening, so there wasn’t any need to use words. I asked for help, I asked for ideas, I screamed in my mind, “Nicky!”

Jean-Claude rose up in my mind, leaving the bed and Asher lying on his stomach behind him, to sit up, and look at me.
“Ma petite…”

“Help him!”

Claudia said, “We’re trying.”

I didn’t waste time telling her that I wasn’t talking to her. Domino was one of my tigers to call; he knew what I was doing, because he could feel it. He knelt by Nicky’s head and put his hands on the other man’s shoulders.

Jean-Claude gave me memories of Belle Morte straddling a man’s body. She damn near glowed with energy, her skin not vampire pale, but almost human-flushed. The vampire under her was paler than death. I knew that Jean-Claude and Asher were seeing her kill one of her Brides.

I knew that they were coming this way, but it didn’t matter. Jean-Claude didn’t have any idea how to help Nicky.

The medics were here. Domino helped lift me off Nicky, and then helped them move him out of the showers and into the locker room. I followed them, but had to stay in the doorway to the showers, because there wasn’t room for more people in the locker room. They laid him on a pad by the bench where we’d made love. The second doctor had the paddles of the defibrillator ready and charged. One of our nurses, who had patched me up before for minor stuff, started putting pads and leads on his chest.

The doc with the paddles called, “Ready!”

Everyone called, “Clear!”

Nicky’s body twitched with the charge. The nurse checked for his pulse. The doctor was already charging the paddles again. The male doctor said, “Again.”