Perilous Partnership (16 page)

When they entered the salon, Jean gestured for Céline to have a seat and offered her something to drink, making Raymond smile again. Even for vampires who needed no sustenance other than blood and could barely register the taste when they did ingest other things, the formulas of hospitality remained unchanged. Jean returned a moment later, two glasses of cognac in hand, one for Céline and one for Raymond. “I thought you‟d enjoy a drink to relax.”

Raymond shot Jean a quick smile, appreciating the gesture even as he recognized the subtlety of the game Jean was playing in handing him his drink before giving Céline hers. Perhaps he was finally beginning to understand le Jeu des Cours.

Returning to Raymond‟s side on the loveseat near the fireplace, Jean waited while Raymond and Céline sipped their drinks. “Ah, Raymond, I forgot to introduce you to our guest,” Jean said after a moment. “Raymond Payet, this is Céline Girardot, chef de la Cour dijonnaise. Céline, Raymond Payet.”

“Enchanté,” Raymond said with a nod in the woman‟s direction. He reminded himself not to assume all the vampire leaders would be male simply because the few he had met were.

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“C‟est mon plaisir,” Céline replied.

The formalities complete, Jean relaxed against the back of the couch and waited for Céline to begin. She had shown up on his doorstep. The next move was hers.

“Renaud called me yesterday,” Céline said after a few moments. “He heard about your involvement with a project in le Morvan, and he thinks you‟re trying to impinge on his territory.”

Jean rolled his eyes. “First of all, his territory is Autun. There isn‟t a Cour in any of the villages in le Morvan because there aren‟t enough vampires in any of them to support one. And secondly, I haven‟t done anything. L‟ANS has purchased land in Dommartin for a project that will benefit any wizards and vampires who choose to be involved in it. Not my Cour, not his. All of them.

Or none of them, if the vampires choose not to participate.”

“And yet here you sit with the president of l‟ANS,” Céline pointed out.

“You‟re splitting hairs, Jean. What do you want me to tell Renaud?”

“If he‟s so determined to meet with me, why didn‟t he come or call himself?” Jean asked.

“Because his reaction to you is the same as your reaction to him. You‟re oil and water, and you have been since he took in the vampire you banished from your Cour. That was his choice as it was yours, but he‟s not about to lose ground in le Jeu des Cours by coming to you now, and he knows you won‟t come to him, so he called on me instead because the last thing I want is a war on my turf. Say what you want about le Morvan and its lack of Cours, we both know all of Burgundy looks to me when there‟s a problem,” Céline said.

“So what are you suggesting?” Jean asked. His voice was even, but Raymond could feel the tension investing the slender frame next to him. He doubted Céline could see it, which made him realize how far he had come in the past year in regards to his lover.

“Saturday night at ten o‟clock,” Céline said, “in the crypt of St Bénigne.

The priests won‟t disturb us, and neither will anyone else.”

Jean rolled his eyes. “Could you be any more stereotypical, Céline? The crypt? Really? Surely we can find somewhere comfortable to meet. A private room in a restaurant, the cave of a café, somewhere… civilized.”

Céline glared at him. “Could you be any more condescending, Jean?” she mocked. “When you broker a meeting on your territory, you can pick the setting.” She rose and set the glass on the table. “Be there on Saturday.

Monsieur Payet, I‟d say it‟s been a pleasure, but we‟d both know I was lying.”

Jean sucked in a sharp breath, on his feet almost faster than Raymond‟s eye could track, but the woman was already across the room and out the door.

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“Salope,” Jean muttered, turning back to Raymond. “I should refuse to go just for that comment.”

“But you won‟t,” Raymond said, “because whatever this Renaud wants to talk about, you need to hear him out. We have too much riding on the success of l‟Institut to make an enemy of him if we can help it.”

“He made an enemy of me twenty years ago,” Jean muttered.

“You want to tell me about that?” Raymond asked. “You were stubbornly vague when we talked about it before.”

Jean shrugged. “There isn‟t anything to tell. I banished a vampire because she had seduced another vampire‟s lover after they made a commitment before the Cour. Renaud chose to take her in. I didn‟t appreciate his choice.”

Jean chose not to dwell on the scene in front of the Congrès des chefs, the insults that had flown back and forth as Renaud accused Jean of favoring mortals over his own kind, as Jean warned Renaud of the folly of trusting a pretty face. Renaud had stalked out in anger and had not returned to the Congrès des chefs since. The meeting in Dijon would reignite those old insults, he was quite sure, because once again Jean had chosen to ally himself with mortals, even if that was the best decision he had ever made. Renaud would not see it that way, and the fact that the alliance was now impinging on what Renaud would consider his territory would only exacerbate an old argument.

Raymond‟s arms encircled Jean from behind, the wizard‟s lips nuzzling beneath Jean‟s dark hair to find the sensitive patch of skin behind his ear. “Not many people approved of Marcel‟s decision to take me in after I defected from Serrier‟s ranks. Maybe all she needed was a chance.”

“I doubt that. The last I heard, she‟d left Autun as well, although I don‟t know the circumstances, since Renaud has chosen not to return to the Congrès des chefs since then,” Jean replied, leaning back into Raymond‟s embrace. “It doesn‟t matter. She isn‟t the issue. The issue is his continued disdain for anyone and anything outside the world of vampires. It‟s the same kind of supremacy issues that Serrier espoused, only for a different race of beings. Renaud was a peasant before he was turned, at the mercy of a cruel local landowner, and so he despises anyone with power because he fears they‟ll gain power over him.

What he doesn‟t realize is how many allies he loses in the process and how much stronger we all are together than we could ever be on our own.”

“You‟re preaching to the choir here,” Raymond joked, licking a stripe up the side of Jean‟s neck. His lover was not usually this difficult to seduce. The visit from the other chef de la Cour had obviously rattled him more than he was letting on. “We‟ll deal with that on Saturday. Tonight we have other things to deal with.”

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“Like what?” Jean asked, turning in Raymond‟s embrace, a suspicious expression on his face.

“Like the fact that you‟ve neither fed nor fucked me in three days. That‟s entirely too long.”

Jean groaned at the sinful image conjured by Raymond‟s words. Raymond spread out on his bed, skin winter-pale against the dark sheets, legs wrapped around Jean‟s hips or perhaps draped over his shoulders….

“In the bedroom,” he said, his voice gravelly with desire. “Now.”

Raymond‟s stomach flipped at the tone of Jean‟s voice. He may have only heard it a few times since they had become lovers, but he knew exactly what it portended. He was about to get ravished.

Releasing his grip on Jean, he all but ran for the bedroom, shedding clothes as he went. The moment he was naked, Jean‟s arms closed around him, lifting him easily from the ground and tossing him onto the bed. Raymond gasped, his heart pounding at the feral look on the vampire‟s face. Jean maintained an affable façade, a civilized man despite the requirements of his existence, but a far more primal creature existed beneath the surface, strong enough to take and hold power in the largest Cour in France. Strong enough to break a man in two if he chose. Raymond shivered at the thought of being at the mercy of that creature. “Come on,” he goaded. “Fuck me already.”

The sound that left Jean‟s throat should have left Raymond paralyzed in fear, something between a hiss and a growl, and all beast, but Raymond already knew he had nothing to fear from his vampire. He simply bent his knees and spread them wide, offering his body to Jean.

The submissive posture snapped the chains of Jean‟s control, the monster within that he had learned to control breaking free. He fell on the body beneath him, needing to taste blood like a drowning man needed to breathe. Raymond tilted his head to the side, offering his neck, but tonight that would not be enough. Tonight, Jean needed more. Even mindless as he was, though, he would not take Raymond unprepared. He fumbled for the lube, his coordination failing in the face of this overwhelming desire. Getting the cap open, he coated his fingers, stabbing hard and deep into Raymond‟s quivering opening. The wizard thrashed beneath him, but Jean knew his lover well enough to recognize the movements as pleas for more. His fingers probed quickly, stretching with far less finesse than usual, but Jean had no more patience left. The moment he felt the guardian muscle give beneath his fingers, he pulled them free, stroking his hand over his cock and plunging into the throbbing heat. His elbows caught Raymond‟s knees, lifting them as he moved forward so that Raymond‟s calves rested on his shoulders.

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Raymond cried out, but the sound only drove Jean on, the demon within him responding to the desperation in his lover‟s tone. He turned his head, finding the smooth patch of skin behind Raymond‟s knee where his blood pulsed near the surface. He licked over it once, drawing a gasp of breath from his lover, before biting hard, blood rushing out to fill his mouth with all the richness of Raymond‟s heart. Jean‟s eyes closed against the nearly unbearable need to claim the man beneath him in every way possible. He wanted his brand on Raymond‟s neck, his claim as public, as visible, and as binding as magic and tradition could make it. He knew all the reasons Raymond resisted, and in his sane moments, he could accept them, but there was nothing sane about the way he was feeling now. Tearing his fangs free, he turned to the other side, biting the other leg as well as his hips pounded into his lover‟s body. Raymond tossed like a rag doll beneath him, totally submissive to Jean‟s demands. And even that was not enough. “Come for me,” he demanded, his fangs leaving their current sheath as his hand closed around Raymond‟s cock. “Now.”

Raymond‟s body responded mindlessly to the order, his cock twitching within Jean‟s grasp.

His need for blood even greater than his need for climax, Jean pulled out, releasing Raymond‟s legs and pouncing on his stomach, licking away the semen coating it before biting deeply into his lover‟s abdomen. Raymond cried out again, but Jean could taste only a matching need in the wizard‟s blood, so he sucked harder, drawing more and more of the life-giving fluid into his mouth. Raymond‟s hands found his hair, eliciting a deep growl from Jean‟s throat at the thought of even such illusory control. He grabbed Raymond‟s wrists, pinning them in an implacable grip as he bit his way higher, his fangs penetrating the heavy muscle of Raymond‟s chest, directly above his nipple. As he drew blood into his mouth once more, his tongue swiped across the sensitive bud, reigniting Raymond‟s flagging passion.

“Harder,” Raymond pleaded. “Putain, Jean. Bite me again!”

Jean would have said he had no control left to lose, but hearing Raymond begging for more triggered something unprecedented inside him. He could no longer keep track of how often he bit or where his fangs scored his lover‟s flesh. His only connection with reality was the hot rush of blood over his tongue and the spiraling desire he could taste within. Mind and body spinning out of control, he pounded into Raymond, his cock plundering Raymond‟s passage as his fangs plundered Raymond‟s flesh.

When his climax finally overcame him and rationality returned, he could feel the cooling strands of Raymond‟s release against his belly and knew his lover had found pleasure in what they had done, but the sight of the bleeding tears all over the wizard‟s torso were a knife to his heart. He did not act this way. He had sworn he would never again give in to the beast within him.

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Grégoire Casile, his maker, had taken him to feed the night he was turned, and in his ignorance, he had lost control, killing the man he fed from. The death itself had left him chilled to the bone, but only after he realized what had happened. As he had fed from his willing prey—for the man had been willing not only to feed him but to assuage the sexual desire that feeding had raised in the newly turned vampire—he had lost all awareness of anything but the powerful feelings of taking a lover for the first time and of the heady rush of blood into his system. When he had drawn back finally, replete, glassy eyes stared up at him from a lax face and a body that looked as savaged as Raymond‟s now did. Jean had determined to walk into the sunlight the moment it rose rather than risk becoming the kind of monster who could do such a thing, but Grégoire had stopped him, promising to teach him control. The older vampire had been true to his word, and Jean‟s beast had not slipped its leash since that night.

Until now.

“I‟ll get a rag to clean you up.”

“Don‟t move,” Raymond ordered, his voice brooking no argument. He had no idea what was responsible for the odd look on Jean‟s face or the unaccustomed withdrawal, but he was not about to let it go unchallenged.