Incubus Dreams (79 page)

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

“Because I can feel it growing in me again, not just my need, but yours. I parceled it out, shared it among those I could, but it is time again,
ma petite.
”

I turned around and stared blindly out into the kitchen. “Are you saying you borrowed my
ardeur
for the last few hours?”

He seemed to think about that. “That will do for an explanation.
Oui.
”

“So I could hunt bad guys and not lose control in the middle of it all.”

“Yes.”

I didn't know what to say, so I said what I could, “Thank you.”

“You are most welcome,
ma petite,
put dawn is near, and when I sleep, the
ardeur
will return home. I would prefer to give it back to you before then, so I might feel how tempestuous that return will be.”

“You're worried.”

“Oui.”

“You asked me how I felt, why?”

“The
ardeur
comes with a price, as all the hungers do, but they have their rewards, as well. I do not speak of the pleasure, but of the strengths that they give us. In effect, by stealing away your
ardeur,
I weakened you tonight. If I
hadn't feared contacting you mind-to-mind, I would have asked your permission first, or warned you.”

“I didn't feel weak.” Then I thought about it. “I'm really bugged by the vampires I killed tonight. I mean, more than normal. I'm sort of shaky, and wondering if I'm the good guy after all.”

“Such self-doubt is not like you.”

“I do have some self-doubt,” I said.

“But not too much, you could not be who you are if you doubted too much.”

“Are you saying that I draw some of my bravery, or my coldness, from the
ardeur
?”

“I am saying that the
ardeur
may feed that part of you that keeps you safe in your own mind, your own heart.”

I shook my head. “This is too complicated for me, Jean-Claude. Just let me have it back, and we'll see if I feel any better.”

“I would rather you be alone with Micah when that happens. We have very carefully left him untouched while we sought to feed, so that you might feed on him yourself.”

I didn't feel the least bit sexy. I just wanted a quick shower and to sleep. “I'm too tired for sex, Jean-Claude. Too tired for much of anything.”

“As I feared, I took too much, or the
ardeur
has become attached to your own natural drives.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Long before the
ardeur
found you,
ma petite,
I found that you were seldom too tired for sex.”

I thought about blushing, but found that even that seemed like too much effort. “What do you want me to do?” What little excitement had crept back into my voice had vanished. Nothing seemed quite real, as if I was already asleep. Asleep on my feet.

“If you intend to clean up . . .”

“I've got other people's blood in my hair, so yeah.”

“Fine, go to the bathroom then, but take Micah with you. Hang up the phone, go to the bathroom, take Micah with you, and sometime before you have filled the bathtub with water, I will give back to you that which is yours.”

“Nathaniel is filling the tub now. Micah said you warned us not to use the shower. Something about glass.”

“The return may be more violent than I would like,
ma petite.
I would feel better if you and Micah were not surrounded by glass walls.”

“Do you know this is going to be bad, or are you just worried?”

“Let us say, that I have not lived so long, or courted you successfully, without thinking worst-case scenarios.”

“
Courting,
is that what you call it nowadays?”

“I am hanging up now,
ma petite.
I suggest you do as I have bid.” He hung up.

I put the receiver back in its cradle and started walking out of the kitchen. Micah was standing by the table, watching with careful kitty-cat eyes. I understood now how much he held back behind that careful face. But tonight I didn't pry. I had enough horrors of my own without borrowing. “You know about what Jean-Claude's been doing with the
ardeur?
” I asked.

“Yes, Jean-Claude had me keep an eye on Nathaniel, so that if he started to get weak, I could call for help.”

I shook my head. “I endangered him, all of you.” I felt numb again, even the self-recrimination felt like just words. Later, when there was more of me, I'd feel bad, but right now, I'd felt about as bad as I was able. There just wasn't enough of me left to worry about it.

“Anita.” Micah was in front of me and I hadn't seen him move. “Anita, are you alright?”

I shook my head. The answer was no, but out loud I said, “I want to be cleaned up before the
ardeur
comes back. I want to get this shit off of me.” I started for the bathroom. Micah trailed after me.

Nathaniel was bending over the bath tub, his pony tail trailing around his naked upper body. He'd stripped down to silk boxers.

The sight of him like that should have moved me, but it didn't. Cold, I felt so cold inside.

He gave me worried eyes as he moved toward me. “What can I do to help?”

I flung myself on him hard enough he staggered. He held me against the warmth of his body. He held me tight and hard, responding to my desperation. I wanted to bury myself in his flesh, wrap him up around me, but I couldn't. I'd endangered him, risked his life, by simply not paying attention to the
ardeur.
If Jean-Claude had not helped out . . .

I tried to push the thought away, but Jonah Cooper's body flashed in my head. His body on the ground, my foot on his shoulder and grass showing through his chest. “You feel the draw of them, I know you do,” he'd said.

I was on my knees and only Nathaniel's hands had kept me from hurting myself on the edge of the tub. “Anita . . .”

I pulled away from Nathaniel and reached for Micah. He took my hand and said, “Go, Nathaniel, go, before the
ardeur
comes.”

“I don't think . . .” he started to say.

I screamed, “Go, please go! God, go!”

Ididn't see Nathaniel go, or stay, because Jean-Claude dropped his shielding. I don't know what I'd expected. He'd made it sound like he borrowed my favorite coat, or book, and now he'd give it back, but a coat doesn't want to come back to you, a book doesn't care who reads it. He didn't hand it back to me, his shields dropped, and it roared home like a train that he had fought to hold back, to keep still, but it had strained against his hold. It had hungered to come home. It was like being caught on the tracks at night, and the first hint you have that disaster is here, is a bright light, and the tracks vibrating under your feet, then the world becomes noise, light, as if thunder and lightning could be forged into metal, and it's all coming straight through you, and you can't get off the tracks. You can't run. You can't hide, because your body is the tracks, and the train is a piece of yourself that wants to come home.

T
HE
ARDEUR
FELL
on us, and we fell into the water. It took us almost a minute to remember we couldn't breathe under water. We came up, gasping for air, laughing almost as soon as we could breathe enough for it. Clothes had vanished in the first rush. We were naked in the water. How had we managed to get out of the jeans that fast? A piece of jean cloth floated by me. Oh, that's how.

“No missionary position, we'll both drown,” I said.

His curls were plastered to his head, and his hair looked black in the candlelight. The laughter died from his face, his eyes, and left something darker, more basic, behind. A look that made me shiver. All he said was, “Okay.” He moved us to the edge of the tub, pressing my back against the smooth side of it. He pressed himself up against me, pinning me between the tub and his body. The feel of him hard and firm against the front of my naked body made me close my eyes for a moment. I had some vague memory of clothes being ripped away, but I wasn't sure when, or even which of us had done it. I was getting better at thinking when the
ardeur
rose, but there were moments when thinking was not what I did.

He moved back from my body so he could caress the front of himself. Just watching his hand play over that thick, firm flesh made me shiver. He angled himself downward so he could push between my thighs. He felt incredibly large sliding between my legs. He didn't try to angle upward, or enter me. He simply pushed himself between my thighs, so that the thickness of him brushed against all of me. He rubbed himself back and forth, using his body like another hand, to caress and play between my legs. But it was a thick, hard rubbing, with none of the delicacy of fingers. You'd think water would help everything be slippery, but water makes some parts less wet, less slick, so that though it felt good, it also was rougher than it would have been if I'd been wet with something other than water.

“Not wet enough,” he said, and his voice was thick and strangely hoarse, strangled with desire.

I would have liked to argue, because the
ardeur
wanted to argue, wanted to say, take me, take me now. If I'd been with almost any other man in my life, we could have done just that without hurting me, or him, but Micah was the exception to a lot of rules in my life. It wasn't the length that was the problem, it was the width. We'd found this out the hard way, and had had the rubby spots to prove it.

I managed to say, “No, not wet enough.”

He leaned his forehead against mine and said a heartfelt, “Shit.”

I nodded my head against his, wordless assent, because I didn't trust my voice. Micah wasn't the only one strangling on need. He drew his body from between my legs, and even that drew a small sound from me. His hands went to my waist and he just suddenly lifted me up, up so that I was perched on the edge of the tub. If his hand hadn't been on my leg I would have overbalanced and fallen back into the water, but he steadied me. One hand stayed on my leg, but the other hand moved up the line of my thigh. I thought he was going to do me by hand, but his finger slid inside me. It was unexpected, and even one finger felt tight and good. So good that I lay back along the raised tile around the tub. I felt the heat before I actually lay down on the candles, but the heat of it pressed against my skin. I sat up so abruptly that he had to move his hands and spill me back into the water.

“Did you get burned?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, not this time.” I'd caught my hair on fire once. I laughed, sort of shakily. “Stupid.”

Micah looked at me, and there was something in that look.

“What?” I asked.

“The
ardeur
is gone.”

I thought about it, felt around for it, and found no, no, not gone, but receded. Not receded like when I fought it, but more like me getting almost burned had help me think again. Or maybe even the
ardeur
bows to physical survival. But I could feel it like a storm that had moved offshore, but was still coming.

“I thought I'd caught myself on fire.”

“Again,” he said.

I frowned at him. “Yes, again. Is it my fault that you're so amazing that you make me forget everything, even physical safety?”

He shook his head. “Not me, the
ardeur
. The
ardeur
makes everything better, Anita.”

There was something about the way he said it, something serious and a little sad, that made me say, “What's wrong?”

He kissed me on the tip of the nose. “Later.”

I might have argued with him, but the
ardeur
decided that it had given us enough time. It hit me like a train and threw me into his arms, made my hands move over his body as if I was hungry to touch him, as if no touch, no caress, nothing would be enough. We kissed the same way, as if we were hungry for each other. It was as if we could have we would have climbed into each other's skins, wrapped ourselves through each other, closer than skin or flesh could survive.

One minute my mouth was trying to climb inside Micah's, the next my beast rose, swimming up, up through my body, coming out of that metaphysical place, and climbing up my body. Micah drew back from my mouth enough to say, “Anita . . .”

I used hands and body to press his mouth back to mine. His beast began to spill up through his body in a line of breath-stealing heat. It rose fast and faster as if it had to catch up with mine. They raced up our bodies, raced through that dark water, raced, and raced, faster and faster until they hit the surface. It wasn't about changing shape, it was about changing bodies. It was about that need to wrap as much of him around as much of me, as tight, and close as I could. It was as if the very essence of our bodies had responded to that desire. Our beasts spilled out of our mouths, and brushed metaphysical furred sides down each other, as we spilled inside each other's bodies. It was closer than sex. Closer than anything I'd ever felt. It was as if for a blinding, shattering moment, we were in each other's bodies. Not in our minds, not merely our thoughts, or feelings, not even memories, but for a breath or two, a part of me slipped inside him, and a part of him slipped inside me. They weren't parts that could think and feel like a human being. There was none of that, wow, so this is how it feels to be Micah. There was only a sense of burrowing down, down deep inside him, of finding that metaphysical hiding place where the beast lay and having my beast curl up, for a moment, inside his most secret space, while his beast did the same in me.

In that moment, the
ardeur
fed. Fed on that warm, living power, fed on the sensation of being deeper inside Micah's body than I'd ever been inside any man's before. The
ardeur
fed, and left us quieter, calmer, happier.

The beasts didn't turn and go back up the way they'd come. One moment that piece of me was curled warm and safe inside him, and the sensation of him inside me was like when we made love, as if even his beast were bigger and took up more room than mine. That warm, living energy didn't come back up our throats, it was as if the two energies spilled out the fronts of our bodies, out our skin, so that for a heartbeat it felt as if we'd burst our skins, and two great furred shapes were passing through us, then it was as if the two beasts dropped back into place. I swear I felt as if something physical with
true weight was dropped down the center of my body, and hit the end of me. As if instead of falling from the height, I was the height, and could feel the body falling through me, and hitting my floor.

We broke from the kiss, laughing, breathless. I found my voice first, “Wow.”

He looked happier than I'd ever seen him, relaxed, more . . . more at home somehow, as if some great weight had gone from him. “You know,” he said, still breathing hard, “you're not supposed to be able to do that, if one of you is human.”

“I didn't know you were supposed to be able to do that at all,” I said.

“If you are both powerful, and a true mated pair, then it's possible.”

“You say it, like it has a name.”

“Shiva and Pavarti, or simply Maithuna, it's Sanskrit for union, or coupling.”

“Shiva, who would destroy the world with his energy if Pavarti didn't constantly have sex with him and spill off the energy.”

He nodded. “World religion class from college again?”

I shook my head. “A few years back we found a naga, a real live one that had been a crime victim. It made me go look up Hindu religion. I mean, if you get one type of supernatural being, you might get others from the same place.”

“Did you?”

“Nope.” I thought about it. “Well, not yet.” I put my arms behind his head, and drew him down for a kiss. He didn't fight, but he kept himself just above my face. “You fed the
ardeur
.”

“I still want a kiss.”

He kissed me, and it was gentle at first, then grew until we were feeding at each other's mouths again. He drew back, laughing and breathless. “I thought we'd done this already.”

I wasn't sure how to explain it. We'd had metaphysical sex, and like sometimes happens after regular sex I was pumped, energized. I could feel him still hard and thick pressed between our bodies. I wanted him inside me. I wanted him as close physically as I'd had him metaphysically.

I kept one hand behind his neck, but let the other trace down his body, until I could cup him in my hand. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. I moved my hand up and wrapped my fingers around him. He was so hard, so thick, so solid in my hand that it made me close my eyes, made my breath shudder from my body.

I opened my eyes and knew that my focus was already soft. “I want this inside me.”

He tried for amusement, but his face was raw with the beginnings of that need. His voice was hoarse again when he said, “Even without the
ardeur
?”

I squeezed him tight enough to flutter his eyes back into his head. When he could see again, I said, “It's not the
ardeur
that makes me want you, Micah.”

His voice was a harsh whisper, as if he were having trouble talking, “We'll never top what we've already done tonight.”

I stroked my hand up the long, hard shaft of him. “It's not about being better, just being as good.”

He shook his head. “It won't be as good without the
ardeur
or our beasts, and this close to full moon, I don't think we want to keep trying the beasts. It could get out of hand.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “Just us, Micah, just us.”

“From the moment we touched, it's never been just us. There's always someone, or something else, never just us.” He looked so serious.

I cupped one hand under the soft wetness of his testicles, and gently played with them, while I played my other hand over the head and shaft of him. “Then we're past due, don't you think?”

He swallowed hard, laughed, then gave a small nod. “You're wetter after you feed the
ardeur,
but we ended up back in the water, so you won't be wet enough or open enough for this,” he wrapped his hand around mine where I still held him, he squeezed our hands together until his head went back, eyes closed, and he shuddered hard enough to make the water slosh against the sides of the tub. He looked down at me and slipped his hand between my legs, searching, until he could slip a finger inside me. He managed two fingers inside me before my head went back, and my eyes fluttered shut. “To go in there,” he whispered.

When I could talk, I said, “Oh, darn, then you'll have to make me wet, and open.”

He shoved the two fingers fast and hard inside me, stopped my voice along with my breath. “I can do that,” he said, and he had that look, that look that said he knew I wanted him, and that I wouldn't say no. I didn't say no, I said yes, over and over again. I said yes, until he worked me open with his fingers, and finally with his mouth, so he could push himself inside me. So we could finally put that in there, and it was wet and tight, and hard, and everything I wanted it to be. When I screamed his name and raked my nails down his back, when his body thrust one last time inside mine, thrust so far and so deep that it made me cry out again and arched his body above mine on the bathroom tile. Painted his body in flame and shadow above me, sent our hands into the candles, and spilled the candles into the water, to smoke
and die, when all that was done, he looked down at me. Eyes not quite focused, face still slack with orgasm.

I said, in a voice breathy and panting, “Metaphysics, we don't need no stinking metaphysics.”

It took him a blink to get the joke, but once he did, he started to laugh, and since he was still inside me, that made me writhe, which made him thrust inside me again, which made me writhe again, which made him writhe, which . . . He finally slid off to one side, onto a small candle-free slice of tile still laughing. We laughed until tiredness pulled at us like some giant hand dragging us under. It was as if the entire twenty-four hours caught up with me at once, and I was just done. Done for the day. Done for the night. Done for the year. Done.

We dried our hair as best we could. I insisted on at least running an oiled cloth over the knives that I'd dunked in the bathtub. Micah helped me gather up the big knife and the two handguns. I got the big equipment bag from the living room, but Micah begged me to just put it in the bedroom with us instead of putting everything into their various gun safes. “Just one night, it'll be okay. I promise,” he said.

I had to agree that I didn't want to go upstairs to the long rifle safe, then downstairs to the ammo safe, then . . . well, you get the idea.

We dragged ourselves to bed carrying more weapons than clothes. I let the equipment bag drop beside the bed, softly. Nathaniel lay on his side, curled into a little ball, like he always lay when no one was in the bed but him. I laid the knives on the bedside table on his side of the bed, again, trying to be quiet.