Kiss the Dead (39 page)

I shrugged. “So?”

“He called me, to find you, to send to Mephistopheles. If Jean-Claude had been awake for the night, he’d have still sent me to find you.”

I could see the door to the underground now. Tonight it had two of the black-dressed guards on it. Usually there were guards only on the inside in the little room behind the doors, but tonight and for the next
little bit we were going to put guards on the door. We were going to beef up our security everywhere, hoping to discourage the crazy.

“Dev is my tiger to call.”

“It’s not that, Anita. Micah is traveling more for the Coalition. Nathaniel takes care of everyone like a 1950s housewife, but he isn’t dominant enough to handle comforting Mephistopheles.”

“So I’m the go-to person for the hand holding, I get that.”

She shook her head hard enough to make her high, tight braid bounce. “We would never call Jean-Claude about this, that’s my point.”

I stopped walking and looked at her. “Okay, just stop being subtle; you’re not good at it, and I’m not good at figuring it out.”

She smiled. “You stand there dressed like one of us, and you don’t get it.”

I glanced down at my clothes and had to smile back. I was in black T-shirt, black jeans, black belt with a blackened belt buckle, and black boots. They had a heel on them, so they were a little more club than guard, but other than that Claudia was right. My holsters and weapons decorated me like every other guard’s. Unless it was business hours, we didn’t try to hide that we were armed.

“I guess I do have a lot of assassin chic in my closet.”

“I know Nathaniel didn’t pick the shirt because it doesn’t show cleavage, and I’d send a guard back to get lower heels on the boots, but other than that you look like one of us.”

“Thanks, I think.”

She grinned, and it transformed her face into something beautiful, happy. She didn’t smile like that enough. “We trust you to understand whatever we bring to you, Anita. We trust you with the decisions about the guns and violence, and this kind of stuff, too.”

“You mean that Dev is crying?”

She nodded, and the grin faded around the edges. “I couldn’t date this many people. It’s hard enough dealing with just one person at a time. I can’t imagine taking care of this many people.”

“Are you dating someone right now?” I asked.

She blushed. I’d never seen Claudia blush.

It was my turn to grin. “Who is it?”

She shook her head. “You go take care of your lover, leave mine to me.”

“Oooh,
lover
is it, not boyfriend.”

She laughed, and it was the kind of laugh I’d never heard from her. “Go talk to the Devil.” She walked away, still laughing. I watched her go, and wondered how I’d missed it. It had to be serious for her to mention it at all. Claudia in love; who’d have thunk it? Cool.

I went for the door to the underground, and to take care of my Devil. The thought made my shoulders want to slump a little, as if I were trying to carry something heavy, but I straightened up, took a deep breath, tightened my core, and stood as straight as my five foot three could manage with the help of the three-inch heels. It was a lot of work to take care of all the people I was dating, but there was no one I would trade away. Asher might force us to send him away, but I’d miss him, and I hadn’t been his main sweetie for a year like Dev had. He’d wanted to add an extra girl, not lose the man he loved. I sighed, made sure I stayed standing straight, no slumping, and went to take care of my golden tiger to call, my Devil, who was crying over his broken heart. One of the hardest things to learn about being polyamorous was you could be totally heartbroken about relationship B, but still be happy about relationship C, but having C didn’t make losing B less painful. It meant you had another established relationship to help you heal over the lost one, but your heart still broke. I’d had this idea that if you loved more people you wouldn’t get your heart truly broken unless you lost them all, but like so many theories, reality was different. But as realities went, I wouldn’t have traded mine. I hoped I could convince Dev the same.

I
COULDN’T SEE
Dev when I first pushed the curtains apart, but I felt him like a brush of heat across my face, which meant his emotions were strong enough that he wasn’t shielding well. The golden tigers were masters of control—they’d had to be to hide from the Harlequin for centuries—but now he was leaking through all that practiced control. I followed that hint of energy to find him sitting beside the fireplace, back against the wall, muscular arms hugging his knees to that nice chest, his head bowed over them so that all I could see was the fall of his blond hair with its highlights and lowlights, from nearly white to a deep yellow. The hair was straight and just long enough to spill around his face and hide it completely while he cried. He was inches taller than Nicky, not quite as broad through the shoulders, but he was still a big guy, and yet he’d tucked himself up so tight that he had been completely hidden behind one of the big chairs that bookended the faux stone fireplace. He was wearing a white T-shirt and pale blue jeans, no shoes, so that he was all pale colors to offset the reds and gold of the new living room.

The guards melted away as I crossed the room toward him. It was
my problem now. Oh, hell, it had always been my problem. Because of Asher’s jealousy, no one else but me was dating Dev, so it was just him and me. I said a quick prayer for wisdom because I didn’t know what to say, but I’d learned that it’s not really what you say sometimes, it’s that you’re willing to say something, anything, that you’re just there.

I walked over to him and touched the silk of his hair. He took in a ragged breath, loud and painful, and raised his face. I had a moment to see that handsome face tear streaked, his eyes with their amber brown circle around the pupil and the outer edge of rich, pale blue, blinking up at me, and then he grabbed me around the thighs, those strong arms pulling me in against his body, knees opening up so he wrapped as much of himself around me as he could. When he was sitting down, his face still came above my belly button, almost to my sternum. I suddenly felt small.

I stroked his hair and murmured, “It’s all right, Dev. It’s all right.”

He shook his head, rubbing his face against my shirt. He managed to gasp in a breathy voice, thick with tears, “It’s not all right. It can’t be. It won’t be.”

“Asher’s only going away for a month, then he’ll be back.”

He pressed his cheek against my stomach. “I love him, Anita, I really do.”

“That’s great, Dev.”

“I’ve never been in love before.”

I bent over him and hugged him back, because the first time can hurt like hell. “It’s wonderful and awful, isn’t it?” I said.

He turned his head, and I stood back up so we could look at each other. “Yes, because he’s wonderful and awful.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s about right—wonderful and awful is very Asher.”

“If he heard you say that, he’d assume you meant the scars.”

I petted the side of Dev’s face, tracing the edge of his profile. “I’ve offered to try to fix the scars. He won’t let me.”

“He’s afraid.”

“I know, I’d have to cut enough flesh away to make a new wound and
see if I can heal it with sexual energy. If it doesn’t work, then we don’t do anything else.”

“I think he’s afraid to be perfect again.”

“Why?” I asked.

He shrugged those big shoulders, arms tightening around my legs, so that my knees had to bend into his chest, so that I would have fallen except he was there to catch me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and shoulders, and his face was suddenly peering at me through my breasts. He snuggled his face so that I could see his whole face framed by my breasts.

I laughed. “I’m here to comfort you.”

He rubbed his face against my breasts. “This is comforting.”

I gave him narrow eyes. “Is this your way of saying you don’t want to talk about this?”

He nuzzled his face against one breast until he found the nipple, then rubbed his lips over it until he felt my body react to his touch. “No, it’s me saying that I haven’t gotten to touch breasts in a long time, and I miss girls. I do love him, Anita, I really do, but if he wants me to give up everyone but him, loving him isn’t enough.” He went back to that light caress of lips across my nipple.

The pulse in my neck was jumping, my body beginning to react to him. “Love doesn’t conquer all,” I said.

“Was it stupid to think it would?” he asked.

“No, not stupid; for some people one person is enough,” I said, “but you…” He rubbed his face harder against my breast. “… You are the most truly bisexual person I’ve ever met.” He licked my nipple through the thin T-shirt material, one long swipe of tongue. My voice was breathy as I said, “You really don’t have a preference for boy or girl, you just like the person.” He opened his mouth wide and put as much of my breast into his mouth as would fit. My pulse was making it hard to talk. “Someone like you isn’t going to be happy without both.” His teeth pressed down, slowly, more pressure than anything. “I take it you don’t want to talk anymore.” My voice sounded strained.

He shook his head with my breast still in his mouth.

“Bedroom?” I asked.

He shook his head again, shaking my breast a little more firmly. It made me have to close my eyes for a minute.

“Here?”

He nodded, biting down on my breast, and letting a slow growl trickle out from between his lips. The growl vibrated across my breast.

“God, Dev,” I breathed.

He grinned with my breast still in his mouth. His eyes filled with a mix of mischief, sex, and just him. Dev was short for Devil, and in that moment he earned his nickname. I shivered and he worried my breast with his teeth until I cried out his name.

D
EV HADN’T TOUCHED
a woman in two months. He wanted to touch, fondle, lick, and nibble all the parts that he’d been missing. Who was I to argue? He brought me with his mouth, with me sitting above him, so that I was staring into his eyes when he brought me screaming, my hands searching the air for something to hold on to. He put me on my back and used his fingers between my legs until I screamed his name and sank nails into the one arm I could reach. I was lying on the carpeted floor boneless, breathless, eye-fluttering happy, when I felt the tip of him begin to touch me.

“No,” I said.

He stopped, his body pulling back enough so he wasn’t touching me. “What’s wrong?”

I fought to roll over on my side and fish for a condom in the pile of clothes and weapons. I hadn’t had one when I was with Nicky, but I’d started trying to carry some in one of my ammo carriers. I finally rolled back with one of the little foil-wrapped packets in my hand.

He made a pouty face at me, still on his knees. I held the condom in my fingers, and smiled. “Sorry, we aren’t fluid bonded.”

“Do you use a condom when you’re with Asher without me?”

“Yes,” I said, and I realized that Jean-Claude had insisted on that. I wondered how long he’d been thinking Asher might have to leave.

“Then that’s fair,” he said. He got up on his knees and held his hand out for the foil-wrapped condom.

I grinned at him. “If you haven’t been with anyone but Asher in two months, then there’s something else you’ve been missing, unless you changed your mind about enjoying pain with your oral sex.”

“Asher can open his mouth wide enough to avoid the fangs; just the sucking doesn’t work.”

I handed him the condom. “Well, if you don’t want oral.”

He grinned, sudden and wide. “I didn’t say that.”

He lay back on the floor, and he was already hard and ready. I began to lick the skin around the edges of his groin. “Please, just go down on me. Please, God, just suck me.”

“Some of the men in my life complain that I don’t do enough preliminaries.”

“I won’t complain,” he said. He gazed down his body at me. I wrapped my hand around the base of him, and licked the tip of him. “Anita, please!” I sealed my mouth over the end of him and began to push my way down slowly, not because I had to, but because I could, and I liked the almost desperate look on his face as I inched my way down him. “Please,” he said, again. I plunged my mouth down until my lips met my hand, and then slid back up the long, thick shaft of him. A look of both pleasure and pain crossed his face. It wasn’t a good pain, but more as if the way I was doing it were more like teasing than action. I gave up trying to prolong things and rose up on my knees, bending my body forward over his so that I could get a better angle, kept my hand around the base of him, and let myself spill my mouth down and over him in one long, fast movement, until I met my own hand, and then up again, faster this time, until I found a rhythm that was fast, quick, with my mouth so close around the thickness of him that I had to remember to watch that my teeth didn’t catch him on the down or up stroke. If we’d had a mattress I’d have used its bounce to help me mouth-fuck him, but
I had to do it all with my legs and one arm for support to the side of his body.

I took my hand away on the next downstroke, and fought to get those last inches down my throat, because to sink my lips against his body, it was down the throat; my mouth alone wouldn’t hold all his length. When he was buried as far down my throat as I could get him, my mouth pressed against the front of his body, I drew myself up with my mouth pressed as tight as I could get it, sucking up the length of him, doing what a vampire’s delicate fangs wouldn’t allow.

Dev made a small eager noise, and when I rolled my eyes up to watch his face, his eyes were closed, head thrown back, and another sound escaped him. I came up off him, and caught my breath, before starting down again. He let me do it twice more and then caught me, his big hands on my arms. His voice was strained and breathy as he said, “If you keep doing that, I’ll go, and I want to be inside a different place when I do that.”

“We’re on carpeting; who gets to be on top?”

“You, me, I don’t care. If I last long enough, then we’ll change positions.”