Page 32 of Rafael (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 28)

It wasn’t what I’d expected him to ask, but I did it. He spread my knees and leaned down to lick me, which was fun, but not quite the angle either of us needed. I lay back on the bed with my knees trailing over the side, and he put his hands under my thighs and began to kiss softly, gently down first one thigh and then the other. He was so slow and so careful that I was making impatient, eager noises before he got to the center of things, but he didn’t touch me there. He kissed in the little hollow where the leg and body meet, and then he kissed the other side deeply, using his tongue as if he were kissing my mouth or other things. It felt wonderful, but it was teasing by this point, so close, but not close enough.

He finally licked up the center of me, and it brought my upper body off the bed like he’d lifted me. “So sensitive,” he said, licking around the very outer edges of me.

“Please,” I said.

“Please what?” he asked.

“You know what.”

He licked a little further on one side and it felt amazing, but not... and then the other side, and he began to mirror himself on one side and then the other, licking around and over everything and everywhere but the one spot I wanted him to touch. It felt so good and at the same time was making me want to scream with frustration.

“Please, Rafael, please.”

“You mean this?” He flicked his tongue over the one spot he’d been avoiding, and just that caught my breath in my throat.

“Or this?” he asked, and slid his tongue underneath the spot, so he was touching just the edges of what I wanted. It was both exquisitely wonderful and exquisitely frustrating.

“Rafael!” I cried his name, but it wasn’t in pleasure, more exasperation.

He laughed, a deeply masculine chuckle, and then he licked across me and it made me cry, “Rafael!” but in a good way. He began to lick, swirling his tongue over and around that spot, doing bigger circles farther away from time to time, and then he’d lick me exactly where I wanted him to until I was almost there, almost, almost, and then he’d move away.

I finally yelled at him, “Damn it, either do it, or don’t.”

He drew back with his face shining with how happy my body was with everything he’d done, and asked, “You don’t like being teased?”

“Not this much, no.”

“I have enjoyed doing it.”

“Sadist,” I said.

He gave that deep chuckle again, and then he put hismouth between my legs and began to suck. After everything he’d already done it was almost too much sensation and not enough, as if my body didn’t know if it was coming or going. He figured out that it wasn’t working and began to lick swirls over that one spot, and finally he used his fingers to spread everything else aside so he could suck only on that one spot. I started screaming before I’d actually come, because it was almost too much after all the foreplay and then suddenly I was going over that edge of pleasure and it was like he held the center of me in his mouth, pulling me through and into and over, as if the world dissolved into the sensation of his mouth on me. I screamed and writhed until the world was white-edged, like seeing through mist. I lay twitching, unable to move or focus my eyes as I felt him stand and move away from me. The next thing I was sure of was him pushing his way between my legs. It raised my body off the bed and made me cry out for him. I saw his skin dark through the paleness of the condom as he used one hand to help guide him inside me. Normally he’d have had to work his way in, but I was so wet that all that hard, eager length just slid inside me.

He said something I think was a curse in Spanish. “So wet.”

“Make love to me.” I sounded breathy and almost not like me, but I managed to say it.

He did what I asked, pushing himself gently into me and pulling out, until he found a rhythm that was gentler than any we’d ever done together. He worked us farther up on the bed and stayed on top, but kept his upper body raised so I could move underneath him. We found a rhythm together of his thrusts and my hips rising to meet him, over and over, in and out. I couldn’t see him gliding in and out of me, but I could feel every inch of him as I rose underneath him to meet his thrust with mine.

“I am close,” he said.

“So am I.” My voice was breathy, and I fought to keep my rhythm with his, and then I felt the edge of orgasm. “Almost,” I told him.

“Feed when we go.”

“Yes,” I said, and then from one thrust to another he brought me screaming, neck bowed backward to shriek his name without deafening him.

He cried out above me and his body thrust one last time inside me and all the barriers came down. I fed on his strength as he held himself above me, I fed through his skin everywhere he touched me, and through him like a doorway I fed on all the rodere.

I’d learned to keep my touch light with people I knew so that I didn’t intrude too far into them. I had accidentally gotten memories, thoughts, emotions before, and there were ones that enjoyed the energy orgasm. They had to welcome the energy in so it was their choice, though Jean-Claude had shared memories of Belle Morte being able to bring pleasure against people’s will like metaphysical rape. I worked really hard not to do anything like that. Jean-Claude had taught me how to fly through them, skimming like wings above their energy, feeding but not too much, not too deep. Face after face, a hand raised as if to touch me, another raised as if to fend me off, but they couldn’t keep me out completely, because Rafael had given them to me. Even as I rode the amazing wave of power buoying me up as if I could fly for real, and felt it spill out of me to spread like golden magic to everyone who had a cord plugged into my power, I still had enough of me left to understand why they feared us. There was a moment where I couldn’t feed off someone, like a rock in the stream of power, so I did what water does and flowed around it and moved on to other faces, bodies, emotions from joy to happiness, fought to pull back so that emotions weren’t touched, and then the faces turned upward with joy and welcome and that was the best feast of all,because it was a sharing. I liked sharing better than taking. Thousands of people, thousands and then I was coming back, back like the ocean pulling back from the shore to go home, and then there was that rock again that I could engulf. It stopped me like the ocean noticing one pebble. What was that? Who was that? I pushed at them, concentrated all that power on just that one... he was twenty-something, handsome, smooth-featured, pale brown skin with greenish-gray eyes. If I hadn’t had Micah’s eyes to compare to, I’d have said they looked exotic. They were arrogant, defiant, enraged, but under that was... fear, and... something... something else. I dived deep into those forest-green, gray-mist eyes, I flew straight into his gaze and traced that something. Hector’s energy pulsed, because of course that was who it was; he tried to push me out of him, tried to shield something from me, from us, I wasn’t even sure which us I was referring to, and I didn’t care. The energy was only warm on top, like icing on a cake, but what was underneath was cold, so much colder than a shapeshifter. He tried to push us out, and he was able to shove us to the surface almost. We were back staring into Hector’s face, his eyes like forests and mist, and then they filled with brown light so dark it was almost black, as if night fell on the forest and started to burn it down. Hector was themoitié bêteof a master vampire. A vampire that didn’t belong to Jean-Claude.

10

“HOW IS ITeven possible for a master vampire to hide themselves this completely from us?” I asked as I paced at the foot of Jean-Claude’s bed. I’d gone to him for sympathy and hugs while we discussed the nasty surprise waiting inside Hector. Instead I couldn’t get up on the bed for comfort, because Asher was already there with him and he still wasn’t on my cuddling list. Since Jean-Claude could feel most of my emotions unless we both shielded harder than we were currently shielding, he knew I wanted a hug, but he didn’t come to me or tell Asher to move, which pissed me off. I was already scared; anger wasn’t a good addition.

Jean-Claude was lounging on the huge, custom-made bed, watching me. He was wearing one of his favorite robes, the black one with black fur edging. It was also one of my favorite robes to see him in; there was just something about the utterly white skin of his chest framed by the black fur, his long black curls mingling with the fur until it was hard to tell which darkness was which, and he’d even opened the top enough so I could see the pale brownish cross-shaped burn scar on his chest. He’d opened the robe purposefully that far becausehe knew how much I enjoyed the view, which pissed me off even more.

“We have an emergency here, Jean-Claude, or didn’t you sense the vampire master that’s got its hooks in Hector?”

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