Page 118 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

Truth and Wicked dropped in the hallway. I heard a sound and glanced to see Richard catch Asher before he hit the floor. I still had Jean-Claude’s hand in mine, and he was still holding me tight.

Dev rose up with Jean-Claude’s blood smeared on his mouth. “You’re still awake,” Dev said.

“The energy buoys me up, but it will not last, I think, so kiss me, my devil, with my blood across your lips.” He didn’t have to ask twice. They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed like they meant it, until Dev came back with fresh blood on his lower lip from getting nicked on a fang.

“Forgive me, I was carried away,” Jean-Claude said.

Dev’s tongue slid over the blood, and he smiled fierce and so happy, maybe happier than I’d ever felt him. “I’m not sorry, I love that you lost control with me the way you can with Anita.”

Jean-Claude smiled at Dev and took his hand as he still had mine. “Take me to bed before the magic leaves and I die again.”

Richard turned toward us with Asher insensible in his arms. “Does he sleep in his coffin, or in a bed now?”

“He sleeps with me!” Kane yelled, still up against the wall with Jake holding him in place.

“Take Kane to a cell tonight and guard him well. No harm shall befall him tonight, but if a night imprisoned teaches him nothing there will be time for punishment,” Jean-Claude said.

Jake turned Kane around and marched him deeper into the underground. We didn’t exactly have cells, but we had guest rooms that were more easily guarded than others. Kane ranted and raved that Asher would hear about this, but we ignored him. It was pretty much the only logical thing to do with him.

Angel came down the hallway as Jake was leading them away. She’d brought the other gold tigers with her. They were all tall and golden- to brown-skinned with varying shades of blond hair and eyes ranging from blue to hazel blue to pale brown. “I thought we’d need help; I guess I was wrong.”

“Your help is much appreciated, our angel,” Jean-Claude said.

“We can at least take Wicked and Truth to their room,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said. She smiled at me, then both of us. Her smile melted a little around the edges when she got to Richard, but she said, “Tucking two gorgeous vampires into bed, no problem.”

“Where do I take Asher?” Richard asked again.

“I want you with me,mon lupe. When I finally die for the day I want to feel you at my back.”

Richard handed Asher to Custer to carry. I sent Geoff with him to tuck Asher into his coffin for the day. That was where he preferred to sleep when he would wake up alone. Nathaniel came up the hallway in the wrong direction. Apparently he and Damian had gone through while I was otherwise occupied, just like Angel leaving. “Why didn’t you help?”

“Damian likes to be in his room before dawn, and you didn’t need your leopard and another vampire you were connected to, this had to be all about you and Jean-Claude and other animals to call.” I couldn’t argue with him, but I did ask if I’d missed anything elsewhile I was pressed to Jean-Claude’s chest. Everyone assured me that was it.

We got to our bedroom with its orgy-sized custom-made bed. We did the cleanup that washrags and toothbrushes could manage, and then we all crawled into bed. I was in the middle, Jean-Claude beside me, though usually Micah or Nathaniel slept between Jean-Claude and me. I still didn’t like that he truly died and then his body would cool during the hours we slept, but tonight I wanted to feel him pressed against me as his life slipped away, so he’d feel me holding him as the last thing. I curled up in the circle of his naked body, still warm and alive as he wrapped his arms around me. Nathaniel spooned on the other side of me and Jean-Claude’s arms went across me to him, and then Dev spooned on the other side of Nathaniel so that our arms overlapped and held each other. Jean-Claude’s arms were long enough that his hand touched Dev.

Nathaniel was already asleep by the time Richard came out of the bathroom. He hadn’t brought any pajamas, so he was as nude as the rest of us as he left the bathroom door slightly ajar like a nightlight. He’d remembered, that was nice.

Dev tensed watching him walk around the room. The bed moved as he climbed in bed behind Jean-Claude. I heard my vampire fiancé make a small contented sound and then Richard’s arm was over him and touching me. Richard’s hand tensed, started to move, but I moved my hand so I could press his hand back on my side. I patted his hand and felt the tension leave his hand and arm. I put my arm back over Nathaniel and Dev, who reached up to touch my hand as if for reassurance. I wasn’t sure I could keep everyone out of my head, but I thought at him how happy I was to feel him on the other side of Nathaniel and how proud I was to call him my golden tiger, and my lover. He raised my hand and kissed my fingertips, which were about all he could reach without moving everyone.

Jean-Claude stroked his hand along Dev’s side under the silky sheets. Nathaniel snuggled lower in his sleep, and then Jean-Claudedied. I felt him leave, heard the pained sound he usually made when it happened. Richard moved closer on the other side of him, holding him in place. I did the same on my side, so we held him as close as we could. We would hold him that way all day as we slept, and when he woke we were both there to see him smile up at us. Nathaniel and Dev kissed him, kissed me, then gave us the room, because the first time waking up together after such a long time apart needed to be just us. We started by cleaning up in Jean-Claude’s huge tub with its mirrored walls, but we didn’t end there. We ended on the bed in the silk sheets with our hair still wet, which is very bad for silk, but there would be other sheets to buy, and there would never be another first time for the three of us to wake up together and remind ourselves why we’d tried to love each other ten years ago, and why we’d failed, and why this time we just mightsucceed.

The wedding of the century is imminent for Anita Blake but first she must overcome the biggest obstacle of all: her family.

Read more for an exclusive sneak peek at

SLAY

the next Anita Blakenovel.

I WASSTANDING ATthe arrival area for the A gates at St. Louis Lambert International Airport trying to see through the continuing crowds of people that kept spilling out past the TSA agent sitting at the little lectern. Arriving passengers had been streaming past the roped-off lines of other passengers waiting in line to go through security and depart. None of them had been my family, either coming or going. I was nervous, which made me want to touch the gun at my waist, but since I was carrying concealed and people tend to panic if you flash in the airport these days, I resisted the urge. Flashing the gun would have flashed my U.S. Marshal badge, too, but I’d found that people who wanted to freak about the gun never seemed to see the badge clipped next to it. I really didn’t want my dad and stepmom’s first glimpse of me in eight years to be kneeling on the floor with my fingers laced behind my head while some newbie from Metro police was yelling at me to comply. I was also really beginning to regret the high, spiked heels. They took me from five-three to five-seven and made my legs look long and shapely, and looked amazing with my short swishy skirt, but the heels weren’t made for standing around in the airport on hard tile floors. Walking was fine in them, I’d even been learning to dance in heels this high as welooked at possible footwear for the wedding, but standing was beginning to hurt.

“You’re actually scared,” Nicky said beside me. He stood like a friendly, blond mountain, so muscled that he’d had to get his leather jacket custom tailored to fit over his upper body. The jeans he had gotten from a bodybuilder site, but he’d wanted a jacket that could cover carrying concealed and for that he’d had to buy from a site that catered to athletic men and even then he’d had to find an in-town tailor. He wasn’t nervous and reaching for his gun like a dangerous comfort object. He was standing cool and calm, keeping an eye on the crowd and the customers who went into the little store against the opposite wall. I caught a glimpse of a slender figure picking up a magazine from the rack near the entrance to the store. They were wearing an oversized hoodie, nondescript jeans, and jogging shoes. They looked like a dozen teens to twenties that had passed by us, so why had they caught my attention? I tensed, trying to feel if it was a vampire, or something else supernatural that wasn’t on our side, and then Ru turned around so I could see his face and a bit of his short blond hair. His bored why-did-my-parents-make-me-come-here expression never changed, but his startling dark eyes looked into mine. He was part of my security tonight. He and his sister, Rodina. I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her yet; then I realized that Ru had done something small on purpose so I’d look at him. He was still undercover, but he wanted me to see him, so I’d feel better. Seeing him helped me feel better about Deimos, the ancient vampire who had come to town recently and attacked us. We’d almost canceled my family’s visit, but after the one attempt Deimos had left us alone. We were hoping he’d found us too powerful and just gone back into hiding. We’d delayed my family’s visit for weeks, but when we couldn’t find him, and he didn’t try to find us again, we finally had to move forward with fitting my dad for his outfit if he was giving me away. Since he was very Catholic and I was marrying a vampire, that was still up for debate. Hell, my family was only now agreeingto meet Jean-Claude. They might not even be coming to our wedding.

Ru turned away, putting the magazine back and sighing so heavily that his body language said just how bored he was with the magazine, being in the airport, waiting for some stupid relative, or... I had no idea how he and all the Harlequin did it, but they were some of the best covert operatives in the world, maybe the best, I hadn’t met enough covert-ops people to judge.

I looked at Nicky. “I was going to say, I was not scared-scared, maybe nervous enough that it’s a type of fear, but if Ru broke cover to try and reassure me, he’s picking up on more than just nerves.”

---