Page 56 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

Graham was embarrassed then that he’d let his momentary fears show. He forced himself to relax between us and not be a big baby about it, his thoughts or mine, I knew they weren’t Jean-Claude’s. I slid my fingers underneath Graham’s shirt. His skin was so warm, his body heat caught underneath his shirt, so it was like warming my hands as I caressed upward, tracing the smooth firmness of his stomach while Jean-Claude did the same to his back. I had a confused moment where I wasn’t sure if I was touching the softer flesh of his stomach or the firmness of his back. Graham shuddered between us as if we’d done a lot more than just touch his stomach and back.

Jean-Claude looked at me over the other man’s shoulder and we stared into each other’s eyes as we ran our hands up his body, forcing his shirt to bunch around our arms, slowly exposing his upper body to the crowd. They went wild, screaming and catcalling. I sensed security moving into place around the stage just in case, but theydidn’t rush us because Jean-Claude was in charge of the energy this time and he didn’t want violence, he wanted lust. Safe, teasing promises of lust, which is what a good strip club is, the promise but never the fulfillment of the fantasy.

Jean-Claude smiled at me over Graham’s shoulder, and I smiled back; we could feel each other’s hands on his body. Graham’s breath came out in a long sigh, his pulse speeding from being in the middle of our power exchange. The shirt lifted, revealing his nipples; the small tips of them were hard with excitement. It made me speculate about how hard other things might be, and I got the pleasure from Jean-Claude that we had made him excited. Part pride in workmanship, part dominance; I almost never felt that way about people I wasn’t emotionally connected to, but for Jean-Claude that was always a high. No wonder he enjoyed being onstage here.

I kissed Graham’s bare chest carefully, leaving a perfect imprint of my red lips on his skin. He sighed again, and Jean-Claude kissed the side of his neck, oh so gently. Graham’s eyes fluttered closed, and I felt the effort in his body not to shudder again. I couldn’t help myself; I flicked my tongue across his nipple, and he cried out. I kept his shirt bunched up underneath his shoulders, as Jean-Claude stood over us both. There was a moment when the leather of his boots prevented him from touching Graham’s back, and the power contracted again, until he touched Graham’s hair, and then the power flexed outward again.

Loud enough for the crowd to hear he said, “It is time he lost his shirt, is it not?”

“Yes! Take it off! Take it off!” The crowd chanted it as Jean-Claude reached over Graham to touch my hands where they held the shirt in place. He placed his hands over mine and it felt amazing to touch each other directly, as if hands meant so much more than normal. I gazed up into his cobalt-blue eyes and I knew what he wanted me to do. He slid his fingers underneath the cloth and lifted as I leaned in to lick the other nipple. Graham’s arms went up withoutbeing asked, and Jean-Claude stripped the shirt off him to fling it into the crowd. I rose up from his chest to find Graham’s face inches from mine, his brown eyes wild with need. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss him. It was gentle and he did not kiss me back but stayed still under my touch as if he was afraid to move, afraid I’d stop if he was too eager. I traced my hands on either side of his face and whispered, “Kiss me.”

Jean-Claude stood above us stroking Graham’s hair and called out to the crowd, “Has our good wolf earned a better kiss than that?” The crowd roared its approval. The chant became “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”

I kept my hands on either side of Graham’s face as I tilted my head up toward him. He made a small eager sound and then he bent over me, and our lips met. He made a soft sound against my mouth, and then he kissed me. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off my knees so that I had to wrap my arms around his bare shoulders to help hold me in his embrace as we explored each other with lips and tongues, he was so eager. He’d wanted permission to touch me for so long. It was as if his eagerness was contagious, so that when his arm tightened around my back and his other hand slid downward to touch my ass I didn’t say no. We weren’t getting out of our clothes, Jean-Claude was right there, we were onstage, and I suddenly felt safe, in control of the uncontrollable. I wrapped my legs around Graham’s waist too high for anything serious, but I’d forgotten how short the dress and how small the thong, and suddenly his hands were on my bare ass, holding me in place as if I needed the help to stay in place around his body, but tentatively as if he wasn’t sure it was okay. I had a moment of thinkingEither grab my ass or let me go. Jean-Claude knew what I was thinking, feeling, so he said, “Grab her ass like you mean it!” He called it out to the crowd, and they shrieked their eagerness. Graham tried to hesitate, but I kissed him harder, using just a touch of teeth against his lips, and he grabbed my ass so hard and sudden that it was my turn tomake a small, surprised sound. I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck and he took that as the invitation it was to move his other hand down to dig his fingers into my ass, but my extra arm movement had raised the short skirt up so that he touched bare skin where the thong didn’t cover.

He froze for a moment, breaking away from the kiss, searching my face for outrage, for a no. I said, “This may be the only chance you get, I’d take advantage of it if I were you.”

He finally allowed himself the eager smile he’d been trying to hide, because he was afraid I’d back off, but not tonight. I smiled at him, willing him to be as eager as we needed him to be. He stared straight into my eyes from inches away and filled his hands with my bare ass, cupping and caressing, so that I wound my legs around his waist, pressing the front of me in the thong against the front of him in his jeans, and found him as hard and eager as I could have wanted. Jean-Claude had moved out of the way of my spiky heels, because he’d known exactly what I was going to do. He kept his hand on Graham’s shoulder as he moved to the side of us. Graham’s hands convulsed, digging his fingers into my ass, pressing me tighter against that hard center inside his pants. The suddenness and the force of it made me cry out and wrap my legs tighter around his waist, driving myself tighter against him. He shuddered, closing his eyes, shoulders bowing as he fought to control what he wanted to do next.

“Do it.” I whispered it against his face.

“I want to fuck you.”

“No,” Jean-Claude and I said together.

“Then what?” he asked, and he sounded wild, trapped and too eager to think clearly.

I knew exactly what I wanted. “Grind me into the stage.”

“Won’t that hurt you?” That he thought to ask when his body wanted me so badly gained him points.

“I want to feel you on top of me, Graham, pushing that hard, solid piece of you against me.”

He didn’t ask again, just straightened his knees and took us to the ground with my legs wrapped around his waist and the dress up around mine, the thin thong all that was between me and the roughness of his jeans. In the right head space, I like the sensation, and I was in that head space. I let go of his shoulders so he could raise himself up above like he was trying to do a push-up with me in the way. It pressed him tighter against me and I loved it. The crowd’s screams seemed distant as I stared up into his face above me. I stared down the bare length of his chest to his waist still safely in his pants. Jean-Claude leaned over me to whisper into Graham’s ear, and just seeing them both above me sped my pulse and made me want more.

Jean-Claude leaned down to kiss me as Graham rose up higher and began to rub himself over me, dry humping is what it’s called, but I was already wet. Jean-Claude kissed me, soft and eager as Graham gained rhythm against my body. I wrapped my hands in Jean-Claude’s hair, crushing those thick, soft curls of his as I came eager to his mouth as my hips started rising and falling with Graham’s. I felt a sharp pain like a piece of candy that you’ve sucked too long until it cuts your tongue, then tasted blood, sweet copper pennies. Jean-Claude drew back from the kiss, his eyes drowning in eager blue light, a dot of crimson on his lower lip. He licked my blood from his lip and whispered,“Ma petite.”

I whispered his name back to him, and then in the power that we had raised was another power creeping like a dark thread through our nice, clean lust. Jean-Claude spoke in my mind, “It is in the crowd.”

I tried to speak mind-to-mind, but with Graham’s body rubbing against mine, his desire riding the air, I couldn’t focus enough for it. I whispered, “What is?”

He kissed me again, but this wasn’t for pleasure, it was to let metaste the power that wasn’t us. It was like... mist clinging to each person in the audience. Some people were covered in more of it, others were a spiderweb wisp, but none of them was clean. Something, another vampire, had ridden in on Jean-Claude’s power like a Trojan horse, and now unless we could cleanse the audience of this taint the vampire would possess these people, and it would be our fault. We had to save them. He rose back from the kiss to gaze into my eyes. He was thinking we needed to raise more power.

Graham had stopped moving against me as if he was sensing some of what Jean-Claude had shared, or maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention to him. No one likes to be ignored when they’re doing something that sexual with you. I looked up at him not sure what to say, because the threat to the audience and the fact that any vampire could have infiltrated the crowd with us right here and not noticing had scared me. That kind of fear wasn’t an aphrodisiac. I didn’t know what to tell Graham or how to raise enough power to rescue all the nice people who had come to enjoy the show tonight. Jean-Claude knew just what to do. He reached down and cupped his hand over the front of my body, tracing the front of the thong where it clung to me. It felt amazing and the crowd screamed his name, urging him on.

He raised his voice, addressing the crowd. “Shall we raise the heat between Graham and our lovely Nikki?”

Screams of approval and suggestions ranged from justyes, do it, to pornographic. Jean-Claude gazed back at me, his hair falling around his face to hide what he said next from the room. He rubbed his hand over the thong and my body underneath. My breathing was already starting to change.

Graham started to move to all fours instead of the odd push-up position. Jean-Claude said, “Graham, we need you right where you are.” He raised his voice and said, “Is that not so, ladies, we need Graham to stay, right, where, he, is.” They roared their approval.

“But Nikki must say yes to being your surrogate onstagetonight.” He looked down at me while his hand rested on the cloth of the thong; his hand felt heavier and more important than it should have been. The audience was chanting,say yes, say yes. Jean-Claude looked down at me and said, “Say yes.”

I stared up into his face and felt his fear, and guilt that all these people would be victims for the vampire if we could not save them. I said the only thing I could think to say. “Yes.”

He whispered,“Je t’aime, ma petite.”

“I love you, too.”

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