Crimson Death

Nathaniel put the iPad down on the bedspread and met my eyes with his; he knew how distracted I suddenly was, because he’d watched himself affect me like that for years. It was closer to the way I got distracted with Jean-Claude and Asher, back when he was in our bed. Did Micah and Nathaniel together make me this stupid-faced? Maybe. It was like I couldn’t remember, which let me know that I needed to walk out of the room and find Jean-Claude, or find a phone and talk to Micah—again. But I didn’t. I stood there and drank in the beauty of them, the possibility of them.

I couldn’t seem to leave the room, but I found my voice. “You couldn’t have ordered the bedspread and pillows online. There hasn’t been time for them to ship.” My voice sounded a little hoarse, so I cleared my throat, trying to sound and feel more like myself.

“No, we ran out and picked up a few things,” Nathaniel said.

“We? You and Damian went out during the day just to shop?” I asked.

“Sunlight doesn’t burn me anymore,” Damian said, studying me with those pure green eyes of his.

“I know, but you still don’t like going out in it.”

“Nathaniel was with me,” he said.

“And that made you feel safer,” I said.

He put an arm around the other man’s shoulders. Nathaniel put his head a little to the side so his auburn hair and Damian’s red intermingled like two streams of some blood-colored sea where the tides meet. It was like Damian’s eyes were the color of leaves to complement Nathaniel’s flower-colored ones.

I shook my head forcefully and looked at the floor. The carpet was new, too. It was dark brown with a pattern of green leaves and autumn-colored flowers on it. I wondered if Damian realized he’d just given up one color of flower for another.

I heard the bed move before Nathaniel crawled into sight, gazing up at me from the ground so I couldn’t hide behind the thick fall of my hair. He gazed up at me with those large lilac-colored eyes. He was improbable, too beautiful, but it was his eyes that tipped the scale from beautiful to something exotic and unreal, like an orchid grown in some hothouse. I could almost feel the heat and humidity of it. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see him, and it was better. The air was less close. I should have started backing out of the room and run for it, but I just closed my eyes, as if that would save me. That hadn’t been a good strategy since I was five and I believed that if I couldn’t see the monster under the bed he couldn’t get me. If there’d really been something under my bed it wouldn’t have worked then, either.

Nathaniel traced his fingers along my arm, the lightest of touches, but it was enough to make me open my eyes and drown in that violet gaze. I was better than this, damn it! I knew how to escape vampire gaze, but then he wasn’t really a vampire and I’d never met a wereleopard who could capture me with his eyes.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight and shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. He caressed my arm again, but I was able to keep my eyes closed this time. I’d played this game with Jean-Claude for years. Of course, that had been back when he wasn’t sure I wouldn’t tell him to go to hell and mean it. It had limited what he would risk, how far he would push. Nathaniel didn’t have those kinds of doubts. Nothing gives you courage like believing someone loves you absolutely.

He ran his fingers along my arm again, and another hand echoed him on the other side of me. It made me open my eyes. Nathaniel was still kneeling in front of me, but Damian was kneeling beside him now. It was his hand caressing my right arm, while Nathaniel stroked the left. I opened my mouth to protest, but I wasn’t sure what I was protesting. We were all lovers already, and the pilot had informed Jean-Claude, who had informed me, that we had a couple of hours more before we could take off.

As if he’d read my thoughts, Nathaniel said, “We have at least two more hours before we need to be at the plane. We had sex, but you didn’t feed the ardeur, because I didn’t know how.”

I had to cough to clear my voice before I could say, “Jean-Claude wishes Rafael were here so I could feed on all the rats through him before we leave.”

“Rafael won’t get back in time to feed you,” he said, rising higher on his knees so he could bring his face closer to mine.

I straightened up so that I wasn’t half-bending over toward him.

Damian leaned in to lay the brush of his lips against my arm, too delicate to even be called a kiss. It made me shiver and wrap both my arms around myself as if I were cold, but it wasn’t cold that had made me shiver. I should walk out, leave . . . now.

“Let us be your food,” Damian said, and I was suddenly staring into the green of his eyes as if I’d never seen them before, never realized how fair of face, how . . .

I shook my head a little more forcefully and took two steps back so I wasn’t between the two of them. “I’m going to . . . go somewhere . . . else.”

“Why?” Nathaniel asked.

“I . . . You’re trying to bespell me again.”

“We’re engaged. We’d marry if you could legally take more than one spouse. I’m not trying to force you to do anything we haven’t already done. You have to feed the ardeur before we get on the plane. You can’t risk feeding hundreds of miles in the air.”

“I’d be too nervous,” I said.

“That means it’s more likely to get out of control, not less.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I tried to call up some anger to protect me from his so-reasonable voice and the two of them kneeling so close to me.