Kiss The Dead

He was in almost the same position as Nathaniel had been: upper body angled upward, only his groin and hips pinning me to the bed. He started slow, keeping his stroke shallow so that I could feel the head of him just touching the end of me, but Nathaniel had done the prep work, and I said, “Harder.”

Once, Micah would have argued with me, but now he just did what I asked. He began to pound himself into me; the thickness of him started to fill me up, not just with his body, but with that warmth, that thick, growing hint of pleasure, but it was the tip of him hitting deep that put me over the edge, that brought me screaming, and set my nails in his arms, digging into his upper arms, so I painted my pleasure the length of his arms, as he brought me screaming and writhing underneath him.

He pulled out, abruptly, his body still long and thick and hard. He said, in a voice gone breathless, and growling deep, “You need to feed the ardeur, Anita. You didn’t even try to feed.”

I panted up at him, and finally managed to say, “I forgot.”

Nathaniel laughed that deep guy chuckle. “He’d make anyone forget.”

We glanced at our other half, and he lay on the bed on his stomach, watching us with those eyes, face alight with emotion, pleasure, just the watching. Nathaniel was both an exhibitionist and a voyeur. He liked seeing me with other people, and he loved watching Micah and me together.

Micah said, “Over.”

“What?” I asked.

“Turn over,” he said.

My lower body wasn’t really cooperating, and Nathaniel helped me over on my stomach. Then Micah put his knees on my thighs, pinning me, which I liked, but I think it was incidental to the fact that the angle was deeper now. He’d spent most of his adult life with women who were always telling him it was too much, too deep, fucking ow; the fact that I liked it, orgasmed from it, made positions possible for him that most women would have tried to endure, but they wouldn’t have enjoyed it.

“If it’s too deep, tell me,” he said. He said that before any new position.

“I will,” I said, my cheek pressed to the bed. The pillows were gone; Nathaniel had moved them out of the way when Micah put me facedown on my stomach.

He didn’t just hit the end of me; the tip of him rolled over, caressing the deepest part of me more than hitting it, and I had to ask, “Is the tip of you bending over, like folding over?”

“Yes,” he said. Which meant from this angle he was a couple of inches too long for me now, maybe more.

“Does it hurt you?” I asked.

“No, does it hurt you?” he asked.

“No, it just feels different.”

“Different good?”

I thought about it for a moment, and then said, “Yes.”

He found a rhythm then, a stroke that carried him into and past the end of me, so that at the end of each stroke I could feel him rolling over, as if he were able to caress me with the tip of himself. It was like he hit the end of me, and then caressed over me, and then stroked upward, and that was at the end of each movement.

“Harder,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He took me at my word, and began to move faster, harder, but each stroke ended in that caressing roll of his body, as if he were petting, massaging deep inside me. It was an amazing sensation. I felt him hesitate, and looked back over my shoulder to see his face. He had his eyes closed; one, so he could concentrate on his body, feel his way inside me, but the other reason was so he could last. Most men are visual, and without being able to see himself going in and out of me, he was able to fight off that last moment a little bit longer. I watched the concentration on his face as my body rocked and moved against the bed under the push and power of him. I had a second of warning, and then the orgasm caught me. It dug my fingers into the bed, it screamed its way down my throat, and out my mouth.

In a voice thick with strain, Micah said, “Anita, feed!”

I dropped the metaphysical leash on the ardeur and let myself feed. Micah could feel when I dropped my shields and released my hunger, and he released himself. He stopped fighting to last, and finally let himself go. He pounded himself inside me, hard and fast, caressing, and then as the tip of him rolled upward with that last extra bit of stroking pleasure he went, and because of the ardeur I could feel it. I could feel him hot and liquid inside me, because my body fed on it, fed on the feel of him thrust so deep inside me; he bent himself a little back, and if he’d been a different kind of man, that might have hurt, instead of feeling so very good, and if I’d been a different kind of woman, having him so deep inside would have turned from pleasure to not, but we were ourselves, we liked it deep and hard, and all the extras that went with it.

He shuddered above me, and I fed on his energy as he collapsed on top of me. I fed on the sweat on his chest, the frantic thudding of his heart against my back, the weight and feel of him in me, on me, with me-I fed on it all. When we could breathe enough to talk, he said, “Every time I think you can’t get more amazing in bed, I’m wrong.”

I wanted to say something profound, to let him know how exquisite he was, how delicious, but what came out was, “Right back at you, babe.” Not exactly poetry, but it made him push back my hair until he could kiss my cheek and say, “I love you, Anita.”

“Love you more,” I said.

“Love you most,” Nathaniel said, as he cuddled in beside us.

I smiled, and we said the next part together, all three of us: “I love you mostest.” And we did.

23

THE PHONE DRAGGED me from a deep, dreamless sleep. There was the tiniest thread of sunlight in the dark room, proving we hadn’t shut the blackout curtains quite right. If they were closed, the room was cave dark. Micah moved beside me, groping on the nightstand for my cell phone. The ring was loud and harsh, an old-fashioned phone ring. Nathaniel made a protesting wiggle on the other side of me, his hand trying to hold Micah in place even in his sleep.

Micah’s voice came with only a hint of sleep to it, “Hello.”

I lay in the dark of the blackout curtains, with Nathaniel curled around me; he’d pulled me in even tighter to his body, his front to my back, but there was a tension to his body that let me know he was awake.

“Just a moment, Marshal Brice.” Micah had said the name out loud so I’d know who I was talking to and have a chance of knowing what it was about. He rolled over and handed me the phone. The line of sunlight slashed across his upper body, so that it looked like it was cutting him like some sort of golden blade. I took the phone but shifted the covers over Micah, so that the line of light didn’t touch his skin. Maybe it was years of dating vampires and knowing what sunlight did to them, but the sight of that line of sunshine across his skin had unnerved me. Micah was a wereleopard; sunlight didn’t hurt him, but… it was almost as if I’d dreamed something bad and didn’t remember it, but it had spooked me just the same.

“Hey, Brice, what’s up?” I said, and my voice sounded normal. I’d had time to wake up for the phone.

“While you and Zerbrowski went home to the family, I found a clue.”

I leaned higher up on my elbow. “What?”

“Neighbors saw the same van between the locations we have, but the plate is registered to an address that our vampire snitch didn’t give us.”

I sat up; Nathaniel’s arm slid down around my waist, his face snuggling into my bare back and ass. He nuzzled a little, and I did my best to ignore it. “Where?” I asked.

“Out near you, which is why you get invited to the party, otherwise I’d just grab SWAT and you’d hear about it afterward. We can pick you up as we drive past.”

Nathaniel was kissing softly against my body. It wasn’t exactly distracting me from what Brice was saying, but it wasn’t exactly helping me focus either. I put a hand behind me between him and my body. I frowned at the clock on the nightstand. “Crap, Brice, we’ve only got two hours until sunset, and there could be as many as twenty