Kiss The Dead

Jade had paid Domino the highest compliment she had for men; she let him join us in bed. Nathaniel was tolerated in the bed, and Crispin, a white tiger and stripper at Guilty Pleasures, but she seldom slept with me because I kept insisting on all these men being there. Her abuser had been male and it had given her a bad opinion of them; the only thing she disliked more was male vampires. Damian had won her over with tales of his own abuse at the hands of She who made him. His vampire mistress made Jade’s master look sane. She’d had to accept that women could abuse, too. Jean-Claude and Asher had enough stories of Belle Morte, and then there’d been the Mother of All Darkness, and Nikolaos the first Master of the City of St. Louis had been one crazy bitch. Crazy didn’t discriminate on the basis of gender.

Jean-Claude had won her over by being himself. It had been interesting watching him work to gain her trust. He’d always told me the only woman who ever frustrated his plans was me; watching him charm Jade had made me believe that statement.

Jade came into sight running so fast she was a blur of black and white. I handed the weapons I’d been holding to Domino and then braced. She was small enough and I was strong enough, but running at that speed it was a lot of momentum to stop.

She slowed down enough for me to see the long hair sweeping out behind her, the pale face, eyes frantic, and then she leapt on me like a monkey. Jean-Claude put a hand on my back to help steady me as all that speed and energy leapt into my arms, and stopped. She wrapped her legs around my waist, arms around my neck, and buried her face into my hair and the side of my neck. I put my hands the only place I could to hold her, which was underneath her slender ass. It was the same way Nicky had carried me into the showers. That thought made my stomach clench tight.

She mumbled into my neck, but she was mumbling Chinese. Even after a year, the nuances of the language when muttered into my hair, or neck, escaped me.

I was already making soothing noises to her, but I transferred one hand up to stroke the incredible silkiness of her hair, while the other arm held her weight.

“Jade, sweetie, I can’t understand you when you’re this upset. Slow down and English, please, dearest, English.”

She raised her face up enough to look at me. Her eye makeup was smeared around her eyes, which probably meant I was wearing it on my neck and the blue silk of the shirt.

Her voice came out in a breathy whisper. “They said you were hurt.”

“I’m all better; all healed.”

She studied my face, serious as a child, as if she thought I might be lying. I’d tried doing that, but found truth worked better than comforting lies. She was way more girly than I would ever be, but liked truth the way that I did, and once lied to, she never forgot. Again, like me.

“Promise,” she whispered.

I nodded as solemn as she was. “Promise.”

She smiled and her whole face changed from serious beauty to a shining happiness. She glowed, and when someone looks at you like that, what can you do? I kissed her, and she hugged me, wrapping her arms around my neck again, and wriggling happily. I was suddenly glad the shirt hung to my knees; her enthusiastic cuddling had made more than one short skirt ride up and give way too much of a girl-on-girl show for the guards.

“Ma petite, should you and the lovely Jade come inside?” He was holding the door and motioning. Asher was already out of sight in the room.

I sighed, but Jean-Claude was right. Jade would never let me just put her down and tell her to go play elsewhere. I had been the one who rescued her from centuries of abuse, by simply being better at metaphysics than her abuser had been; in effect I’d been the better vampire, so he was still alive. The other Harlequin were hunting him and the few rogues left, but he wasn’t dead. Jade believed that if I died her old master would take her over again. I wasn’t just her rescuer, I was her continued salvation. We couldn’t even tell her that she was wrong, because you weren’t supposed to be able to cut the bonds between master and animal to call without killing the old master. But what I knew, and he hadn’t, was that part of what made it work was Jade’s willingness. She had wanted freedom, and when I offered it, she’d thrown her free will into mine. It’s so much easier to rescue prisoners if they want to come with you. I’d offered love and safety, he’d offered hate and fear; who wouldn’t choose love?

38

JEAN-CLAUDE’S CUSTOM-MADE BED was still a four-poster like his last one, but the heavy wooden posts and crossbeams were too thick for the drapes that used to hang on the bed, making it a cozy nest. The wood also had heavy attachment points scattered here and there. The frame itself was reinforced steel. When you do bondage with shapeshifters and vampires, you need something sturdy to chain them to. The bed was also bigger even than a California king; orgy-size was what we’d started calling it. I was sitting with my back against the small mountain of black and white pillows in the middle of the headboard. Jade was snuggled lower on the pillows, so that her head tucked in between my waist and hip; one arm was across my thighs, the other was curled underneath her, the hand touching my calf. I had one hand on her shoulders, touching all that almost slippery shiny hair. Jean-Claude was on the other side of me. He had his arm across my shoulders so I lay back tucked in against the side of his body. My free hand was on his thigh, petting the silk and the muscles underneath it. Asher hadn’t even tried to climb on the bed with us. One, I was still mad at him, and he knew it. Two, Jade didn’t like him. She didn’t trust him, and she shouldn’t have. There was something about her extreme victim vibe that made Asher want to do bad things to her, not really hurt her, but dominate her in that bondage-and-submission way, except that Jade wasn’t healthy enough for fun and games like that. She might never be. But Jade’s very fear of him made Asher want to seduce her, not necessarily tie her up and have his way with her, but make her say yes. Her issues and his: bad mix.

Asher paced at the foot of the bed like a big cat in a cage with too much energy and not enough room. I stroked the warmth of Jade’s hair, and then cuddled into the solidness of Jean-Claude. I let their touching me, and my touching them, help dissipate some of the nervous energy that Asher was having to pace away.

“If I had dreamed that you would make love to Nicky more than once so close together, I would have cautioned you,” Jean-Claude said.

“I know he’s a Bride, but I thought I was a danger to him only if I was gravely hurt; then I might accidentally drain a Bride to death. That’s what you told me.”

“Yes, ma petite, but…”

“I wasn’t that hurt.”

“No, but the Brides have no ability to protect themselves; they are designed to give anything that their master wants from them.”

“I didn’t use the ardeur the first time. It didn’t feel like I used it.” I tried to think. “I did heal enough to go down on Nicky the second time.”

“I cut you badly,” Asher said, stopping by the side of the bed. “That is a lot of healing unless the sex was magical.”

I frowned at him. “I know that the ardeur can drain a lover to death if I feed too often on any one person, but healing from sex has never come with that kind of price unless the ardeur is invoked.”

Jean-Claude laid his cheek against my hair. “Belle Morte drained her Brides to raise her own power, just before she would take us into a nobleman’s court and try to seduce them all.”

“I wasn’t trying to do anything but heal and feed the ardeur,” I said.

Asher said, “The first time she killed a Bride and stole all his energy, it was accidental.”

We looked at him.

He used his hair to hide almost all of his face, not just the scars, as if he didn’t want to see us while he told us. “The first time was like this, just sex, but there was no modern medicine to restart his heart. He died and stayed dead, but she wasn’t upset. She loved the power of it, and filed it away in that dark mind of hers. By the time Jean-Claude arrived in court she had made it just another piece of her power.”