It was Jean-Claude's mouth that found mine first. I knew the taste of him with my eyes closed tight. He gave himself up to the ardeur, and I fed through his kiss, fed in a rush that flowed through my body, in a tingling rush of energy. I'd fed the ardeur a hundred times, and it had never been like this.
He drew back from the kiss, eyes filled with midnight fire. «How do you feel?»
I tried to think past the pulse of my own body. I'd fed the ardeur, but the swollen longing in my body wasn't gone. I felt for Nathaniel's energy, and found him still there, still alive. Distant as a dream, Damian's spark like a match flame in a wind.
«More,» I whispered, «I need more.»
He nodded. «I gave you enough to bring you back to us.» He moved back from me, and I tried to hold him against me. «Non, ma petite, you need food.» I kept my arms locked around his neck, and he reached out, and brought Requiem into view. «When you helped him raise need in yourself, you raised it in him, as well. Would you deny him?»
I frowned at him. I couldn't think. I whispered, «No,» but wasn't entirely sure what I was saying no to: no, I wouldn't deny him, or no, to other things?
Requiem's hand slid over my bare arm. That one touch threw my head back, fluttered my eyes shut. I knew where my need had come from, I could taste it on my tongue, taste his need.
Jean-Claude slid away, and Requiem was above me. So lonely, so heart-wrenchingly lonely. Lonely for so long. You feed the ardeur on sex, but its gifts are more than that. Sometimes you can see into people, see what they most desire, most need, and you can offer it to them. You can offer them their heart's desire, and sometimes you can even give them exactly what you promise.
I had an instant of seeing so far into Requiem that I started to cry. Weeping not my tears, but his. He wanted the ardeur again, yes, but more than that, he wanted a place of refuge. A place where he could stop being afraid; he'd been afraid for so very long. Afraid that Belle would drag him back, and make him suffer for all eternity for falling in love with someone else. I felt his fear, his loneliness, his loss, like blows to my heart, and in the end, I did the only thing that would keep him well and truly safe. I made him mine.
32
MOST OF THE clothes vanished in a blur of hands and bodies, but it was when he wrapped his hands around my belt, and tore it in two, jerking my body up off the bed, that I remembered. I had just enough presence of mind to make sure he didn't destroy the shoulder rig, but it fell to the floor with the pieces of the jeans and T-shirt. Requiem, with his poetry, his gentlemanly restraint, vanished under the crash of the ardeur, and the power of his own magic.
I fed on the touch of his hands, the brush of his lips, the sensation of his naked skin brushing along mine, the weight of him above me. Requiem and I had never been nude together, and that first time was shared with Nathaniel and Damian. They knew what I was doing, they could feel it, because I'd opened that mark between us, so that each touch, each kiss, each movement, fed energy to them. Nathaniel's heart began to beat sure and strong, but Damian's spark still flickered, hesitating between life and death. Nathaniel could make his own heart beat, but Damian couldn't. Damian needed more than these small touches of ardeur. I'd gotten to where I could feed the ardeur in small ways from less touching, but I needed orgasm for a full feeding. Okay, for a really, truly, full feeding you needed orgasms from everybody involved, but one was enough to get you through. We needed to get through.
Requiem rested above me, pressing every inch of his nakedness against the front of me, but he laid his body on top of mine, not inside it. He pressed me down into the bed, kissing me as if he would eat me from the mouth down, and only luck kept us from cutting our lips on his fangs. The feel of him, swollen and hard, made me spread my legs and try to wrap my legs around him, but he moved away. Moved above me, holding most of his weight away with his arms and legs, as if he were afraid to touch too much of me. It had all seemed to be going so well, and then he'd climbed back into himself, regained control somehow. Requiem in control went back to being a gentleman. In a situation where I would not have blamed him about taking full advantage, he still seemed painfully aware that he wasn't my first choice, or even my seventh. He tried to feed the ardeur without crossing that last barrier, because he knew, or thought he knew, I didn't want him.
«Requiem, please, please, finish it.»
«Finish it,» he said, voice showing the strain of his control. «Your words betray you, Anita. You use me only because you must, not because you want me.»
Anger flared through me. «My body wants you, Requiem.»