Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 14. Danse Macabre(80)

I looked at him, happy he'd helped me, but uncomfortable that he'd had to help me.

«Did it bother you?» Micah asked me.

I shook my head. «No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was…«My breath shivered out of me. «It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together.»

«Then it's okay,» Micah said. «Don't feel bad because you don't feel bad.»

Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. «It sounds stupid when you say it out loud.»

He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. «It's not stupid, Anita. It's how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.»

I drew back enough to see his face. «You're okay with everything we did tonight. You don't think we're evil or something.»

He chucked me under the chin. «That's Richard's voice in your head, not mine.»

I nodded. He was right, on part of it.

He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. «Take off the robe and let me hold you all naked and warm.»

I wanted to, in fact I couldn't think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn't touch my robe, and I didn't climb on the bed.

Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.

I turned with a little gasp. «You're naked.»

He frowned at me. «Yes, we always sleep naked.»

I shook my head, and said, «But…«then I realized what was wrong. I'd sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true menage à trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn't been fact, until tonight.

I tried to put it into words. «I knew in theory you liked men as well as women,» I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I'd ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he'd vanish.

«But now you know in fact, and you think less of me,» he said, in a voice as empty as his face.

«No, not less, just…«I tried again. «In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other's dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don't undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don't sleep with them, or… oh, hell.» I looked up at Micah. «Won't it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?»

Micah laughed. «Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?» I frowned at him. «I don't…«I pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. «Fuck you,» I said, but I was starting to smile and that usually meant I'd lost the argument. I wasn't even sure it was an argument.

«Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself.» His face held a hint of humor now.

I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. «Stop it, all of you.»

«Stop what?» Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.

«Don't you dare laugh at me.»

«Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?» Jean-Claude's neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.

«No,» I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.

«Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?» Micah's mouth was twitching at the edges.

I glared at them all. «Maybe.»

«Anita — «Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. «Anita, remember I thought I'd have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true menage а trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj.»

I frowned at him. «So it doesn't bother you?»

«No. I'm not into men, but I don't seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do.»

«Don't compare me with him,» I said, and was all set to be angry.

«If it was another woman sleeping naked with you, you'd have the same problems that he does,» Micah said.