"The marble is cold," he said.
I sighed. "I need to find out how well my body's working."
"Just try sitting up in my lap without me holding you. If you're okay, I'll fetch towels and you can sit on them, but trust me you don't want to sit naked on this marble."
"Practical," I said.
"Don't tell anyone I actually made sense, it'll ruin my image."
I smiled. "Secret's safe with me." I tried sitting up, while Jason fidgeted with the water, trying to get the right temperature. I could sit up. Great. I tried to stand, and only Jason's arm around my waist kept me from falling on the marble steps leading down from the tub.
He tucked me safely back in his lap. "Don't try and do so much so fast, Anita."
I leaned back against him, his arm like a safety belt around my waist. "Why I am so weak?"
"How can you have been around vampires this long and ask me that?"
"I don't let them feed," I said.
"I do, and trust me, when you've donated this much, it takes a little while to recover." He seemed satisfied with the water temperature at last. He turned the faucets on harder and had to talk louder over the sound of the water. "We'll get you cleaned up and see how you feel."
I could feel myself frowning, and I wasn't sure why. I felt like I should be angry. I should be something, and I wasn't. Now that I wasn't trapped between Jean-Claude and Asher anymore, I was strangely calm. No, not just calm, I felt good, and I shouldn't have.
I frowned harder, trying to chase this wonderful lassitude away. It was like trying to wake from a bad dream when it didn't want to let you go. Except instead of fighting to wake from a nightmare, I was fighting to destroy a good dream. That seemed wrong, too. Everything seemed wrong. I felt, vaguely, like I'd missed something important, but for the life of me, I couldn't place it.
I felt out of sorts and wonderful at the same time. It was as if my natural grumpiness was fighting some warm happy thought. The warm happy thought was winning, but I wasn't sure that that was necessarily a good thing.
"What's wrong with me?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" Jason asked.
"I feel good, and I shouldn't. I feel wonderful. A few minutes ago I was terrified, dizzy, sick, and scared. But once you got me out of the bed, it all seemed better."
"Just better?" he asked. He was slipping out of his leather jacket, one arm at a time, while he took turns holding me with the other arm.
"You're right, not just better. Once I wasn't scared, it was wonderful again." I frowned and tried to think, and was still having trouble doing it. "Why can't I think through this?"
He rearranged me in his lap so he could unzip his boots, and push them off with his feet. It finally hit me that he was undressing himself, while still holding me in his lap. Who says that the skills you learn at work don't come in useful in your everyday life?
"Why are you undressing?"
"You can't move around without falling down, I'd hate for you to drown in the tub."
I tried pushing this wonderful feeling farther away, but it was like trying to fight a warm, comforting mist. You could strike out, but there was nothing solid to hit. The mist just moved and reformed, and stayed.
"Stop," I said, the one word was firm enough, though I didn't feel very firm inside.
"What?" he asked, as he moved me enough forward so that he could unfasten the tops of his jeans.
"This should bother me, you trying to get naked, while I'm naked, in a tub, that should bother me, right?"
"But it doesn't, does it," he said. He was unbuttoning his button fly jeans with one hand. That took talent.
"No, it doesn't," I said, frowning again, "why doesn't it bother me?"
"You really don't know, do you?" he asked.
"No," I said, not even sure what I was saying no to.
He'd gotten his jeans unbuttoned. "I can either lay you down on the very cold tile, or I can throw you over my shoulder for a few seconds while I take the pants off, lady's choice."
The decision seemed too hard for me. "I don't know."
He didn't ask a second time, just tossed me, as gently as he could over his shoulder, sort of half a fireman's carry. Being upside down made the world spin again, and I wondered if I was going to be sick all over his back. He balanced me there while he wormed out of his jeans.
I was now staring down his bare back as the jeans slid down the top of his butt. The nausea had passed, and I giggled-I never giggle-"Nice ass."
He choked, or laughed. "I never knew you noticed."
"Underwear," I said.
"What?"
"You had underwear, I caught a glimpse of it." I had this horrible urge to run my hands over his butt, just because it was there, and I could. It was like I was drunk or high.