Gregory came to stand beside her, his furred form towering over her. “You want to play, too, don’t you?”
She looked down at us again, and this time her eyes weren’t human.
I’d seen that particular trick a thousand times, but this time I screamed. Screamed like a tourist, and Nathaniel pressed himself against me as if he were trying to push himself out the other side.
Damian just lay in my lap, like the fear had already killed him.
“Get Clair out of here,” Richard said, and his voice held that first edge of growl. “She’s too new, if you bring her beast like this, she’ll bleed people.”
I made a small sound in my throat, a helpless sound.
Micah took Clair by the arm and started leading her toward the door. She didn’t fight him, but she made him pull a little, while her animal eyes in that pretty face stared at us. She wasn’t embarrassed anymore, there was nothing human enough left in her to be embarrassed about nudity.
“What’s happening to them?” Micah asked.
“Damian’s first master is trying to kill them,” Richard said.
“How?” I wasn’t sure if he were asking how she’d kill us or how it had happened.
“Scare them to death.”
Micah almost had Clair to the door. “How can you stop it?”
Richard looked at Micah then. “I let Anita feed on me, and Jean-Claude comes riding to the rescue.” The growl had left his voice, and all that remained was tiredness and a sort of world-weariness, as if he’d seen too much, done too much, and didn’t want to do it anymore.
Micah and Richard stared at each other for a moment, then Micah gave a small nod. “Keep everybody alive,” he said, and he pulled Clair through the doorway.
She grabbed the door frame. “They smell so good.”
Micah threw her over his shoulders, and the movement startled her enough that she let go of the door and he carried her out of sight.
Her words floated back, “No, I don’t want to go.”
Richard tried to get his jeans unfastened one-handed, and it wasn’t working. “I need some help here Gregory.”
The leopardman looked at him. “Going to fuck while you have the chance?”
Richard growled at him, and I made a small sound. Nathaniel whimpered. I knew in the front of my head that this was stupid. That Richard would not hurt me, not in that way, but the fear had a mind of its own. Nathaniel was a wereleopard, but he was terrified, too. No logic, just fear.
“If I shift, the pants will shred, and I don’t have extra clothes over here anymore,” Richard said.
“I thought your control was better than that, Ulfric,” Gregory growled.
Richard turned some of that anger loose and yelled, “I can taste their fear on my tongue, down my throat, as if I’ve already swallowed them.” He balled his good hand into the torn front of his T-shirt and pulled. He was suddenly standing over me naked from the waist up, with a look in his eyes that would have frightened me even if I’d been myself. It was a wild, fierce look, made up of hatred and lust. Hatred and lust in a man’s eyes is a bad combination.
It seemed to take physical effort for him to turn away from me and look at Gregory again. “Did you feel that?”
Gregory’s only answer was a low growl that made Nathaniel whimper again.
“God help me, she’s afraid to see me nude, and I fucking love it.
I love that she’s afraid of me, and I hate myself for loving it.
Theardeur will rise, but God alone knows what we’ll do before it does.
With this much fear, with her, I don’t trust my control. And whatever happens I want clothes when it’s over, because I’m going to want to get the hell out of here.”
He undid his belt with one hand and squeezed the top button of his pants. The button popped open, and, still gripping the top of the pants, he made a rolling motion with his hand and the buttons snapped open in a long rolling line. The front of his pants spilled open, and he spilled out. Either he wasn’t wearing any underwear, or it couldn’t keep him contained.
I’d seen Richard nude enough times to lose track. The sight of him nude had excited me, made me nervous, afraid in that oh-my-god, where-am-I-going-to-put-it-all sort of way, envious when I’d lost my naked privileges, angry when he was being shitty, or trying to rub my face in the fact that I still found him handsome, but he wasn’t mine anymore. All those emotions, and lust, and love, but never fear. Never that feeling that he was physically so much larger than I was, so much stronger, so much… he’d never hurt me physically, and I’d never been afraid of him physically, but I was now. I was afraid the way virgins are supposed to be afraid when white slavers snatch them away. Afraid of being ravished. Afraid of him using that body in mine. Afraid in a way that I’d never been afraid of anyone that I loved.
I put my hands over my eyes like a child. If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t hurt me. Stupid, silly, but I couldn’t stop the way I felt. Couldn’t change the way I felt. I felt a scream growing in my throat. A scream that was waiting to be touched. I knew I was going to do it, and I couldn’t stop it.
But it was as if he felt that scream waiting to come out, because he didn’t touch me. I felt his face on the other side of my hands like heat, a moment before I felt his breath against the back of my hands.
If he’d touched me, the fear would have spilled out my mouth, but he didn’t touch me, not with his body.
His breath was hot against my skin, so hot. I felt Damian being lifted out of my lap. I wasn’t sure how I knew he hadn’t crawled out on his own, but I did.
“Anita, look at me.” His voice was very soft, and very close, each word breathing out against my hands. “Please, Anita, please look at me.”
His voice floated through the fear, eased the tightness in my throat, relaxed the muscles along my shoulders.
“Anita, look at me, please,” he whispered.
I could breathe past my pulse again.
“Please,” he whispered, and he touched fingertips to the back of my hand. The lightest of touches, and my hands lowered an inch, two inches, and I could see his face from between my fingers. His eyes were pure chocolate brown, and at that moment, they were gentle. There was no trace of anger, or lust, nothing but patience and gentleness.
This was the part of him I’d fallen in love with once.
He touched my wrists, gently, and lowered my hands away from my face. He smiled and said, “Better?”
I started to nod, then Damian grabbed my leg, and the fear roared back, and the scream ripped out of my throat. It wasn’t just Moroven’s power, it was Damian’s fear of that power, and the fact that I couldn’t shield against it.
21
I screamed, and Richard’s mouth was suddenly on mine. He kissed me, a gentle press of lips. Fear thrilled through me, all the way to my fingertips, as if terror were an electric current. I shoved him away from me.
I waited for the anger to come rushing through me, to ride over the fear and everything else, but it didn’t come. In fact the fear blossomed into panic. Panic that freezes your body, numbs your mind, makes you forget everything you’ve ever learned about how to make your body a weapon, and all that is left is a small screaming voice inside your head that makes you a victim. If you can’t think and can’t move, then you are a victim. That’s why panic will get you killed.
Richard knelt in front of me, only as far away as my arms had moved him. There was nothing gentle in his face now. He looked eager, anticipatory. He was on one knee, the other leg turned so that he shielded himself from my view. The body language was modest; the look on his face was not.
He leaned in toward me and sniffed, drawing the air in deep, so that his chest rose and fell with it. His eyes closed as if he’d smelled the sweetest of flowers, his head thrown back, just a little.
When he opened his eyes, they weren’t brown, they were amber, dark orange wolf amber. There was a moment where seeing those eyes in the tan of his face was breathtaking, then Damian’s fingers dug into my leg. A fresh wave of panic poured through me, tore a scream from my throat, and Damian echoed it. I had a confused image of bodies, hands, being held down, cloth ripping, the weight of a body pinning us to the table and…
A hand wrapped around my wrist and jerked me up and away. Damian’s nails ripped through my skin as he tried to hold on. Richard tore me away from Damian’s hands, his horror, his memories, and his fear.