I felt Jean-Claude's power, felt it like a cool soothing wind. I still hurt; the wolf was still there trying to fit all that tooth and claw into my smaller body, but it was better. I could hear again, and what I heard was chaos. Screams, shouts, Claudia's voice above the rest, "Ulfric, don't do this!"
Jean-Claude's voice floated through my head, and through Richard's, because Richard had tied us that close. "My marks keep her human, Richard; all you can do is destroy her."
Richard bellowed, "She's mine!" He was standing over me. I didn't even remember being on the floor. Richard wasn't human anymore. He was that movie wolfman, except that his fur was the color of cinnamon, and he was very male, not that smooth sexless Barbie-doll look from the movies. From my angle everything about him looked monstrously large. Partly the angle, and partly the pain.
The wolf inside me stretched my body, trying to force claws out from under my nails. Trying to stretch more body out than I had to give it. I had air now, thanks to Jean-Claude, and I used it to scream. I finally screamed the pain, shrieked it, and somehow it helped. I was still human, I could still speak. I screamed, "Nooo!"
Clay appeared above me, face scared. "Give me your wolf, Anita."
A clawed hand appeared and jerked him back, out of sight. Richard had pulled him back. "No," he growled, "no, my pack does not stop this."
"Not your pack," Jean-Claude's voice now, in the room somewhere, "my pack, for all that is yours is mine; by vampire law, they are my wolves, not yours."
I turned my face and saw him in the doorway. He stood there, beautiful, cold, his eyes glittering with that cool fire. I reached out to him with my bloody hands. I screamed, "Help me!"
Richard was suddenly airborne. Too quick for the bodyguards, too quick for anyone. He hit Jean-Claude, and they both rolled out of sight into the bedroom beyond.
Clay was back at my side. He was bloody, and I couldn't tell if he was wounded or had just gotten blood on him. "Give me your beast," he said.
He was disobeying a direct order from his Ulfric. But in that moment I didn't care. I grabbed his arm, and he pressed himself to my mouth, let me kiss him. More than ever before I felt the wolf pour out of my mouth. I choked on fur and blood and things that couldn't be real. I choked, and Clay stayed pinned to me while his body struggled to get away. He forced himself to stay against me, forced his body to take my beast, but it hurt too much not to struggle. I knew now just how much it hurt, and I was sorry, but I didn't stop.
His body exploded above mine; wet, thick things covered my eyes, and only my hands told me that fur and muscle were above me now. My body still ached, but the wolf was gone, gone like a hole in my heart, an empty space where something should have been.
Someone else's hand smoothed the gunk from my eyes so I could blink up into Rafael's face. He was crying. I'd never seen him do that. It scared me. What would make Rafael cry? What was happening?
Gunshots exploded in the other room, so loud, so horribly loud. I sat up and fell back down. "Help me," I said to Rafael.
He picked me up, as if I were a child, and carried me to the other room. I didn't protest, I would have been too slow; but what I saw in the bedroom said that we'd all been too slow.
The first thing I saw was Jean-Claude sitting on the floor, his white shirt in bloody tatters, blood trickling from his mouth. The guards were standing in a semicircle with guns out. Richard's wolf form was crouched at the center of that circle. I could see his heart thudding frantically in the open air. It was a killing wound, but he still crouched there, growling at them. I could see him about to spring, and I knew that the guards wouldn't let that happen. It was one of those moments when everything slows down, when the world becomes crystal-edged, the colors brighter, the edges of everything sharper; you see everything in painful clarity. Seconds to see my world about to go up in flames.
Jean-Claude's voice whispered through my head, "I am sorry, ma petite, there is no time." I thought he was apologizing for the fact that they were going to shoot Richard, until I felt his power. It didn't wash over me, it didn't press against me like Richard's had; his power simply was there and did what it wanted. I felt it almost like a series of tumblers in a lock: click, and he took Richard's blood lust, like a cup in his hand; click, and he turned that blood lust into another kind of lust; click, and he spilled it into me.
There was a blink, where I saw Richard's head go down, watched his body begin to change back to human. Knew they wouldn't have to shoot him now. A blink, to be relieved, then the ardeur ripped through me as surely as the beast had done earlier. My body forgot that it hurt. My body forgot that it was bloody and aching. My body forgot everything except one thing. The ardeur did what it always did: it washed over the man I was touching and carried him away with me. I was already on the floor with him on top of me before I remembered who I'd be looking up at. Rafael, the rat king, who was going to get to be food after all.
Chapter Twenty-two
RAFAEL CARRIED ME out to the hallway with my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms around his shoulders, my mouth feeding at his. He stumbled at the door and almost fell, having to catch his hands on the doorjamb. He put a hurried hand around me, but he was in no danger of dropping me. He'd have had to pry me off him for me to fall. I was drowning in the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin. He smelled smoky, not like cigarettes, but wood smoke, and salt, like some food that had been smoked and salted, until the meat was flavored and tender and so ready to eat. I felt his need. I just knew that it had been a long time for him. So much need, so much power, so long denied. He was a feast waiting to be eaten. The last wasn't my thought. We fell against the wall outside the door. The sensation of him falling against me, bruising me into the wall, made me cry out. He leaned heavier against me and even through our clothes I could feel him hard and ready. I cried out again and pressed myself against him, but there were too many clothes in the way. I moaned into his mouth, too eager for words.
Rafael tore himself from my lips. He used one hand to keep my face from touching his so he could look into my eyes. "Your eyes," he whispered, "like blue fire." Blue, but my eyes were brown, I thought. Then Jean-Claude's power washed the hesitation away. He filled my head as he filled my eyes. It was my mouth but Jean-Claude's words that said, "A fire that burns just for you, Rafael, just for you." In that moment it was true. We wanted only Rafael, needed only him.
I felt him fall into our eyes. There was a moment when he swayed forward, his hand catching on the stone wall behind me. He stared into our eyes, and his face didn't smooth out and become empty, waiting for orders like every other vampire victim I'd seen—no, his face filled with need, want; months, years, of denial, all there in his face and a heartbeat later it was in his hands where they tore my shirt. His mouth fed at my breasts, biting, sucking, rough enough that he drew back and tried to fight clear of our power. A small spark inside him was afraid he'd hurt us. We laughed, and it was an odd mixture of Jean-Claude and me, so that for a moment my laugh slithered over Rafael's body and made him shiver. I bit his neck, sudden and sharp, digging my teeth into that smooth, dark flesh. He balled his hand in my hair and pried me off him. His neck bled where I'd bitten him. He drove his mouth into mine, so hard that teeth grazed on teeth. He kissed me with tongue and lips until he ate the taste of his own blood from my mouth.
He ripped my jeans apart at the seam. My body jerked with the strength of it. The sensation of the heavy cloth tearing around my body brought a small noise from me. My panties ripped and again the feel of it made me cry out. I ground myself against the front of him, but all I could touch was cloth. That hard, eager flesh was still out of reach.