I stroked my hand up the long, hard shaft of him. "It's not about being better, just being as good."
He shook his head. "It won't be as good without the ardeur or our beasts, and this close to full moon, I don't think we want to keep trying the beasts. It could get out of hand."
It was my turn to shake my head. "Just us, Micah, just us."
"From the moment we touched, it's never been just us. There's always someone, or something else, never just us." He looked so serious.
I cupped one hand under the soft wetness of his testicles, and gently played with them, while I played my other hand over the head and shaft of him. "Then we're past due, don't you think?"
He swallowed hard, laughed, then gave a small nod. "You're wetter after you feed the ardeur , but we ended up back in the water, so you won't be wet enough or open enough for this," he wrapped his hand around mine where I still held him, he squeezed our hands together until his head went back, eyes closed, and he shuddered hard enough to make the water slosh against the sides of the tub. He looked down at me and slipped his hand between my legs, searching, until he could slip a finger inside me. He managed two fingers inside me before my head went back, and my eyes fluttered shut. "To go in there," he whispered.
When I could talk, I said, "Oh, darn, then you'll have to make me wet, and open."
He shoved the two fingers fast and hard inside me, stopped my voice along with my breath. "I can do that," he said, and he had that look, that look that said he knew I wanted him, and that I wouldn't say no. I didn't say no, I said yes, over and over again. I said yes, until he worked me open with his fingers, and finally with his mouth, so he could push himself inside me. So we could finally put that in there, and it was wet and tight, and hard, and everything I wanted it to be. When I screamed his name and raked my nails down his back, when his body thrust one last time inside mine, thrust so far and so deep that it made me cry out again and arched his body above mine on the bathroom tile. Painted his body in flame and shadow above me, sent our hands into the candles, and spilled the candles into the water, to smoke and die, when all that was done, he looked down at me. Eyes not quite focused, face still slack with orgasm.
I said, in a voice breathy and panting, "Metaphysics, we don't need no stinking metaphysics."
It took him a blink to get the joke, but once he did, he started to laugh, and since he was still inside me, that made me writhe, which made him thrust inside me again, which made me writhe again, which made him writhe, which... He finally slid off to one side, onto a small candle-free slice of tile still laughing. We laughed until tiredness pulled at us like some giant hand dragging us under. It was as if the entire twenty-four hours caught up with me at once, and I was just done. Done for the day. Done for the night. Done for the year. Done.
We dried our hair as best we could. I insisted on at least running an oiled cloth over the knives that I'd dunked in the bathtub. Micah helped me gather up the big knife and the two handguns. I got the big equipment bag from the living room, but Micah begged me to just put it in the bedroom with us instead of putting everything into their various gun safes. "Just one night, it'll be okay. I promise," he said.
I had to agree that I didn't want to go upstairs to the long rifle safe, then downstairs to the ammo safe, then... well, you get the idea.
We dragged ourselves to bed carrying more weapons than clothes. I let the equipment bag drop beside the bed, softly. Nathaniel lay on his side, curled into a little ball, like he always lay when no one was in the bed but him. I laid the knives on the bedside table on his side of the bed, again, trying to be quiet.
He opened his eyes just enough to see me, then they closed, and his breathing deepened. He didn't wake completely, but his body responded to me climbing in beside him. He was so warm, almost hot, feverish, or maybe that was just how cool our skin was, from the bath, and the sex in the open air. I put the Browning in its homemade holster in the head of the bed. Micah put the Firestar on the bedside table by him. Nathaniel relaxed into the curve of my body, pressing as much of him against as much of me as he could. It was only then that I realized we were all nude. Nathaniel hadn't worn anything to bed, and neither had we. I let Micah come to bed nude if he wanted to, but never Nathaniel, and never me. It hadn't even occurred to me to get clothes on first. I'd just wanted to go to bed, to sleep, to cuddle between them both. Micah settled in against my back, and I let myself sink into the sensation of being held between them. I'd slept with Micah pressed naked to my back, but never Nathaniel. I'd had his ass pressed into the curve of my stomach and groin for months, but never without clothes, never just skin-to-skin. I pressed my breasts against the warmth of his back, one arm up and over his head so I could touch his hair. My other hand went around his waist. In his sleep, he pulled my hand closer to his body, lower, so that my fingers brushed areas I'd made very sure stayed covered.
"What's wrong?" Micah whispered, as if he'd felt some tension in me.
I touched the silky warmth of the skin just inside Nathaniel's hip, that soft pocket of flesh that frames the groin. Nathaniel's hand on mine, holding me close to him, as his breathing evened back into deep sleep. I snuggled in against him, until my breath danced along his neck, and he snuggled harder against me. "Nothing," I whispered, "nothing at all."
Micah spooned himself in at my back. His arm going underneath my pillow, and a little under Nathaniel's. Micah's other arm went over my waist, and because Nathaniel was so close to me, his hand ended up resting on Nathaniel's hip. "Ah," he whispered, "no clothes."
"No clothes," I said.
He whispered against the back of my neck, and it half-tickled. "That a problem?"
"No," I said, and moved my head a fraction down my pillow so I could breathe in the scent of Nathaniel's neck.
"You sure?"
"Yeah." And I was, because it felt too right to be wrong.
82
The raid on the vampire condo got national attention. A mixed blessing. Headlines ranged from "Condo of Death," to "Police Raid Ends Vampire Serial Killer's Rampage," or the most popular, "Vampires turned serial killers, next on Channel..." The reports were so similar it didn't much matter what local channel it was on. I just stopped answering my phone for a few days. The interview requests were national, and a few international. I wondered if anyone on Mobile Reserve was getting this much attention. If they were, I hoped they were enjoying it more than I was.
DNA came back, and my worst fears were confirmed. Three of the vamps killed matched the earlier victims' bites, but that left us with five unaccounted for. Five serial killers still at large. Serial killers don't stop killing, not unless they're locked up, or permanently dead.
They'd fled St. Louis, the way they fled New Orleans, and Pittsburgh before that. They'd killed policemen in all three towns. Their kill count was more than twenty, and they were still out there.
There'd been a gap of nearly three months between the killings in Pittsburgh and the killings in New Orleans. Barely a month between New Orleans and St. Louis. They were escalating, less time between killing sprees, more victims of choice, though St. Louis had managed to get away with the fewest dead among our police. How did we get so lucky? Jean-Claude got a letter.
The writing was beautiful, calligraphy, on heavy vellum paper with a watermark. The note was from Vittorio's Gwennie: