Anita Blake 19 - Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton

still beside me, as if should I let go of his hand he would simply vanish in plain sight. Most vampires couldn’t really do that, but the old ones could be so still that you were forced to remember this was not a truly living being, but something else. Live human beings didn’t ever feel like this with their hands in mine. Moments like this were one of the reasons I’d been able to resist his charms for so long. His hand was still wrapped around mine, but it was like holding a “living” mannequin.
    I pulled at my hand, and he let me go. He knew how I felt about moments like this, and I also knew that it was his way of protecting himself from what was about to happen. The two men he was probably more attracted to than any others were about to tear us all apart again. Fuck.
    “And what have I done to amuse you, Ulfric?” There was no teasing now, but the beginnings of anger made Asher’s eyes gleam.
    Richard started for the bed, taking his jean jacket off as he moved, so that by the time he got to the bed his upper body was painted against the red of his shirt. He’d been keeping up with his gym time. I knew that because it was one of the few places I’d seen him since summer. When you can bench-press a small car, as he could, you couldn’t really get a challenging workout at a normal gym. Thanks to Jean-Claude’s vampire marks I was stronger than I should have been, too. Micah, Jason, and Nathaniel had been taking me to the gym that was designed for that.
    Richard threw his jacket on the foot of the bed and stood there looking down at Asher. He looked back, his face locked in an arrogant mask that meant whatever he was thinking was something he didn’t want to share. I knew part of it; no one who was moved by a handsome man could gaze up at Richard and not want him.
    I looked at Jean-Claude. He was more unreadable than Asher. There would be no help from him, and I had no clue what to do.
    Richard turned back and held his hand out to us. “Are you joining us?” He was smiling and he didn’t look angry.
    I shrugged and walked toward the bed. I knew I wasn’t going to stay frozen by the door like a scared rabbit. If it was all going to go down in flames, the least I could do was run into the smoking building and try to salvage something. I let Richard take my hand and help me onto the bed. It was tall enough that in hose I tended to slide off the black satin coverlet.
    We crawled onto the bed, and Richard used his hand in mine to direct me onto the side of Asher closest to the door, while he crawled around Asher’s legs so he could lean into the pillows on the other side. I sat there, a little stiffly, and had a moment to share a look with Asher. He let me see that he was wondering what the hell was going on, too. Glad it wasn’t just me.
    I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and lay back on the pillows still fully clothed including heels and my weapons, so not exactly comfortable, but so far we weren’t completely fucked. It was a record for the four of us alone in a room.
    Jean-Claude looked at us. For a moment he was that almost two-dimensional stillness, and then he took a step and from one moment to the other it was as if he came to life. It was like the difference between a photograph and film. He had that easy smile on his face, and was all ease and grace. He walked toward us as he’d probably walked into a thousand rooms over the years, smiling, pleasant, beautiful, and still hiding what he was feeling just as surely.
    He stopped by the bedpost, his hands stroking the black and red curtains. He looked at us all and shook his head. “Too good to be true,” he said.
    Richard nodded. “I’ve been a bastard and I’m sorry.”
    We all looked at him, including Asher. It startled him enough that he didn’t even worry about how his hair fell so that his scars were bare to the soft glow of the bedside lamps.
    “The apology is a wondrous thing,
mon ami
, but forgive this old vampire if he asks, what