Anita Blake 20bis - Beauty: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Outtake Read Free

Jean-Claude’s were dark.
    Asher left the door open behind him and, hat literally in hand, said, “My deepest apologies, Anita, I should have knocked, because you are always armed.” He smiled then, and it was that particular smile of his that said part of him had enjoyed barging through the door just to see what would happen. He pushed his luck, did our Asher. I had some of Jean-Claude’s memories, so I knew that Asher had pushed his luck like that for hundreds of years. He just couldn’t seem to help himself.
    “If only you were truly sorry,” I said, and cuddled closer to Jean-Claude.
    He smiled then, wide enough that it was almost a grin, rare for him. It made me smile, and I felt some tension ease out of Jean-Claude, as if he’d held his proverbial breath, though he wasn’t actually breathing at the moment. Now that I’d noticed it, I had to put my hand over his chest to see if I could feel his heart beat; sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.
    He pressed my palm to his chest and I felt the slow, thick rhythm of his heart. “It beats for the two of you, both of you,” he said, smiling. The last time he’d been able to say that about Asher and another woman had been over two hundred years ago with their beloved Julianna. She’d been Asher’s human servant, where I was Jean-Claude’s, but she had loved them both, and they’d been a happy threesome for over twenty years. She’d been executed by the Church as a witch because she consorted with vampires. Jean-Claude had been in time to save Asher’s life, but too late to save the woman they loved.
    Now, they were together again with me, and it was the happiest I’d seen either of them since her death, because again I had memories of the three of them together. I remembered seeing her sitting by the fire, knitting, that quiet, happy smile on her face, and I remembered loving her, and on the end of that thought was the sorrow of losing her.
    “You knew I was coming to join you in the bath, or the bed, after work, Anita, so really I didn’t surprise you.” He laid his hat down on the counter by the sink and started untying the blue silk tie, unsnapping the button of his white tux shirt, and smiled down at us in the bath.
    “I just wasn’t sure how soon you’d be coming, that’s all.”
    “Oh, I’ll be coming, but not too soon.” He undid the cuffs of his shirt.
    It took me a moment to get the double entendre, and when I did I blushed, which made me hide my face against Jean-Claude’s neck—not out of embarrassment, but because I hated that I still blushed so easily.
    Jean-Claude laid a gentle kiss against my face. “I love that you still blush,
ma petite
.”
    “I don’t,” I mumbled from against the smoothness of his neck.
    Asher laughed, and it had some of the touchable, sexual energy that Jean-Claude’s could have, as if just the sound of their laughter could tease along your skin. “We both prefer our women a little innocent.”
    I turned and glared up at him, but since he had his shirt flapping open and was undoing his pants, the glare didn’t last long. I managed to say, voice a little unsure, “I am not innocent.”
    “Not anymore,” he said, and stripped his pants down those long legs, leaving him in a silk white thong and the open tux shirt that hung down to his hips. He looked even taller than his six foot one as he stood there; his legs went on forever before getting lost in the shirttails.
    I just stared at him, wordless, struck stupid by the sight of him. I felt Jean-Claude go very still as he held me, as if he was having the same inability to think that I was having. That smile curled his lips, the one I could only describe as evil. He smiled down at us with a shining, eager, beautiful, and evil smile, put his thumbs in the front of the thong, and began to slide it down his body, watching us as he did it. He stood up with it in his hand, still wearing the unbuttoned tuxedo shirt so that it framed his groin, the cloth only