Free Cravings by Laurell K. Hamilton, Eileen Wilks, REBECCA YORK, MaryJanice Davidson Page B

skin, I felt what Damian was feeling. Satisfaction. Eagerness. Worry,
but that was fast fading under the feel of his lips on my skin. He wanted. He
wanted me. He wanted to feed the hunger of his skin. The hunger of his body, not
so much for orgasm but for that need to be held close and tight, that need we
all have to press our nakedness against someone else's. I felt his loneliness,
and his need, even if it was only for one night, not to be lonely, not to be
exiled down in the dark, alone. I saw how he felt about his coffin down in the
basement. It was not his room. It was not his in any way. It was just the place
he went to die every dawn. The place where he went to die, alone, knowing that
he would rise as he had died, alone. I saw the endless stream of women that he
had fed on, like pages in a book, a blonde, a brunette, the one with a tattoo on
her neck, dark skin, pale skin, the one with blue hair, an endless stream of
necks and wrists, and their eager eyes, and grasping hands, and nearly every
night, it was in public view, as part of the floor show at Danse Macabre. So
that even his feedings were not private. Even that was not special. It was
eating so you wouldn't die, with no meaning to it.
    In the center of his being was a great emptiness.
    I was supposed to be his master. I was supposed to take care of him, and I
hadn't known. I hadn't asked and I'd been so busy trying not to be tied to
another man through some weird metaphysical shit that I hadn't noticed that
Damian's life sucked.
    "I'm sorry, Damian, I…" I don't know what I would have said, because his fingers touched my lips, and I couldn't think. His
fingers held heat and weight that they'd never had before.
    His eyes widened, surprised, I think, as surprised as I was at the sensation.
Or did my lips give heat to his skin, too? Did my lips suddenly feel swollen and
eager as his fingertips did to me, as if both mouth and fingers were suddenly
more?
    I moved my lips against his touch, a bare movement, just enough to press my
mouth against the ripeness of his fingers; barely enough to call it a kiss, but
it wasn't his skin I tasted, or not the skin I was touching. It was as if I laid
my mouth against the most intimate parts of him. There was the hard, solid press
of his fingers, but the taste, the smell of him, was the perfume of lower
things, as if I were a dog on the scent of where I wanted to be.
    His breath drew in a shaking gasp, and when I rolled my eyes up to see his
face, the look in his eyes was one of drowning, as if I already touched what I
could taste. His eyes filled with emerald fire, and just like that there was a
line of desire carved from my mouth down his fingers, his hand, his arm, his
chest, his hips, to the center of his body. I could feel him thick and rich and
full of blood. Could taste the warmth of him as if my mouth were nestled against
his groin. I could taste him, feel him, and when I slipped my mouth over the
tips of his fingers, slid something so much smaller, harder into my mouth; his
green eyes rolled back into his head, ginger lashes fluttering downward. His
breath sighed out in one word, "Master."
    I knew he was right, in that one moment, I knew, because I remembered being
on the other side of such a kiss. Jean-Claude could push desire through me as if
his kiss were a finger drawn across my body, down my very nerves so that he
touched things that no hand or finger could ever caress. For the first time I
felt the other side of such a touch; felt what Jean-Claude had felt for years.
He'd tasted my most intimate parts, long before he'd ever been allowed to touch
them, or even see them. I felt what he'd felt, and it was wondrous.
    Nathaniel touched my hand. I think I'd actually forgotten about him,
forgotten about anything but the sensation of Damian's flesh against mine. Then
Nathaniel touched me and I could feel his body through the palm of my hand as if
a line ran from the pulse in