Anita Blake 22 - Affliction by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online

and it was better than almost anything I had ever imagined having. Once I’d thought I could only be in love with one person at a time, but I loved Jean-Claude, and I loved the two men in my arms. I loved them together; as a unit, we were three. Jean-Claude was his own entity, and he and I, even with all the other bed partners, were more a couple. I was in love with him, too.
    I stood there in their arms and loving them, and their loving me, didn’t take away from Jean-Claude and me; it added to it. All of the relationships added to one another, until we were all happier than we’d ever been. I didn’t believe in happily-ever-after, but I did believe in happier-than-we’d-ever-been, because I was living it.
    I raised my face and Nathaniel leaned down to kiss me, while Micah held us both, or we held him, and I knew once this kiss was done there would be another one from Micah. Life was great. We could get through this, whatever came when we landed in Micah’s old hometown; we could do this, because we loved one another. Love doesn’t conquer all, but it can help you conquer everything else.

6
    Voices from outside the plane made us look up from the warm circle of us. I tried to look down the steps to see what was making people raise their voices, but I couldn’t see past Nathaniel’s broad shoulders and chest. He could see, and Micah had a better angle, so I asked, ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Nicky is blocking the stairs and the other guards aren’t happy about it,’ Nathaniel said.
    ‘Nilda isn’t happy about it,’ Micah added.
    They moved to either side so I could see for myself. Nicky stood at the bottom of the foldout steps like a wall of blond muscle. He was just under six feet, so Nilda towered over him by five inches; at six foot four she was the second-tallest woman I’d ever met and she hit the gym seriously. It had given her long arms smooth tone and muscle, but she was one of those women who didn’t put on muscle easily. She looked strong and imposing, but Nicky’s shoulders were almost as wide as I was tall, a huge spread of muscle that nothing would give Nilda no matter how many weights she lifted. I muscled up faster than she did. It was just one of those genetic things. Her summer tan was a light gold that contrasted strongly with her white-blond hair and made her blue eyes stand out in the high cheekbones of her strongly Scandinavian face like an advertisement for Norwegian Vacations-R-Us. Her full name was Brunhilda, after one of the Valkyries, and yelling into Nicky’s face, her shoulders and arms straining with tension, her face enraged, she looked it. She was one of the Harlequin who had been the bodyguards, spies, assassins, judges, and executioners of vampirekind for centuries. So deadly that to even speak of them could get a vampire hunted down and killed. They had been the elite guards of the Mother of All Darkness, the legendary first vampire, the darkness made flesh, and she had used them to keep her control absolute. Then she grew bored, or old, and fell into a ‘hibernation’ for centuries and her control slipped, and the Harlequin began to fracture into those who believed in their original purpose and those who didn’t. Nilda was the animal to call of one of the master vampires who had been Harlequin, and she was now with us. There were days when I was pretty sure Nilda would have stayed on the other side with the Harlequin who were still pissed that we’d destroyed their mistress, but Nilda’s master was old-school, which meant it had never occurred to him to give her a choice. She was his animal to call, and to the old-school vampires that meant she was just an extension of the vampire, a walking, talking, fighting machine that he occasionally fucked, but sometimes I think he saw it more as masturbating, as if she weren’t real to him. No, I didn’t like Nilda’s master much, but I wasn’t particularly fond of her either. She was on this detail in an effort to merge the