mystery Archives - Laurell K. Hamilton

Dead Ice now in Paperback, with Bonus Content “Wounded”

I’ve been so busy trying to finish writing, Crimson Death the 25th Anita Blake novel that I forgot that Dead Ice the 24th Anita Blake novel is out in paperback today! No, wait yesterday, because that was April 26th. I have a serious case of, “writing this book is eating my brain.” There’s a surprise in the back of the paperback, not the usual preview from my next novel, but something different. It’s entitled, “Wounded’, and it’s an outtake scene, or a short story, or a novelette, or a long epilogue for Dead Ice. I’m honestly not sure which to call it, but it is a series of events that we talk about briefly in the denouement of Dead Ice but they all happen off stage. A lot of you told me you missed seeing Jean-Claude dancing at the wedding and wanted to see more about Manny Rodriquez and his family. Well, so did I, and I thought why not? Why can’t I write them out and share them with all of you? Why can’t we see all of it on stage in living color? So I started writing out this brief extra scene and it grew until it was more than a scene, more than a story, and closer to a short novel. At one point I thought it might be as long as my novels Jason and Micah, but it didn’t quite make that word count, thank goodness, so what to do with it? Someone, I can’t actually remember now if it was my agent, my editor, or me, suggested what if we put it in the back of the paperback. Great idea! So for those of you who have read Dead Ice and wanted some more it’s in the paperback now! For those who prefer paperback to hardback here’s your chance and with extra bonus content! But please do not read the extra until you’ve finished reading Dead Ice, because the bonus novelette is full of spoilers. You’ll find out who lives, who dies, who the villain is and how the mystery is solved. No, really, it’s full of spoilers! You have been warned, so if you read the new content before you’ve read Dead Ice the plot will be spoiled for you!!!! So enjoy Dead Ice out now in paperback and I hope the story, “Wounded”, helps satisfy your desire for more from Anita Blake and her world.

New Pub Date for Crimson Death

Crimson Death, the new Anita Blake novel, will be published on September 13, 2016. For those of you who follow my blog, you know I’m still writing the book, what you don’t know is that I finished it once already. I typed, The End, one glorious morning as I watched the sun rise; but once the euphoria of the writing high faded and I got some sleep, I knew something was wrong. I’d known something was wrong for weeks, maybe months, but definitely weeks. I was too close to finishing the book, so I ignored my muse and my characters arguing with me. One character in particular wasn’t happy. Damian, who started life as a Viking until one dark night he and his brothers in arms tried to raid the wrong castle. She-Who-Made-Him, a master vampire that traumatized him so badly he’s afraid to speak her name, held him as a virtual slave for centuries. She let him go, and he still doesn’t know why, but he was allowed to go to America where he became a manager at one of the hottest dance clubs in the country, Danse Macabre. In fact, he first appears in the book that introduces the club. The Killing Dance is the sixth book in the series, and this is Damian’s introduction:
“I TURNED to find another new vampire. He was tall and slender with skin the color of clean white sheets, but sheets didn’t have muscle moving underneath, sheets didn’t glide down the steps and pad godlike across a room. His hair fell past his shoulders, a red so pure it was nearly the color of blood. The color screamed against his paleness.”
Originally, I thought Crimson Death would be a short novel like my books, Micah and Jason, called Damian, but very quickly I realized it was going to be a big book. I believe my largest word count was 300,000 words. I’m one of those writers that writes long and then cuts, but this was excessive, even for me. It was another clue that my muse and I were debating with each other. The original plot had Damian kidnapped and Anita coming to his rescue. It would take me typing to the end, or what I thought was the end, to be willing to listen to my muse, and to Damian. He finally got through to me and not literally said, but basically told me, “I’ve been in the series since book six and now I’m finally getting my own story in book twenty-five and I’m just the damsel in distress. All those newer characters that have come on stage and been heroes, or major love interests, or something more than just the victim du jour, and now I’m just as unhappy, just as powerless, just as afraid as I began. Nineteen books and I haven’t grown at all.” He was right, and it was unusual for me, because I’m all about the character growth and letting my fictional friends have interesting lives, except for him. Damian had been almost static, I don’t know why, but he finally stepped up and threw the gauntlet down.
“You can do better than this,” he told me, and he was right. I turned my plot on its ear and now Damian is going back to Ireland to help solve a mystery. He’s going back to face his greatest fears to save lives as a consultant with the Irish authorities about their sudden vampire problem. Sudden, because Ireland isn’t supposed to have any vampires. It’s one of the few countries on the planet that has no folklore about them. The only dead that walk in Irish myths are ghosts and the shades of heroes. But Damian knows differently, he knows that there is a vampire so powerful and so frightening that to even speak her name is to risk her power seeking you out, even across an ocean. She-Who-Made-Him says the vampires plaguing Dublin are not her doing, and that she’s grown weaker since Damian left her side. U. S. Marshal Ted Forrester, AKA Edward, is already there acting as a consultant. He wants fellow marshal Anita Blake to come help hunt the undead and to bring the only vampire that might know the truth about what’s happening. Anita thought Damian was going home, but Ireland was never home, it was the place where he died.

Dead Ice: Anita Blake

This is the last blog before Dead Ice hits the shelves here in America, you lucky fans in the U.K. already have your copy, but on this side of the pond we’re still waiting and in anticipation of that wait here is Anita. Because if there’s just one more blog left before the pub date, it’s got to be Anita.

Question: How did you come up with the character of Anita?

Answer: The summer after college I read my first hard-boiled detective fiction, Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, Sue Grafton, Sara Paratesky, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. I’m sure there were other male writers in the genre I read that year, but that’s the list that sticks out in my mind. What stood out in my mind then was that the male detectives got to cuss, have sex, and shoot people pretty much without remorse. The female detectives rarely cursed, sex was either nonexistent or sanitized and off stage, and if they had to shoot someone they had to feel really, really bad about it. The difference between the two hard-boiled genders was so unbalanced that it pissed me off, and out of that anger I decided to create a female detective that could even the playing field. At the same time I read a short story with zombies in it, several articles on real life voodoo as a religion, one on Sanataria, and . . . the idea that Anita would be more than an ordinary detective began to take shape.
Secrets to Share: In retrospect I may have done a bit more than just evened the playing field, but then if something is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing? *grins* The seed that would eventually become Anita Blake, and spawn a #1 New York Times Bestselling series, began with that sense of outrage at the gender inequality in hard-boiled detective fiction. If I’d stayed with that original idea then I would have tried to sell a seriously violent detective series with a hard talking and sexy female detective, and respected editors in the mystery genre have told me that they love Anita Blake, but the series would never have sold if it had been straight mystery. We may have come a long way, baby, but apparently mainstream mystery hasn’t come far enough to have a female detective that can play as hard as the men. In fact, Anita gets to play harder than most of the men in the plain mystery section. If I hadn’t read the pieces about voodoo and zombies at nearly the same time as the mysteries, then I don’t know if I would have thought to have Anita raise the dead for a living. Adding the horror genre to the mystery was what allowed me to be as violent as the crimes Anita was investigating needed to be; and horror also lets women fight back right alongside the men, more even than mystery.
The zombies came from reading the right things at the perfect time, but I’d already decided to put the supernatural in the series because I thought I’d get bored with just straight mystery. I read a lot of mystery series after those initial ones, not just hard-boiled, but cozy, and everything in between the two. What I found was that most writers seemed to get bored with their series between book five and eight. You could watch them fall out of love with their characters and their worlds. Some authors rallied and were able to find renewed energy and fall back in love with their series, and some were selling too well to stop so they struggled on for more books, but the lack of joy in their work showed through on the page. I decided I’d give myself enough toys so I would never grow bored. I’d read fantasy and horror most of my reading life and I loved old horror movies, especially the old Hammer vampires films. I’d watched them as a child on the late night creature feature show and been enthralled. I’d read all the real life ghost stories and folklore that I could get my hands on from the time I could read, so I decided I wanted a world where everything that went bump in the night was real. More than that though, I wanted it to be modern day as if we went to bed one night and got up the next day with all the monsters being real and everyone knew about them. I wanted to see modern day America have to deal with vampires, zombies, and shapeshifters as a reality, not as a rumor or a ghost story, but real. I wanted to mix the fantastic with the mundane in a serious way and see what happened. That was one of the main things that interested me at the beginning and is still one of my favorite things to write about today.
The fact that I then added relationship tropes to the series just helped me push the writing in any direction the story took me.

Question: Will we ever meet Anita’s family on stage in a book?

Answer: I think so.
Secrets to Share:
I actually wrote the first chapter and planned the mystery plot for a book where Anita goes home for Thanksgiving. The original idea was she would take Richard to meet her family, but by the time I sat down to write the first chapter it was Micah and Nathaniel. Why not Jean-Claude? First, vampires don’t travel as well by car, and that was the original plan. Second, Grandma Blake is crazy religious and prays for Anita’s soul because she’s sleeping with a vampire. We don’t trust her not to do something like open a window so sunlight hits Jean-Claude. The original idea was that Anita would stay in the house she grew up in, like most of us do when we go home for the holidays. Nothing like being surrounded by family and staying in your old room to throw you back into old childhood mindsets. Not sure how much of the plot would change, but every time I try to make it the next book it just doesn’t work. My muse and I aren’t ready, or maybe Anita isn’t ready.

Question: Is Anita you?

Answer: No.
Secrets to Share:
I made Anita my size, because it was easier to choreograph a fight scene if my main character was my size. If I’d made her taller, or in any way that different from me physically, then I’d have had to find a friend the size of my character anytime I went gun shopping or looked at a shoulder holster. She’s my size because the hand I have is the hand I need to fit. It just made sense to me at the time. I gave her my hair because I like my hair, and I figured if I was going to screw her life up with terrifying mystery/horror plots that I should give her something that she might like, too. I’m told that Anita’s attitude is tough, strong, masculine, not very feminine, and in many ways, it is my attitude; but I didn’t think of it in those terms until readers and interviewers started telling me. Anita’s personality and mine were closer to the same at the beginning of the series, but it’s a first person narration so making her sound and think like me was easier as a new novelist. When I sat down to write Merry Gentry years later I would make sure she didn’t sound like Anita, which meant she didn’t sound much like me, and made writing her a whole lot harder. I think it’s one of the reasons that Merry writes slower than Anita, because I don’t think like Merry does, and yet she’s a first person narrator, too. Anita and I have diverged as people because our experiences have been very different. She’s gone on to have one of the highest kill counts in fiction outside of war novels, and I married, moved to suburbia, had a child, dogs, and did a much more traditional approach for the first decade I wrote Anita. She was anything but traditional by any standards. Anita is now decades younger than I am, because I read an essay by Agatha Christie years before where she complained that she’d made both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot too old, and if she could do it over again she’d have started them off much younger. I took that bit of advice to heart and Anita was twenty-four when she stepped onto the page, as was I when I wrote the first short story with her in it. Seven to eight years is all that’s passed in Anita’s world, while much more has passed in the real world.
Anita and I both lost our mothers in car accidents as children. She was eight when her mother died, I was six. Why did I do that? Because when I was twenty-four my mother’s death was still so traumatic that I couldn’t imagine understanding a character that hadn’t had a similar experience. That early tragic loss made me understand just how fragile life was, and took forever the ideal that the adults around me are omnipotent and could keep me safe, because they couldn’t keep themselves safe. That knowledge at such a young age has made me a different person than I might have been, and it’s so intimate to who I am that I gave the viewpoint to my main character, because again, first person narration. They say, write about what you know, so what did I know? I knew death and loss, monsters and lovers, small town American lost in the big city, I knew how to be a strong woman in a man’s world, I knew not to ask for mercy for there isn’t much to go around, save the mercy for someone who needs it more.

Sneak Peek from Dead Ice:
Lita looked at me, head slightly to one side. “You didn’t worry that it’d make men not want you?”

“No,” I said.

“You didn’t worry that it made you look like a victim?” Kelly asked.

I frowned at her. “No, every time I look at my scars I think that I lived, and I killed what hurt me. These are victory marks, not victim,” I said.

The Blog I promised

It’s the 20th anniversary for the Anita Blake series, and to help celebrate that I asked you to tell me what the books and characters had meant to you, and how you found them. The response has been overwhelming and wonderful – Thank You.
I’m sitting in my office with just our three dogs for company, as I usually am when I write. It is a very isolated job, writing. Authors spend most of their lives in a room by themselves while the world passes by outside. The inside of my head is full of a slightly different world populated by people so real to me that sometimes it feels wrong that I will never be able to touch their hands, see their smiles across a table from me – not for real. I call them my imaginary friends, rather than my friends, because in years when I just said, my friends, some fans misunderstood and thought that Anita, Jean-Claude, Richard, Micah, Nathaniel, Jason, all of them were based on real, flesh and blood people. So, I started saying my imaginary friends so people would understand that I did not base my characters on real people. It also started cutting down on fans asking for the phone numbers of my imaginary men. But one thing many of you made clear was that my imaginary friends had become your friends, too.
In fact, you told me that my imaginary friends, my world, my creations, had helped you guys get through some really tough times. That the books had been what you read at the bedside when your families were in the hospital, or even been a refuge when you had to face the death of those close to you. Some of you told me that Anita had taught you how to be strong, how not to back down, and that until Anita a lot of women, especially, hadn’t realized how to be strong. I’m always amazed by that, I guess because I was raised by a very strong woman, so strength and being female was just a given to me, but I’m glad I could share some of the strength I learned growing up, and building my life. I’d already lost track of the number of women who had told me at signings that they’d left abusive relationships, because they knew Anita wouldn’t have taken it. I am very proud of that, and I know that Anita would be, too.
I asked who your favorite characters were, and wasn’t surprised by most of the answers. Jean-Claude is big fan favorite, and he’s earned it. I think that he was more surprised by how he and Anita have grown as a couple than even she is, after all it’s not every woman that can surprise a man that’s over five hundred years old, but our girl keeps doing it. I think the key to that is that Anita keeps growing and changing, willing to be pushed outside her comfort zones. Many of you told me that you’ve learned to go outside your own comfort zones from reading my books. You know what? I’ve learned the same thing. I joke that I haven’t seen my comfort zones in at least ten years, and that’s true. It’s not a comfortable way to live, but it’s never boring, and it’s led me to be happier than I ever thought possible. What I hadn’t expected was to hear how many of you had learned a similar lesson. I guess, we’ve all grown together.
Trying to do justice to the hundreds of years of lady’s man for Jean-Claude led me to learn how to walk in high heels, and has totally changed my clothing choices. he’s like this voice in my head that pops up and goes, hmmm . . . what if you wore this today, or that would look lovely. I probably take more clothes advice from him than Anita would tolerate. *laughs*
I expected Micah to be a favorite, and the Wicked Truth, though Damian is very underused for someone that so many of you like. I’m sorry for that, but he’s happy being monogamous with Cardinale and who am I to argue with that? We may be seeing more of him in the future, but I’m trying to figure a way of doing that without wrecking his relationship. Zerbrowski is one of my favorites, too. I’ve actually made notes about a short story that would let us see him at home with his wife, Katie, and their kids. We’ve referred to Anita, Micah, and Nathaniel, going to cook outs at their house with the other cops, but never seen it on stage. Something about hitting this anniversary has made me look around the series and go, “What is it that we’ve never seen on stage that would be fun?”
Richard still has his fans, though admittedly most of you are not. Richard really is in therapy, and is making peace with himself and the conflict between the life he wanted and the life he has, which are miles apart. He’s been talking to me again, and I’m hopeful. I swear, that I brought him on to marry Anita. It was my solution to breaking her up with Jean-Claude and not having to kill him. It would take me years to realize that Richard was my ideal man, at the time, but maybe not hers.
The character that more of you mentioned than any other, either in a list with others, or alone, was Nathaniel. I knew he’d be on a lot of people’s favorite list, but I hadn’t anticipated what he’d meant to you so many of you. Some of you told me that him talking about his own therapy helped you be willing to see your therapy. That’s wonderful, because I’m a big believer in good therapy. It’s made a huge difference in my own life, and still does. I am so happy that sharing Nathaniel’s story has helped so many of you understand that just because something terrible happens to you, that isn’t the end of the story. We can heal, and grow, and learn to be happy. Thank you for telling me how much watching Nathaniel’s journey through the books has helped all of you understand that you can be happy, too. I know that would mean a lot to Nathaniel, too. Writing him has taught me, and Anita, that strength doesn’t always come full blown, sword in hand, but that some of the bravest people are the ones that learn to be brave.
In fact, several of you have told me that my books taught you that true bravery isn’t when you’re not afraid. True courage is being scared to death and doing it anyway. It was such a given to me that bravery is acting in the face of fear, that it never occurred to me that everyone didn’t understand that. It is one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned and I am very happy to share it with all of you.
Thank you for so many of you telling me that my characters have helped you understand that you have to stand up for what you believe, what you want, who you are, and not let society tell you different. Anita and I both started the series so conservative, and now here we are so very not. 🙂
I would be a different person today if I had never written Anita. I would be a different person if I had only written the original three books I was contracted for, and stopped, or even stopped with the first six. The research I did into real crime, real violence, showed me things that I didn’t always want to know, but it helped me make Anita’s police work, more real. I believed that if I wanted people to believe in zombies, vampires, and wereanimals, that I had to make the real life details as real as possible. I haven’t always gotten it right, but I thank all the police and military personnel over the years that have helped me try, all mistakes are mine and mine alone. You guys did your best with this writer that has never worn any uniform for a job. But more than the true crime, the research into alternative lifestyles opened my eyes and showed me a much broader definition of . . . nearly everything.
Some of you have been with Anita and me from the beginning, but I hear from people every day that have just found us. Thank you for being on this journey with us, whether you found us with Guilty Pleasures, or somewhere in the middle, or just watched the video for Affliction and thought, I want to read that. Me, too, it’s why I wrote it, why I still write Anita, because I want to know what happens next.

My Birthday, Your Present

Today is my birthday, but this is a present for all of you. One late night of writing as I fought towards the latest deadline, I got on twitter and decided to play a game with everyone. I was writing a sex scene, which was a nice change from all the zombie slaughtering and just violent crime fighting in this latest Anita Blake novel, Affliction. I offered that if someone guessed exactly who was involved in the scene and where it was taking place that I’d post it as a blog. The game was a mixture of sexy clue, and twenty questions. Someone did win, and I was going to post it, but then realized this scene was too far in the book and potentially spoiled some things in the plot and character arc, so what to do? I decided to use a scene that takes place earlier in the book. It does give away a few things plot-wise, and certainly character-wise, but all good sex scenes help develop character, and even sometimes world build. But this earlier scene seemed less like I was revealing too much, so here are two chapters of Affliction which will be out July 2, 2013.

Chapter Fifty:

There are moments when undressing isn’t sexy, being covered in dried blood, guts and brains is one of those moments. Weapons first and there were a few bits of dried zombie on them, too. We’d clean them later. Our body armor had left a clean spot on our shirts underneath. The vests were all going to need cleaned, and since mine was a custom fit job I didn’t have a back up vest. Men’s vests didn’t fit right on women, though I could borrow a man’s vest and because it was really too big for me it didn’t crush my breasts the way it did on women that were bigger through the shoulders and ribcage. But holding the vest up and looking at some of the “stains” on it I thought a second vest might not be a bad idea.

The three of us paid attention to our weapons and body armor, and it was sexless. Shirts first, and Nicky looked at my bra, all right, he looked at my breasts, they just happened to be in a black satin bra.

“I like that about you,” Nicky said.

“What, my breasts?”

He grinned. “That, too, but you don’t bitch if I stare at your breasts.”

“I’m wearing a push-up bra if I didn’t want people to look at my breasts I should probably wear something else.”

“Yeah, but I know that Nathaniel packed for you, which means it’s all going to be push up, satin, or lace.”

I smiled and shook my head. “I’m not sure I own anything else.”

“I like that about you, too,” he said. He took off his shirt in one movement. I heard the cloth stick on one shoulder as it came off, but at least the vest meant the whole shirt hadn’t been covered in gunk, bad for the vests, but good for our peace of mind and a lower ick factor. I concentrated on the muscled expanse of his chest and shoulders; they almost distracted me from the flat plains of his stomach.

“Hmm . . . an eight pack.”

He grinned. “Some of the other guards are pissed, because they can only do a six pack, if they work their asses off.”

“Eight is genetic right, not everyone can do more than a six pack no matter how hard they work out,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, and he looked pleased with himself.

There was a small sound in the room, the kind that makes you look up and try to locate the source, and depending on who was making the sound, you’d either pretend you hadn’t heard, or comfort the person making the noise. Dev had his belt unbuckled, but his shirt was only partially untucked. He held his hands sort of awkwardly away from his body, as if he didn’t want to touch something, or already had touched something and didn’t want to transfer it from his hands to his clothes.

Nicky and I looked at each other, and without a word, went to Dev. “Let me help you out of those clothes,” I said, trying to put teasing and sexiness in the words.

Dev looked at me, eyes too big, face sort of slack with the edge of panic he was fighting. He held his hands out to me like he was five and had hurt himself. There was no mark on his hands, they looked clean to me, but sometimes you have a sort of Lady Macbeth moment, and even after washing the blood away, it’s like you can still see it, feel it, engrained on your skin.

I reached out to touch his hands, but he jerked back. “I’ve got . . . stuff on me.”

“Me, too,” I said, voice soft.

His eyes fluttered, and flashed white like a horse about to bolt.

“It’s okay, Dev, it’s okay.”

He shook his head.

“You said you thought you’d never get me out of my clothes, and you haven’t even said how cute I look,” Nicky said.

That got a smile from Dev, it was weak, and a little uncertain, but it was better than I’d gotten out of him. He looked at Nicky then, really looked at the other man. He looked at his bare, muscled chest, the way Nicky had looked at my breasts. There were some men in my life that even as comfortable as they were sharing a bed with me and other men all at the same time, they wouldn’t have taken that look from Dev without it being a fight, or at least severely uncomfortable, but Nicky took it in stride.

“That’s better,” Nicky said.

Dev put his head to one side, and said, “You don’t like men, so why do you care if I admire the view?”

Nicky shrugged as much as his shoulder muscles would let him. “I like knowing that you’re not just kidding about it.”

“You like knowing that I’d do you if you’d let me, and you’re still going to get in the shower with me. Most straight men would be totally creeped by it.”

“I’m secure in my masculinity.”

“Well, that’s the truth,” I said.

Nicky smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“But you wouldn’t be doing me, I don’t bottom to anyone,” Nicky said.

“That works for me,” Dev said.

I was no longer certain we were joking.

Nicky grinned. “If I come across for you then I’ll have to fight off Jean-Claude and Asher. I think I’ll stay on this side of the hetroflexible divide, it’ll make things less complicated.”

Dev pouted at him, and if you’ve never seen a handsome, athletic, 6′ 3″ man pout and be able to make it totally work for him, then I’m sorry, because it was way fun to watch.

Nicky laughed. “Let’s get naked and wet.”

The look on Dev’s face at such a bold comment from the other man ruined the pout and stripped his face to something uncertain and hopeful. I hadn’t known that Dev thought Nicky was cute, but Nicky’s maneuvering of the other man let me know that my werelion had known. Was I that blind, or was Nicky just that observant?

Dev stripped his shirt off in one fast motion and threw it on the floor as if he didn’t want to touch it any longer than he had to, but he unzipped his pants and stripped them off to join his socks and boots which were already on the floor beside him. He was suddenly totally nude and beautiful, but he wasn’t looking defiantly at me, he was looking at the other man. It was almost as if he thought Nicky would chicken out, and have a moment of heterosexual panic, but I knew better. If it was a test of nerves, my money was on Nicky.

He didn’t disappoint me. He just unfastened his pants and stripped them off, okay he had to peel them off due to some fluid that had dried on one leg, but he got them off and let them fall on top of his own boots and socks. He stood there naked and yummy, and stared at Dev like he was daring him to say something.

Dev opened his mouth, closed it, and then laughed head back, eyes closed, totally delighted. Nicky looked at me, and smiled. I decided then and there that I would never try and bluff Nicky, because he was out of my league. I could lie, but I couldn’t manipulate like that, not even in a good cause.

Nicky held his hand out to me, and I went to him. “You have too many clothes on,” he said.

“We can fix that,” I said.

“Yes,” Dev said his voice still holding an edge of laughter, “we can.”

We did.

Chapter Fifty-One:

We helped each other get clean. It took three times through the shampoo for Dev’s hair to get clean. He’d gotten hit the worst from something, or maybe it was the baby fine texture of his hair, whatever Nicky helped me pick bits out of the back of Dev’s hair. He started shivering even though the water was steaming hot, but there is cold that no amount of hot water will warm. I think we could have turned his skin pink with heat and he would still have shivered.

He put his hands on the tile of the wall and leaned, as if he were trying to take strength from the wall to keep standing. Nicky and I exchanged a look; he motioned with his head for me to get closer to Dev while he kept picking bits of zombie out of the other man’s hair. I touched his arm, and he jumped.

“It’s me, Dev, it’s just me,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

I let that go, we both knew what was wrong, but knowing doesn’t always fix it. I touched his arm again, and this time he stood still for it. I slid in under his arm and even with him leaning against the wall he was tall enough for me to look up at him and not have to bend over at all. He was a foot taller than I was, and standing there with his arms on either side and above my shoulders, his face above mine, I was suddenly aware that he was a really big, not just tall, but wide through the shoulders, broad through the chest. If he would have spent half the time that Nicky did in the weight room Dev would have been massive. I wasn’t sad that he didn’t, I might have felt physically overwhelmed and then again, maybe I wouldn’t. I could see Nicky’s shoulder on one side of Dev’s, and I didn’t have a problem with Nicky. I didn’t think a few inches of extra height would have tipped the difference for me.

Wet, Dev’s hair fell a little below his shoulders, framing that square and very masculine jaw. His blue on blue eyes blinked a little too quickly as he stared down at me. I slid my hands over the slick wetness of his chest as Nicky kept working on his hair.

“I don’t think I’m in the mood, Anita. I never thought I’d say that, but I can’t stop thinking about what Nicky is cleaning out of my hair. Now I know why you insist on a shower before you greet everybody some nights.”

I touched his face, made sure I had serious eye contact. “The thing in the basement tonight was bad, Dev, even by my standards it was a slaughter. I don’t do that every night. Hell, I don’t do it most of the time.”

“You mean I’m not being a serious pussy?”

I smiled at him. “Well, you are a pussycat, but no, it was bad, worse than normal even by my standards for mess and brutal fighting. Flesh eating zombies just don’t stop coming. I’ve never, ever seen that many of them.”

“Really?” he asked, and his voice was fragile, like the look in his eyes.

“Really,” I said my hand on the side of his face.

His head pulled back as if Nicky was moving his hair too much. Then I saw Nicky’s hands come up and he ran his fingers through Dev’s hair. “There, all clean.”

Dev let out a shaking breath, but he straightened, pushed away from the wall, and ran his own hands through his hair. He did it a second time a look of relief on his face, as he smoothed his hair back from his face.

“Thanks, Nicky,” he said.

“You can return the favor sometime,” Nicky said.

Dev looked over his shoulder at the other man. “Are you inviting me to shower with you again?”

Nicky smiled. “So far you’ve been a perfect gentleman; I think my virtue is safe.”

“You have virtue to keep safe?” I asked, peering around Dev’s body.

Nicky raised an eyebrow at me. I realized he’d swept his wet hair back from his face completely exposing the scars that covered the socket of his right eye. He usually hid the scars with that triangle of bangs, so that I valued when he didn’t. It meant he was comfortable. I liked that.

“No, no I don’t,” he said, and there was something about the way he said it, more sad than teasing back, that made me remember that he’d been abused as a child both sexually and physically by his mother. She’d been the one that took his eye. I suddenly felt stupid and slow, and . . .

I went to Nicky, stroking my hands down his bare, wet arms. “I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said.

I wrapped myself around him, nakedness to nakedness, and it wasn’t erotic, because he didn’t hold me back, he stayed upright and didn’t meld into the hug.

“I missed something,” Dev said behind us.

Nicky said, “Yeah, you did.”

I looked up at the man in my arms, searched that closed down face. He’d turned away from me just enough to hide the scars, not to be pretty the way Asher would do to hide his, but it was either that or reach back up and smooth his wet hair down over them, and that would have been admitting it mattered to him and Nicky wouldn’t do that.

“Look at me, please,” I said.

He did, but the look on his face was arrogant, distant as his body felt because he wouldn’t hug me back.

“I’m sorry, I forgot.”

He glared at me, and I felt the first rush of heat as his anger hit his lion and it stirred. “How can you forget when you have to look at this every time you see me?” He touched his finger to the edge of the scars.

It was the first time he’d said anything out loud that the scars bothered him, reminded him every time he looked in the mirror. The way he wore his hair let me know that it bothered him, but he’d never actually said so, before.

“It’s just a part of you,” I said, “that’s what I think when I look at you, that’s all I think.”

He stared down at my face, studying it. “I can feel that you mean that.”

“I like the scar,” Dev said, “and the fact that you are as good as you are with weapons and hand to hand having to compensate for the lack of depth perception is impressive.”

Nicky shifted in my arms, and that flare of anger was like heat marching down my body as if the heat of the shower was starting to emanate from his body and not the taps behind us. “He really does like scars,” I said, “Dev’s a texture junkie.”

He relaxed a little in my arms, and finally put his arms around me. He wasn’t holding me tight, but it was progress.

“I’ll prove it to you, if it won’t freak you out,” Dev said.

Nicky gave him a look, as if nothing he could do would be that freaky, but I knew Dev better than Nicky did. I was betting there was plenty that the weretiger could do to freak out the werelion. The reverse was also true, but Dev’s would be sensual and Nicky’s would be more violence. I didn’t really want them to try to freak each other out though; I feared it would go badly.

Dev moved in behind me until his body was pressed up against mine, which pinned Nicky’s hands between my body and the other man’s. Nicky was only touching against Dev’s stomach, he didn’t complain, or move his hands. Neither man’s body was excited to be there yet, so though it was nice, it wasn’t as erotic as it might have been. He reached out to touch Nicky’s cheek.

Nicky jerked back.

Dev let his hand fall and smoothed his hands down my arms. “See, it freaks you out.” He leaned down to lay a kiss on the top of my head, nuzzling against my wet hair.

I wriggled into Dev’s touch, raising my face up so he could kiss my lips. We kissed, and the kiss grew until it tightened my hands around Nicky and made me grind myself against Dev. His body was already beginning to react which encouraged me to grind harder against him. Nicky’s arms around my back kept me from grinding as much as I could have, which forced me away from Nicky’s body in an effort to touch more of Dev’s.

Nicky’s body pressed in tighter from in front. It brought me back from kissing Dev and to move my face towards Nicky. This time he leaned over so I could reach his lips. We kissed and it was a soft brush of lips, then a more urgent press of his mouth on mine. He moved his arms from between Dev and me, and at the same time I was suddenly pressed tight between both of them. One of them thick and growing thicker against the front and the back of me, the sensation of being pinned between their bodies tore my mouth from Nicky’s and made me cry out.

It was only when Dev leaned over me for another kiss that I realized why they were both pressed so close. Nicky had moved his arms so he was holding onto the other man’s waist and Dev had done the same, so that they were using their strength to press themselves in tighter against my body. Nathaniel and Micah called it, making a sandwich, and I loved being the middle of it.

They took turns kissing me, until I writhed and ground against both their bodies and they were both hard, and thick, and achingly ready. With their skills at foreplay it seemed a shame to skip most of it, but sometimes the urgency of the need is its own foreplay.

Dev rose up from kissing me and touched Nicky’s scar. When he didn’t protest Dev leaned over me, which pressed him even tighter against my ass, and he laid a soft kiss on the scar. Nicky didn’t really react to it, so it encouraged Dev to move one hand up to the side of Nicky’s face. He leaned in and kissed the scars where Nicky’s eye should have been more thoroughly. I looked up to watch the kissing, my body still pinned between theirs. Nicky had gone still, and his body wasn’t quite as happy to be pressed against me, though Dev had no way of knowing that.

He kissed down Nicky’s face, one soft kiss at a time, and I got to watch each kiss get closer and closer to Nicky’s mouth, until finally Dev kissed him.

Nicky drew back from it, shaking his head. “No,” he said, not angry, but firm.

Dev dropped his hand from the side of the other man’s face, and kissed me as if he were trying to kiss me as deeply and completely as he could. He drew back from the kiss lips half parted, face so eager, so excited that it made me laugh a little breathless and shakily.

Nicky kissed me then, and it was gentle, tender, as if he were making love to my mouth. He drew back and left me with my eyes still closed, lips half parted. I was even a little weak in the knees, just from the kiss.

“Wow,” Dev said, “I feel like I need to try again.”

I opened my eyes enough to see Nicky smiling down at me. He looked utterly pleased with himself. It made me smile up at him, but the smile spread until it was more an evil, happy, grin.

“Now I know I need to try another kiss,” Dev said, “because that is a really good smile.”

“Yes,” Nicky said, “yes it is,” and his voice was already deeper with the first rush of testosterone, and a smile that held all the heat you wanted to see in a man’s face. It was full of love, yes, but it was also full of lust, and the thought of everything he was going to do to you, and with you.

“Why do I feel like I need to catch up when I’ve been standing here the whole time?” Dev asked.

“She loves me,” Nicky said, as if that explained everything, and apparently it did, because Dev said, “You are a lucky man.” That’s usually something a man says, when what he means is, your woman is hot and I would totally fuck her, but it’s either morally wrong, or you would kill me for it. It seemed weird that Dev felt the need to be so polite with his nakedness pressed against my ass, and knowing that he was getting sex, too, but sex isn’t everything. It’s nice, it’s great even, if you’re lucky, but everyone, eventually, wants love.

I went up on tiptoe to kiss Nicky again, and Dev moved back a little so that we could use hands and arms on just each other, while the kiss grew from tender to urgent. When we drew back just to look at each other, Dev said, “I’ll offer just once more to give you guys’ privacy, and I should get major brownie points for offering, at this point.”

I looked over my shoulder at him, with Nicky and I still holding each other. I wasn’t sure what I would have said, because Nicky said, “Breast, or ass?”

“What?” Dev said, frowning, obviously puzzled.

“Do you want to fuck her first, or have her suck your dick first?”

I turned back to look at Nicky, the look was enough, because he said, “You love me and I love you and it’s amazing, but at heart I’m a thug, Anita. I’m crude and rude and violent, and you’ve taught me the only gentleness I’ve ever known, but I’m still me.”

I nodded. “Okay, it’s not that I don’t agree with the division of labor it was just a little crudely put, that’s all. You surprised me.”

He smiled. “Okay, Mephistopheles are you a breast, or a thigh man?” Nicky looked at me, head cocked to one side. “Better?”

I grinned. “Yes, thank you.”

Dev watched us like he’d never seen us.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m just wondering when you guys became a couple and why didn’t I notice?”

I looked back at Nicky and he slid his arms more securely around, bringing me in against his body in a way that was less sexual and more romantic. It seemed weird in the shower all naked with another man, but there you are, if it works don’t poke at it. I was trying to be smarter.

“You were busy worrying about Asher,” Nicky said.

Dev nodded. “True, and I’ll take thighs.”

Nicky grinned quick and fierce, more a baring of teeth like a happy snarl. “We fuck both ends.”

“I’d like to go down on her, while she goes down on you.”

“That’s hard in the shower,” I said.

“Bed?” Dev asked.

“Normally, I’d say, not only yes, but hell yes! But if the police call before I get some sleep I’m going to cry, so just this once let’s just have intercourse,” I said.

Dev’s face showed a conflict of emotions, but finely he smiled and said, “Who am I to argue with the Queen of Tigers?”

“Still not sure I like that title,” I said.

“You hated mother of tigers more,” Nicky reminded me.

“True.”

“But I don’t think we’ll be fucking right away,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Too much talking, not enough sex,” he said and motioned that he wasn’t hard anymore.

I glanced at Dev and found similar deflation. “I can fix that,” I said and knelt between them on the shower tiles, the water rushing around my knees.

“So we get oral and intercourse seems unfair,” Dev said.

“I like and can orgasm from both,” I said, looking up at him from my knees.

“I’ve had women orgasm from intercourse, but you’re a first for oral,” he said.

“Anita, will you please shut him up?” Nicky asked.

I went done on Dev while he was still talking, stopping him in mid-syllable. The feel of him in my mouth was, as always, amazing. I liked the sensation of men when they were small and soft, and it was easy to take them all in my mouth, roll them around with my tongue, and bury my lips against their bodies as close and tight as I wanted without choking or fighting my gag reflex, and as long as I kept him deep in my mouth he’d stay smaller. It was only as I began to draw back off of him and suck him back into my mouth that he began to grow longer, and thicker.

Nicky ran his hand through my wet hair and turned me to him. He wasn’t as small as he had been, just watching me go down on Dev and anticipating his turn had made him grow bigger, so that he filled my mouth more, and I had to fight a little around the beginnings of my gag reflex to bury my mouth against his body as far and tight as I could.

Nicky put his hand on the back of my head holding me on him, but moved my hand from his thigh to wrap it around Dev so I could feel that the other man was thick and hard in my hand. The double sensation of my hand and mouth filled up with that eager hardness . . . they were both so warm, skin soft like muscled velvet to suck and stroke, so that it made me suck harder and faster on Nicky and stroke my hand up and down Dev’s shaft to curve over the round, thick, silk of him.

Nicky wrapped his hand in my hair and pulled me away from his body. “I want inside you first,” he said, voice breathless. He used his handhold on my hair to push me towards Dev. I slid my mouth onto Dev, but kept my hand on him, too, so that I was stroking the shaft and sucking and licking the head and first few inches.

He whispered, “Oh, my God.”

I felt Nicky’s hands on my waist and hips as he pulled me into place. I started to turn and say something, or look, but he pushed his hand into the back of my head, holding me down on Dev for a second. Without words he was clear what he wanted, me to go on Dev while he . . . I felt the head of him brush against my opening, but being in the water, even just a shower, had made me tighter even than normal, so that I felt the brush of his hand as he guided himself in place and then began to push the head of him against the tightness of my opening. Just feeling him do that made me begin to suck faster and deeper on Dev, my hand wrapped around the base of him against his body.

“I won’t last long,” Dev said.

Nicky pushed his way inside me, fighting for every inch against the tightness from the water. It made him feel even bigger, thicker than I knew he was, and the sensation of him pushing his way inside made me cry out around Dev.

He made an inarticulate sound. I could taste salt from the pre-come now, he was close, but I didn’t care as Nicky finally found enough room to shove himself into me, and my body finally opened for him so that he pulled himself almost out, put his hands on my hips to hold me in place, or move me with him, like leading on a dance floor, except this was the water slick tiles of a shower. Then Nicky pushed his way in again, and found a fast, deep rhythm, that made me scream as I buried my mouth down the length of Dev’s body.

“Close,” Dev said, voice strained as he fought to last.

Nicky picked up his rhythm fast and deep so that his body smacked against mine in a sharp repetitive sound of flesh on flesh, and between one quick deep thrust and the next he spilled me over and I screamed my orgasm around Dev’s body. It was too much for Dev, and he thrust into my mouth rather than waiting for me to suck, but with Nicky’s orgasm riding my body I wanted as much of both inside me in that moment. Dev responded to my eagerness by grabbing the back of my head and forcing me down as he thrust up, and it was almost too much down my throat even with orgasm I had to fight not to try and breath, because I couldn’t have. It isn’t always a gag reflex, sometimes it’s a suffocation reflex. I relaxed my throat as much as I could while I was still trying to scream my own orgasm, but Dev had shoved himself so far down my throat that there was no sound possible. I felt him pulse inside my throat all the way along his shaft where it lay in my mouth and knew that he was going, before I felt that moment of hot as he spilled himself inside me and I fought to swallow. If I’d let the arduer lose there would have been no problem, because when that rode me I had no gag reflex, it was like magic and took away all the issues, but I’d fed already and I was trying to do certain things without the arduer’s help, because if I could do it just me, then I could do things more frequently without risking draining my lovers to death. Such a mood killer.

It was while I was struggling to take all of Dev in that Nicky intensified his rhythm and let me know he’d been aiming for that sweet spot nearer the opening, because now he searched for the deeper spot that he could hit from behind. Most women will go from the G-spot being caressed long enough, but not all women go from the two deeper spots, for the longest time I thought I enjoyed having my cervix bumped until I learned that wasn’t what the men were hitting, at all. From behind Nicky slid the head of himself into the spot deep and high within me, and the orgasm that had been fading spilled into a second one from deeper within me, so that when Dev drew himself out of my mouth I screamed loud and deep throated. Nicky drove himself one last time deep inside me, his hands pulling me backwards against his body at the same time so that he thrust as deep into me as he could in that last moment as his body convulsed inside mine. that last thrust was almost too deep, almost hurt, but in the middle of the orgasm, topped by the sensation of him going inside of me, the almost pain translated into a bigger pleasure.

“I’ll go,” Dev said, and stepped out of the shower on slightly unsteady legs. The water that he’d been blocking suddenly cascaded down on me. I hung my head down so it wouldn’t get in my eyes and mouth. I wanted to ask, where Dev was going, but I couldn’t figure out how to say words yet, I was still quivering happily from the orgasm coherent speech was a few minutes way.

Nicky was still buried as deep as he could be, hands still holding my hips in place, so that even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have moved. He leaned over me and laid a kiss on my back, and said in a voice growling deep, “You’d think they’d get used to the fact that you’re a screamer.”

Apparently, Nicky and Dev had heard the other guards pounding on the door. I tried to be embarrassed that they’d all heard me screaming, but Nicky chose that moment to lean over me and growl. The sound of it seemed to vibrate through my body as if as long as he was buried inside me I would resonate with the growling depth of him.

I shivered for him.

He leaned his face close to mine, so that the water splashed over us both. “If Dev hadn’t been here I would have set my teeth into your shoulders and marked you as mine, but mustn’t scare the tigers.” And he growled again with his chest curved over me, his face touching mine. I made a small, helpless noise of happiness, and he laughed so deep a sound that it should have had teeth and claws around it.

I hope you enjoyed my Birthday present to you!