Cerulean Sins   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Jean-Claude had moved so that he touched me from behind by the time Belle came to stand in front of me. I leaned back against him, because she had marked me once, and that was without any physical touch. I leaned against Jean-Claude and fought the urge to draw his arms around me like a shield.

Belle stood so close that the edge of Musette's full skirt brushed my feet. Belle's ghostly dress seemed to bleed over my shoes, creep up my ankles. I couldn't breathe.

Jean-Claude moved us backwards, out of reach of that creeping power. I pulled his arms around me tight. Screw it, I was scared.

"If truth will not work with me, what will, ma petite? " Belle asked.

I found my voice, it was breathy, scared, but there was nothing I could do about it. "I am Jean-Claude's ma petite, no one else's."

"But whatever he has is mine, so you are my ma petite. »

I decided to let that argument go, for now. There were other more important ones I needed to win. "You asked if truth doesn't work with you, then what does?"

" Oui, ma petite, I did ask."

"Sex or power," I said, "that's what works for you. You prefer both together, if you can get it."

"Are you offering me sex?" She purred at me, and the sound made me shudder and push myself harder against Jean-Claude. I didn't want to play with Belle, not in any way.

"No," I said, in almost a whisper.

She reached out towards me, that slender white hand with its dark copper nails, and that afterimage of Musette's hand underneath, as if Belle's graceful hand were a strange metaphysical glove.

Jean-Claude moved us back again, a fraction of a fraction of an inch, so that those long-nailed fingers missed my cheek by a breath.

Belle looked at him, her long black hair beginning to move around her body like there was a wind blowing around her. There was no wind, only Belle's power.

"Are you afraid that one touch and I will take her from you?"

"No," Jean-Claude said, "but I know more of what your touch can do, Belle Morte, and I am not sure that Anita would care for it."

He'd used my real name, he almost never did that. Perhaps because Belle was using my nickname, he didn't want to.

Her anger burned the air in front of us, like a real fire, stealing the oxygen from the lungs, making it impossible to breathe, unless you took that heat into your lungs. Then they would sear, and you would die.

The heat filled her words, so that I half expected them to be burned into the very air.