FIC Rescuing Regulus Part 3
Nov. 8th, 2006 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jessara40k_ljHere's part 3.
Jean-Claude watched as Anita exchanged vows with Regulus, this time only promising twenty-five years and signed their contract as one of Regulus’ witnesses with a feeling of jealousy. He remembered how she’d taken him to a hotel for at least a semblance of a honeymoon afterwards, and the way she’d stopped making love to him when she realised he was reluctant. Even if he hadn’t loved her before that he would have fallen in love with her then for her consideration. He was half scared that Anita would decide to take Regulus away with her for a honeymoon, yes she’d repeatedly claimed not to have any interest in him beyond how she could hurt Hugo by taking him, but Jean-Claude couldn’t help worrying about losing her favour.
“Faust, you can borrow Regulus for the night. At some point I want you to attempt to deliberately hurt him as part of sex; it doesn’t have to be anything serious, just biting him would do perfectly well. Regulus does this bother you?”
“This is just to test that all clauses of our contract will be magically enforced?” Regulus sounded scared at questioning Anita, he kept his eyes cast down and worried at his lower lip with his teeth.
“Yes, I’m assuming that if one clause holds all of them will, and this is the only clause Jean-Claude did not ask for which you did.”
“Then no it doesn’t bother me, not if that is the only purpose. Are you willing to share me with Faust in the future, or is it just for this night?”
“Anytime you both wish to lie together you are free to.” Anita dismissed the two vampires with those words and Faust drew Regulus away. Jean-Claude dismissed Regulus from his mind and continued with what he had planned for after Anita signed her contract with the older mate. Firmly controlling the flash of guilt he felt at having planned to make sure Anita couldn’t take Regulus to her bed, at having distrusted her so much that he assumed she would, he stepped up to her handing over one of the ankhs she’d given him at Christmas. A smile spread across her face.
“How do you want this?”
“I’m tired of how gentle you are with me. I want you to pin me down and fuck me so hard I’ll be feeling it tomorrow.” He’d missed feeling her take charge as decisively as she used to, and he’d missed the feeling of her nails in his skin, she’d only scratched him one time as they made love since she’d learned of his pregnancy, the night she’d gotten Regulus with child, and that scratch had taken as long to heal as it would have had he been human.
“You expected me to take Regulus to my bed after we signed his contract, didn’t you?” Anita sounded half angry, half amused. “And you planned this so I couldn’t.”
“Yes Sire.” No sooner had the words left his mouth than Jean-Claude found himself being dragged to his bedroom by a bruisingly strong grip on his arm.
His lover pushed him to the bed, kissing him hungrily, and hard. And he let himself respond just as demandingly and aggressively for once. Anita had promised to make love the way he wanted it when he gave her that piece of jewellery, and he was going to enjoy it. He’d asked Anita to pin him down and fuck him, but he was going to make her work for it. He was wearing a blue shirt with lace down the front and black jeans, and he’d been barefoot, he usually was now. They tussled together for a while, until Anita managed to pin him down long enough to tie his hands together with a sleeve she’d ripped from his shirt. Immediately Jean-Claude froze, long training holding him motionless as a whimper escaped his lips.
“Hush. If you want me to release you then tell me so, but I just wanted to get you to hold still long enough to get our clothes off the two of us.”
“Go ahead. I do not mind these games, and I even enjoy them, but only if I’m given some warning beforehand.” Now he knew that Anita only wanted to stop their tussling long enough to strip he was able to relax and he enjoyed it as she undressed for him then unfastened his jeans, pulling them off and simply ripping his shirt to shreds, including the sleeve binding his hands. Jean-Claude felt grateful that his Sire was so eager to get to him, and sensitive enough to his fears that she offered to untie him without even the need to ask. Later perhaps if she wanted to do this more fully he would be more than happy to comply, so long as he knew what she wanted from him. But he still took the unguarded moment when she’d finished tearing his bonds loose to roll over on top of Anita, pinning her momentarily in their mock struggle, only for her to twist beneath him and somehow reverse their positions.
He thought that even though his Sire was stronger than he it would still be easy to use his greater mass to move her, but he was wrong, and when she reached down between them to guide him into herself he gave up control, enjoying the feeling of her taking him, dominating him, even enjoying the nails raking down his flanks though he knew he would pay for his pleasure with days, perhaps even weeks, of soreness. He only realised there was something wrong when she climaxed and broke his left collarbone. He screamed, half in pain, and half in pleasure as the training he’d experienced forced his own climax.
“Shit!” Anita looked down at him in shock. “Heal for me, now. I don’t want you to still be hurting.” But it didn’t work and she stood pulling her own clothes on rapidly and wrapping him in a robe. “You need medical attention for this.”
Jean-Claude didn’t respond; just lay in her arms as she carried him out and to her car. He was conscious, it took a lot more pain than that to force him to pass out, but he decided to just let Anita deal with everything and let himself lose track of what was happening as his Sire took him to the hospital and got him treated.
~~~000~~~
Jean-Claude watched his master as the doctor stitched up the scratches on his side. Anita hadn’t been allowed to keep holding him, and feeding him with her blood in lieu of a transfusion, but she’d insisted on staying in the room with him. The hospital staff hadn’t been happy about that for some reason, and they were stepping carefully around her.
“We need to take him to X-ray, and you can’t come with him.” Jean-Claude didn’t mind that they were talking over him, he just stood and prepared to go with the doctor.
“Can you tell me if it hurts anywhere but your shoulder?” The human doctor only asked the question when he thought Anita wouldn’t be able to hear him, it was almost as if he doubted her in some way.
“Anita told you about my injuries.”
“Yes, but are you hurt anywhere else, something you didn’t mention to her?”
“A few bruises, but nothing important. They’ll heal soon enough, but I didn’t think they were important enough to tell you. Anita knows about them, but you don’t notice little things like that in the heat of passion.
“Please, I don’t want to talk about this any more.” Jean-Claude looked at the doctor with wide pleading eyes. Even though he thought he’d made it clear that it was his choice to submit when he gave his interview on his pregnancy to Irving some humans had believed that Anita had abused him and forced him to say those things. It had become even worse after people had learned about the Mate Laws – of course the hate groups that wanted all vampires dead had decided Anita was a heroine. Still a lot of people felt sympathetic towards Jean-Claude and he was perfectly willing to use that sympathy.
The doctor gave up trying to convince Jean-Claude to complain about Anita’s treatment of him and did the X-ray in silence. Then he led Jean-Claude back to the cubicle, smiling at his surprise when he realised Anita wasn’t there. But the detective who’d collected him from the park Regulus had left him in after Hugo kidnapped him was.
“Detective Arnet, why are you here? And where is Anita?”
“We got a report that the staff suspect Anita’s abusing you. They have to report it by law, and since you’re a vampire we get to deal with it. Sergeant Zerbrowski took Anita to get her version of how this happened. I thought vampires healed too quickly to need anything like this. And how did you get hurt so badly?”
“This, and the fact that I had to come here are my fault.”
“What do you mean your fault? How can it be your fault that you’ve got a broken collarbone and scratches deep enough to need stitches?”
“There is a legend among vampires that after a mate first gives birth his Sire can hurt him as easily as if he were human. If Anita had grabbed Asher as hard as she grabbed me all that would happen would be that he’d have bruises, and perhaps some cuts from her nails. I should have told Anita, and checked with Regulus whether the story was true instead of dismissing it. If I’d told Anita she’d have held her strength back while we had sex.”
“She does this much damage during sex? I thought Zerbrowski was joking when he said she likes it rough.” The young woman sounded shocked.
“I asked for Anita to be rough with me, to be aggressive this time. And it isn’t so much that she likes it rough as that she’s stronger than normal humans, and she rarely lies with anyone as easy to hurt as a human, so she does more damage. It would not have mattered if I hadn’t been careless.”
“Careless how?”
“Anita used a contract signed in our mingled blood to claim me. It’s magically binding and it protects me from the three things that scared me most about being Anita’s mate. One of those things is that if Anita hurts me I would heal only when she gave permission, but instantly then, except for the contract. But the clause that guarantees I’ll heal within a certain time period also says that injuries from sex heal at the normal rate. I decided on that, I always liked wearing her scratches and bites, but for some reason, although I meant at the normal vampire rate it ended up as the normal human rate.”
“So you maintain that your lover isn't abusing you?”
“No, and even if she was, under the mate laws it would be perfectly legal.”
“It what? No, that's disgusting.”
“The mate laws are based on vampire tradition surrounding mates. Any vampire who saw me now would only wonder what I'd done to anger my sire. Eventually you'll get used to this and react the same way.”
The detective visibly forced herself to calm down. “Is there anything I can do for you then?”
“Stay here until Anita comes back?” Jean-Claude would have preferred it if his master was there, blocking his pain for him, but he'd take what he could get.
“Of course.” At that Jean-Claude settled down on his bed, waiting for his master's return.
~~~000~~~
Anita was pacing back and forth, waiting for her mate to be returned to her when Sergeant Zerbrowski arrived with Detective Arnet.
“Anita, we've got a report that the doctors here suspect a case of domestic abuse. Could you come with me so I can talk with you and Detective Arnet can question Count Dracula in private.”
“You think I'm abusing Jean-Claude?” Anita was shocked by the idea. she couldn't believe that anyone would think she was hurting her mate, she never would, not deliberately. “I'll come with you, but I want to get back for my mate as soon as I can.”
“We'll do our best. Detective Arnet will be careful with your mate, I promise.”
“She better be.” Anita slowly walked out with Zerbrowski, letting him lead her to one of those rooms the hospital kept for waiting relatives.
“What do you need to know?”
“The doctors reported that you brought Jean-Claude in with broken bones and bleeding badly enough that he needed stitches. I thought vamps healed too fast to need hospital treatment for injuries! How did he get into that state?”
“I used a magically enforced contract to claim him, it felt right and the idea was to give him a bit of protection and reassurance. One of the provisions is that other than injuries inflicted during sex everything I do to him heals within a given timeframe.”
“So you were assuming that you'd want to hurt him outside of sex?”
“No! But because he's a mate if I hurt him he won't heal until I say he can, and he'd seen other mates who were kept hurting for months on end, and he was scared of that. So I gave him the parameters and let him write our contract to make him feel safer.”
“Parameters?”
“He heals from injuries outside of sex with either a week for bruises, or a day for anything else, he does not have sex with anyone but myself or Asher - and that was his desire not mine, he's afraid of being passed around if I tire of him, which I won't. And he has to ask before he can conceive again.”
“What happens with injuries from sex?”
“He heals at the normal rate - I thought that meant the normal vampire rate - but it turned out to be the normal human rate. I didn't mean to hurt him so badly, but apparently when my mate isn't pregnant he's as easily damaged by me as a human would be, which I only learned when Regulus saw me carrying Jean-Claude out of my bedroom.” Anita had been a bit surprised to find him waiting there with Faust, as it turned out they'd been planning to tell her that Regulus' contract held, before going back to bed, but they'd offered to help when they saw the state Jean-Claude was in.
“You hurt him that badly by accident? You're that rough during sex?”
“It wasn't so much that I was rough, although I was rough this time, at Jean-Claude's request, but I don't know how to control my strength during sex anyway. I never really needed to before now, as I was always the weaker partner physically. I need to learn how now, and I will, but it never occurred to me that grabbing Jean-Claude's shoulder would hurt him, it never has before! And I should have realised that my nails would leave scratches that could leave stitches, Jason once told me that a human would need stitches, but not for any other vampire, or even for a were.”
“So you're saying it's alright for you to hurt him if it heals quickly.”
“I'm saying that I'm as likely to scratch myself up as my lover and I don't mind if my lover scratches me up during sex. And much as I hate it, legally it wouldn't matter if I wanted to beat him every night - I'd have the right to.”
“No one has the right to beat someone else! I know for a fact that's totally illegal.”
“Zerbrowski, you need to read the mate laws, they state that a mate, a vampire who can bear children has no rights at all. And as his Sire I can't be prosecuted for anything I do in his defence.”
“So you're the only person allowed to hurt him.” There was bitterness in Zerbrowski's voice, Anita couldn't bring herself to blame him.
“Pretty much. I try not to hurt him if I can avoid it, but...he expected me to punish him after Hugo took him, and it seemed to make him feel better afterwards.”
“Just how did you 'punish' him?”
“Spanking. The way I'd punish a child. But now that he's hidden so many things from me and gotten himself hurt I'm going to have to do something different.”
“What?” Zerbrowski just sounded curious, but...
“This is not to go into your report, nor is how I punish my mate when necessary. It isn't any concern of yours, nor relevant.”
"I might have to report it, but I'll try not to. If you're planning to hurt him..."
"No, but until this happened I was planning to let him go back to taking an active role as Master of the City, now I can't let him do that until he's healed. He's bored out of his head, but first I wanted to make sure he'd recovered from giving birth, and now with this injury he can't deal with any challenges to his authority."
"And you're going to tell him that?"
"My decision, not my reasoning." Anita shrugged, trying to make it look careless. "I'll let him think it is only punishment, he's been getting sick of the limitations I put on him, even if he doesn't complain. Do you want to come watch?"
"Yes, then at least I'll be able to say you didn't hurt him because of this." Zerbrowski followed Anita as she returned to find Jean-Claude waiting for her in bed and Detective Arnet watching over her.
"Jean-Claude, Sergeant Zerbrowski wanted to witness your punishment this time."
"Oh, but you don't have a hairbrush here."
"I'm not going to punish you that way this time. Tell me what you need to be punished for." Anita sat beside Jean-Claude, laying a gentle hand on his hair to block his pain.
"Not telling you that 'normal rate' meant normal human rate rather than normal vampire rate. Not mentioning the stories about how easy it is for you to hurt me. And not asking Regulus about them."
"No, I can't punish you for something I do far too often myself. But the first two things are correct. For not telling me about your problems healing, well I was going to tell you that you could return to full duties as Master of the City tonight, but now I won't let you until our daughter is weaned, and you are not permitted to rush that."
"I wouldn't!" Jean-Claude seemed shocked that Anita could ever suspect that he would neglect their child for any reason at all.
"I know, but for your second offence, I'm going to tell Asher that the restrictions on sexual contact with you are lifted - I had planned to leave them in place until Julianna was weaned."
"What restrictions?" Zerbrowski looked at the two of them in confusion.
"I told Asher to let Jean-Claude initiate sex until further notice, but from now on I'll let Asher initiate sex if he wants."
"Why is that a punishment?" Detective Arnet sounded curious about that, and still worried about Jean-Claude, something that made Antia like her better.
"Because as a mate I don't have the right to say no to Anita or to Asher as my contract specifically gives him the priviledge of having sex with me. He wouldn't outright rape me, but he can be...insistent."
"Come on, there isn't anything we can do here, Anita is behaving perfectly within the law." Anita watched as the police left and waited for the hospital to release Jean-Claude before taking him back to the Circus.
~~~000~~~
Jean-Claude shivered as he watched Asher from beneath lowered lashes. It had been two days since Anita had accidentally broken his collarbone because he'd been keeping things from her, and he couldn't understand why Asher hadn't taken advantage of her lifting the restrictions she'd put on him yet. He was almost dreading it, he knew that Asher could be rough sometimes and the longer it took for Asher to claim his rights the rougher he was likely to be. So he'd resisted the temptation to use his daughter as a shield from Asher's desires, letting her sleep in her crib, rather than keeping hold of her constantly.
"Jean-Claude." The younger vampire's attention was immediately fixed on his lover, if he could call it that.
"Yes Asher?" Eyes dropped back to study the ground at Asher's feet, in an unspoken display of submission.
"Come to my bedroom in two hours."
"As you wish," Jean-Claude hesitated before using the pet name, "mon chadonerret." but he was rewarded with a pleased smile from Asher, and he let himself hope it would make the coming hours easier on him.
Jean-Claude brushed out his hair thoroughly before he went to satisfy Asher. Once he would have just walked in on the golden haired vampire, because they were lovers, or more recently because he was Asher's master, but now he raised his hand and nervously knocked at the door.
"Come in Jean-Claude." He obeyed, going to his knees and bowing his head once the door had closed behind him. Asher grabbed him by his hair, pulling his head back at an almost painful angle and kissing him savagely.
"You've been avoiding me, haven't you?" The question was hissed into Jean-Claude's ear, anger apparent in Asher's voice.
"Yes Asher, I have."
"Why?"
"You...can be rough at times, I was scared." Jean-Claude shrugged, despite the hand in his hair. "I'm not your better now, or even your equal, so I don't know how to deal with you, I don't have the protection I had before."
"Strip and get on the bed!" Asher released Jean-Claude's hair, pushing him away so he had to catch himself before he fell. He obeyed swiftly, without taking the time to try and make it in the least bit sensual, he could tell that Asher wasn't in the mood for anything slow. The older vampire had resented that he only had access to what he considered a rightful perogative of his on Jean-Claude's consent, and now that those restrictions were lifted he'd want to appease his anger as much as his lust. He'd understood the restrictions perfectly while Jean-Claude was pregnant, because you had to be careful with anyone who's pregnant, and when Anita outright forbade sex with Jean-Claude that was perfectly understandable, because he belonged to Anita after all, but to be dependent on Jean-Claude's choice was an entire other matter. Jean-Claude knew how his oldest love thought about some things, and as a mate his status was now lower than even the newest vampire's in many ways.
It was over quickly, and afterwards Asher was willing to hold him, to reassure him, at least a little, but those were the only things Jean-Claude really enjoyed about it. Asher hadn't bothered with more than the sketchiest preparation before he took Jean-Claude, and it hadn't lasted long enough for the younger vampire to climax either. He didn't care about that, he forced himself to go soft and just relaxed into Asher's arms, praying, to a god he knew he had no right to call on, and to his Sire, his master, that Asher had worked out his anger at being denied.
"Explain to me why Anita had to rush you to the hospital, and why this is still broken." Asher ran his fingers idly over Jean-Claude's broken collarbone as he spoke.
"My contract says I heal injuries from sex at the normal rate, but I didn't specify the normal rate for vampires." Jean-Claude bit back a whimper as Asher pressed harder onto the bone.
"Why didn't she just give you permission to heal anyway afterwards?"
"My Sire tried, but apparently my contract overrides that."
"I see. Stay with me for the rest of the night, and through the day, until I awake."
"As you wish Asher."
~~~000~~~
"Hi Jean-Claude, Regulus. Is Anita about?" Jean-Claude looked up from his book when Jason arrived, he was carrying a bag and smiling as if he'd plotted something. Vaguely he remembered that his pomme de sang had made a point of checking that no-one had anything planned for tonight.
"Yes, she's sparring with Damian at the moment. I don't think she really wants to be interrupted at the moment though." He could feel her arousal through their link and he knew that they were doing more than just sparring, although it wouldn't be full intercourse, Anita had stuck to his stricture, even if he did feel ridiculous asking it of her, even if he had no right to ask it of her. She'd asked Damian to teach her how to use a sword, even if hers was very different from his, and he'd all too gladly agreed. Jean-Claude was glad she'd found a way to stay in shape and practise that gave her time to sleep and see Julianna.
"Do you have any idea how long she'll be? The rest of the guys are going to be arriving in half an hour."
"If you wish to check on her feel free, she is in the room where she presented Julianna. And why are 'the rest of the guys' going to arrive in half an hour?"
"We're having a video night. Thought you might like a chance to ease into dealing with people again. And it might help Regulus stop flinching." Jean-Claude winced at the casual contempt in Jason's words. He obviously couldn't understand why Regulus was so nervous about people, but he didn't make any effort to understand either.
"Thank you for your consideration." The words were semi-forced, but he knew that Anita liked Jason, and she might even have agreed to this, so he had to pretend to be happy about it. He knew that he was safe here, and with whoever Jason had invited, and if he couldn't handle a night in with friends, or at least allies, there was no way he'd be able to handle acting as Master of the City.
Jason did go down to fetch Anita after Nathaniel arrived with Micah, and she dragged Damian with her when she came up. She ended up on the couch, with Jean-Claude and Regulus curled up either side of her and Damian and Nathaniel at her feet. One of the first movies Jason pulled out was 'X-men', and that one had them all riveted, there was so much that resonated with them. Anita seemed to be particularly interested in 'Rouge', so much that Jason noticed.
"You like Rouge huh? Are you going to turn bi on us?" Jason was grinning, he was probably the only one who could get away with making that sort of insinuation. "Not that I can blame you, she's hot, especially before she got that white streak."
"I like that white streak, it's distinctive, even a bit sexy, the white in with all that dark hair. But no, I'm not into women, it's just, my powers were once that uncontrollable. There but for the grace of god thing."
"Oh!" Jason had nothing further to say to that, Jean-Claude could certainly understand Anita's reaction.
"It reminds me of how I was when I first suffered from the ardeur, I do not think the ardeur was ever that bad for you, was it ma petite?"
"Not as bad as my necromancy was before I learned that I had to use it. Did I ever tell you about the first time I used my necromancy?"
"I do not think so. And even if you had most of those here have not heard of it."
"Well, you see I was thirteen and my pet dog had died. My father did one of those pet funeral things, you know, where your parents bury your dead pet in the back garden? Three days later I woke up in the middle of the night with her licking at my face. For one moment I let myself think we'd been mistaken, that she wasn't dead, but even then I knew dead when I saw it. And in the next few months I started inadvertantly raising all the roadkill in the area, and since I didn't know how to put them back they began following me around Pied Piper of Hamlin style." The image was rather horrific, and Jason declared that he had just the video to fit that story.
~~~000~~~
Two nights later Jean-Claude noticed that Regulus was playing unhappily with his hair. By now it had grown out of the sculpted style Hugo had required, but not into anything better, and it looked a mess. Jean-Claude would be unhappy if his hair looked like that, and he didn't see his value as much in terms of how much he could please Anita as Regulus seemed to.
"Would you like to get your hair cut? The style you used to wear's pretty high maintinance, or if you'd rather you can have a cut done more suitable for growing it out."
"But, we need our Sire's permission for that, and she hasn't given it."
"She will, she'll let you do whatever you want to your hair, she really doesn't approve of all the limitations being a mate puts on us, and she took you from Hugo to punish him, not to own you." Jean-Claude frowned then, he had a feeling his words hurt Regulus as much as reassured him. "I'm not sure if she'll give me the same freedom, but as long as I keep it long I don't think she'll object." He wanted to have a white streak put into his hair, if she found it arousing...
"Get her permission first, it's too dangerous not to." Regulus could be stubborn about soem things, particularly if they scared him.
"Very well." And Jean-claude stood, pulling Regulus with him.
"N-no! I didn't mean to go looking for her. We can't disturb her, she'd be angry, so angry." Jean-Claude reached out and subtly checked what Anita was doing, she tended to leave her mind partly open to him, just enough that he could check her location, and what she was doing if it wasn't related to her personal life or policework.
"Not if we're careful, and don't actually interfere with anything. She's doing one of her raisings now, I'll get Jason to drive us to the cemetary."
"Don't!" Regulus stopped then, resisting with all the strength hundreds of forced pregnancies had given him, and Jean-Claude was nowhere near strong enough to force him. "You can call and make arrangements now, and get her to write out permissions for when the hairdresser arrives." That would certainly be a better idea than going after Anita now, he didn't really want people to see him with a broken collarbone, it would mean people would remember his weakness, and make it even harder for him to take back control of the city.
"Very well." Jean-Claude lifted the phone and dialled the number of his hairdresser. "What do you want doing?"
"I want a cut that will still look good as I let my hair grow out. I do want to forget Hugo as much as I can, and the Traveller likes long hair, if our Sire wishes to give me to him as a gift I should look pleasing to him. And she likes long hair too, if she does not choose to give me away I should be pleasing to her." Regulus frowned then. "And what do you want?"
"I thought I could have a strip of my hair bleached white, Anita did say that she thought it was sexy, and if she dislikes it I can always have it dyed back to black."
"Hello, who is this?"
"Antony, this is Jean-Claude. When would you be able to come to the Circus of the Damned to cut my hair and Regulus'?"
"Do you have Anita's permission? I was told about these new laws."
"No, but when you come it will be waiting for you, I want a white streak put into my hair, and Regulus wants his cut to a style more suited for growing it out."
"I do not know..."
"Our Sire will not object to Regulus having his hair cut, she likes long hair, and at the moment his hair does not look very pleasing, it upsets him. Come, and do his hair if nothing else. And I believe that the others who live here might wish to have their hair cut as well."
"And they won't object to having haircuts scheduled for them?"
"Most likely not. You're checking so that you'll still have something to do if I am not permitted to do what I wish?"
"And while I'm waiting for the bleach to work on your hair. I can come by in six days, August 31st. When should I arrive?"
"Six in the evening? The more powerful among us are awake by that time."
"Very well." Then it was just a matter of waiting for Anita to ask her permission. When she heard what they wanted she laughed and wrote out permission for Regulus to have his hair cut however he chose, and for Jean-Claude to have anything he wanted done, as long as his hair remained at least to the bottom of his shoulderblades.
~~~000~~~
"Anita, can I talk to you?" Irving came up to Anita just after she'd finished raising a corpse and handed it over to the lawyers. His timing was good, or it would have been if she hadn't just been thinking about what she'd done with Jean-Claude after he'd shown her what he'd done with his hair. It had been incredibly flattering that he'd been willing to make such a big change on the chance that she'd like it, and she'd found it very appealing. So much so that she'd bedded him for the first time since she'd broken his collarbone. And this time she'd taken care not to hurt him, holding back her strength for his sake. But that meant she hadn't been able to let go, and she realised just how tough things must have been for Jean-Claude, Richard and her other lovers before.
"Go ahead."
"Remember that interview you agreed to give me when you announced what Jean-Claude is, and the short follow-up you did by yourself after Jean-Claude had given birth?"
"Yes, what about them?"
"My editor wants another interview, this one with Jean-Claude, and I think if I could get Regulus in as well it would be a bonus. Will you allow it?"
"Yes, but I won't force them to give you an interview, if we do agree when do you want it?"
"Two days time, on the fourth perhaps?"
"It will be at the Circus of the Damned if they agree, and I'll ring you with a time and information on what you're allowed or forbidden to ask about. Will that be a problem for you?"
"No, of course not. That would be wonderful. Are you going to be there too?"
"Do you want me there, or are you worried that they wouldn't answer your questions truthfully if I was there?"
"I'd like to talk to you, but it would look better if you weren't there, if they answered questions without you standing over them."
"If you want to you can run a separate interview with me, afterwards, and ask me any questions their interview has brought up."
"Thanks, that would be good, and we can run that separately."
"I can't talk any longer, I need to put that zombie back." It was the last raising of the night and Anita immediately made her way back to the Circus and called Regulus and Jean-Claude to her.
"Jean-Claude, you remember that interview we did with Irving just after Christmas?"
"Yes ma petite, I do."
"Irving wants to do a follow-up with you, and perhaps Regulus, without me there to influence what you're saying. Do either of you have a problem with that?"
"If you wish it then I will obey Lady Anita."
"I have no problems dealing with the press ma petite, and Irving will not push too far with me after all."
"Good. He wants to do the interview on the fourth, what time should I give him to meet you at?"
"Seven in the evening perhaps?" Anita nodded and put the call through. Afterwards she thoguth of something else. "How long can I wait after you give birth to present your child Regulus?"
"Up to a year."
"Then I'll present him after you've weaned him, Jessie and Jean-Claude will both have stopped producing milk by the time you give birth."
~~~000~~~
Regulus wasn't entirely happy about giving the interview to Irving, and it showed, but Jean-Claude could tell that he'd thought Anita's request had been a veiled order. And he didn't trust Anita the way that Jean-Claude did, so having her there wouldn't make him feel better. But he was still unhappy, and it showed in the way he held himself. A human wouldn't notice, but Irving might, and even if he didn't the way Regulus felt might show in the way he spoke.
If Jean-Claude had been unhappy about this he'd have asked Anita to be with him, to make him feel better, but that wouldn't do anything for Regulus, he still found it hard to believe that Anita wouldn't abuse him, and that she would hand him over to the Traveller after she'd presented their child. She'd just about ignored him after she'd gotten him pregnant, she had thought that it would reassure him that she wouldn't abuse him if she only did her duty to him and tried to avoid other contact with him, but it hadn't worked that way. And they were running out of time before Irving would arrive for the interview.
But Regulus did seem to trust Faust, even if he was much weaker than even Asher. Although considering that Regulus was more powerful than most of the Council it didn't matter how strong anyone but his Sire was.
"Regulus, you aren't comfortable doing this, I can tell. Would it help if Faust was here with you while we do this?"
"Does it matter whether or not I am comfortable with this? It is our Sire's wish. And does Faust not have other things to concern himself with?"
"Nothing that someone else cannot do, and of course it matters whether or not you are comfortable doing this. If nothing else it looks bad for Anita if we're forced into doing something like this."
Regulus bit his lower lip. "Get Faust then." Regulus waited until Jean-Claude had sent a wolf for the younger vampire before continuing. "What sort of questions will I have to answer?"
"Well, Irving will ask how it is that Anita has two mates now, for the record, and he'll probably ask how you feel about being Anita's, how it compares to your previous master, that sort of thing. I think he'll probably be more focused on me, and my daughter, but if he asks you a question you aren't comfortable answering then just say so. He won't press the issue, he's a wolf after all, my animal to call. What is your animal anyway?
"Cats, all cats from large like tigers, to small, the domestic breeds."
"Oh. I need to get Julianna, but I should be back before Irving arrives."
"Why do you need to get Julianna?"
"I think she needs feeding now, or soon anyway, for one thing, and it makes better pictures for the story if I've got my daughter with me for the interview."
"You're willing to use your daughter that way?"
"I'm not using her, it gives me an excuse to have her with me. Not that I really need one." It was almost a joke how Jean-Claude did his best to keep his daughter by him all the time he was awake, even if he did acknowledge that he had to let her sleep when she needed it. That meant that he couldn't keep her with him for much of the night, but he always seemed to know when she needed feeding and when she woke up. She loved playing with his hair, and with Anita's too, although she didn't find it as adorable as he did. Julianna was waking up, but she wasn't fussing, so Jean-Claude took her back to his living room, where he found Regulus curled in Faust's arms, half sitting in his lap.
Jason arrived, bringing Irving in with his photographer just after Jean-Claude put Julianna to his breast.
"Jean-Claude, do you mind if we get a picture of that?" Jean-Claude was wearing loose black pajamas for ease of access, and when Anita gave her interview with Irving during the week he'd been kept in his bed she'd allowed pictures so...
"Go ahead, just don't disturb her."
"My editor wanted a follow-up to the interview where you talked about being a mate, with you not with Anita, he figured that three months was long enough to let you recover after giving birth. Let's start with something simple, why did Anita get Regulus pregnant as well, and how?"
"Regulus belonged to a werehyena called Hugo, who kidnapped me and tried to make me miscarry after Anita had claimed me. Anita and I manipulated him into offering to let Anita borrow Regulus when she presented Julianna and she got him pregnant then."
"How did that happen? You said that only his Sire could get a mate pregnant once he's been claimed."
"Hugo wasn't the father of my first child, he cut that out of my stomach, and beat me until I miscarried my second. Anita gave me something to drink and it broke his claim on me, then she got me pregnant. She says that she won't present my child until I've weaned her, and then she tells me that she intends to give me away, to an old lover, a Council member."
"You both talk about Anita 'presenting' your children, what does that mean?"
"That she invites all the acknowledged Sires and tells them that she has a new child, and what her name is. It's required for the first child a Sire gets on each mate. Until she presented Julianna Anita wasn't acknowledged as a Sire." Jean-Claude shifted his daughter to his other nipple as he spoke.
"I see. And Regulus, it doesn't bother you that Anita intends to give you away?"
"No, I told you, she means to give me to an old lover, someone who I still love, and who was hurt trying to get me away from Hugo when he learned that Hugo was abusing me."
"I realise most humans would find it odd, but Anita took Regulus from Hugo as vengeance, and because he was being badly abused. She doesn't care about him for his own sake other than as someone she is obliged to protect. Giving him to one of the most powerful independent vampires in the world is a good way to protect him, it will also make him happy, or happier than staying here would. Our children are the key to her immortality, but she only cares about them as children, for their own sake, not for what they can give her. But we are going to keep Regulus' child, it isn't as if he wants to raise it."
"Why not Regulus? And why are you willing to raise Regulus' child?"
"Because I've been forced to bear over 250 children, I don't want to have anything else to do with children. I tried to raise the first ten, but Hugo barely gave me a month from giving birth to conceiving again at first, that meant I was exhausted, and I couldn't cope. And then, that first century, over seventy of my children died before they were adults, and twenty more before they could have children of their own."
"Was losing that many children unusual for the time?"
"N-no, not in the lower classes, but I wasn't of the lower classes, my children shouldn't have been at as much risk, and more should have survived, they might have if I'd been allowed to space them out a bit more. Anita has insisted that Jean-Claude should have at least eighteen months between pregnancies, I wish I'd been allowed that, but by the time Hugo was willing to let me just have a child every ten years I couldn't bring myself to care about my children anymore."
"I'm willing to raise Regulus and Anita's child because it is Anita's child, and that is all that matters. I named Julianna for Asher's human servant, when she died, she was talking about having a child of her own, getting pregnant by a suitable human. Both Asher and I loved her, we'd have gladly helped raise the child because it came from someone we loved, this is the same thing."
"It isn't uncommon for a master vampire with a female human servant to do that actually, at least if he loves his human servant."
"Umm, right. Jean-Claude, you said that Anita doesn't care about Regulus for his own sake, but that sounds to me an awful lot like what cheating spouses say when they're caught out, is there any comparison at all?"
"No, Anita only bedded him once, she gave Faust permission to sleep with him to test the contract she used to claim him with and if his pregnancy makes him horny. And she'll be sending him away in a bit over a year. I'm not jealous of him because Anita doesn't really see him sexually, and I'm not jealous of Asher because he can't give Anita children." What Jean-Claude didn't say was that he was jealous of Damian, and he stil wasn't sure why.
"You haven't been acting as Master of the City in anything but name for some time now, when will you be able to go back to it?"
"After I've weaned my daughter, probably in three to four months time, it would be a bit awkward for me to act as Master of the City while I was still breastfeeding." Eventually Irving got tired of asking questions and left, the article he wrote was published two days later.
~~~000~~~
Jean-Claude watched as Anita exchanged vows with Regulus, this time only promising twenty-five years and signed their contract as one of Regulus’ witnesses with a feeling of jealousy. He remembered how she’d taken him to a hotel for at least a semblance of a honeymoon afterwards, and the way she’d stopped making love to him when she realised he was reluctant. Even if he hadn’t loved her before that he would have fallen in love with her then for her consideration. He was half scared that Anita would decide to take Regulus away with her for a honeymoon, yes she’d repeatedly claimed not to have any interest in him beyond how she could hurt Hugo by taking him, but Jean-Claude couldn’t help worrying about losing her favour.
“Faust, you can borrow Regulus for the night. At some point I want you to attempt to deliberately hurt him as part of sex; it doesn’t have to be anything serious, just biting him would do perfectly well. Regulus does this bother you?”
“This is just to test that all clauses of our contract will be magically enforced?” Regulus sounded scared at questioning Anita, he kept his eyes cast down and worried at his lower lip with his teeth.
“Yes, I’m assuming that if one clause holds all of them will, and this is the only clause Jean-Claude did not ask for which you did.”
“Then no it doesn’t bother me, not if that is the only purpose. Are you willing to share me with Faust in the future, or is it just for this night?”
“Anytime you both wish to lie together you are free to.” Anita dismissed the two vampires with those words and Faust drew Regulus away. Jean-Claude dismissed Regulus from his mind and continued with what he had planned for after Anita signed her contract with the older mate. Firmly controlling the flash of guilt he felt at having planned to make sure Anita couldn’t take Regulus to her bed, at having distrusted her so much that he assumed she would, he stepped up to her handing over one of the ankhs she’d given him at Christmas. A smile spread across her face.
“How do you want this?”
“I’m tired of how gentle you are with me. I want you to pin me down and fuck me so hard I’ll be feeling it tomorrow.” He’d missed feeling her take charge as decisively as she used to, and he’d missed the feeling of her nails in his skin, she’d only scratched him one time as they made love since she’d learned of his pregnancy, the night she’d gotten Regulus with child, and that scratch had taken as long to heal as it would have had he been human.
“You expected me to take Regulus to my bed after we signed his contract, didn’t you?” Anita sounded half angry, half amused. “And you planned this so I couldn’t.”
“Yes Sire.” No sooner had the words left his mouth than Jean-Claude found himself being dragged to his bedroom by a bruisingly strong grip on his arm.
His lover pushed him to the bed, kissing him hungrily, and hard. And he let himself respond just as demandingly and aggressively for once. Anita had promised to make love the way he wanted it when he gave her that piece of jewellery, and he was going to enjoy it. He’d asked Anita to pin him down and fuck him, but he was going to make her work for it. He was wearing a blue shirt with lace down the front and black jeans, and he’d been barefoot, he usually was now. They tussled together for a while, until Anita managed to pin him down long enough to tie his hands together with a sleeve she’d ripped from his shirt. Immediately Jean-Claude froze, long training holding him motionless as a whimper escaped his lips.
“Hush. If you want me to release you then tell me so, but I just wanted to get you to hold still long enough to get our clothes off the two of us.”
“Go ahead. I do not mind these games, and I even enjoy them, but only if I’m given some warning beforehand.” Now he knew that Anita only wanted to stop their tussling long enough to strip he was able to relax and he enjoyed it as she undressed for him then unfastened his jeans, pulling them off and simply ripping his shirt to shreds, including the sleeve binding his hands. Jean-Claude felt grateful that his Sire was so eager to get to him, and sensitive enough to his fears that she offered to untie him without even the need to ask. Later perhaps if she wanted to do this more fully he would be more than happy to comply, so long as he knew what she wanted from him. But he still took the unguarded moment when she’d finished tearing his bonds loose to roll over on top of Anita, pinning her momentarily in their mock struggle, only for her to twist beneath him and somehow reverse their positions.
He thought that even though his Sire was stronger than he it would still be easy to use his greater mass to move her, but he was wrong, and when she reached down between them to guide him into herself he gave up control, enjoying the feeling of her taking him, dominating him, even enjoying the nails raking down his flanks though he knew he would pay for his pleasure with days, perhaps even weeks, of soreness. He only realised there was something wrong when she climaxed and broke his left collarbone. He screamed, half in pain, and half in pleasure as the training he’d experienced forced his own climax.
“Shit!” Anita looked down at him in shock. “Heal for me, now. I don’t want you to still be hurting.” But it didn’t work and she stood pulling her own clothes on rapidly and wrapping him in a robe. “You need medical attention for this.”
Jean-Claude didn’t respond; just lay in her arms as she carried him out and to her car. He was conscious, it took a lot more pain than that to force him to pass out, but he decided to just let Anita deal with everything and let himself lose track of what was happening as his Sire took him to the hospital and got him treated.
Jean-Claude watched his master as the doctor stitched up the scratches on his side. Anita hadn’t been allowed to keep holding him, and feeding him with her blood in lieu of a transfusion, but she’d insisted on staying in the room with him. The hospital staff hadn’t been happy about that for some reason, and they were stepping carefully around her.
“We need to take him to X-ray, and you can’t come with him.” Jean-Claude didn’t mind that they were talking over him, he just stood and prepared to go with the doctor.
“Can you tell me if it hurts anywhere but your shoulder?” The human doctor only asked the question when he thought Anita wouldn’t be able to hear him, it was almost as if he doubted her in some way.
“Anita told you about my injuries.”
“Yes, but are you hurt anywhere else, something you didn’t mention to her?”
“A few bruises, but nothing important. They’ll heal soon enough, but I didn’t think they were important enough to tell you. Anita knows about them, but you don’t notice little things like that in the heat of passion.
“Please, I don’t want to talk about this any more.” Jean-Claude looked at the doctor with wide pleading eyes. Even though he thought he’d made it clear that it was his choice to submit when he gave his interview on his pregnancy to Irving some humans had believed that Anita had abused him and forced him to say those things. It had become even worse after people had learned about the Mate Laws – of course the hate groups that wanted all vampires dead had decided Anita was a heroine. Still a lot of people felt sympathetic towards Jean-Claude and he was perfectly willing to use that sympathy.
The doctor gave up trying to convince Jean-Claude to complain about Anita’s treatment of him and did the X-ray in silence. Then he led Jean-Claude back to the cubicle, smiling at his surprise when he realised Anita wasn’t there. But the detective who’d collected him from the park Regulus had left him in after Hugo kidnapped him was.
“Detective Arnet, why are you here? And where is Anita?”
“We got a report that the staff suspect Anita’s abusing you. They have to report it by law, and since you’re a vampire we get to deal with it. Sergeant Zerbrowski took Anita to get her version of how this happened. I thought vampires healed too quickly to need anything like this. And how did you get hurt so badly?”
“This, and the fact that I had to come here are my fault.”
“What do you mean your fault? How can it be your fault that you’ve got a broken collarbone and scratches deep enough to need stitches?”
“There is a legend among vampires that after a mate first gives birth his Sire can hurt him as easily as if he were human. If Anita had grabbed Asher as hard as she grabbed me all that would happen would be that he’d have bruises, and perhaps some cuts from her nails. I should have told Anita, and checked with Regulus whether the story was true instead of dismissing it. If I’d told Anita she’d have held her strength back while we had sex.”
“She does this much damage during sex? I thought Zerbrowski was joking when he said she likes it rough.” The young woman sounded shocked.
“I asked for Anita to be rough with me, to be aggressive this time. And it isn’t so much that she likes it rough as that she’s stronger than normal humans, and she rarely lies with anyone as easy to hurt as a human, so she does more damage. It would not have mattered if I hadn’t been careless.”
“Careless how?”
“Anita used a contract signed in our mingled blood to claim me. It’s magically binding and it protects me from the three things that scared me most about being Anita’s mate. One of those things is that if Anita hurts me I would heal only when she gave permission, but instantly then, except for the contract. But the clause that guarantees I’ll heal within a certain time period also says that injuries from sex heal at the normal rate. I decided on that, I always liked wearing her scratches and bites, but for some reason, although I meant at the normal vampire rate it ended up as the normal human rate.”
“So you maintain that your lover isn't abusing you?”
“No, and even if she was, under the mate laws it would be perfectly legal.”
“It what? No, that's disgusting.”
“The mate laws are based on vampire tradition surrounding mates. Any vampire who saw me now would only wonder what I'd done to anger my sire. Eventually you'll get used to this and react the same way.”
The detective visibly forced herself to calm down. “Is there anything I can do for you then?”
“Stay here until Anita comes back?” Jean-Claude would have preferred it if his master was there, blocking his pain for him, but he'd take what he could get.
“Of course.” At that Jean-Claude settled down on his bed, waiting for his master's return.
Anita was pacing back and forth, waiting for her mate to be returned to her when Sergeant Zerbrowski arrived with Detective Arnet.
“Anita, we've got a report that the doctors here suspect a case of domestic abuse. Could you come with me so I can talk with you and Detective Arnet can question Count Dracula in private.”
“You think I'm abusing Jean-Claude?” Anita was shocked by the idea. she couldn't believe that anyone would think she was hurting her mate, she never would, not deliberately. “I'll come with you, but I want to get back for my mate as soon as I can.”
“We'll do our best. Detective Arnet will be careful with your mate, I promise.”
“She better be.” Anita slowly walked out with Zerbrowski, letting him lead her to one of those rooms the hospital kept for waiting relatives.
“What do you need to know?”
“The doctors reported that you brought Jean-Claude in with broken bones and bleeding badly enough that he needed stitches. I thought vamps healed too fast to need hospital treatment for injuries! How did he get into that state?”
“I used a magically enforced contract to claim him, it felt right and the idea was to give him a bit of protection and reassurance. One of the provisions is that other than injuries inflicted during sex everything I do to him heals within a given timeframe.”
“So you were assuming that you'd want to hurt him outside of sex?”
“No! But because he's a mate if I hurt him he won't heal until I say he can, and he'd seen other mates who were kept hurting for months on end, and he was scared of that. So I gave him the parameters and let him write our contract to make him feel safer.”
“Parameters?”
“He heals from injuries outside of sex with either a week for bruises, or a day for anything else, he does not have sex with anyone but myself or Asher - and that was his desire not mine, he's afraid of being passed around if I tire of him, which I won't. And he has to ask before he can conceive again.”
“What happens with injuries from sex?”
“He heals at the normal rate - I thought that meant the normal vampire rate - but it turned out to be the normal human rate. I didn't mean to hurt him so badly, but apparently when my mate isn't pregnant he's as easily damaged by me as a human would be, which I only learned when Regulus saw me carrying Jean-Claude out of my bedroom.” Anita had been a bit surprised to find him waiting there with Faust, as it turned out they'd been planning to tell her that Regulus' contract held, before going back to bed, but they'd offered to help when they saw the state Jean-Claude was in.
“You hurt him that badly by accident? You're that rough during sex?”
“It wasn't so much that I was rough, although I was rough this time, at Jean-Claude's request, but I don't know how to control my strength during sex anyway. I never really needed to before now, as I was always the weaker partner physically. I need to learn how now, and I will, but it never occurred to me that grabbing Jean-Claude's shoulder would hurt him, it never has before! And I should have realised that my nails would leave scratches that could leave stitches, Jason once told me that a human would need stitches, but not for any other vampire, or even for a were.”
“So you're saying it's alright for you to hurt him if it heals quickly.”
“I'm saying that I'm as likely to scratch myself up as my lover and I don't mind if my lover scratches me up during sex. And much as I hate it, legally it wouldn't matter if I wanted to beat him every night - I'd have the right to.”
“No one has the right to beat someone else! I know for a fact that's totally illegal.”
“Zerbrowski, you need to read the mate laws, they state that a mate, a vampire who can bear children has no rights at all. And as his Sire I can't be prosecuted for anything I do in his defence.”
“So you're the only person allowed to hurt him.” There was bitterness in Zerbrowski's voice, Anita couldn't bring herself to blame him.
“Pretty much. I try not to hurt him if I can avoid it, but...he expected me to punish him after Hugo took him, and it seemed to make him feel better afterwards.”
“Just how did you 'punish' him?”
“Spanking. The way I'd punish a child. But now that he's hidden so many things from me and gotten himself hurt I'm going to have to do something different.”
“What?” Zerbrowski just sounded curious, but...
“This is not to go into your report, nor is how I punish my mate when necessary. It isn't any concern of yours, nor relevant.”
"I might have to report it, but I'll try not to. If you're planning to hurt him..."
"No, but until this happened I was planning to let him go back to taking an active role as Master of the City, now I can't let him do that until he's healed. He's bored out of his head, but first I wanted to make sure he'd recovered from giving birth, and now with this injury he can't deal with any challenges to his authority."
"And you're going to tell him that?"
"My decision, not my reasoning." Anita shrugged, trying to make it look careless. "I'll let him think it is only punishment, he's been getting sick of the limitations I put on him, even if he doesn't complain. Do you want to come watch?"
"Yes, then at least I'll be able to say you didn't hurt him because of this." Zerbrowski followed Anita as she returned to find Jean-Claude waiting for her in bed and Detective Arnet watching over her.
"Jean-Claude, Sergeant Zerbrowski wanted to witness your punishment this time."
"Oh, but you don't have a hairbrush here."
"I'm not going to punish you that way this time. Tell me what you need to be punished for." Anita sat beside Jean-Claude, laying a gentle hand on his hair to block his pain.
"Not telling you that 'normal rate' meant normal human rate rather than normal vampire rate. Not mentioning the stories about how easy it is for you to hurt me. And not asking Regulus about them."
"No, I can't punish you for something I do far too often myself. But the first two things are correct. For not telling me about your problems healing, well I was going to tell you that you could return to full duties as Master of the City tonight, but now I won't let you until our daughter is weaned, and you are not permitted to rush that."
"I wouldn't!" Jean-Claude seemed shocked that Anita could ever suspect that he would neglect their child for any reason at all.
"I know, but for your second offence, I'm going to tell Asher that the restrictions on sexual contact with you are lifted - I had planned to leave them in place until Julianna was weaned."
"What restrictions?" Zerbrowski looked at the two of them in confusion.
"I told Asher to let Jean-Claude initiate sex until further notice, but from now on I'll let Asher initiate sex if he wants."
"Why is that a punishment?" Detective Arnet sounded curious about that, and still worried about Jean-Claude, something that made Antia like her better.
"Because as a mate I don't have the right to say no to Anita or to Asher as my contract specifically gives him the priviledge of having sex with me. He wouldn't outright rape me, but he can be...insistent."
"Come on, there isn't anything we can do here, Anita is behaving perfectly within the law." Anita watched as the police left and waited for the hospital to release Jean-Claude before taking him back to the Circus.
Jean-Claude shivered as he watched Asher from beneath lowered lashes. It had been two days since Anita had accidentally broken his collarbone because he'd been keeping things from her, and he couldn't understand why Asher hadn't taken advantage of her lifting the restrictions she'd put on him yet. He was almost dreading it, he knew that Asher could be rough sometimes and the longer it took for Asher to claim his rights the rougher he was likely to be. So he'd resisted the temptation to use his daughter as a shield from Asher's desires, letting her sleep in her crib, rather than keeping hold of her constantly.
"Jean-Claude." The younger vampire's attention was immediately fixed on his lover, if he could call it that.
"Yes Asher?" Eyes dropped back to study the ground at Asher's feet, in an unspoken display of submission.
"Come to my bedroom in two hours."
"As you wish," Jean-Claude hesitated before using the pet name, "mon chadonerret." but he was rewarded with a pleased smile from Asher, and he let himself hope it would make the coming hours easier on him.
Jean-Claude brushed out his hair thoroughly before he went to satisfy Asher. Once he would have just walked in on the golden haired vampire, because they were lovers, or more recently because he was Asher's master, but now he raised his hand and nervously knocked at the door.
"Come in Jean-Claude." He obeyed, going to his knees and bowing his head once the door had closed behind him. Asher grabbed him by his hair, pulling his head back at an almost painful angle and kissing him savagely.
"You've been avoiding me, haven't you?" The question was hissed into Jean-Claude's ear, anger apparent in Asher's voice.
"Yes Asher, I have."
"Why?"
"You...can be rough at times, I was scared." Jean-Claude shrugged, despite the hand in his hair. "I'm not your better now, or even your equal, so I don't know how to deal with you, I don't have the protection I had before."
"Strip and get on the bed!" Asher released Jean-Claude's hair, pushing him away so he had to catch himself before he fell. He obeyed swiftly, without taking the time to try and make it in the least bit sensual, he could tell that Asher wasn't in the mood for anything slow. The older vampire had resented that he only had access to what he considered a rightful perogative of his on Jean-Claude's consent, and now that those restrictions were lifted he'd want to appease his anger as much as his lust. He'd understood the restrictions perfectly while Jean-Claude was pregnant, because you had to be careful with anyone who's pregnant, and when Anita outright forbade sex with Jean-Claude that was perfectly understandable, because he belonged to Anita after all, but to be dependent on Jean-Claude's choice was an entire other matter. Jean-Claude knew how his oldest love thought about some things, and as a mate his status was now lower than even the newest vampire's in many ways.
It was over quickly, and afterwards Asher was willing to hold him, to reassure him, at least a little, but those were the only things Jean-Claude really enjoyed about it. Asher hadn't bothered with more than the sketchiest preparation before he took Jean-Claude, and it hadn't lasted long enough for the younger vampire to climax either. He didn't care about that, he forced himself to go soft and just relaxed into Asher's arms, praying, to a god he knew he had no right to call on, and to his Sire, his master, that Asher had worked out his anger at being denied.
"Explain to me why Anita had to rush you to the hospital, and why this is still broken." Asher ran his fingers idly over Jean-Claude's broken collarbone as he spoke.
"My contract says I heal injuries from sex at the normal rate, but I didn't specify the normal rate for vampires." Jean-Claude bit back a whimper as Asher pressed harder onto the bone.
"Why didn't she just give you permission to heal anyway afterwards?"
"My Sire tried, but apparently my contract overrides that."
"I see. Stay with me for the rest of the night, and through the day, until I awake."
"As you wish Asher."
"Hi Jean-Claude, Regulus. Is Anita about?" Jean-Claude looked up from his book when Jason arrived, he was carrying a bag and smiling as if he'd plotted something. Vaguely he remembered that his pomme de sang had made a point of checking that no-one had anything planned for tonight.
"Yes, she's sparring with Damian at the moment. I don't think she really wants to be interrupted at the moment though." He could feel her arousal through their link and he knew that they were doing more than just sparring, although it wouldn't be full intercourse, Anita had stuck to his stricture, even if he did feel ridiculous asking it of her, even if he had no right to ask it of her. She'd asked Damian to teach her how to use a sword, even if hers was very different from his, and he'd all too gladly agreed. Jean-Claude was glad she'd found a way to stay in shape and practise that gave her time to sleep and see Julianna.
"Do you have any idea how long she'll be? The rest of the guys are going to be arriving in half an hour."
"If you wish to check on her feel free, she is in the room where she presented Julianna. And why are 'the rest of the guys' going to arrive in half an hour?"
"We're having a video night. Thought you might like a chance to ease into dealing with people again. And it might help Regulus stop flinching." Jean-Claude winced at the casual contempt in Jason's words. He obviously couldn't understand why Regulus was so nervous about people, but he didn't make any effort to understand either.
"Thank you for your consideration." The words were semi-forced, but he knew that Anita liked Jason, and she might even have agreed to this, so he had to pretend to be happy about it. He knew that he was safe here, and with whoever Jason had invited, and if he couldn't handle a night in with friends, or at least allies, there was no way he'd be able to handle acting as Master of the City.
Jason did go down to fetch Anita after Nathaniel arrived with Micah, and she dragged Damian with her when she came up. She ended up on the couch, with Jean-Claude and Regulus curled up either side of her and Damian and Nathaniel at her feet. One of the first movies Jason pulled out was 'X-men', and that one had them all riveted, there was so much that resonated with them. Anita seemed to be particularly interested in 'Rouge', so much that Jason noticed.
"You like Rouge huh? Are you going to turn bi on us?" Jason was grinning, he was probably the only one who could get away with making that sort of insinuation. "Not that I can blame you, she's hot, especially before she got that white streak."
"I like that white streak, it's distinctive, even a bit sexy, the white in with all that dark hair. But no, I'm not into women, it's just, my powers were once that uncontrollable. There but for the grace of god thing."
"Oh!" Jason had nothing further to say to that, Jean-Claude could certainly understand Anita's reaction.
"It reminds me of how I was when I first suffered from the ardeur, I do not think the ardeur was ever that bad for you, was it ma petite?"
"Not as bad as my necromancy was before I learned that I had to use it. Did I ever tell you about the first time I used my necromancy?"
"I do not think so. And even if you had most of those here have not heard of it."
"Well, you see I was thirteen and my pet dog had died. My father did one of those pet funeral things, you know, where your parents bury your dead pet in the back garden? Three days later I woke up in the middle of the night with her licking at my face. For one moment I let myself think we'd been mistaken, that she wasn't dead, but even then I knew dead when I saw it. And in the next few months I started inadvertantly raising all the roadkill in the area, and since I didn't know how to put them back they began following me around Pied Piper of Hamlin style." The image was rather horrific, and Jason declared that he had just the video to fit that story.
Two nights later Jean-Claude noticed that Regulus was playing unhappily with his hair. By now it had grown out of the sculpted style Hugo had required, but not into anything better, and it looked a mess. Jean-Claude would be unhappy if his hair looked like that, and he didn't see his value as much in terms of how much he could please Anita as Regulus seemed to.
"Would you like to get your hair cut? The style you used to wear's pretty high maintinance, or if you'd rather you can have a cut done more suitable for growing it out."
"But, we need our Sire's permission for that, and she hasn't given it."
"She will, she'll let you do whatever you want to your hair, she really doesn't approve of all the limitations being a mate puts on us, and she took you from Hugo to punish him, not to own you." Jean-Claude frowned then, he had a feeling his words hurt Regulus as much as reassured him. "I'm not sure if she'll give me the same freedom, but as long as I keep it long I don't think she'll object." He wanted to have a white streak put into his hair, if she found it arousing...
"Get her permission first, it's too dangerous not to." Regulus could be stubborn about soem things, particularly if they scared him.
"Very well." And Jean-claude stood, pulling Regulus with him.
"N-no! I didn't mean to go looking for her. We can't disturb her, she'd be angry, so angry." Jean-Claude reached out and subtly checked what Anita was doing, she tended to leave her mind partly open to him, just enough that he could check her location, and what she was doing if it wasn't related to her personal life or policework.
"Not if we're careful, and don't actually interfere with anything. She's doing one of her raisings now, I'll get Jason to drive us to the cemetary."
"Don't!" Regulus stopped then, resisting with all the strength hundreds of forced pregnancies had given him, and Jean-Claude was nowhere near strong enough to force him. "You can call and make arrangements now, and get her to write out permissions for when the hairdresser arrives." That would certainly be a better idea than going after Anita now, he didn't really want people to see him with a broken collarbone, it would mean people would remember his weakness, and make it even harder for him to take back control of the city.
"Very well." Jean-Claude lifted the phone and dialled the number of his hairdresser. "What do you want doing?"
"I want a cut that will still look good as I let my hair grow out. I do want to forget Hugo as much as I can, and the Traveller likes long hair, if our Sire wishes to give me to him as a gift I should look pleasing to him. And she likes long hair too, if she does not choose to give me away I should be pleasing to her." Regulus frowned then. "And what do you want?"
"I thought I could have a strip of my hair bleached white, Anita did say that she thought it was sexy, and if she dislikes it I can always have it dyed back to black."
"Hello, who is this?"
"Antony, this is Jean-Claude. When would you be able to come to the Circus of the Damned to cut my hair and Regulus'?"
"Do you have Anita's permission? I was told about these new laws."
"No, but when you come it will be waiting for you, I want a white streak put into my hair, and Regulus wants his cut to a style more suited for growing it out."
"I do not know..."
"Our Sire will not object to Regulus having his hair cut, she likes long hair, and at the moment his hair does not look very pleasing, it upsets him. Come, and do his hair if nothing else. And I believe that the others who live here might wish to have their hair cut as well."
"And they won't object to having haircuts scheduled for them?"
"Most likely not. You're checking so that you'll still have something to do if I am not permitted to do what I wish?"
"And while I'm waiting for the bleach to work on your hair. I can come by in six days, August 31st. When should I arrive?"
"Six in the evening? The more powerful among us are awake by that time."
"Very well." Then it was just a matter of waiting for Anita to ask her permission. When she heard what they wanted she laughed and wrote out permission for Regulus to have his hair cut however he chose, and for Jean-Claude to have anything he wanted done, as long as his hair remained at least to the bottom of his shoulderblades.
"Anita, can I talk to you?" Irving came up to Anita just after she'd finished raising a corpse and handed it over to the lawyers. His timing was good, or it would have been if she hadn't just been thinking about what she'd done with Jean-Claude after he'd shown her what he'd done with his hair. It had been incredibly flattering that he'd been willing to make such a big change on the chance that she'd like it, and she'd found it very appealing. So much so that she'd bedded him for the first time since she'd broken his collarbone. And this time she'd taken care not to hurt him, holding back her strength for his sake. But that meant she hadn't been able to let go, and she realised just how tough things must have been for Jean-Claude, Richard and her other lovers before.
"Go ahead."
"Remember that interview you agreed to give me when you announced what Jean-Claude is, and the short follow-up you did by yourself after Jean-Claude had given birth?"
"Yes, what about them?"
"My editor wants another interview, this one with Jean-Claude, and I think if I could get Regulus in as well it would be a bonus. Will you allow it?"
"Yes, but I won't force them to give you an interview, if we do agree when do you want it?"
"Two days time, on the fourth perhaps?"
"It will be at the Circus of the Damned if they agree, and I'll ring you with a time and information on what you're allowed or forbidden to ask about. Will that be a problem for you?"
"No, of course not. That would be wonderful. Are you going to be there too?"
"Do you want me there, or are you worried that they wouldn't answer your questions truthfully if I was there?"
"I'd like to talk to you, but it would look better if you weren't there, if they answered questions without you standing over them."
"If you want to you can run a separate interview with me, afterwards, and ask me any questions their interview has brought up."
"Thanks, that would be good, and we can run that separately."
"I can't talk any longer, I need to put that zombie back." It was the last raising of the night and Anita immediately made her way back to the Circus and called Regulus and Jean-Claude to her.
"Jean-Claude, you remember that interview we did with Irving just after Christmas?"
"Yes ma petite, I do."
"Irving wants to do a follow-up with you, and perhaps Regulus, without me there to influence what you're saying. Do either of you have a problem with that?"
"If you wish it then I will obey Lady Anita."
"I have no problems dealing with the press ma petite, and Irving will not push too far with me after all."
"Good. He wants to do the interview on the fourth, what time should I give him to meet you at?"
"Seven in the evening perhaps?" Anita nodded and put the call through. Afterwards she thoguth of something else. "How long can I wait after you give birth to present your child Regulus?"
"Up to a year."
"Then I'll present him after you've weaned him, Jessie and Jean-Claude will both have stopped producing milk by the time you give birth."
Regulus wasn't entirely happy about giving the interview to Irving, and it showed, but Jean-Claude could tell that he'd thought Anita's request had been a veiled order. And he didn't trust Anita the way that Jean-Claude did, so having her there wouldn't make him feel better. But he was still unhappy, and it showed in the way he held himself. A human wouldn't notice, but Irving might, and even if he didn't the way Regulus felt might show in the way he spoke.
If Jean-Claude had been unhappy about this he'd have asked Anita to be with him, to make him feel better, but that wouldn't do anything for Regulus, he still found it hard to believe that Anita wouldn't abuse him, and that she would hand him over to the Traveller after she'd presented their child. She'd just about ignored him after she'd gotten him pregnant, she had thought that it would reassure him that she wouldn't abuse him if she only did her duty to him and tried to avoid other contact with him, but it hadn't worked that way. And they were running out of time before Irving would arrive for the interview.
But Regulus did seem to trust Faust, even if he was much weaker than even Asher. Although considering that Regulus was more powerful than most of the Council it didn't matter how strong anyone but his Sire was.
"Regulus, you aren't comfortable doing this, I can tell. Would it help if Faust was here with you while we do this?"
"Does it matter whether or not I am comfortable with this? It is our Sire's wish. And does Faust not have other things to concern himself with?"
"Nothing that someone else cannot do, and of course it matters whether or not you are comfortable doing this. If nothing else it looks bad for Anita if we're forced into doing something like this."
Regulus bit his lower lip. "Get Faust then." Regulus waited until Jean-Claude had sent a wolf for the younger vampire before continuing. "What sort of questions will I have to answer?"
"Well, Irving will ask how it is that Anita has two mates now, for the record, and he'll probably ask how you feel about being Anita's, how it compares to your previous master, that sort of thing. I think he'll probably be more focused on me, and my daughter, but if he asks you a question you aren't comfortable answering then just say so. He won't press the issue, he's a wolf after all, my animal to call. What is your animal anyway?
"Cats, all cats from large like tigers, to small, the domestic breeds."
"Oh. I need to get Julianna, but I should be back before Irving arrives."
"Why do you need to get Julianna?"
"I think she needs feeding now, or soon anyway, for one thing, and it makes better pictures for the story if I've got my daughter with me for the interview."
"You're willing to use your daughter that way?"
"I'm not using her, it gives me an excuse to have her with me. Not that I really need one." It was almost a joke how Jean-Claude did his best to keep his daughter by him all the time he was awake, even if he did acknowledge that he had to let her sleep when she needed it. That meant that he couldn't keep her with him for much of the night, but he always seemed to know when she needed feeding and when she woke up. She loved playing with his hair, and with Anita's too, although she didn't find it as adorable as he did. Julianna was waking up, but she wasn't fussing, so Jean-Claude took her back to his living room, where he found Regulus curled in Faust's arms, half sitting in his lap.
Jason arrived, bringing Irving in with his photographer just after Jean-Claude put Julianna to his breast.
"Jean-Claude, do you mind if we get a picture of that?" Jean-Claude was wearing loose black pajamas for ease of access, and when Anita gave her interview with Irving during the week he'd been kept in his bed she'd allowed pictures so...
"Go ahead, just don't disturb her."
"My editor wanted a follow-up to the interview where you talked about being a mate, with you not with Anita, he figured that three months was long enough to let you recover after giving birth. Let's start with something simple, why did Anita get Regulus pregnant as well, and how?"
"Regulus belonged to a werehyena called Hugo, who kidnapped me and tried to make me miscarry after Anita had claimed me. Anita and I manipulated him into offering to let Anita borrow Regulus when she presented Julianna and she got him pregnant then."
"How did that happen? You said that only his Sire could get a mate pregnant once he's been claimed."
"Hugo wasn't the father of my first child, he cut that out of my stomach, and beat me until I miscarried my second. Anita gave me something to drink and it broke his claim on me, then she got me pregnant. She says that she won't present my child until I've weaned her, and then she tells me that she intends to give me away, to an old lover, a Council member."
"You both talk about Anita 'presenting' your children, what does that mean?"
"That she invites all the acknowledged Sires and tells them that she has a new child, and what her name is. It's required for the first child a Sire gets on each mate. Until she presented Julianna Anita wasn't acknowledged as a Sire." Jean-Claude shifted his daughter to his other nipple as he spoke.
"I see. And Regulus, it doesn't bother you that Anita intends to give you away?"
"No, I told you, she means to give me to an old lover, someone who I still love, and who was hurt trying to get me away from Hugo when he learned that Hugo was abusing me."
"I realise most humans would find it odd, but Anita took Regulus from Hugo as vengeance, and because he was being badly abused. She doesn't care about him for his own sake other than as someone she is obliged to protect. Giving him to one of the most powerful independent vampires in the world is a good way to protect him, it will also make him happy, or happier than staying here would. Our children are the key to her immortality, but she only cares about them as children, for their own sake, not for what they can give her. But we are going to keep Regulus' child, it isn't as if he wants to raise it."
"Why not Regulus? And why are you willing to raise Regulus' child?"
"Because I've been forced to bear over 250 children, I don't want to have anything else to do with children. I tried to raise the first ten, but Hugo barely gave me a month from giving birth to conceiving again at first, that meant I was exhausted, and I couldn't cope. And then, that first century, over seventy of my children died before they were adults, and twenty more before they could have children of their own."
"Was losing that many children unusual for the time?"
"N-no, not in the lower classes, but I wasn't of the lower classes, my children shouldn't have been at as much risk, and more should have survived, they might have if I'd been allowed to space them out a bit more. Anita has insisted that Jean-Claude should have at least eighteen months between pregnancies, I wish I'd been allowed that, but by the time Hugo was willing to let me just have a child every ten years I couldn't bring myself to care about my children anymore."
"I'm willing to raise Regulus and Anita's child because it is Anita's child, and that is all that matters. I named Julianna for Asher's human servant, when she died, she was talking about having a child of her own, getting pregnant by a suitable human. Both Asher and I loved her, we'd have gladly helped raise the child because it came from someone we loved, this is the same thing."
"It isn't uncommon for a master vampire with a female human servant to do that actually, at least if he loves his human servant."
"Umm, right. Jean-Claude, you said that Anita doesn't care about Regulus for his own sake, but that sounds to me an awful lot like what cheating spouses say when they're caught out, is there any comparison at all?"
"No, Anita only bedded him once, she gave Faust permission to sleep with him to test the contract she used to claim him with and if his pregnancy makes him horny. And she'll be sending him away in a bit over a year. I'm not jealous of him because Anita doesn't really see him sexually, and I'm not jealous of Asher because he can't give Anita children." What Jean-Claude didn't say was that he was jealous of Damian, and he stil wasn't sure why.
"You haven't been acting as Master of the City in anything but name for some time now, when will you be able to go back to it?"
"After I've weaned my daughter, probably in three to four months time, it would be a bit awkward for me to act as Master of the City while I was still breastfeeding." Eventually Irving got tired of asking questions and left, the article he wrote was published two days later.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 12:50 pm (UTC)me encantan tus historias y no puedo esperar el momento de leerlas.
de sudamerica, Uruguay (yes that tiny country everybody thinks it's in africa)
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Date: 2006-11-10 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 12:13 pm (UTC)Under Different Light
Date: 2006-11-19 10:15 am (UTC)WoW Great Chapter!
Date: 2006-11-19 10:13 am (UTC)Re: WoW Great Chapter!
Date: 2006-11-20 09:40 am (UTC)