Danse Macabre

19

JEAN-CLAUDE HUGGED ME in against his body. "I am sorry, ma petite."

Asher came and kissed me on the cheek. "I am not sorry he is gone."

"Be nice," I said.

He cuddled in against me, his arm going around Jean-Claude's shoulders. "We all behaved ourselves admirably and your Ulfric still leaves in a huff."

Nathaniel came to stand in front of me. He pushed a lock of my hair back from my face. "Honestly, Anita, I'm not sorry he's staying somewhere else for the night. I want to hold you tonight, and Richard wouldn't let me in the bed."

They were both right, so why did I feel like I should defend Richard's honor?

"Enough of this," Jean-Claude said, "Ma petite is tired. We will leave her with Micah and Nathaniel." He kissed my upturned face, gently, his face showing nothing. There were nights when he asked not to be sent away, but tonight he didn't even try for it.

He let me go, and started for the door, Asher at his side.

"It seems wrong to keep kicking you out of your own bed," Micah said.

Jean-Claude turned back, and said, "Ma petite is not comfortable when I die at dawn. We will respect her sensibilities in this tonight. She has had enough shocks for one night."

Asher slipped his arm through Jean-Claude's. "We'll be in my room." I'd seen them arm in arm a hundred times. I'd sent them off to bunk in Asher's room dozens of times. But for the first time, I wondered what they would do once they got there. Would they have sex? Would they do with each other what Jean-Claude and I did with Auggie? Did the thought bother me? I wasn't sure.

Micah looked at me. "Damian doesn't die at dawn if he's with you. Shouldn't we find out if the same applies to Jean-Claude?"

"Don't push me, Micah." I felt almost frantic with the need for some kind of normality tonight. My voice didn't sound frantic, it sounded angry.

"He can sleep on the other side of me, so if he dies at dawn, you won't be touching him."

I shook my head. "Why is this so important to you? Why tonight?"

"I do think we need to find out if Jean-Claude has gained some of the same powers Damian has, but truthfully, Belle Morte had a harder time controlling you once he touched you. I'd like to keep him close to you tonight, just in case."

I blinked at him, then sighed. "Practical as always," I said.

"Eminently practical," Asher said. He let go of Jean-Claude's arm. "I will go to my lonely bed."

"Asher," I said, "please, I can't deal with any more hurt feelings tonight."

He smiled at me, and came back to me. He hugged me, gently, and gave me an almost brotherly kiss on the forehead. "I will not cause either of you more distress tonight. But I would like a chance to test this theory of vampires in the day. If it works for our Jean-Claude, then perhaps it might work for me."

"It only works for Damian if Nathaniel is in the room. I think without Richard it won't work for Jean-Claude either."

Asher stepped back, gave that Gallic shrug, and went for the door. He waved at us lightly, but I had too many centuries' worth of memories of his body language, thanks to Jean-Claude's memories. Asher was bothered. I guess I couldn't blame him. He was the only one kicked out of the room. But I didn't call him back. I didn't really want to have one corpse in the bed, let alone two.

I turned back to the corpse in question. He stood there in his elegant robe. A triangle of his chest showed, so pale, surrounded by the black of the fur lapel. His hair was a foam of curls, softer than mine.

Tiredness came over me in a wave. No, it wasn't being pregnant, it was just everything. I had had all I could handle for one night.

Micah hugged me from behind. Nathaniel came to stare down at me. He lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. He gave me the gentlest of smiles, then said, "You're beat."

I nodded, his fingers still under my chin.

He kissed me on the mouth, still gentle, no demand to it. He took my hand and started leading me toward the bed. Micah let his arm fall away but kept my other hand, so that Nathaniel led us both to the bed.

The bed was draped in red tonight. Crimson, from the curtains that graced the four posts to the mounds of pillows. The sheets underneath the bedspread either would match the rest perfectly, or would be some high-contrast color. Once upon a time Jean-Claude's decoration had been exclusively black and white. I'd complained. I still remembered the first night I'd seen the bed draped in red. I'd stopped complaining about the monochrome color scheme after that, afraid of what he might do next.

Nathaniel had to let go of my hand to wiggle the coverlet out from under the mound of pillows. The sheets were black, like a splash of darkness in all that red. Some of the smaller pillows would get piled in the room's two chairs, beside the false fireplace. Thanks to modern technology it could actually make flames, but in all the time I'd been with Jean-Claude I'd never seen anything in the fireplace but an antique fan framed behind glass.

Nathaniel and Micah went back and forth like busy ants until the seats were piled high with pillows, and there were still plenty left on the bed.

Jean-Claude had come to stand on the other side of the bed from me. We stood there staring across the expanse of red and black silk. When I say expanse, I mean it. The bed was larger than a king-size. Orgy-size is what I'd started calling it, but I hadn't actually shared that with Jean-Claude. I didn't mean to imply anything about what he was doing when I wasn't here. The bed was just the biggest one I'd ever seen. Then I realized, that wasn't entirely true. Belle's bed was this size. I really wished I hadn't thought of that. Suddenly I was cold.

"What is wrong, ma petite?" he asked.

I shook my head. I didn't want to share the observation, as if talking about it would make it more true.

Micah and Nathaniel came back to the bed. Micah stopped and looked from one to the other of us. Nathaniel started unbuttoning his shirt.

"I think you might want to wait on that," Micah said, still looking from one to the other of us.

Nathaniel kept unbuttoning. "They'll work it out." He slipped the shirt off, and went for the large armoire. It was dark rich wood that matched the bed. Nathaniel opened it, and started hanging up his shirt. The armoire was empty except for our extra clothes. Nathaniel's, Micah's, mine. Jean-Claude had a room the size of a small warehouse that was full of clothes. He'd started hanging an outfit at a time in the armoire, but he still kept his room as clean and empty as he could. He'd gotten in the habit when he used to entertain strangers on a regular basis. You don't keep things you value in a room where you're going to have one-night stands. Jean-Claude didn't do one-night feedings and fucks now, but old habits die hard. Vampires, I'd found, once they have a habit, really don't like giving it up. Old dogs, new tricks, that sort of thing.

Nathaniel came back to the bed wearing absolutely nothing. I had one of those moments of discomfort. I'd seen him nude more times than I could count. I'd seen him nude in front of Micah and Jean-Claude more times than I could count. So why was I blushing?

Nathaniel climbed into the bed, pulling the sheet up just enough to keep me from yelling at him. Left to his own devices I think Nathaniel would have been nude all the time. He lay back against the red and black pillows. His hair was still in its braid so that his face was framed by all that black and red silk. His face had started to fill out; bone structure that had only been a promise six months ago was somehow more real, more masculine. He was moving from the pretty handsomeness that some young men get, to the more handsome handsomeness that most of them grow into. He'd also grown nearly an inch taller in the six months we'd been together. At twenty he was growing into what some people hit at seventeen, or earlier. Genetics is a wonderful and confusing thing.

He smiled at me, and the smile was all male. That pleased smile that said he knew I was looking at him, and how much he liked the effect he had on me. He'd been in my bed for half a year, naked in it for about a month, and I was still staring at him as if it were the first time.

It made me blush and look away.

"Come to bed, Anita," he said, "you know you want to."

The anger was instantaneous. I wasn't blushing when I raised my eyes back to him. "I don't like being taken for granted, Nathaniel."

He sighed, and sat up, putting his muscular arms around his knees. "Don't let the whole baby thing push you back. You've made a lot of progress in your comfort zones, don't lose ground now."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" I asked, hands on hips, glad to be angry. Anger was so much better than sad, or scared, or embarrassed.

His lavender eyes went all serious, not scared, or worried, but grown-up serious. "Are you really going to make us do this?"

"Do what?" I demanded.

He sighed, and said, "Why is my being nude bothering you?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally said, quietly, "I don't know." That was the truth; stupid, but the truth.

Micah came to me, touched me tentatively. I went to him, wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me close, and I turned my face in against his neck, so I could smell the warmth of him. Just the smell of his skin made something hard and cold inside me loosen. I breathed in the scent of him, and underneath the smell of clean skin and aftershave, Micah had that nose-wrinkling smell, an almost sharp smell, of leopard. The smell of home.

He spoke against my skin, "Let's go to bed, Anita."

I nodded, still pressed against him.

I felt his mouth move in a smile against my skin. I knew exactly the feel of it, which meant I must make him smile with his mouth pressed to me a lot. I guess I did.

He drew away and started unfastening his collar. He had a tie bar to remove. I stood there and watched him begin to reveal his tanned upper body, but instead of enjoying the show, I felt the anxiety creep back.

I touched Micah's arm, stopped him in the middle of undoing one of his cufflinks. "Stop for a minute." He turned puzzled eyes to me.

"You're nervous again," Nathaniel said. "Why?"

I shook my head, then looked across the bed. Jean-Claude was still across the bed, but he was leaning on one of the big wooden posts. His arms entwined around it as he watched us. His face was neutral, but I'd been further into his head tonight than ever, in one special area.

"Shit," I said.

"What?" Micah and Nathaniel asked together.

"I know what's wrong."

They both looked at me, but it was Jean-Claude that I looked at. "It's you," I said.

"I have seen your men nude before," he said in that pleasant neutral voice.

"We've been in bed all naked and sweaty, Anita," Nathaniel said.

"Yes, but you've never had sex with him. I had sex with him."

"Jean-Claude has fed off me, Anita," Micah said, "has had more of my blood than yours."

I looked at Micah. "Are you saying having him take blood is the same thing as having sex with him?"

He shrugged, and I watched his face shut down to the look he wore when he wasn't certain what look I wanted. "I've had sex that didn't feel as good as Jean-Claude's feedings."

"Then you were doing the sex wrong," I said.

He smiled. "I was young; I got better."

"Yes, you did," I said, and smiled back.

He kissed me, then moved back and gave me a searching look. He moved past me to put the first cufflink on the bedside table. He started on the other sleeve, his back to me. I glanced up and found that I wasn't the only one watching him.

Jean-Claude's neutral, beautiful face watched us all. We had been naked and sweaty in a bed together. Hell, some nights the pile had included Asher and Jason. It just depended on who had fed whom last. So why was I suddenly bothered by Jean-Claude watching Micah take off his shirt?

I suddenly had a smart idea. I don't have that many of them, not about my own emotional life anyway. "I know what's wrong," I said again.

They all looked at me. I touched Micah's naked back, but looked at Jean-Claude. "It was what we did tonight with Augustine."

Jean-Claude sat on the corner of the bed, one arm still wrapped around the bedpost. "What exactly are you referring to, ma petite? We did many things with Augustine tonight."

"I know that everyone thinks we're all snogging each other's brains out, but tonight was the first time I'd ever seen two men kiss. I've never even seen someone do..." I faltered. God, was I still such a baby? No, damn it, I was a grown-up. "I've never seen anal sex before, let alone between two men. Let alone between my lover and a stranger." I took in a big breath and let it out, and went to the edge of the bed, a little closer to Jean-Claude. "Am I making any sense?"

"You were disturbed by what you saw," he said.

"Wait," Nathaniel said. The wait turned me to him. He was propped up on the pillows, the sheet forgotten in his lap, so that he was barely covered at all, but his face showed he wasn't even thinking about it. "How did you feel when Jean-Claude kissed Auggie?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it, because I wasn't sure what the answer was. How had I felt? "I didn't mind it. It was... interesting." That wasn't true. I looked down at the bedspread and said, "No, I... it was interesting."

"Interesting bad, or interesting good?" Nathaniel said.

Without looking up, I answered, "Good."

Someone sighed, and I wasn't sure which of them had done it. I looked up, slowly, and no one was looking at me like I'd said something awful. I don't know why I thought anyone in this room would think it was wrong that I liked seeing Jean-Claude kiss another man, but I did think it. I was waiting for someone to tell me to be ashamed of myself. I'd seen someone I loved kiss another man, and not only hadn't I been horrified, but I'd liked it. Was that wrong? I had waited for it to feel wrong, but it hadn't. It had felt strangely right, as if I'd been waiting my whole life to see it. It had felt right in that way that only the things that truly speak to your heart can feel. I hadn't felt bad when it was happening. I was feeling bad now. Why? Was it guilt? No, I felt uncomfortable, and a little squeamish, but not guilty. So what was it?

Micah touched my arm. "So many thoughts flying over your face--what are you thinking?"

"That I don't feel bad, and shouldn't I feel bad about it."

He looked puzzled, frowned. "Bad about what?"

"Shouldn't it bother me that I saw Jean-Claude kiss another man, a stranger at that?"

"Did it bother you?"

I shook my head. "Not at the time, no."

He smiled, eyes still a little uncertain. "But it's bothering you now. Why?"

"Did it bother you to watch us like that?"

He gave me a look. "I've watched you have sex with other men before, Anita."

I suddenly felt thirteen again, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing.

"I believe, ma petite, he is asking how you felt about watching me with Augustine."

I looked at him, happy he'd helped me, but uncomfortable that he'd had to help me.

"Did it bother you?" Micah asked me.

I shook my head. "No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was..." My breath shivered out of me. "It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together."

"Then it's okay," Micah said. "Don't feel bad because you don't feel bad."

Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. "It sounds stupid when you say it out loud."

He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. "It's not stupid, Anita. It's how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes."

I drew back enough to see his face. "You're okay with everything we did tonight. You don't think we're evil or something."

He chucked me under the chin. "That's Richard's voice in your head, not mine."

I nodded. He was right, on part of it.

He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. "Take off the robe and let me hold you all naked and warm."

I wanted to, in fact I couldn't think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn't touch my robe, and I didn't climb on the bed.

Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.

I turned with a little gasp. "You're naked."

He frowned at me. "Yes, we always sleep naked."

I shook my head, and said, "But..." then I realized what was wrong. I'd sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true menage ¨¤ trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn't been fact, until tonight.

I tried to put it into words. "I knew in theory you liked men as well as women," I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I'd ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he'd vanish.

"But now you know in fact, and you think less of me," he said, in a voice as empty as his face.

"No, not less, just..." I tried again. "In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other's dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don't undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don't sleep with them, or... oh, hell." I looked up at Micah. "Won't it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?"

Micah laughed. "Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?" I frowned at him. "I don't..." I pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. "Fuck you," I said, but I was starting to smile and that usually meant I'd lost the argument. I wasn't even sure it was an argument.

"Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself." His face held a hint of humor now.

I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. "Stop it, all of you."

"Stop what?" Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.

"Don't you dare laugh at me."

"Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?" Jean-Claude's neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.

"No," I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.

"Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?" Micah's mouth was twitching at the edges.

I glared at them all. "Maybe."

"Anita--" Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. "Anita, remember I thought I'd have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true menage ?trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj."

I frowned at him. "So it doesn't bother you?"

"No. I'm not into men, but I don't seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do."

"Don't compare me with him," I said, and was all set to be angry.

"If it was another woman sleeping naked with you, you'd have the same problems that he does," Micah said.

"I've slept with some of the female wereleopards before."

"But never nude, either you or them," Micah said.

I started to deny it, then stopped. Was he right? "I don't know, I... I might be able to sleep nude, if it's just sleep, with another woman. I don't think I'd like it, though. I'd rather sleep pressed between two men."

"And that's fine," he said, "but if you knew for a fact that a woman saw you as a potential sex partner, you'd treat her differently."

"Yes, she'd go in the boy box."

"According to your thinking, Nathaniel and I should put Jean-Claude into a different box now, right?"

I thought about it, then nodded.

He smiled. "Anita, seeing him with Auggie wasn't the first clue I had that Jean-Claude liked men."

I looked from one to the other of them. "Have I missed something?"

"Not what you are thinking, ma petite." Jean-Claude sat more solidly on the corner of the bed, his back against the foot of it, his knees drawn up for his arms to wrap around. "I have not seduced either of your cats behind your back."

I hadn't really thought he had, but... "Then what is Micah talking about?"

"Anita," Nathaniel said, "pay more attention the next time that Jean-Claude feeds off one of us, or Asher feeds off me. You won't have to ask."

"But I've been in the bed while you guys did that. What did I miss?"

The three of them exchanged a look. "No, no looks, just tell me."

"You said you were tired," Micah said. "I think you don't want to know this, or you wouldn't have to ask."

"Don't want to know what?"

Again they exchanged that look.

"Stop that," I said, and I had to fight the urge to stomp my foot at them.

"Let us cuddle together, ma petite. Let us hold you, and give you the comfort that we all need tonight. It has been a long night, a good one in many ways, but long. You are tired."

I was tired, but the rush of anger, and confusion, had chased back the tiredness. "I am tired, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and let you hold me. But damn it, you're all looking at each other like there's an elephant in the room, and I can't see it."

Claudia spoke from the edge of the room, where she and the rest of the bodyguards were so quiet. We were close to kicking them out of the room. Okay, I was close to kicking them out. "I think I can catch this one," she said.

I looked at her. "Go ahead," I said.

"Jean-Claude feeds from a man the same way he feeds from a woman. Most vampires differentiate when they feed. Heterosexual vamps take more liberties with opposite-sex victims. Homosexual vamps take more liberties with same-sex vies. Jean-Claude doesn't differentiate, do you understand?"

"When have you seen him feed on other women?"

"Aha," Claudia said, "and that is exactly why he doesn't feed on women except at the clubs, in public. You'd be jealous of other women if he took them in private, but you aren't jealous of men. You don't see them as sexually competitive for Jean-Claude's attention."

My head was beginning to hurt. "You're giving me a headache, Claudia."

"Only because you don't want to think this one through."

"You're saying that Jean-Claude likes both men and women, but because I'd be jealous of women, he takes mostly men. I get it, I get it."

"Thank you, Claudia," Jean-Claude said.

"You're welcome."

"Do I apologize to anyone, everyone?" I asked.

"Just take off the robe and get in bed," Nathaniel said. "Silk is cold without another body to warm it up."

I smiled at him, shook my head, and started to undo my robe. I stopped, and said, "Everyone that's not getting in the bed, outside."

"If it's an invitation..." Graham started.

"Can it, Graham," Claudia said, and went for the door.

He hesitated, but he followed her. Lisandro was already going for the door. Claudia had sent most of the others out when things calmed earlier. Probably sent them to watch over our "guests." The bodyguards piled out. The door shut, and we were alone.

Micah crawled onto the bed, on the other side of Nathaniel, leaving room for me. "You're looking a little overdressed," he said.

I undid the sash and let the robe fall to the floor. I crawled up onto the silk with the help of their hands. They pulled me down between them, so their naked bodies pressed in against me. There was a moment where I had to close my eyes. The sensation of their warm, bare skin sliding against mine was almost overwhelming. It was like wrapping myself in a favorite blanket with my favorite stuffed toy in my arms, and my gun close at hand. Sandwiched between Micah and Nathaniel was the safest, best place I'd ever known.

Nathaniel kissed me. My arms slid around his shoulders automatically. He took that as an invitation to press his upper body against mine. Micah's hand slid across my hip, until his hand found the inside of my thigh. He stroked his hand back and forth, and without thinking about it, I moved my leg so he could reach other things if he wanted to.

My hands slid down Nathaniel's back, found the curve where his waist met lower things, traced the two dimples in his very lower back. The kiss had grown into something more, and his body responded to that promise, swelling where he lay trapped against my hip. The feel of him hard and firm against me made me shudder into his mouth.

He drew back enough to watch my eyes fluttering open and shut. "You are my most favorite toy."

It was more effort than I would have admitted out loud to focus on his face. Micah's hand kept stroking my thigh, as if he was coaxing me to open my legs for him, but I'd already done that. His fingers kept trailing on that last inch before he touched intimate parts. I wanted him to touch me. Wanted his fingers to finish that teasing promise.

"I thought you were tired," Micah whispered, but his mouth was just above my neck, so hot, so close.

"I was." My voice was thick, but not with sleep.

"What do you want?" he breathed against my neck. That alone made me shiver.

"Touch me."

"I am touching you." His fingers trailed just below where I wanted him to touch, back and forth, back and forth, but not the back and forth I wanted.

"Please, Micah. No more teasing."

His fingers slid over me, and that first touch drew small sounds from me.

"So eager," he said, and he rose up enough to see my face. His own face was eager, too, but there was also a soft wonder to his face. He raised his hand from between my legs to touch, lightly, along my face. "I love that look on your face," he said.

"What look?" I whispered.

He smiled. "That look." He leaned in for his own kiss. Nathaniel's hand curved over my breast, as Micah's mouth found mine. Nathaniel's touch made me more eager at Micah's mouth, so that the kiss was more than it would have been. I fed at Micah's mouth, my hand running over his body. I tried to use both hands, but Nathaniel caught my hand, pressed it to the bed, so he could lower his mouth to my breast. He filled his hand with my breast, pressing it until it was just this side of pain. His tongue flicked over my nipple. Micah's tongue slipped inside my mouth, tasting me. Nathaniel's mouth slid over more of me, and he sucked, hard and fast. It brought me screaming off the bed, screaming my pleasure into Micah's mouth. I tried to raise my other hand off the bed, but Nathaniel held it trapped. He bit my breast, and I raked nails down Micah's back. Nathaniel let go of my other hand, and bit me harder. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to dance that line between pain and pleasure. I put a matching row of scratches down his back, and they let me go.

I lay gasping on the bed between them, trying to focus my eyes around the white, cottony edges of the world. Micah said, "That was fun."

Nathaniel said, "Mmmm." He flicked his tongue across my nipple, quick and gone.

I writhed across the bed, my hands grabbing at the silk sheets. "Oh, God!"

A hand caressed my ankle. That one quiet touch opened my eyes, made me gaze down my body to find Jean-Claude kneeling there. He was still wearing the robe, belted tight. His face was neutral, pleasant. "Micah invited me to touch you, but I've found that it is your invitation I need." Translation: sometimes in the midst of all the men, I got pissy if someone touched me without my saying yes first. Just because one of the men was touching me didn't mean that everyone got to touch me equally. A girl's got to try to draw a line somewhere.

"You can't have intercourse until you've fed again," I said.

He smiled. "So American. There are other ways to pleasure a woman."

"But you won't be able to..."

His hand slid up my calf, the most delicate of touches. "I will be content, ma petite."

"We can stop now," Micah said, "if you want. This was fun."

I gazed down his body and saw just how fun he thought it was. He was long, and thick, and ready, and long and thick for Micah was very long and thick indeed. I glanced down at Nathaniel, and found him just as ready. No, he wasn't as big as Micah, but then the only one of the men who could compare was Richard. Though Richard didn't seem as aware of it as Micah.

Nathaniel was definitely more, just not as more as Micah. Not in length anyway, but in width, well, yeah. Men are hung up on length; trust me, girls pay attention to width, too. Frankly an inch or two less length wasn't always a bad thing; depended on what you wanted to do with it.

I ran fingertips over both of them, and just that light touch made them shudder, and me writhe. "So pretty," I said, "seems a shame to waste them."

"We'll get more," Micah said.

"I agree with Anita," Nathaniel said, grinning.

Micah smiled at him, a bright flash of teeth in his tanned face.

"I will join Asher." Jean-Claude began to slide off the bed.

"Don't go," I said.

He looked at me; it was a very searching look. "I do not have the patience of your two cats, ma petite. They have served blood for Asher and myself more than once, then watched us have our way with you."

"We had to save them for the ardeur the next day, or next night," I said.

"Oui, but I am not the voyeur that Asher is, and if I am not to join in completely, I would as soon leave. It is not a complaint, merely truth."

"I still think you shouldn't go that far away," Micah said. "I don't trust Belle."

Jean-Claude smiled. "Wise, and correct." He spread his hands wide. "If it were just sex between the three of you I could watch and be content to join the cuddling afterward. But it is the emotional content that makes it difficult to be excluded."

I frowned. "I don't understand."

"I know that you love me, ma petite, but my arms do not fill you with that last drop of something. I see you with Micah and Nathaniel and that last drop of emotion, or contentment, is there." He held up a hand as if someone had started to speak. "It is the truth. I do not begrudge it, especially with the news we have had tonight. You will need that bond, but it is"—he shook his head--"discomforting to watch, and know that I am not a part of it."

I didn't know what to say to that. I mean what do you say to the man you love when he's just told you that he realizes that you love two other men more?

"Besides, ma petite, you have expressed doubts about me now. You say you enjoyed our time with Augustine, but your actions state otherwise. I think your cats are what you need tonight, ma petite, not the memory of..." He gave that Gallic shrug, and got off the bed. He stood there adjusting his robe with smooth, nervous gestures. When he was nervous, and not policing his movements, he smoothed his clothes. It was one of the few truly human gestures that had survived centuries of being dead. I liked that he did it, and that he didn't realize he did it, because once he noticed it, his hands went still, as still as his face.

The little bit of sex I'd had with Micah and Nathaniel had helped me clear my head. "Do you think that I think less of you for having seen you with another man?" I asked.

"You have implied it," he said in a voice that was almost neutral.

I raised myself up on my elbows. "I guess I did, but I don't mean it. I think I thought it should bother me, but it didn't. I tried to talk myself into it bothering me, but the truth is--" I sat up, folding my legs tailor fashion. "The truth is, Jean-Claude, I liked seeing you kiss Auggie. I don't know how I feel entirely about the rest, but it didn't bother me at the time, so why should it bother me now?" I shook my head. "I'm not going to talk myself into an issue I don't have."

He gave a small smile, uncertain around the edges. Was it my reaction that had made him uncertain? Or was it that I'd trained him that after a major metaphysical or sexual breakthrough, I pulled back and ran? I guess either way, it was my doing, that uncertain smile. I didn't want him uncertain. I loved him; I shouldn't be the one making him insecure, not if I loved him. Sometimes the hardest thing about having so many men in my life wasn't the sex; the sex we could handle, but the emotional stuff... The emotional stuff was harder. I couldn't help Richard tonight, because his issues were things I couldn't really help him with, but this issue, this I could fix, or I could try to.

I smiled at him, and tried to put into that smile everything a man wants to see in a woman's smile. I watched his eyes fill up with that dark light that has nothing to do with vampires and everything to do with a man. His smile matched his eyes, confident, sure of itself, anticipatory.

"What would you have of me, ma petite?" His voice curled over my bare skin like the tickling edge of fingernails. It made me shiver.

"You're overdressed," I said.

"Are you certain you wish to do this, ma petite? You have never taken three of us before, and the ardeur will not rise again tonight, it has been too well fed."

He was offering me an out, but if I said no, then he'd leave the room. I'd already watched Asher and Richard walk out; I did not want to lose another of my men tonight. I needed as many around me as I could manage. Saying it made me almost want to call Asher back, but... I'd never done the full deal with three of my guys at the same time. Four would have to wait.

"I said, you are overdressed," and I made it a very firm statement.

Jean-Claude's smile widened. "Easily remedied." He undid the robe, and let it fall to the floor. He stood there pale and perfect. I had seen him nude a thousand times or more, but I never got over the shock of him. It was as if he were some amazing work of art, and I had stolen him away from the museum where they kept him roped off and safe, stolen him so I could run my hands over the smooth, flawless surface of him.

"You're too far away," I whispered.

He smiled wide enough to flash just a hint of fang. "That, too, is easily remedied." He crawled up on the bed, and I watched his body, small and loose, more than his face. Until he fed, he'd be small, which meant I could indulge in something that I didn't get to do much. By the time you get most men out of their clothes they're not as small as they can get--no, definitely larger.

"I know what you are thinking of, ma petite." His voice was chiding.

"Did you read my mind?"

"Non, ton visage."

He'd said he'd read my face. I was picking up a little French here and there in self-defense.

He hesitated at my feet, and I realized he was looking at Micah. "And you, Nimir-Raj, what do you say to this?"

Micah smiled at him. "I'm here to try to make things work better, not make them worse."

"I don't try to make things worse," I said.

"Shh," Micah said, "don't take it personally."

I opened my mouth, realized I was going to start a squabble if not a fight, and I didn't want to fight anymore tonight. "Fine, I won't take it personally."

"You're not going to argue about it?" Nathaniel asked.

I shook my head, and lay back against the pillows. "Nope."

Micah and Nathaniel exchanged looks.

"What?" I said.

They both shook their heads. "Nothing," Micah said.

"Nothing," Nathaniel said, but he was smiling.

"I don't argue about everything."

"Of course not," Micah said.

"I don't," I said.

"Not anymore," Nathaniel said.

I slapped his shoulder.

He grinned. "Hit me harder, if you want it to hurt."

I didn't hit him again. "You'd enjoy it too much."

He grinned wider.

"I am no longer the only one who is not ready," Jean-Claude said.

I glanced down at the other two men. He was right. They definitely weren't ready to go.

"We've talked too long," Nathaniel said.

I waited to be uncomfortable at the thought of three men and just me with no holds barred on the sex. I waited, but the discomfort didn't come. I lay there and waited to feel overwhelmed, or uncomfortable, but... I just wasn't.

"I think I can fix it," I said, and started to slide lower on the bed, turning toward Nathaniel as I did it. I started kissing my way down his body, then thought of something. I looked back at Jean-Claude where he knelt on the bed. "You didn't ask Nathaniel's opinion."

"Micah is your Nimir-Raj, Nathaniel is not."

"But he's still my sweetie."

"It's okay, Anita," Nathaniel said, petting my shoulder. "Thanks for thinking of me, but I'm okay with not being asked."

I looked up at his face with my face almost to his groin. If it seemed an odd time for a in-depth talk he didn't complain. "Why are you okay?"

"Jean-Claude is right, I'm not anyone's leader, and I'm okay with that. If we were all completely dominant our happy little domestic situation wouldn't work."

"But just because you're not dominant doesn't mean that your opinion doesn't count."

"No," he said, and gave a little laugh, "no, but it does mean that I don't have as many opinions."

"But..."

"You want me to be more dominant?" he asked.

"I'd like to know how you feel about this, yeah."

"Suck my dick, so we can fuck." He was smiling while he said it.

I blinked at him for a second or two, then shrugged, and said, "Okay."