Richard sat up enough to prop himself on his elbows. "You said it yourself, Anita, you're already dating Jean-Claude and Asher, and living with Micah and Nathaniel. You said that the thought of a man on either side of you 'just flat does it' for you. What's one more pair?"
I glared at Jean-Claude. "Do you have like some metaphysical fist up his ass, like he's some kind of ventriloquist dummy, because that doesn't sound like him. That sounds like you."
"Don't talk to him, when you want to talk to me," Richard said. He sat up, and the sleepy smile was gone. "Does it bother me that you're with Micah and Nathaniel and Jean-Claude and Asher? Hell, yes. Does it bother you that I'm with Clair and half a dozen women in my pack?" He looked at me when he said it. I looked back. He finally said, "That was a question, Anita, can I have an answer?"
"Yeah, it bothered me to see Clair, and to meet your girlfriend for the first time, while I was nude. Yes, that was a special treat. I try to know as little about your personal life with the ladies of your pack as possible, so the rest, I didn't know about."
"I felt how much you wanted me earlier at your house, and you know how I felt about you. So let's not pretend anymore about that."
I hadn't known we were pretending, but I didn't say it out loud. "I don't know what you mean by that, Richard."
"It means we both want to be able to touch each other again. You fucked Byron for God's sake. Why are you okay with doing him, and not about this--us?" He motioned as if taking in the whole bed. I didn't think the "us" meant him and me. For the first time from Richard, I was pretty sure that he was talking about him and Jean-Claude.
I clutched the cold towel and tried to say out loud something that made sense. "I'm not"--change that--"Byron was emergency food. Once upon a time, I thought you and I were going to be it for each other. When you dumped me, it broke me up. Touching you is still not like touching other people for me."
"I feel the same way. You know I do," he said.
"I know you want me, but I also know that you'll be ashamed later. When Jean-Claude isn't there to calm your fears, you'll start to drown in them again." I laughed. "God, for the first time I understand what Asher was saying about me and the ardeur. I don't want this to be a good time now, then we go back to cutting each other up. I couldn't bear it." There, that was the truth. I had a glimmer for the first time why some people do casual sex with people they don't care about. If you don't care, and it goes horribly wrong, it's not that important.
"I don't want us to keep cutting each other up, either, Anita. I really don't." He rolled to the edge of the bed and stood up. The dozen or more candles painted his upper body in shadow and light. I missed the thick fall of his hair around his shoulders, but it was still Richard. Still the man who had come closest to making me try for the picket fence, and the two-point-five kids. "You still need at least one more daytime feed."
The topic change was too quick for me. I pressed myself against the door, so that the doorknob was in reach. If I had to run for it, I wanted to hit the door, not the wall. "Yes, though I found out that I can feed on human form, then feed again on the animal form, and it's like two different feeds."
Jean-Claude crawled closer to the end of the bed, the robe more framing his body like lingerie than hiding anything. "So in effect, you now have four daytime feeds, yes?"
"Sort of, right now Nathaniel and I are estimating I need to feed the ardeur about every six hours, or I start draining Damian's life energy. Since I can't feed on the same person every day, that still leaves me short."
"It may leave us, as you say, short, at night even. You'd fought to push your feedings to every twelve hours."
"I don't know, Jean-Claude, but I seem to need to feed more often."
"You are the energy for your new triumvirate. It takes energy to maintain it."
Richard turned and looked at the other man. "Are you saying that Anita and I drain energy from you?" He turned back to me before he got his answer, and the look on his face said he wasn't happy with the show Jean-Claude was putting on.
"Not precisely, but in a way, oui. All power comes with a price, Richard, and that price can be high."
"I think until I understand how to distribute the power among the three of us, that it's every six hours. I hadn't thought about the fact that only you and Asher feed me at night. Shit." I said the last with feeling.
"You have Damian now," Richard said. "Won't three be enough?"
I looked at him, tried to see jealousy, or anger, but he seemed to have offered it as simply a fact. "I don't know, maybe."
"I trust ma petite to control what she can," Jean-Claude said, nearly from the end of the bed, the robe sliding over his upper body until almost everything above the still-tied sash was naked to light. There was something about the way his body caught the flames, shining and pale, almost unreal, as if he were some kind of living work of art, that you would touch and he would fade, too beautiful to be real.
Richard snapped his fingers, and the sharp noise brought my attention back to him. He was frowning. "Are you actually turning me down?"
This was too hard a question for me. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see either of them. "Not exactly, but I need to know what to expect, Richard. I need to know what this changes."
"Every third day or so, I come to your house, and you feed the ardeur."
I opened my eyes then. "Just a little sex, and that's it."
"What do you want from me, Anita?"
I pushed away from the door, because now I was getting angry. "Not dating, just fuck-buddies, is that it?"
"You're living with two men now, I don't think there's room for me in your life."
What I wanted to say was, if you can just fuck me and nothing else, then we were never really in love. What I said out loud was, "It's not just the sex I miss, Richard. I miss weekend movie marathons. I miss going places with you. I miss you, not just your body, Richard." I almost kept the next part to myself, but I had to know. It was time. "Do you miss me, Richard, or just my body?"
I managed to make it neutral, very neutral. Brownie points for me.
He looked down, and emotions fought across his face. His power flared like a warm wind, then died down. When he looked at me, there was pain and anger in his eyes. "You're the one who said it first, Anita. We don't work as each other's one and only. I'm working hard to accept my life as it is, but I can't live like you do. I still want one woman to be my forever person. I still want marriage, and maybe kids. I want a life, Anita. I know now that I can't have what I want with you." He reached out toward me, then his hands curled into fists. "But I miss you. Not just the sex. I miss the smell of you on my pillow, on my skin. I owe you an apology. When everything happened in Tennessee, I blamed my beast first, then I blamed you. It took six weeks of therapy to get me to see that I was pissed at you for saving my mother and brother when I couldn't do it."
"You would have given your life to save them," I said.
"Yes, but then we'd all be dead." It wasn't just pain in his eyes, it was anguish. The kind of emotion that eats you up and spits you back out. "You did horrible things, Anita, horrible things to find out where they were in time. You tortured a man, cut him up to get the information. I couldn't have done that. I wouldn't have let anyone do it in front of me. It wasn't just that you saved them and I didn't, it was when I heard all that happened, I realized that even if I'd been there with you, they would have died. My mother and Daniel would have died because I wouldn't have let you do what was necessary to save them."
I just looked at him, because I couldn't think of anything good to say. I wasn't proud of what I'd done in Tennessee, not all of it anyway, but I didn't regret any of it, because to save Charlotte and Daniel, I would have done worse. My only true regret had been that I didn't get there before they were raped and tortured. I would go to my grave regretting that part, because I'd seen Charlotte break into tears in her kitchen. She would say, "I don't know why I'm crying. So silly." It wasn't silly, and I'd recommended a good therapist I knew. The one I usually recommended to people wanting to join the Church of Eternal life, as a forever member.
"You're the Bolverk for my pack. The evildoer, the one who does what the Ulfric won't, or can't do. Raina was Bolverk for Marcus."
"Yeah," I said. See, I could still talk, but I still didn't have anything good to say.
"I want the white picket fence, Anita, and I know you don't."
"It's not that I don't want it, Richard, it's that it's too late for me. My life won't fit in that picture."
He nodded. "I know, and maybe mine won't either, but I still want to try. There are Ulfrics that have a wife and family separate from the pack. I've been trying to find a new lupa for the pack, and no one measures up. No one is you."
I was back to not knowing what to say, so I said nothing. I rarely got in trouble keeping my mouth shut.
"I think the reason your beast got out of control today is that you've been spending too much time with just one animal. I think if you have personal contact with something besides leopards that your beast will go back to being just amorphous, more metaphysics than physical. I want your permission to send some of the wolves over to bunk with you."
"Richard--"
"I don't mean fuck them, but sleep with them. Or take some wererats home, pick an animal, but if your power only touches leopards, it's going to think it's a leopard."
"And you're one of the wolves that will be stopping by?" I couldn't keep the irony and the unhappiness out of my voice.
"I don't mean it to be casual, Anita. I mean, be our lupa. Bring the leopards with you, and they can hunt with us on the full moon."
"I'll be your lupa, which means, what? What changes?"
"We're a couple within the lycanthrope community. You'll have more contact with my wolves outside of just crisis situations. Micah has really been working his tail off helping everybody out. We need at least one other person full time on the hotline. He's running himself ragged."
"I didn't know you were keeping track."
"I'm trying to pay attention, Anita. I'm trying to see what's there, not what I want to be there. I couldn't share you the way Micah shares you with Nathaniel, not every day, every night. I don't think I could tolerate you dating Jean-Claude and Asher. I certainly wouldn't be able to play blood donor on as regular a basis as Micah and Nathaniel do."
I just blinked at him, because this was a talk I never thought I'd have with Richard. It was way too logical. "I agree with everything you said in that last bit. But it doesn't change anything, does it?"
"I felt the power of your triumvirate with Damian and Nathaniel. Damian's not a master, and Nathaniel is no Nimir-Raj, but the three of you together are an amazing amount of power. What would we be, the three of us, if we did this right? If we did this the way it was meant to be done?"
"That so doesn't sound like you," I said.
"Tell me you haven't thought about it since you did the other triumvirate?"
I couldn't in all honesty, so I didn't try. "I felt what Jean-Claude and I could do at his club when Primo got out of control. I felt what Jean-Claude could do when I let him feed the ardeur in a way that was closer to a full feeding with other women. So, yeah, I thought about it, sort of."
"You said it yourself, Anita, we don't have enough soldiers. We need to look strong and not just for the vampires that might want this territory. Our pack has a bad rep, thanks to me, and Raina and Marcus before me. My reputation is shit among the other Ulfrics. They think I'm weak, and I've had some scouts from other territories that have too many dominants and not enough land. So far our pack is so screwed up that they leave without a challenge. No one wants the mess I've made of it. But as I get a better handle on my wolves, that may change. If we all joined together the way you and Jean-Claude did last night, if we were really a triumvirate of power, no one would touch us, Anita, no one would dare."
It was almost a direct quote from something I'd thought earlier. I looked past him to Jean-Claude. "We're parroting what you've been thinking for months, aren't we?"
He shrugged those lovely bare shoulders. "Oui, but I did not put the thoughts there, ma petite. I believe that both of you have come to the same conclusion at the same time. Is that so hard to believe?"
"I don't know," I said, and I was tired. Tired of the games, tired of hurting, tired of being scared.
Richard lay back on the bed, one knee up, the other down, so that he looked winsome as hell against the red sheets. "I'm scared again, Anita. I don't want everything we're building to go down in flames, because we're mad at each other. Let Jean-Claude take the edge off my fear. It felt great."
I looked past him to the vampire who was still draped against the pillows. "Did you pull back from his mind?"
"Non, ma petite, he simply fought, a little, and I was cast out. Both of you have the power to thwart me if you wish to."
"I don't wish to," Richard said, and that smile came back. It was lazy, and sleepy, and filled his eyes with that knowledgeable innocence again. I realized in that moment that it wasn't Jean-Claude's look, it was Richard if he wasn't afraid, or angry, or conflicted. It was what he might be if he didn't get in his own way all the time.
"Ma petite." Jean-Claude raised his hand toward me. "Join us."
I was shaking my head.
Richard reached out toward me, too. "You want to, you know you want to."
"My life is as close to working as it ever has been, I don't want that to go to wrack and ruin, either."
"I'm not offering to go back to what we had, Anita. I understand that that won't work for us. You are harder and more ruthless than I will ever be, and I can let you be that, but not if you're my only sweetie. I need a little distance from the worst of it, so I can pretend a little. Not much, but just enough so I don't lose my mind." He snuggled back until his head was resting against Jean-Claude's side. Jean-Claude was all black fur and velvet against white skin. His hair spilled around his naked upper body like a dark dream. He turned his head so he could look at Richard lying there. Richard was all tan and jeans, and seemed to burn with how very alive he was. They looked like they'd stepped out of two very different porno movies.
Jean-Claude looked up at me, and there was a pleading in his eyes. Without a word, he asked, "Please, ma petite, please do not spoil this."
"No fourth mark," I said.
"Agreed," Jean-Claude said.
"For now," Richard said.
I looked at him.
"Right now a lot of things seem like a good idea. No, don't frown, Anita, if a little vampire magic can take the edge off my anxiety, I'm all for it. It works better than the pills the doctor gave me."
"Lycanthropes' bodies work too fast for most medicines to stay in the body long enough to help," I said.
"I know," Richard said, and he raised his head up just enough that he was resting directly on Jean-Claude's bare back. It was probably just as well that he couldn't see Jean-Claude's face when that thick hair touched his skin. He probably wouldn't have liked any man looking like that because of him.
"Come, ma petite, let us be a true triumvirate at last. Be lupa in more than just name for Richard and his pack. Keep your living arrangements as they are, but allow Richard to visit."
"While he keeps searching for Ms. Right among the human population."
"You will have your men, and he will have his woman. It is fair, ma petite."
I wasn't sure how I felt about the fairness of it. "I don't know how I feel about all of this, some great, but others, I don't know if I'll be able to live like that."
"We can but try," Jean-Claude said.
Richard held his hand out to me. "Anita, please, please, if you leave, you know I won't stay. You were able to let Jean-Claude get closer without me being there to buffer it, but I need you to help me." He pushed up to his knees and held out his hand. "Please, Anita, I promise not to run, no matter how dark my fantasies get."
"Just feeding for Jean-Claude and some slap and tickle?" I asked, and couldn't help but sound suspicious.
Richard glanced back, and he and Jean-Claude had one of those rare guy moments. The looks they exchanged said plainly that that hadn't been what they had in mind. Jean-Claude said, voice mild, "If that is all you wish from us, we can restrain ourselves."
I closed my eyes. Was that all I wished from them? No. Was that all I could stand right now? Maybe. It was a wonderful offer. It seemed to fix most of the problems that we'd raised with the new power, so why was I still hesitant? "You know, finding a wife that would be okay with you sleeping with another woman isn't going to be easy."
"Nothing worth doing is easy," Richard said, "and maybe I'll find that the white picket fence isn't for me, after all. All I know is that right now, right this moment, I know what I want, and what I want is you."
A lot of women would have run to him, thrown their arms around him, and said something like, "Oh, Richard." But that just wasn't me. What I was thinking was that if Clair had been his little fuck-buddy, he wouldn't be here now. He wouldn't want me, now. I dropped the towel on the floor and was shaking my head. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."
Richard was still holding his hand out to me. "Neither am I."
"Then why are we doing it again?"
"Because we want to."
"Doesn't seem like a good enough reason." But I moved, slowly, toward the bed.
"Because when I'm near you, all I can think about is the smell of your skin, and the way your hair spreads like black foam on my pillows. Because when I'm near you, all I can remember is how your body feels against mine. I have to be a bastard to you, so that I don't fall down at your feet and beg you to take me back. Tell you that it wasn't you I hated. It was me, and I'm sorry that I took that out on you. Sorrier than I can say. That you had the courage to make a life that worked for you, regardless of how far that life was from where you wanted it to be. Help me have the courage to do the same, Anita. Help me be who I am." He moved his hands just a little closer to mine. His fingers brushed mine. I think I would have jerked away like you do when your skin brushes something so hot it will burn. But he grabbed my hands, wrapped them in the warmth of his hands. His hands that were so much bigger than mine, so that he could hide my hands in his, as if I were a child. I'd never really liked that about Richard. He was so much bigger than me, that sometimes I felt overwhelmed. Like now.
I'd learned a long time ago that if something sounds too good to be true, it is. If someone promises you everything your heart desires, they lie.
He drew me into the circle of his arms, so that the front of my body was pressed against his. He buried his face against my chest, still covered by silk, but the weight of his face against me made me close my eyes, and when I opened them, I was looking at Jean-Claude. He looked not at Richard's bare back, but at me, at my face. I watched him be afraid. Be afraid that I'd say, no.
Richard rubbed his face against the silk, and his breath came through the cloth like something that should have burned, but it didn't. It made me shiver as if I were cold, but held in the circle of his arms with his breath hot on my skin, I felt as if I would never be cold again. I couldn't stop my hands from stroking his hair. Still woefully short, but thick and heavy, and just... Richard's.
Jean-Claude was on his knees. He didn't raise his hands, but he put the word please into his face, those eyes. His voice whispered through my head, "Ma petite, we endanger everyone that depends on us by this hesitation. Everything we have worked so hard to build hangs upon the next challenge to my power, or to Richard's. If we do not embrace our power as a triumvirate, there will come a night when someone sweeps over us and we will not prevail. The worst that could happen is not that Richard may come to your bed, then come no more, or that you may grow discontent with Micah and Nathaniel. The worst is that we are dead, and our people will be at the mercy of others that do not love them." He held his hand out to me. "Come to us, ma petite, come to us, and let us build a fortress behind which our people, all of our people, may be safe." That last he said out loud.
Richard raised his face enough to gaze up the line of my body. "Please, Anita, don't punish everyone because I've been a bastard."
Jean-Claude was close enough that I could have taken his hand, while Richard still held me in his arms. "Please, ma petite, if there is word or deed that would move you, I would say it, or do it. Tell me only what to say, or what to do, and it is yours."
I took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. I reached out and let his fingers brush mine. He came that fraction closer so he could take my hand, and that was the deed. He took my hand, and I knew that nothing he'd whispered in my head had been a lie. What would I do to keep my leopards safe? Anything. What would I do to undo the damage that Richard had done to his wolves? Almost anything. What would I do to keep Jean-Claude's vampires from being at the mercy of masters like Belle Morte? Anything.
A night of metaphysical, or not so metaphysical, sex, with one man that I loved and another man that kept breaking my heart, so I must love him, too, or he couldn't keep doing that, seemed a small enough price. Or maybe I just wanted to be with them both in a bed for the first time. Yes, the first time, contrary to all the rumors. Maybe I feared the chance would never come again, and I simply didn't want to be the one who said no. Maybe.