8

AS HER LOST HIS pants and everything else, though there was a moment when he hesitated on his shirt, because the most severe scars were on his chest and stomach on the one side, and his hair wasn't long enough to be used as a shield as he did for his face. Jean-Claude and I had done our reassuring months ago. It was Richard with his perfect upper body that made Asher embarrassed, shy, some word that I never thought to use for him in any circumstance.

Jean-Claude and I looked at each other, and we were both wondering how to get the two men to work the issue, when Richard said, "Jean-Claude told you to strip; do it."

Asher scowled at him, holding his unbuttoned shirt closed. "He told me to undress, actually."

Richard opened his mouth to say something harsh, I think, but something made him look at Jean-Claude. More than a look passed between them. I think Jean-Claude whispered in his head as he could mine. Whatever was said softened Richard's face. He turned to Asher. "You didn't get to see the scars from the silver bullets that nearly killed me last summer." He traced that broad, untouched spill of muscle. "This half was a mass of scars. I thought it was permanent. It usually is if it scars at all. I didn't think of myself as vain, but I didn't like the scars. I didn't like being less than perfect. When Jean-Claude started using energy to heal his own wounds, I learned how to heal mine. He let me take enough energy from the triumvirate to put me back to this." He spread his hands, framing all that nice smooth skin.

I'd known they used energy from our power as a unit to heal themselves - it was one of the serious perks to having the vampire marks - but I hadn't realized that if we hadn't had enough power, there would be three men  in the room with serious scars on all that creamy and tanned goodness, respectively.

"I had no triumvirate to turn to," Asher said, holding his shirt tight, voice sullen.

Richard went to him. "I've tried nice, but sympathy just makes you angry. I understand that, so let me try something else." He moved in a blur, his hand grabbing a handful of Asher's hair, the other hand going around the man's waist, jerking him against Richard. It was sudden, violent, but with that edge of kissing closeness again. Asher's anger seemed to float away on the strength of Richard's hands.

Richard stared into those pale blue eyes from inches away and snarled, "I want you naked. I want to see it all. I want you tied up and naked, and if you make me tell you to strip again I'll rip your clothes off your back." He almost threw Asher away from him and walked away.

Asher staggered, caught the bed to steady himself. When he could stand steady, his shirt went on the floor and the rest of his clothes followed. There was something about Richard wanting to see him nude and tied up that reassured him, made him feel desired. There was no more hesitating.

We tied Asher on his knees to one side of the bed, centered between the bedposts. He was near enough to the edge of the bed that if we wanted to we could have his legs off the side, but we started with him comfortable, kneeling. The bed was the same bed, but the frame had been changed since last we had Richard with us. The frame was metal and custom built so that there were distinct places for attaching things all over the frame. It had originally been done so that Asher could teach me to top Nathaniel, but that meant that all of us had experienced the bed on both sides. The rule was you never try something on your submissive that you hadn't tried on your own body first. There had been a few things that Nathaniel wanted that I couldn't, or wouldn't, try on myself because the pain level was too high and I didn't heal like he did, but Asher had taken more than one for the team in that area, until even he had called no mas, and Nathaniel had still not gone to his limit on pain with us. Frankly, Nathaniel's limits in this area still scared me, even as they intrigued me.

Jean-Claude had gotten out the toy trunk - not toy box, trunk. It was one of those huge old-fashioned steamer trunks big enough to hide a body in. We'd moved it permanently into the bedroom about a month ago rather than having to get a few toys and carry them in; it had been a tacit  acknowledgment of what we were doing in the bed and with each other. I had never dreamed that Richard would be on his knees digging around in the toys. I'd known he liked this kind of sex; he was right: Raina hadn't created the need, she'd just let it out of its box. That he'd gotten comfortable enough with himself to admit it out loud to us was nothing short of miraculous. If miracles were things you thought you'd never see, like the St. Louis Rams winning the Super Bowl, or ice skating in hell.

Jean-Claude had simply taken off his shirt, and he was in leather pants and boots, very BDSM. With Asher tied up nude, my little businessy skirt outfit looked so out of place, but Jean-Claude had a fix for that. It was a leather dress, short but with a full skirt, and it belted at the waist; it looked like June Cleaver does bondage. I went into the bathroom to change with a pair of stiletto heels in hand. The shoes I'd worn before, but the dress was new. But the true beauty of the dress didn't hit me until I put it on and started playing with the heavy zipper that went all the way down the front of it. The upper part of the dress was tight enough through the chest that it held me in place without a bra even when the zipper was nearly halfway down. My breasts stayed mounded, and no matter how I moved they weren't going to fall out by accident. No, I'd have to lower the zipper and let them out. Or I could zip the dress all the way up and show no cleavage at all. It was a nice dress. I played with the zipper until my breasts looked like they were spilling out, or would at any moment, but I knew they were solid in place - well, as solid as real breasts get. I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror as I moved for the door, and it stopped me. I wasn't into breasts, but the sight of my own chest in that dress with the wide leather belt making my waist look even tinier in all that leather with the full skirt was eye-catching. Okay, it made even me think, Wow, look at all that creamy goodness. It wasn't something I was used to thinking about my own breasts.

When I stepped out in the dress, Jean-Claude let me see on his face exactly how much he liked the view. "Mon Dieu, ma petite." He grabbed Asher's hair and turned him so he could see me. The angle was painful, but as he had with Richard, Asher didn't respond like it hurt. Jean-Claude put their faces together and said, "Look at her, Asher. Look at her and know that you don't get to touch her tonight." He let go of that golden hair and walked toward me, leaving Asher hanging there as if he didn't matter. I knew it was part of the game, and I trusted Jean-Claude to know what kind  of submissive Asher was, but if I was the one tied up, humiliation or taunting would throw me out of bottom and right back in my fuck-you-and-you-don't-get-to-fuck-me attitude.

Jean-Claude came to me and offered his hand. The stilettos were four inches. I looked fabulous in them, but as my sexy meter went up, my graceful meter went down, or that's how it felt. He'd assured me if I'd only wear them enough to practice, I'd get better at it. Sure.

With his hand to steady me I felt pretty secure in them. The floggers and some whips were laid out by the bed in neat rows. I caught a glimpse of Richard at the end of the bed, hidden by the belted bed curtains.

"They aren't going to fit," Richard said.

Jean-Claude had fetched a pair of leather pants that had fit Richard. I realized that they must have been the same ones I'd seen him wear more than once. But that had been over a year ago, and apparently it wasn't just his arms that had gotten bigger from the weight lifting.

Jean-Claude led me around the foot of the bed. Richard was leaning against it, his body bent almost double as he pulled the last of the leather over his ankle and foot. He'd tied his hair back in a ponytail so he was one long curve of smooth, summer-tanned skin from his neck to midthigh.

He shook his head and said, "There's no way. I've put on too much muscle." Then he looked up and saw me in the dress, and if Jean-Claude's face had been everything I wanted to see, Richard's was both better and worse. He slid off the bed to land heavily on the floor. He sat there with the leather pants in his lap and stared at me as if I'd hit him between the eyes with a hammer. Gob-smacked, Byron, one of our newer British vamps, would have called it. If I'd had any doubts about the outfit, Richard took care of them.

Then Richard rallied and grabbed on to the bed to stand. He was still holding the pants in one hand in front of his body, but he stood every inch of that six foot one inch, shoulders back, face set in that arrogant model look. Most of the time I wasn't sure he knew just how handsome he was, but then he'd get that look on his face, and I knew he understood exactly how amazing he looked. With most of his legs showing I could see the extra muscle that had kept him out of the pants. Then he dropped the pants and let me see all of him. He let me see that it wasn't just his face that had reacted to the sight of me in the dress.

My hand tightened on Jean-Claude's, because I was suddenly not steady enough in the stiletto heels. I couldn't see my face, but I suspected that it  was my turn to look like the handsome hammer had got me between the eyes, my turn to be gob-smacked. He'd had that effect on me almost from the first moment I saw him, which had been nude in a bed, come to think of it. I had never asked what he had been doing in that bed with a female shapeshifter. I'd always assumed they'd just passed out changing from animal to human form - most shifters were nearly comatose for hours after shifting back - and someone had put them between the sheets to sleep it off. Staring at him standing there, I realized that assumption had probably been naïve.

"Your face," Richard said, "for a moment it was exactly what I wanted to see, and then you started thinking about something else. You didn't see me anymore. What . . . who were you thinking about while you looked at me?" His face was still almost impossibly handsome; without the hair, the cheekbones that had helped give him the darker skin tone sculpted his face to painful perfection, but the anger was there too now, and that wasn't attractive. Of all the men in my life, only he'd ever used his rage against me.

"Ma petite," Jean-Claude said, and his nickname for me was enough. He meant for me to try to fix this. I understood. This was the closest we'd ever gotten with our Richard to something workable. The moment I thought  our Richard, I knew it wasn't my thought. I'd ceased to think of him as mine, but that was okay; we needed this to work the way kids need their fighting parents to make up before the divorce splits the family and the possessions. The problem with the three of us was that the "possessions" included people. More than any child, the vampires and werewolves and other shapeshifters in this city were possessions. We needed to grow up and fix this.

"You, Richard. I was thinking about the first time I saw you. You were in Jean-Claude's bed in the offices at the Circus of the Damned with the woman shapeshifter beside the bed. You were both nude, and I never asked what you were doing in the bed with a naked woman in the room. I never asked how you ended up there like that."

The anger began to seep away, leaving his face confused, more real somehow. "What do you want me to say about it?"

"I don't know. I was just thinking that I never questioned it. I never asked if you and Rashada were lovers. You asked me out the same night, so I assumed you weren't dating anyone else. Was I naïve, Richard? Was I just that naïve then?"

His face softened, and he smiled. He came to us then, not angry, or arrogant,  but gently. I was able to watch his face as he moved instead of staring lower. Point for me, but honestly the look on his face in that moment meant more to me than seeing him nude.

He touched my face, and his skin was warmer than it should have been. A warmth to cuddle against on a cold night, and I moved my face against that touch, and he turned his hand so that I could lay the side of my face in the warm cup of it.

"We both were," he said softly, and I realized his other hand had reached past me. I turned my head, and his hand was big enough that my face still rested against it when I could see that he was touching Jean-Claude's hair.

Richard drew us in toward him until our faces were close together. They had to bend down to touch their faces to mine. Jean-Claude's and my hair mingled, all black curls, so that it was hard to tell whose hair was whose. Richard's hands were on the back of our heads, fingers worked through the curls so I could feel them on the back of my skull. His fingers moved against my skin as if he were massaging. I knew he was doing the same to Jean-Claude. I could have had the tactile memory to go with it, truly felt what Jean-Claude was feeling, but he knew that freaked me out, so we'd been working on me simply knowing without the whole show. I just knew what Richard was doing.

He pressed our faces together and whispered, "If we'd known what would happen, would we have run from each other?"

I didn't know what to say to that, but Jean-Claude did. "Ask, rather, mon ami, if we would all be alive now, if we had not had each other to turn to in times of trouble? Ask how many of our vampires and wolves would be dead, or trapped by sadistic masters?"

"Not just my wolves," Richard said. "Anita and Micah have helped a lot of the shapeshifters in town." I heard his breath go out in a long sigh. He moved his head enough to lay his lips on my forehead. It was almost too soft to be called a kiss. "If you want to keep Asher as your second, your  temoin, and keep the werehyenas in town, we have to tame him."

"Oui," Jean-Claude said.

"Define tame," I said.

Richard laughed, pulling back enough to look at both of us, but longer at me. "That suspicious tone in your voice, it's so you, Anita, so very you."

I frowned at him, one hand on my hip, the other still on Jean-Claude's hand. "I'm still me, Richard. How else would I sound?"

"How can I love you and still want to do such terrible things to you and with you? How can it be okay with you that I like what I like?"

Jean-Claude went very still beside me. "I don't want to have this talk again, Richard," I said.

"Me, either," he said. He looked at Jean-Claude. "I want to have sex with Anita. I'm willing to touch you and be touched. I want to torment Asher with the fact that he can't have me." A look went through those chocolate-brown eyes and they suddenly looked darker. "I want to watch his face while Anita goes down on me, and I go down on Anita. I want him to watch you fuck Anita, and think he's not getting you. I want to cause him pain while you do it, and know that he'll enjoy the pain, too." That dark look in his eyes became fierce, not anger, but fierceness. "The thought excites me."

His words made me glance down, and his body was responding to the thought. I flicked my eyes back up to his face and found him looking at me. He'd noticed what I'd done, or maybe he'd sensed it the way I'd sensed when he'd petted Jean-Claude's hair.

"Do you want me?"

"What?" I asked.

"Do you want me, Anita?"

I didn't know what to say to that, either. I opened my mouth, closed it. Jean-Claude said, "Truth, ma petite, the truth."

I said the only truth I'd had since almost the first time I saw Richard. "Yes."

He smiled, but it held that fierceness that I wasn't sure I understood. "Good," he said, "because I've missed you." He moved so fast, I made that girl-scream squeal. He was just suddenly holding me around the waist. My pulse was in my throat, thudding against my skin. My feet were dangling above the ground and I was looking into his eyes from inches away. My hands were on his arms, but not in a useful way.

"That scared you." He leaned his face in against mine, not quite touching, and sniffed the air above my skin. The gesture made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "Your skin smells so good because you're afraid of me, Anita. I like it, do you understand that?"

I had to swallow to whisper, "Yes."

"I want you afraid; do you understand that?"

"It's that chase-the-prey thing, I get it," and again my voice was a whisper.

A low growl trickled out from between those soft, human lips. My pulse sped up again, as if I'd choke on it. "Do you trust me?" he whispered, but his voice held that same edge of growl, as if his voice were deepening.

I swallowed twice. I didn't trust my voice, and knew that the real answer was maybe, but Jean-Claude was there and I trusted him to see that things didn't get out of control. So I nodded yes.

"Good," he said again. I felt his muscles tense, and then I was airborne and falling toward the bed.

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