44

Nathaniel was done for the night, there would be no shapeshifting. He was barely conscious in that after great sex kind of way. A few of the customers complained, but not many. Most of them felt that they'd had a show worth the price of admission. We got Nathaniel settled in what the strippers called the quiet room. It had an oversized couch, blankets, low lights, and was just what the name implied, a quiet room, where you could either sleep or get your shit together when things went odd. There were smaller rooms where you could pay to have a private dance, but this wasn't one of them. This was more a room for crashing when you were tired or had to pull a surprise double shift.

I stroked Nathaniel's hair, and asked him, "Are you alright?"

He'd opened his eyes just barely and smiled up at me. I'd never seen his face so content. "Yes, very, yes."

I told him to enjoy the afterglow, and I put Requiem on the door, because Nathaniel was mine to take care of, and I planned on being busy for awhile.

My eyes had bled back to normal by the time I walked down the hallway toward Jean-Claude's office. He stopped in the hallway and called after me, "Where are you going, ma petite?"

I paused at the door and looked at him. "To your office."

"Your mood is cooler now, and the power has left you." He was trying to be utterly neutral, and failing just a bit.

I opened the door still looking at him. "Come into the office, Jean-Claude, and lock the door." I didn't wait to see what he'd do, I went through the door, leaving it open behind me. I went to the desk and hopped up on it. I could have tried for subtle, but it was late, and I didn't feel the least bit subtle. I put my boots up on the desk, my legs apart, and let the skirt ride up as far as it wanted to go. It was outrageously slutty, but the look on his face as he came through the door made me glad I'd done it.

He leaned against the door and locked it, and was unbuttoning his jacket as he walked across the floor. I pulled off the leather jacket and threw it to the floor. His jacket was on the floor, the fluffy white cravat undone so that his upper neck showed pale. I slipped the shoulder holster off my arms but only had the belt partly undone, when he pulled the shirt over his head, and was naked from the waist up. I finished the belt, but he was at the desk before I got it off, slipping the shoulder holster free and setting gun and all beside me on the big black lacquer desk.

I went to my knees on his desk and fell upon the silken muscle and lines of his chest with hands and fingers and mouth. I licked the cross-shaped burn scar. I drew first one nipple and then the other into my mouth. Rolled them with my tongue, sucked them. Used my hands to mound the flesh of his chest, so I could take more of his nipple into my mouth, more of his breast. Until I could lock my mouth around as much as would fill it, and bit down until he cried out and his hands found my face, drew me away from his body, and to his mouth.

We kissed as we had on stage, as if we were exploring every inch with tongue, lips, teeth. He drew back from the kiss, and his eyes had bled to blue. Mine were still my own, but I didn't care. His hands found my shirt, and he pulled it over my head and bent over me, kissing down the line of my neck, my shoulder, and mounds of my breasts where they spilled up from the black lace bra. He stuck his hands inside my bra and lifted my breasts out so they rested on the underwire, like it was a black frame for the pale mounds of my breasts.

He went to his knees and pulled me to the edge of the desk so he could run his tongue over my breasts. Flicking against my nipples, quick, and light, and wet, until I made small noises. He locked his mouth around my breast and drew as much of my breast as he could between his fangs without nicking me. He sucked, hard and harder, rolling his tongue along my nipple and drawing harder on my breast until he stretched me out in a line that felt so good, but I could feel how careful he was being. It wasn't the first time he'd played with me like this, but it was the first time that I'd known that this was only the beginning of what he wanted. It wasn't like telepathy, or a picture in my head, I just knew. I knew what he wanted to do. What he was fighting not to do.

"Bleed me," I said.

He rolled his eyes up to me, so he could see my face.

"Bleed me, I know how long you've wanted to do that now. How careful you've been."

He stopped and released my breast slowly, carefully. He said, "Ma petite, you are drunk with the new powers, but tomorrow night, you will not be."

I shook my head. "Let me feel what it's like to have you stretch me tight in your mouth and draw just a little blood. I'm not saying that the whole ride will appeal to me, but I am saying that I'm willing to try a little, to see if I'll like a lot, or not."

He looked strangely suspicious, and I realized that it was my expression in his eyes, more than his, as if I'd taught him that look, and this caution.

"I give you my word that I won't punish you for anything I agree to try tonight. A little blood tonight, only a little, barely a nick, just a taste." I leaned in toward his face. "I know that you want to feed there now. You never told me."

"Nor would I have, ma petite, you let me take blood so infrequently, that I would never have dreamt to ask such a liberty. When you will not share your neck, why would I think to ask for more delicate parts?"

"I'm offering now. I'd take me up on it, if I were you. Who knows if I'll ever offer again, if you say no now." I stared into his face from inches away and let him see that there was no conflict here, no doubts, just eagerness. Eagerness to try.

"What has gotten into you, ma petite?"

"You, you've gotten into me, or I want you to. I want you inside me, Jean-Claude, I want you inside me. I want you to lie me back across this desk, with my breasts bare and your mark on them. I want you to push yourself inside me and watch the blood flow from the wound that you made. I want you to watch the blood flow fast and faster, while you fuck me."

"You are echoing my fantasy, ma petite, have I taken you over?"

"I don't think so," I said, but even the thought of it didn't panic me. "Just a little tonight, Jean-Claude, just a little nick."

He reached around my body, and it took me a second to realize he was undoing the back of my bra. He slipped it off my shoulders, down my arms, and let it fall to the floor. He gazed up at me, and his eyes never got higher than my breasts. I didn't mind in the least.

He cupped my breasts in his hands, gently, reverently, and laid the gentlest of kisses upon each of them. He raised eyes to me that were back to their normal midnight blue, as human as his eyes ever became. "Are you sure, ma petite, are you sure?"

I nodded. "Yes, oh, yes."

He cupped my right breast in his hand, then took just the tip of it in his mouth, a quick drawing of his mouth over my flesh. He sucked and pulled until my nipple was tight and thick under his touch. It brought my breath faster, made my pulse race. He rolled his eyes upward to watch my face, and whatever he saw there reassured him, because he drew hard and fast, made me gasp. Then he drew, slowly, so slowly, more and more of my breast into his mouth. He'd never taken so much in at once, because to do even this much was to risk drawing blood. His mouth was so warm, so wide, the hard press of his teeth was as distant as he could make it and still hold me in his mouth.

He used his hands to help his mouth, pour so carefully over me, his breath like heat against my skin. He moved carefully off of me, his mouth sliding back until there was much less between his lips. He went back out to the safe distance that he'd been before. He drew just the tip of my breast in his mouth, and he sucked. He sucked and pulled and stretched it out and out, until I made small sounds low in my throat.

He squeezed my breast between his hand, squeezed it, and rolled his eyes up to watch my face. When I didn't tell him to stop, he squeezed tighter, tighter until it felt like he was trying to garrote my breast with his fingers. It hurt, it did, but it was all mixed up with the sucking and the pulling on my nipple, and that didn't hurt, not really. In fact it felt good, so good.

It fell out of my mouth in a voice that was almost a moan, "Yes, please, please, yes."

He rolled his eyes up again to watch my face, and there was something in those eyes, some knowledge, or warning, and suddenly he bit down, not as hard as I'd seen in his head, but a little. He let the barest tips of those sharp fangs graze my breast as he sucked it, as he squeezed it with his hand. It was sharp, but it didn't hurt. It was lost in the other sensations. His hand squeezing so tight, his mouth sucking so hard, the tiny bit of the fangs was nothing compared to the rest.

He let his mouth slide down my breast until only the nipple was caught between his teeth. But there on the mound of my breast were two tiny dots of crimson. As I watched those two tiny dots began to glide down my skin. He drew my nipple out and out, and we both watched those two tiny trails of red slide down my skin. He pulled on my nipple so hard and so long, that I cried out, "Enough, enough."

He drew back, gently, and knelt for a moment watching the colors flow on my skin, not just of the blood, but of the marks of his fingers. They faded, but the two lines of blood didn't fade. They glided down my skin, and as the sensation returned to my breast, they tickled down my skin. The feel of that tiny gliding touch, the sight of it easing down my skin, made me shiver.

He smoothed his hands up the insides of my thighs, and it was only as his fingers brushed certain parts that I made real pain sounds. "No manual manipulation tonight."

He frowned. "Are you hurt?"

I explained as briefly as possible. "Let's just say that the ardeur needed feeding and Requiem was a gentleman. I think we'd both be less sore if he'd been a little less of a gentleman."

He looked puzzled.

"I'll explain everything in detail, but later, please, Jean-Claude. Take off the pants, I've had all the leather pants up close and personal that I can handle tonight. Let me see you nude."

He peeled off boots and the leather pants with the practiced ease of someone who wears a lot of them. I'd seen him nude more times than I could count now, but he never stopped amazing me with his beauty. Flawless was the only word I had for him. White and pale, and perfect, as if someone could carve cold white marble and breathe life into it, and plant a blush of color at his groin, where he sat straight and thick and ready. The hair that trailed from the delicate thimble of his belly button down to his groin was as black as the curls that fell around his shoulders. That black, black hair stark and unreal against the whiteness of him.

There should have been gentler words for what I wanted, but all I could think of was how much I wanted him inside me. How much I wanted him to sink that shining color inside my body. "Fuck me," I said, because make love was not what I meant. I wanted the sex that went with what he'd done to my breast. I wanted the sex that matched the blood trailing down my skin.

"Fuck me."

He bent over me and licked the blood off my chest, not a quick lick, but thick, long movements of his tongue, as if he'd never tasted anything so good and didn't want to lose a single drop. I was making small wordless noises and writhing on the desk by the time he raised his face up and showed me eyes that had drowned in blue flame.

I whispered, "Please, Jean-Claude, please."

He did what I'd seen in his head, he did what I'd offered. He laid me back against the desk and pulled my hips to the very edge of the wood. My skirt was completely bunched around my waist like a belt. I was still wearing the thigh-highs and the boots, and nothing else. He used his hands to spread my legs apart, then came to me, the tip of him sliding against my opening.

"You are wet, but you are still tight."

"Fuck me," I said, "please, just do it, please, please, please, please..."

Somewhere in the last please, he began to force himself inside me. I was tight, so tight, and so wet. On another night, I would have asked for more foreplay to make that horrible tightness loose, but tonight I wanted to feel him push his way in. I wanted to feel him shove himself inside me.

He pushed himself between my legs, using his hips and legs to drive himself into me. It was just this side of too tight, and I started to struggle underneath the push of it. Not struggle to get away, but struggle because I couldn't help it. My hands and arms swept over his desk and knocked everything within reach off, including my gun. I wanted something softer to touch, something to scratch and hold on to, but there was nothing but the cool wood of the desk, and that wasn't what I wanted to touch.

When he was as far inside me as he could go, he began to pull himself out, slowly, as if my body were trying to hold on to him, and maybe it was. He drew himself out slowly, and then began to work himself in, just as slowly. If he didn't hurry, I wasn't going to be tight anymore. I wanted that feeling of him forcing himself into my body, and we were going to lose that if he kept being gentle.

"Fuck me, Jean-Claude, fuck me while I'm tight, please."

"That will hurt," he said.

"I want it to hurt."

He gave me a look, then gripped my hips in his hands, let me feel some of that otherworldly strength, and he did what I asked. He drove himself into me, and pulled himself out of me, as fast and hard as he could. It did hurt, and I wasn't ready for it, and it was exactly what I wanted.

He drove himself in as deep and hard as he could, so that the impact of our bodies tore a grunt from my body and a sound in his that I'd never heard before. He trapped my hips under the strength of his hands, and he forced himself inside me, fought the tightness of my body, as if he were piercing my body, making a new hole, because this one wasn't wide enough.

The blood was flowing across my chest in widening lines, as my heart beat faster, and my blood pumped itself out of those two little holes. The blood looked so red, so red, on the white of my skin.

He lifted my legs so that my feet were by his face, he grabbed my hips and pulled me further down the desk, closer to his body, and used his weight to push my legs back over my body, so that he changed the angle inside me, made it deeper, sharper.

I cried out.

He moved his hands to my waist and pulled me farther into his body, and he rode my legs down so that I was almost bent in two. We'd done gentler versions of this, and he knew I was limber enough for it, but it was suddenly a much different position. Because he rode my body into a tight knot, fucking me as hard and as fast as he could, but he pushed my body together so that he could lick my chest while he fucked me.

He raised his face up from my chest, and his mouth and jaw were crimson with my blood. He spilled my legs to either side, and jerked me up, off the desk, so that I was suddenly pressed to the front of his body, my legs wrapped around his waist. He kissed me, kissed me with the taste of my own blood like metallic candy in his mouth.

He was making low sounds in his throat, and he drove us into the wall hard enough that my back slapped against it, hard enough that if he hadn't cradled my head, it would have hit the wall. He drove himself into me again and again and again, as hard and as fast as he could. I wasn't tight anymore, I was wet and loose, and it didn't matter.

His chest and stomach were decorated with my blood. Startling crimson splashes against the white of his body. He pressed his entire body against me as tight and close as he could, so that the slickness of blood began to flow between us, as he pinned me against the wall. I held him with my legs locked around his body, my arms locked around his shoulders, I held him, and he fucked me. It was like he was trying to put a hole in the wall behind me, so that every thrust felt like it was pounding me into the wall, crushing me against his body. I almost said, enough, almost said stop, but as I drew breath for it, the orgasm came like a huge overwhelming wave. It engulfed me, and I clawed at him, and screamed, and bucked against the weight and strength of him so that the orgasm became another kind of struggle, another kind of fight. My teeth dug into his shoulder, my nails tried to find a way through his back, and my body rode his, while he pounded me into the wall, and somewhere in all of that I felt his body convulse, felt his hips drive in one powerful effort up and inside me.

He screamed as he came, and I felt him pour himself inside me, felt it as he put his hand against the wall and tried to steady us as his knees collapsed, and we ended on the floor with my legs still wrapped around his waist, him still inside my body.

His breathing was ragged, and his eyes unfocused, as he stared into my face. "Mon Dieu."

"'Wow' seems too junior high, but 'amazing' doesn't cover it," I said. I tried to touch his face, but found that my arms weren't working that well yet. "Just promise me we can do it again some night."

He smiled, and it was a tired smile, but it held an absolute delight in it. "That is one promise, ma petite, that I will happily make."

"I'll hold you to it," I said.

"Oh, no," he said, and found that he had enough strength left to lean in against me, "I will most certainly hold it against you."

45

We'd made our plan for the rest of the night. When we'd recovered enough to walk, we'd throw on our clothes. Pick up Nathaniel and drive to the Circus of the Damned. We'd tuck Nathaniel in somewhere, and Jean-Claude and I planned on a nice, hot bath. But before we'd even gotten to the throwing the clothes on part, my cell phone rang.

I almost didn't answer it, because no one calls at three in the morning with good news. The number blinking in the little window was Detective Sergeant Zerbrowki. "Shit," I said.

"What is it, ma petite?"

"Police." I flipped the phone open and said, "Hey, Zerbrowski, what's up?"

"Hey back at you. I'm across the river in Illinois, guess what I'm looking at?"

"Another dead stripper," I said.

"How'd you guess?"

"I'm psychic. I assume you want me to come down and look at the body."

"Never assume anything, but in this case, yeah."

I looked down at my blood-covered chest and the wound that was still seeping. "I'll be there as soon as I get cleaned up."

"You covered in chicken blood?"

"Something like that."

"Well, the body isn't going anywhere, but the witnesses are getting restless."

"Witnesses," I said, "we have witnesses?"

"Witnesses or suspects," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come down to the Sapphire Club and find out."

"The Sapphire, isn't that the high end club, the one that calls itself a gentlemen's club?"

"Anita, I'm shocked, I didn't know you frequented the titty bars."

"They wanted to use vampire strippers, and I got to go talk to them about it."

"I didn't know that was part of your official job description," he said.

If it had been Dolph, I would have let it go, but it was Zerbrowski, and he was okay. "The Church of Eternal Life doesn't allow its members to strip, or do anything else the church considers morally questionable. So the club needed Jean-Claude's permission to import vamps from the next territory over."

"He gave it?"

"No."

"And you went with him to help decide?"

"No."

"You went alone?" he asked.

"No."

He sighed. "Oh, hell, just get down here. If you said vampires were supposed to stay away from this place, your boyfriend isn't going to be happy."

"Just no vamps on stage," I said, "other than that, not our business."

"Not on stage, at least not paid," Zerbrowski said.

"You said witnesses or suspects, and now you say no vamps paid on stage. Shit, are you sitting on some vamps that were in the audience?"

"Come and see, but I'd hurry, dawn's coming." He hung up.

I cursed softly.

"I take it a languorous bath is not going to be happening tonight," Jean-Claude said.

"No, unfortunately."

"If not a bath for you, then may I offer a quick shower here."

I sighed. "Yeah, I can't go see the police like this."

He looked down at his own blood-spattered body and smiled. "Perhaps for me, as well, tonight."

"We could conserve water, and share," I said.

He raised an eyebrow at me and smiled again. The smile said worlds.

"Okay, okay, I guess we'd get distracted."

"I am not sure I have the strength to be, as you put it, distracted quite so soon."

"Sorry, I keep forgetting boys don't recover as quick as girls."

"I am not human, ma petite, with another blood donation I could indeed recover."

"Really?" I said. My pulse sped just a little bit at the thought. Shit, I was too tired and too sore to be thinking of it again.

"Truly," he said.

"I think if I donate any more blood to anything tonight, it would be bad."

"It does not have to be your blood," he said.

I stared at him, and he stared at me. I said what I was thinking, which I'd almost broken myself of. "So what, you take blood from me, then we fuck, and you have a blood donor standing by, and we fuck. We could like, what, have a room full of donors and just screw until we were so sore, or so tired, we couldn't move?" I was sort of kidding. The look on his face wasn't. The look on his face, the expression in his eyes, made me blush.

I had a sudden image so strong, if I hadn't already been on the floor, it would have put me there. I saw Belle Morte stretched in the big bed, surrounded by candlelight. Asher and Jean-Claude were on the bed, too. There were men tied to the big posts of the bed, nude and pale, they were. Blood glittered in thin lines on their bodies, from neck, chest, the inside of their arms, down their legs. Not one bite apiece, or even two, but more than I could count. One man's head had slumped forward onto his chest, and he sagged against his bonds. If he breathed, I could not see it.

Jean-Claude pushed me out of his memory, it was almost a physical shove. I came back to myself, on the floor of his office, covered in my blood, the phone still in my hand.

"I would not have had you see that."

"I'll bet."

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "We were young and knew no better. Belle Morte was our God."

"You bled them to death so you guys could have some marathon sex session," I said it, and my voice wasn't horrified, in fact, it sounded empty. Because I could still see the memory, not in livid detail like it had been, but now it was in my head, too. God, I did not need someone else's nightmares.

"There are many things I have done, ma petite, that I would not have you know. Things I am ashamed of. Things that burn inside of me like bile."

"It was your memory, remember. I felt what you were feeling. There was no regret."

"Then I pushed you out too soon." He didn't pull me in, he simply stopped pushing me out, and I was back in that room. Back in that bed. I was inside Jean-Claude's head when he noticed the man on the bed that wasn't moving. He crawled across the bed and touched the cooling flesh. I felt his sorrow, felt his shame. Had his knowledge that these were humans that trusted us. Humans that we had promised to protect. Give us your blood and your bodies, and we will keep you safe. I looked back at Belle Morte stretched nude and luscious, under Asher's body. Asher's body before the human church had scarred him. I watched Asher's face lift up, meet our eyes, and in the middle of what Belle thought was the most sensuous of nights, the seed was sown that we must escape. That there were things that you did not do, and lines you did not cross, and she was not a god.

And I was back in his office, with my blood drying on my body, and my breast beginning to ache, and I was crying.

He stared at me, dry eyed, and he expected me to run. To turn away, and run. Like I had so many times in the past. Nothing was pretty enough for me, nice enough, clean enough. I didn't like messy people in my life, and once that had been true, until I woke up one day and realized that I was one of the messy people.

My voice was steady, and didn't sound like I could have tears drying on my face. "I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time."

He just looked at me, his face closing down, hiding from me, because he was certain where I was going, what I would say.

"There are days, hell weeks, when I still don't know anything. I've been pushed so far outside what I thought was right and wrong, that some days I don't know my way back. I've done things in the name of justice, in the name of my version of justice, that I wouldn't want anyone to know. I can look a man in the eyes and kill him, and I feel nothing. Nothing, Jean-Claude, nothing. You didn't mean to kill, and you felt bad about it."

"You take life to protect life, ma petite. I have taken lives for pleasure, for the pleasure of she whom I served." He shook his head and slowly drew his knees into his chest, hugging himself tight. "Did you ever wonder why I did not replace the vampires that you and Edward, and even I later, killed, when we destroyed Nikolaos?"

"I hadn't really thought about it," I said. "I know we're suddenly lousy with vamps when we seemed a little empty before."

"I called vampires home to me, because I had taken them long ago. But I have not made a new vampire since I became Master of the City. It had kept us dangerously low. If we had truly had another territory's master declare full war, we would have lost. We simply lacked the manpower."

"So why not make more?" I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.

He looked at me, and there was something in his eyes that reminded me of someone else. It was a look of pain and confusion, and centuries of hurt. I'd never seen his eyes so raw, so human. "Because, to make them vampire, I must first take away their mortality, their humanity. Who am I to do that, ma petite? Who am I to decide who will live on, and who will die in their appointed time?"

"Who are you to play God?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "yes, who am I to know what it will change. Belle used to use our power to change countries, wars, who ruled, who was assassinated. There was a time when she ruled more of Europe secretly than anyone knew, even among the vampire council itself. She killed millions through war, and famine. Not by her hand, but by her choices."

"What stopped her?"

"The French Revolution, and two world wars. Even death itself must bow before such wanton destruction. Now the council rides tighter rein on its members. The time when any in Europe could build such a secret power structure is finished."

"Glad to hear it," I said.

"What if I take someone and make them as I am, and that person would have cured cancer, or invented some great thing. Vampires invent nothing, ma petite, we are consumed by death and pleasure, and senseless power struggles. We seek money, comfort, safety."

"So do most people."

He shook his head. "But not all, and my kind are attracted to those who hold power, or wealth, or are unusual in some way. A beautiful voice, a gift of artistry, of mind, or charm. We do not take the weak, as most predators do, we take the best. The brightest, the loveliest, the strongest. How many lives have we destroyed over the centuries that could have made some wonderful, or terrible, difference to humanity, to the world at large."

I looked at him, and not that long ago I would have distrusted this sharing. But I could feel him in my head. I worried about whether I was a monster. Jean-Claude knew for certain. He did not regret what he was, for he could not imagine another life, but he worried about others. He worried about making the choice for others. He worried about playing some dark god. He worried that one day he would become that which he ran from. One day, he would become a version of Belle Morte.

What do you do when you are suddenly able to see that far into someone's darkest fears? What do you say to that much truth about someone else? I said the only thing I could think of, the only thing that would give him any comfort. "You'll never become like Belle Morte. You'll never become as evil as that."

"How can you be certain of that?" he asked.

"Because I'll kill you before I let that happen," and my voice was soft when I said it, because it wasn't a lie.

"Kill me to save me from myself," he said, and he tried to make light of it, and failed.

"No, kill you to save everybody else you'd destroy." My voice wasn't soft anymore.

"Even if it destroys you at the same time?"

"Yes."

"Even if it drags our tortured Richard down with us?"

"Yes," I said.

"Even if it cost Damian his life?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Even if Nathaniel died with us?"

I stopped breathing for a second, and time seemed to do one of those stretches where you have all the time in the world, and none of it. My breath came out shaky, and I had to lick my lips, before I said, "Yes, on one condition."

"And that would be?" he asked.

"That I could guarantee that I wouldn't survive it either."

He looked at me, and it was a long, long look. A look that weighed me down to my soul, and I realized that in a way, that's exactly what he'd done years ago.

"You told me once that I'm your conscience, but that's not all I am, is it?"

"What do you mean, ma petite?"

"I'm your fail-safe. I'm your judge, your jury, and your executioner if things go wrong."

"Not things, ma petite, me. If I go wrong." There was a peacefulness in his eyes, as if some weight had gone from his shoulders. I knew exactly where that weight had gone.

"You bastard. I'd have been happy to kill you once, but not now. Not now."

"If it is too much to ask, then consider it unasked, unsaid."

"No, you bastard, don't you understand? If you do go mad and start slaughtering the innocent, I am exactly who they will send. I am the Executioner." I stared at him.

"But, ma petite, you were always the one they would send. You have always been the Executioner."

I got to my feet. My knees weren't weak anymore. "But I've never been in love with someone I had to kill before."

"But you have told me that your love for me would not stop you from doing your duty."

My eyes burned. "No, it won't. If you go bad, I'll do my duty." I closed my eyes, and shook my head. "You Machiavellian bastard, I would have killed your ass without being in love with you."

"I did not want you to love me because you would be my fail-safe, as you put it. I wanted you to love me, because I was in love with you." His voice was close, and when I opened my eyes he was standing in front of me. "It is only lately that I have worried that you were so besotted with me that you might forgive me crimes in this lifetime, now."

I shook my head. "No, no."

"I had to know, ma petite."

"Don't call me that, not right now."

He took a deep breath and let it out. "Anita, I am sorry. I would not cause you pain, not deliberately."

"Then couldn't this conversation have waited until the afterglow faded?"

"No," he said, "I had to know if you loved me more than your sense of justice."

I swallowed hard. I would not cry, I would not fucking cry. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."

He took my hands, and I almost jerked away, but I made myself stand there and let him touch me. I was so angry, so pissed, so...

"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind," he said, "That from the nunnery, Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind."

I looked up at him, and said the next line, "To war and arms I fly."

"True, a new mistress now I chase," he said.

"The first foe in the field," I said, and let him draw me closer.

"And with a stronger faith embrace," he said.

"A sword, a horse, a shield." And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.

"Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore," he whispered against my hair.

I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more."

"To Lucasta, on going to the Wars," Jean-Claude said. His arms were around me, holding me close.

I eased my arms around him, slowly. "Richard Lovelace," I said, "always liked his stuff in college." I kept moving my arms until they were around his waist, and we just stood there holding each other. "I don't think I would have remembered the whole poem if you hadn't helped."

"Together we are more than we are apart, Anita, that is what love is."

I held him, and the tears started down my face, hard and hot, and choking. "Not Anita."

I didn't have to see his face, to know the smile was there, I could hear in his voice, "ma petite, ma petite, ma petite."

There comes a point where you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.

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