50

The t-shirt and undies went in the first rash of hands, but I'd never tried to touch him when it wasn't a metaphysical necessity. I'd never just turned to Nathaniel because I wanted him. It wasn't that I didn't find him attractive. God knows I did, but I hadn't realized until those first few moments how much I'd come to rely on the ardeur. I'd thought of it as only a curse, but I appreciated for the first time that it greased the wheels for me. It got me over the embarrassment, the awkwardness, the good-girls-don't-do-this attitude. Without the ardeur, it was just me, and the inside of my head was ugly.

Nathaniel noticed, because he notices everything. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at me. "What's wrong?"

I wasn't sure how to say it, and that must have shown on my face, because he said, "Just say it, Anita, whatever it is."

I looked up at him and fought the urge to gaze down the length of his body. I had to close my eyes, and finally said, "Without the ardeur, it's just me. It's just me, and I'm..." I sat up. "I'm not comfortable."

"With me?"

I started to nod, then stopped, and said the real truth. "With myself."

He moved forward on the bed so that he rested his face against the small of my back. He was so warm. "What does that mean, exactly?"

How did I explain something to someone else, that I didn't really understand myself? "I don't know if I can explain it," I said.

The bathroom door opened, and we both looked up. Jason was there with a towel around his waist. He wasn't wet, but he was wearing a towel. I'd been around the shapeshifters long enough to think that was odd.

"I can't stand it," he said, "I just can't stand it."

"What?" I said.

"You're going to fuck this up."

I looked at him, and it wasn't a friendly look.

"Don't glare at me." He came to stand at the end of the bed, hands on hips. "I've told you that I'd give almost anything to have someone look at me the way Nathaniel looks at you."

"Yeah, but..."

"But nothing," he said, "I thought you were growing, changing, but what you just said blames it all on the ardeur. You didn't do any of it. Not your fault. If you fuck everything that moves while under the sway of the ardeur, you're still blameless."

I started to argue with him, but couldn't think how to do it. I finally said, "I sort of agree with what you said, what of it?"

"God, Anita, it's not about blame. You act like it's a sin."

Something must have shown on my face, because he made a sound in his throat that was part growl, and part exasperation. I had to look away from the expression in his eyes, the anger in them. "I was taught that it was a sin."

"They also taught you that Santa Claus was real, and you don't believe that anymore, do you?"

I crossed my arms across my body, which lost some of its intended sullenness, because I was naked, and it's never easy to be sullen when you're nude. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He went down on his knees by the bed. "It means, look at him."

I looked stubbornly at Jason, and not at Nathaniel.

"Turn around and look at him, or I'll turn you around."

"You'll try," I said.

"Fine, you want to wrestle, we can wrestle, but wouldn't it be less embarrassing, and less childish, if you just turned around?"

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and turned around.

Nathaniel was lying there on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. His face was what you noticed first. Those amazing lavender eyes with the remnants of the eye makeup still there, making them look darker, larger, as if they needed any help to be amazing. His eyes held such patience, a calm surety that I'd fix this. That it would be alright. I didn't like anyone looking at me like that, because life had taught me that it usually wasn't alright. That I couldn't save everyone. That I couldn't fix anything. His lips held a slight smile. There was no anxiety in him. No fear that I'd run. He looked at me with the calm face of a saint staring into the face of God. Secure in his faith, safe in his knowledge, trusting in a way that I had lost so long ago. How could he look at me like that? Didn't he know better? He'd lived with me for four months. Didn't he know by now that I was screwed six ways to Sunday, and he shouldn't depend on me?

He ducked his head, almost a bashful movement, but it drew my gaze across the sweep of his shoulder, down the curve of his back. I'd only allowed myself to touch him below the waist once. When the ardeur was very new. I'd covered his back and buttocks with bites, and he'd loved it, and I had fed, and I'd never let myself touch him that much again, until the last two days. That first time had been about feeding, and I hadn't taken time to really see him, really enjoy him, because I'd looked at it as an evil necessity. Looking at him now, I felt guilty for ever thinking of him like that. He deserved better.

I'd made him put clothes on for months, at least shorts, even in bed. But he was entirely too comfortable nude for me not to have caught glimpses of him. Even last night, at the club, I hadn't really let myself look at him, not really. Because if I'd allowed myself to linger on his body, I'd have lingered on the part that seemed to fascinate me most, and, no, it wasn't what you think. His back had a slight sway to it, a curve that spilled to a lovely ass, but at the farthest line of his back, before it became not his back, were dimples. Maybe dimple wasn't the right word for them, but I had no other word to use. I stared at him now, let my eyes linger, rather than glance and look hurriedly away. I let myself see not that he was nude, but see his body.

I reached out to him and let myself do something that I'd wanted to do for months. I traced my hand down the curve of his back and came to rest just there, just at the end of his back, before the swell of his ass.

He shivered just a little under the touch of my hand, even though all I had done was lay my hand flat against his skin. Let the weight of my hand rest between those two dimples so low on his body. It was as if when the clay had been wet, God had placed his thumbs just above the swell of Nathaniel's rump, as an extra sweetness, like the idea that a dimple near the mouth is the kiss of an angel before the baby is born, so those dimples on his body were like some extra grace.

I kissed, ever so gently, each of those smooth hollows, like tiny shallow cups in his skin. Each mark was the size of my lips, as if they were meant for me to kiss them. I laid my head in the curve of his back, rested my cheek on those marks of grace, so that my face was slightly up tilted with the swell of his body, leading my eyes down the curve of his rump and his distant legs and feet, but for the moment I was content where I was.

I used his body as my pillow, and just as my mouth fit to those kissable dimples, so my head fit neatly in the curve of his body, as if I were meant to rest there. Nathaniel's breath went out in a long sigh, and his body seemed to settle into the bed, as if some tension that I hadn't even seen had run out of him and left him able to rest.

I trailed my hand across the curve of his ass, and he made a small sound for me. I trailed my fingers lower, tracing the line of his thigh. It wasn't that his legs were off-limits in the way that other areas had been, but I realized that I'd divided his body along a line at his waist, like some boundary in a war. Above the line was us, below the line was forbidden. His thigh was lush and smooth-skinned, and firm with muscle.

I brought my hand back up his leg and allowed my fingers to trace circles on his derriere. Those small movements drew small, quick, sounds from him, almost sounds of protest.

I asked, and my voice was as lazy and soft as my touch, "You're almost making pain noises, does it hurt?"

"No," he said, and his voice showed a strain that his body didn't even hint at. "It's just that I've wanted you to touch me for so long. It feels... amazing to have your head resting on me, your hands on me. God, it feels so good."

I let my hand trace, very delicately, along the crack of his ass, so that if there had been any little hairs I could have played with them, but he was smooth, utterly smooth. It made me wonder if other things were as smooth.

I brushed my fingers down the line of his ass again, tracing the separation between the cheeks, until I found that first line of warm flesh that was neither ass nor more, but a line of soft, silken skin.

I put a finger on either side of that skin, the softest of pinches, and slid my fingers up and down. Nathaniel writhed under the touch. His hands struggling against the sheets as if he wasn't sure what to do with them.

I raised my head from his back and kissed my way up his cheeks until I could lay my head one side of him, like a pillow. I caressed my hand down his thigh again, and this time I made circles behind his knees, and kept going, until my fingertips could play with his ankles.

He laughed and struggled against the bed again, like he had when I touched much more traditionally intimate places. There are so many more erotic areas on the body than the small list that most people make. I raised up from the pillow of his body, so that I could pay more attention to his ankles, drawing my nails lightly across that apparently sensitive skin. He writhed for me, his upper body coming off the bed, and his breath shaking out in something between a sigh and a laugh. I sat up so I could run my fingers across the bottoms of his feet, and he sighed, "Oh, God." I touched the front of his feet, very lightly, and he kicked his feet, as if it were almost too much. Not everyone's feet are that sensitive for foreplay, but when someone's feet are, they really are.

I gazed up the line of his body, while he lay gasping against the sheets. I'd barely started. So many choices, I bent over his ankles and licked along the round bone, tracing the skin with my tongue, in thick, wet, circles.

He made protesting noises and started to kick his feet, but I grabbed his foot with both my hands and held him against my mouth. He made a sound that was almost a scream and gazed down at me, along the length of his body. There was something in his eyes that was wild, and tender, and amazed.

I bit down on that shallow flesh, not hard, just a graze of teeth, but it rolled his eyes into his head and folded his shoulders onto the bed, as if he'd swooned.

I moved back up the bed, so that I could lay my head, not on one cheek, but across that part of his body, so that it was indeed my pillow. The feel of his cheeks spreading under the side of my face made me close my eyes, and have to relearn how to breathe for a moment. I spilled my hand down the line of his body, until I found that silken skin again. But this time I used it like a line to trace to something else. I found what I wanted, and the skin was so soft, softer than anything else I'd touched on his body. His testicles were trapped underneath his body, thick, and round, and delicate. Only part of them were trapped where I could touch them, and the combination of his body weight and the excitement had made them swell, so that the skin wasn't as loose as it would have been otherwise. I'd wanted to play with all that fragile loose skin, but it was already pressed tight around him. To pull on it now might be more pain than pleasure. No matter what Nathaniel liked in that area, I wasn't ready for it.

I slipped my body over his legs and pushed them farther apart, so that I lay between them. I laid my mouth against the inside of his thigh, but stopped before I could decide whether I was going to kiss him, lick him, or bite him. I stopped because I could see Jason over the slope of Nathaniel's thigh.

Truth was, I'd forgotten he was there. Was that a bad thing to say, or a good thing? Did it mean I was getting more comfortable with myself, or that I was falling into the pit of whoredom? Whatever, but I was suddenly frozen, gazing over Nathaniel's body into those pale, blue eyes. It was what I saw in them, that made me freeze. Lust would have been embarrassing, but logical. But that wasn't what I saw. Jason watched us with something in his face that was close to sorrow, and his eyes held a longing, a sense of loss. I didn't know what to do with that look, so I stopped, and raised my face up from Nathaniel's body.

Jason realized I saw him, and he ducked his head. When he looked back, he had his face under control. He almost pulled the joke off, when he said, "Don't stop on my account. I'm enjoying the show." His voice was fine, but his eyes, the lightness never quite reached his eyes.

"Liar," I said.

He gave me an unhappy smile. "I thought you were too busy to notice me. I should know that without the ardeur you pay better attention."

"What's wrong?" Nathaniel asked.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Don't worry," Jason said, "I'm not pining for you, Anita, or Nathaniel for that matter. But I am pining for someone to take that much time and attention with me."

I frowned at him.

"You can have sex, and it can be good, but I'd give almost anything to have someone touch me the way you touch Nathaniel. We'll probably have sex later, and it will be great, but you won't look at me like that."

I sighed. "I think I remember us having this conversation before. You want to be consumed by love, and my goal in life is never to be consumed at all."

"Ironic, isn't it," he said, "I want just once for someone to look at me the way you look at Nathaniel, and you've been scared to death of it. You keep saying that the ardeur is a curse, but if the ardeur had never come along, you wouldn't have Nathaniel, or Micah. I'm not even a hundred percent sure you'd be double dating with Asher and Jean-Claude."

I laid my arms across Nathaniel's cheeks and rested my face on my arms and looked at Jason. I looked at him and tried to hear what he was saying. "Maybe, about Asher, I mean. Once you've crossed enough lines, one more doesn't seem that big a deal."

"Exactly," Jason said.

"So the ardeur is what, a blessing?"

"Look at what you're propped up on, and tell me it isn't? I heard you earlier, Anita. If the ardeur hadn't come to you, you'd still be stuck where you had been. You'd still be fighting what you want, and what you think you're supposed to want."

I looked at him, while I rested against Nathaniel's body. Nathaniel had propped himself up on his elbows and was looking at Jason. We both seemed utterly comfortable with him there. Was that wrong? It didn't feel wrong.

I wanted to argue, but I couldn't, well, I could, but I would have sounded silly. If the ardeur hadn't come, where would I be? I thought, I'd still be with Richard, but as soon as I thought, I knew better. Richard had used the ardeur as another excuse to run from me, but he hadn't liked any of my life. He hadn't liked the police work, the zombie raising, my comfort with the vampires and shapeshifters. Strangely, the thing he'd liked less was that I seemed willing to accept him and his beast. I'd seen too far into his head in that one moment in my own bathroom. Damian had said it best; Richard loved his shame more than he loved anything else.

So, where would I be without the ardeur? No Micah, no Nathaniel, no Asher. My life still nothing but murder cases, zombie raisings, and vampire slayings. Hell, without the ardeur would I have stayed with Jean-Claude, or would I have found another reason to run from him, too? Maybe. It sounded like something I'd do.

I looked at Jason and settled more solidly against Nathaniel's body. He sighed, and laid his head down on the bed.

"So what, the ardeur is the universe's way of getting me where I needed to go?"

"Maybe," he said, then grinned, "I can't speak for whole universe. All I know is that I envy you, and I don't envy many people."

I frowned.

"Are you jealous?" Nathaniel asked.

Jason looked surprised, either at the question, or at who had asked it. He finally shook his head. "Not jealous of you or Anita, like in love with you jealous, no. Jealous of what you have together, hell yes. Jealous of not having that many people in love with me, hell, yes, again." He smiled, and then grinned, and it reached his eyes this time. "Besides, I'm not Anita's type for a relationship."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"I'm not submissive enough, or dominant enough for you. I'm certainly not domestic enough. I'm also not willing to take on all the responsibilities that Micah seems to embrace so easily. You've found another person who thrives on his job and taking care of other people's crises. Not my idea of fun." He spread his hands wide. "You and Jean-Claude, well, that's something else. I know I can't compete with it."

"It's not a competition," Nathaniel said.

"You don't see it that way," Jason said, "but I'm just dominant enough, and guy enough, to see it that way."

"If any one of them saw it as a competition, it wouldn't work," I said.

"I know," Jason said. He shook his head. "I'm going into the bathroom again, and this time I'm staying there until I'm called, or until I feel the ardeur rise. You guys have fun. Sorry, if I flattened the mood."

"My mood's fine," I said.

"Mine, too," Nathaniel said.

Jason stared at us both. "No ardeur, and I've made you talk and think too hard, and you're still okay with this?"

"Yes," I said.

"Why?"

"Because a very wise and dear friend told me I was going to fuck this up, and I don't want to do that."

He smiled and his face softened. "If you do ever pick one of them to actually marry, and it's Nathaniel, I get dibs on being best man."

"I don't think that's going to come up," I said, "but if it does, you'd be our first pick."

"You didn't ask Nathaniel," he said.

"She didn't have to," Nathaniel said.

Jason walked toward the bathroom, shaking his head. "Too dominant by half."

I called after him. "You know I have to be the better man in any relationship, Jason." I meant it to be a joke.

He turned at the bathroom door, and said, "Fuck, Anita, you are the better man. Just because you don't have the right equipment, doesn't change what you are." He closed the door behind him, firmly, until it clicked.

We were left alone in the bedroom. Nathaniel raised up and looked down at me. "You don't have to finish tonight, Anita. Jason's right, the way you touched me, I know if not this time, then next. The sooner you feed the ardeur the better you'll feel."

I smiled at him, then unfolded my arms and slid my face down, until I was as far between his legs as I could get. He wasn't as excited now, and the skin was loose. I licked that most delicate of skin and heard his breath go out in a long sigh. I drew the loose skin into my mouth, pulling it gently out and away from his body. The skin didn't stay loose for long, and when it was tight and I could lick the balls inside that skin, I told him, "On all fours."

He did it without being asked twice.

I drew his balls into my mouth, one at a time, carefully, so carefully. I rolled them in my mouth with tongue and lips, until they were wet and slick. I caught glimpses of the rest of him, just in front, but not all, and not well. I'd only seen him nude from the front three times. Once when I first met him, once when I made the triumvirate between him and Damian, and earlier in my office.

"Roll over," I said, and he spilled himself over onto his back. He lay thick and quivering against his stomach, pointing like an exclamation mark against his own body. "I don't remember you being this big the first time I saw you nude."

"I was in a hospital. Someone had almost killed me. I wasn't at my best."

I gazed down at him, and said, "I can see that." I reached for him, slowly, and laid my hand against the warmth of him. But I was losing my patience. Another time I'd be slower, but now I wrapped my hand around him, let the thick round hardness of him fill my hand. His upper body spasmed, raising a little off the bed. I slid one hand to his balls and massaged them, while I stroked the thick velvet warmth of him. "So soft, and so hard, all at the same time."

I stroked him, until his eyes lost focus and his neck spasmed, so that he was closed eyed, and didn't see me bend down. I slid my mouth over the tip of him while he wasn't looking, and he cried out, as I worked my mouth down the length of him. I knew what I wanted. I wanted all of him inside my mouth, down to his balls, at least once. Next time I'd start with him smaller, now I had to fight for it. I'd gotten better at deep-throating, because sharing a bed with Micah, it was either get better at taking more, or stop doing one of my favorite things. Practice paid off, I sealed Nathaniel inside my mouth in one hard, clean line, until my lips touched the top of his testicles. I could only stay for a moment, then I had to come up. Up to breathe, up to let the wetness from my mouth trail down the shaft of his body.

I raised up on my knees, between his thighs, and the look on his face was worth all the effort. In fact, worth so much, that I had to do it one more time. Then I came up more shallow on him, so I could move better, thrusting him in and out of my mouth. Licking him, rolling him, sucking him, and when he was making enough noise, very lightly, I used teeth.

"Oh, God, yes, yes, please."

I moved off him enough to ask, "Please, what?"

"More teeth, please."

I frowned at him. "Most men think that hurts."

"I'm not most men," he said, and there was something about the way he said it that made me press my mouth back over him. I sucked him, pulling hard and firm, then forced my mouth down on the shaft, not as far as before, and bit him, not too hard, but harder than I'd bitten any other man I'd done this with. I kept my eyes on his face, so I could see if it hurt him. The look on his face had nothing to do with pain. His eyes were wild, and he said, "Harder."

I looked at him.

"Please, Anita, please, you don't know how long I've wanted this."

It wasn't my bits being bitten, but I was reminded that Nathaniel had once had no stopping point, no danger-do-not-cross sign. I could do what he wanted, but it was up to me to make sure it didn't go too far. I was finally doing what he'd always wanted. I was topping him.

I went down on him fast and hard, and this time I bit him hard enough that my teeth closed around that thick, meaty flesh. I had a momentary flash of not the ardeur, but of the beast, and its craving for flesh between teeth. I pushed it away, but I also came off of him and didn't do it again. But I'd done enough, because his eyes were rolled to whites, and he was writhing on the bed. His hands had grabbed mounds of the sheet, and his body strained, and bucked against the bed.

I waited for him to lie still, though his eyes stayed like butterflies, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. When I caught a glimpse of lavender eyes between the fluttering, I stroked him gently. I stroked him with my hands, until I had his eyes looking at me instead of the inside of his own eyelids.

He looked up at me, his lavender eyes lazy, and his smile was like the cat who got the cream. I wrapped my hand around that warm, thick, length. Wrapped my hand and squeezed. "I want this inside me."

When his eyes opened, he said, "You haven't had any foreplay."

I squeezed him again, watched his spine bow, and his head throw back, sliding the long braid of his hair off the bed, like something escaping off the edge. "Trust me, Nathaniel, I've had foreplay."

When he recovered enough, he said, "You're not the only one who hasn't gotten to touch someone below the waist."

I closed my eyes. "Please, Nathaniel, please, just make love to me. I want you to finish what you started in the office, please."

He looked at me, and there was something in that look that was very male and very grown-up. "You liked that, did you?"

I gave him a look, then said, "You were there, what do you think?"

He sat up, and I was suddenly surrounded by his legs, his arms. He kissed me, and the kiss was gentle, but not chaste. He explored my mouth the way I'd explored his legs, and ass, lightly, delicately, savoring it. But one hand was sliding down the front of my body, until his fingers slid over me. My body reacted to that light touch, but his hand didn't stop. He traced a finger around the opening to my body. "You are wet."

"I told you so."

He slid the finger inside of me and stole my breath. Then he pushed two fingers inside of me, and with the tips of his fingers found that spot. He flicked the tips of his fingers, just the tips, flexing them fast, and firm against that spot. And it was as if that part of my body had been waiting for him, as if all the work he'd done earlier, was still there, because those quick, firm touches, brought me. Brought me screaming, nails digging into his shoulders, and back.

He caught me with his other arm around my waist, or I would have fallen back to the bed. He slid his fingers out from inside me, and said, "Now, you're ready."

Since all I was seeing was the inside of my eyeballs, and speech was not an option, I tried to nod, but I really don't think I needed to. As they say, actions speak louder than words.

51

I watched his face above me, as his body worked in and out of mine. He stayed propped on his arms, his legs were bent toward me, so that he acted as a frame for his own body. Seeing him sliding inside me threw my head back, spasmed my body, but I fought for control. Fought to see him. To watch him, this first time. This first time after so many false starts. I fought my body, fought the amazing sensations that were filling me, fought, because I wanted to see his face.

Propped up like he was, it was shallow, and usually I liked it deep, but something about the angle, or the depth, or lack of it, or the rhythm, which was quick, so quick, began to bring me. I could feel it starting. I remembered in time to gasp, "When I go, you go."

His voice was strangely controlled, as if he were concentrating very hard on what he was doing. "You can go more than once, I may not be able to."

I touched his face, held it light between my hands. "When I go, you go, no more near misses."

His eyes smiled down at me. "Agreed."

And suddenly there was no time for words, no time for debate. The orgasm tightened my body, then spread outward, blowing through my body, my skin. I rode that wave after wave of pleasure. His eyes went wide, as if they were surprised, and his breathing quickened, his body hesitated, paused almost, then he thrust himself deep inside me, and if I hadn't held his face he'd have thrown his head back, but I wanted to watch his eyes. They were almost frantic. His body spasmed again, and this time the orgasm caught me unprepared and my hands lost his face, my eyes rolled back into my head, and I screamed.

He collapsed on top of me and thrust as hard and sudden as he could. I shrieked under him and clawed at his back. His skin gave under my nails. He writhed on top of me. Writhing with his body still thrust deep inside mine, caused my nails to dig deeper, and I set my teeth in his shoulder, screaming into his skin. Making a gag of his flesh between my teeth.

Nathaniel's body liked the pain. It was as if, as long as I hurt him he wasn't done. The more that my nails and teeth dug into him, the more his hips pumped into me. It was like we were caught in an endless loop of pain and pleasure, and the line from one to the other blurred.

His breathing changed again, and when his body threw itself backward, in orgasm, I still had my teeth in his shoulder. He tore himself out of my mouth. I released him in time to not take a bite out of him or lose a tooth, but not in time to keep from drawing blood. I was suddenly drowning in the taste of his blood. Sweet and salty and metallic, and underneath that, something else, something more. I'd bitten his neck only hours before, and I had not been as aware then of the taste of his blood. It was like the difference between gulping water because you were thirsty and sipping wine to enjoy the bouquet. I let Nathaniel's blood rest on my tongue, licked it against the roof of my mouth, played with the taste, the texture, the warmth of it.

I let it slide down my throat. I made it last, as if it were the last sip of liquid I would ever have. I'd craved blood before, but as with the beast, I'd thought that one part was all of it. In that one sweet taste I knew better. I'd tasted blood before, but I'd never enjoyed it or known that it could taste like this.

Power trailed over Nathaniel's skin, and trapped under his body, that power marched over me in a skin-tingling, breath-stealing rush. It made me shiver, and my beast stirred, like something furred and half-asleep, disturbed from its nap.

Nathaniel bowed down toward me again, his eyes were pale gray with a hint of almost blue. I stared into his leopard's eyes and felt his beast stretch inside his body, like it was rubbing against the bones of its cage.

My beast stretched inside my body, I'd had the sensation before, but I'd never been able to feel it as if my body were somehow hollow and this long shape stretched the length of me. It made me shiver, and it was hard to breathe for a moment, as if something truly was inside me and had reached up high enough to compromise my lungs. The pressure lasted for a moment, then it was gone, but I hadn't liked the sensation of it.

"You smell of blood," Nathaniel said, and there was an edge of growl to his voice.

"It's your blood," I whispered, and my heart was already beating faster.

"But it's in your mouth," he growled, just above my lips. His mouth was suddenly on mine, his tongue pushing between my lips. He kissed me, hard and long and deep, pushing his tongue so far into my mouth that it was almost like deep-throating. But his tongue was neither as long or wide as he was. But this had teeth that almost cut at my lips, a bruising force, that no amount of oral sex could equal. His tongue licked along the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks. He was licking the taste of his own blood from my mouth.

The leopard screamed through my brain, he's eating us! I knew better, but something moved inside me, in places that nothing was supposed to move. I felt it, not like some liquid amorphous shape, but as if something very solid and very real was sitting in the center of my body and moving around. It stirred, and this time I felt something like a hand stretch upward, and something else stretch down. It hurt, and I was suddenly choking on Nathaniel's kiss.

He drew back, and the smile on his face was fierce and joyous, a savage beauty, as if the thoughts behind his face weren't very human anymore. "You taste good," he said, and his voice was painfully low. It didn't sound like Nathaniel's voice at all.

The leopard didn't react to that growl, it was gone from my head. But that thing in the center of my body stretched, stretched legs and arms inside my body. I could feel it touching things that should never have been touched. I screamed and stared up into his eyes and wondered if there was enough of Nathaniel in there to help me.

"Anita, what's wrong?" With leopard eyes and a voice of a stranger, but his face was all Nathaniel, all concern and worry.

"It hurts."

"What? Did I hurt you?"

I shook my head, and claws tickled along my ribs, and made me struggle underneath his body. "Help me!"

He rolled off of me and yelled, "Jason!" He had to yell twice, before Jason came out, dripping from the shower, a towel in his hand. He looked at us, and the smile was gone instantly.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Nathaniel said, still in that low voice, "she says something hurts."

The thing stretched again, stretched and stretched and my body stretched with it, as if it fit inside my arms and legs. It didn't hurt, exactly. It was as if my body were a glove and it was seeing how much room it had.

"Did you feel that?" Jason asked. His body had broken out in goosebumps.

Nathaniel nodded. "It's her beast."

Jason knelt by the end of the bed. "Yeah, but it's never felt like this before."

My beast stretched to the limits of my body, then found that there was nowhere else to go. I'd gotten a tiny piece of Richard's beast years ago, and somehow Belle's line had given me an animal to call--the leopards. Through that I was Nimir-Ra to Micah's Nimir-Raj. Nathaniel had been my pomme de sang, but now he was my animal to call, as Richard was to Jean-Claude. Now that part of me that was beast, cat, stretched inside my human body. I'd felt it as power before, more metaphor than physical, but this was very, very physical. I could feel it. Feel it struggling inside me, looking for a way out. It was as if I was a lycanthrope, except I lacked that last bit of the puzzle, that one last bit that would allow the beast to slip out of my skin and be real.

It shrank back into that small center of my body, where it stayed most of the time. But now it was like one of those leopards at the zoo in a small metal cage. It paced, paced, paced, and finally rushed the bars, slashing and clawing. But these bars were my body, and I screamed. I reached out, trying to grab something, anything that would help me. How do you fight something that's inside your body? How do you destroy something that is in the very meat of you?

Jason grabbed my hand, and I was suddenly breathing in the sweet musk of wolf. But it was as if touching Jason's hand acted like a conduit, and suddenly I could see Richard. He was in the bright sunlight of his kitchen, cooking something in a pan. He wore nothing but jeans, with a dish towel stuck into the waistband of his pants. His back was covered in claw marks, or really serious nail marks. It looked more like the result of good sex than an attack. His head came up, and he sniffed the air, and only then did he turn and stare behind him, as if he could see me. He said, "Anita, is that you?"

"Help me."

"What's wrong now?"

I squeezed Jason's hand, and it was like that extra bit of contact took me closer to Richard. It was like I hovered just in front of him. He reached out, and his hand brushed through me.

My beast reacted to it, screaming and clawing, going wild. It didn't want the wolf inside us, there wasn't room for it. There certainly wasn't room for both.

Richard drew his hand back, and said, "Anita, Anita can you hear me?"

I screamed his name, because screaming was all I could do. It felt like the leopard was cutting me up, trying to dig its way out, and it couldn't get out.

"Give your beast to someone else, Anita. Someone whose body can let it out."

I didn't understand what he meant. I started to tell him so, but he seemed to feel my puzzlement. Because he shared a memory with me. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; a memory with complete sensory surround sound is worth so much more. Saves so much time, shares the pain faster.

We were in the center ring of the Circus of the Damned. I reached out to Richard's beast, his rage, because if we couldn't control it, the council would kill him. I reached out to that rage. That power that he called his beast came at my touch. I smelled like home to it, somehow, and it poured into me, over me, through me, like a blinding storm of heat and power. It was similar to the times I'd raised power with Richard and Jean-Claude, but this time there was no spell to use the power on. Nowhere for the beast to run. It tried to crawl out of my skin, tried to expand inside my body, but there was no beast to call. I was empty for it, and it raged inside me. I felt it growing until I thought I would burst apart in bloody fragments. The pressure built and built and had nowhere to go.

Richard had crawled to me on hands and knees, bleeding. He'd laid his lips against mine in a trembling kiss. A sound came from low in his throat, and he was suddenly pressing his mouth against mine, until it either bruised or I opened my mouth to him. I opened, and his tongue plunged inside me, his lips feeding on mine. The cut inside his mouth filled my mouth with the taste of him, salty, sweet. I held his face in my hands, my mouth searching his, and it wasn't enough.

We moved to our knees, mouths still pressed together. My hands slid over his chest, his back, and something deep inside me clicked and relaxed. His power tried to spill outward, but I held it back... Richard's hands slid up my legs, finding the lace top of the black panties. His fingers traced my naked spine, and I was undone.

The power spilled upward, outward, filling us both. It flared over us in a rushing wave of heat and light, until my vision swam in pieces, and we both cried out with one voice. His beast slid inside of him. I felt it crawl out of me, pulled like a large, thick string, spilling inside of Richard, coiling into his body. I expected to feel the last bit of it spill between us, like draining the last drop of wine from a cup, but that drop remained.

The memory rolled back and left me gasping on the bed. Nathaniel was leaning over me. "Anita, Anita, are you alright?" His eyes had bled back to lavender.

Jason was nuzzling my hair. "You smell like pack."

Richard was standing in his kitchen, one hand on the edge of the cabinets as if he were steadying himself. "Now, do you remember?"

"I remember," I whispered.

"What do you remember?" Nathaniel asked.

"Can't you smell it?" Jason asked. He was rubbing his lips against the side of my face.

Nathaniel leaned over me, his face very close to mine. "Wolf," he sniffed my skin, "Richard," he whispered the name against my skin.

The feel of their lips against me made me close my eyes for a moment. But once sight was gone, the scent of them covered me like a blanket. The sweet musk of wolf and the acrid sweetness of leopard were everywhere, like invisible water, and I was drowning in it. I expected my cat to complain, but it didn't. It was strangely calmed by both scents.

"You're still pack, Anita, as much as you're pard. Give your beast to them." Richard stared up at me, and I noticed for the first time that he had scratches low on his right cheek. Not usually a place you mark in the heat of passion.

I stopped seeing Richard's scratched face in his sunny kitchen. I opened my eyes to a wisp of auburn hair across my eyes. Nathaniel was pressed against the side of my face, his mouth just under the line of my jaw. His body was back on top of mine, laying his weight along me. He was so warm.

Jason still had my hand, and his mouth was rubbing along the side of my neck on the side opposite from Nathaniel.

I was warm and safe, and I realized that Richard had given me some of his control. He'd given me breathing space. I needed to use it before my beast shook free of this warm, comfortable lassitude.

I thought back over the memory of giving Richard's beast back to him. How had it worked? A kiss, why did everything take a kiss, or a touch? Jean-Claude had answered that question last night. Because we could only use the tools we had available. Most of our tools came from Belle Morte's line, and that meant that our tools, our skills, were going to have a certain theme. I waited to be tired of that theme, and part of me was, part of me thought we really needed some new skill sets, but most of me was warm and safe, and covered in the scent of pard and pack.

Their lips worked gently at each side of my neck, soft kisses. Nathaniel's body was so warm pressed the length of mine, warmer than any blanket, better than simply being held in someone's arms. Jason's hand smoothed along the edge of my hip, and I couldn't help but cuddle into the feel of his touch. That one small writhing movement seemed to affect Nathaniel's body. He was suddenly heavier than he had been, heavy in the way Richard's kiss had been in the memory. Nathaniel's hips pressed in against me, and as with the remembered kiss, he pushed against me, and I had a choice of opening to him, or keeping him outside my body.

Richard's beast had left through a kiss. I could only kiss one of them at a time. The thought came that I could do other things, and still kiss. But I'd had enough of threesomes and more. My battered morals had had about all the multiples they could handle for awhile. That little voice whispered, but it feels so good. And the voice that I'd learned at my grandmother's hand yelled, Slut! You work so long and so hard to listen to your inner voice, but sometimes guilt or habit makes you listen to those other voices--the ones that beat you down. Sometimes you just can't shake them.

"I need to give my beast to my cat," I said, and my voice was thick, slow. I tried to draw my hand out of Jason's, but he held on. He whispered into the bend of my neck, "I'll be your cat."

Nathaniel whispered against my other cheek, "I'm her cat."

Jason's voice against my skin, "I'll be your doggy then." He licked along my neck, and it made me writhe, but I shook my head, just a little, turning my head so I could see the side of his face.

"Not tonight, Jason." This time when I pulled my hand, he let me go.

His blue eyes came into my vision, and he kissed me, long and deep, and my beast lay quiet. "You taste like blood and other men's kisses," he whispered, as he pulled away.

My beast woke inside me, as if it had only been napping. It woke and tried to spill upward. It filled my body like someone trying on a coat that was far too small. I could feel it stretching out inside me, feel it filling me, like hot water spilling up and up inside me until it filled every inch of me, and still there was more to come. It poured and poured, if water could have bones and muscle and anger. Because when it found that there were limits, that my skin did not burst, my bones did not bend, my body did not give, the beast began to rage inside me. It slashed with claws and fought with muscles that should have been metaphoric but felt all too real. It was trying to tear its way free of the cage, and the cage was my body.

I screamed, screamed and struggled, but you can't fight something that you can't touch. Nathaniel was still on top of me, eyes wide and frightened. He started to slide off of me, but I grabbed his arms, and managed to say, "Kiss me."

If it had been almost anyone else, they would have argued, but he didn't. He put his mouth against mine, and the next scream was muffled into his mouth. I willed the thing inside me into him. I tried to force it, but it was panicked, and could not hear me. It was like a wild animal, cornered, it heard nothing, but its own fear.

I tore my mouth from Nathaniel's and simply screamed. Jason was there, a hand on either side of my face, and the moment he touched me, the beast hesitated. The cat paused long enough to sniff the air, as if wondering what he was.

I looked up at Nathaniel with Jason's hands still holding my head. "Try again, kiss me."

He kissed me, and this time I was able to kiss him back, but the beast didn't rise. It sat inside me, sniffing, puzzling, but it did not rise. I broke the kiss and screamed not from pain, but frustration. "Richard said to share my beast with someone who can give it release, but it won't go. It won't leave."

"Are you still fighting for control of the ardeur?" Nathaniel asked.

I blinked at him and thought about it. Was I? Not consciously, but controlling it had become automatic. Now that I didn't have to control it, but had to, instead, call it into being, was I still quashing it? Was I still shielding? The answer was, yes.

"Yeah."

"Stop fighting," Nathaniel said, "just let everything go."

"No," I started, but he touched my lips with his fingers.

"Hush, Anita, you can feed off of both of us, and it won't drain me that badly. It's not a good idea, but it's not a disaster. Stop fighting, and maybe the beast will stop fighting, too."

I opened my mouth with his fingers still touching me. He slid his fingertips just inside my mouth, playing along the edge of my lips. The movement stopped me from talking more effectively than anything else could have done. I just lay there and let his fingers play around the edge of my mouth, delicate, sensual. "Let go, Anita, just let go. We'll catch you."

Jason leaned in against my face. "I'm here, Anita. I won't let anything bad happen to Nathaniel. I promise." He laid his face against my forehead. "We can do this, Anita, but you have to let go. You have to let us catch you."

Let go. It sounded so simple. But letting go of anything was so not my best thing. I wasn't even sure I knew how to do it. How do you let go? How do you open your hand and let yourself fall, and trust that other people will catch you? That they'll catch you and not let you hurt them, or yourself. Did I trust Nathaniel and Jason that much? Sort of.

Did I trust anyone that much? Maybe. Okay, not really. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and I let go. I let go, and trusted. Trusted, even as a small voice inside me whispered, stupid, stupid, stupid.

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