58

We stayed on the corner of the bed, as if there was no more bed to use. I was still not sure it was a good idea. I think Richard was uncomfortable with Jean-Claude being in the bed. Jean-Claude was just being patient, biding his time, because he knew if he pushed, one of us would bolt. When Richard's mouth first found mine, and I drank in the taste of him like some almost forgotten addiction, I thought I'd be the one to run screaming for the hills. But the third time Richard winced when Jean-Claude brushed his bare back, I began to think it wouldn't be me that screwed this up.

He cursed in French, then said in English, "I put my hand on your shoulder to steady myself, nothing more. You are acting as if I am after your virtue. I assure you that I am after ma petite's virtue, not yours."

Richard sighed and looked down so that even sitting in his lap I couldn't see his face. "You keep touching me."

Jean-Claude made a sound low in his throat. "How am I to touch her, if she is in your lap, your arms, kissing you, without at the very least brushing your body with mine? I am not such a magician that I can share a woman with another man and never once touch the other man's body."

"Trust me, he hasn't been doing much more than holding me," I said. I touched Richard's chin, and he let me raise his face up to me. I looked into those solid brown eyes, and all I saw was pain, confusion. "What's wrong? You were the one who was all hot for this. You talked me into it, remember?"

"I'm sorry," he said. He pressed his forehead to my shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said again.

Jean-Claude and I stared at each other over his bent head. I asked the question with my expression, what the hell is going on? "Tell us what is wrong, mon ami, and we will try to help."

"The last time I was in a bed with another man and a woman, it was Raina and Gabriel."

I'd known that Raina had been his first lover, but that he'd ever let Gabriel touch him, that I had not known. I was so astounded that I was glad he couldn't see my face. Raina had been bad enough, but both of them, at the same time. Uckies, uckies, uckies.

Raina's munin was usually quiet behind its metaphysical cage bars, but my reaction gave her a tiny opening. Raina had behaved herself for so long, that it caught me off guard. Made me a little less quick to squash her back down, and protect us all. Or maybe it was the fact that I was touching one of her pack, one that she knew in every way.

I saw Gabriel like a technicolor ghost, with his black curls just long enough to touch his pale gray leopard eyes. The silver ring through his nipple glinted in the lamplight. I was lying back in the middle of a big bed, and Gabriel crawled from one side, and Richard crawled from the other, both moving in that graceful stalk as if they had muscles in places that humans did not. It was a younger Richard, less muscled, face a little less sure of itself, his hair cut neat and clean. Richard when he was twenty, before I ever met him. His face so open, eager, laughing. We'd told him it was a game. Raina wanted to have two men ravage her. A little rape fantasy among friends.

He pinned my wrists, her wrists, and as requested, there was no foreplay. It was supposed to be rough. I could see through her eyes, as she watched Gabriel come in behind Richard's back. It was a rape fantasy, alright, but Raina wasn't the victim.

Richard screamed, and stood up, dumping me to the floor. He took two shaking steps, and collapsed to his knees. Something about what Raina's munin had done, had torn down his shields. I wasn't getting the memory, just his reaction to it. Shame, anger, rage. I got glimpses of Gabriel and him fighting. Not struggling, but beating the hell out of each other. Both of them nude, slick with each other's blood. Raina watching from the bed, her mouth wet, her tongue playing along her lips, enjoying the show.

Richard tried to shield, but he couldn't. It was as if the emotions had stripped him of his shields. It was Jean-Claude's cool touch in my head that shut it down. He shielded Richard from me, and I think from himself. He gave him back his metaphysical clothes, so that he wasn't raw before us.

"I, too, have my memory of Gabriel," Jean-Claude said, his voice was soft.

We both looked at him. Richard said, "You, and Gabriel?" The look on his face showed his disgust.

"Not by choice. It was her price for convincing Marcus that he should continue to ally with me."

"A night with both of them?" I asked.

Jean-Claude nodded.

"Did you know?" Richard asked, "before, did you know what they wanted you for?"

He nodded again. "I negotiated that night as completely as any night I have ever bargained for."

Richard was still on his knees on the floor. He looked back at Jean-Claude. "And you knew, you knew that she wanted to watch Gabriel... have you?"

"She wanted many things, but that was one she was most adamant about."

"How could you let him do that to you?" A strange look came over Richard's face. "Oh, but you don't mind. You like men."

Jean-Claude's face went blank, him hiding away. "Actually, yes, I did mind. I minded very much, but it was one of the points that Raina would not give up. She wanted certain things, and that was one of them." He raised his robe around his shoulders as if he was cold, and would not look at either of us. "I talked her out of a great many things that would have hurt a great deal more."

"You didn't enjoy it," Richard said.

Jean-Claude gave him a look, such a look. It sent the vampire's power like cool water through the room. "Rape is rape, Richard. Is a woman less raped because she likes men? That's a question, Richard."

"No, of course not," he said.

"Then why is it less rape for a man who likes men to be raped by another man?"

Richard looked away at that.

I was left sitting on the floor not knowing what to say, or who to comfort, or even how to start comforting. "I didn't know any of this."

"My bargain with Raina was based on it not being known. It would have undermined my authority, which would have defeated the purpose of the bargain."

I got up off the ground and went to Jean-Claude. I reached out to him, half-afraid he'd move away. No one's good with this kind of pain, but men seem especially bad at it. I think it's because they have a hard time thinking of themselves as potential victims. Women are raised with the possibility. Most of us understand from an early age that we are not the biggest or strongest. It's why when women fight, they fight dirty; something's got to make up for the lack of upper body strength.

I touched his face, and he gave me that blank beautiful look. As if he were a painting that held color and line, and beauty, but not life, as if telling the secret sucked something precious away from him. "I'm sorry," I said, softly.

He smiled, and some tension left him, and something of him began to seep back into his eyes. "I thought you might be upset, find me sullied goods."

I raised eyebrows at that. "You never blame the victim, Jean-Claude. Don't you know that by now?"

He smiled a little wider and laid his face against my hand. "I have never thanked you for killing them both."

"They were trying to kill me at the time, and film it for a snuff flick. Trust me, it was my pleasure to whack them both."

Richard got to his feet and came to stand near us, just out of comfortable reach. "That night was why I broke up with Raina." He laughed, and it sounded bitter, as if he would choke on it. "Broke up, God, that sounds so high school. Gabriel and I nearly beat each other to death, while she watched." He was shaking his head, and even with his hair barely grown out, it was already longer than it had been in the memory. I wondered if that was one of the reasons that he grew it long, so it would help him feel different.

"I can find other food," Jean-Claude said. "You do not have to do anything you are not comfortable with."

Richard looked at us, my hand still on Jean-Claude's face. "What I said earlier is still true. We need the three of us to be as close as the two of you are."

"I do not believe you are ready to do what is necessary for such a binding," Jean-Claude said.

"What is necessary, exactly?" he asked.

Jean-Claude licked his lips. "This is magic, not science. In truth I am not sure. We could do the fourth mark, that I know how to do, but what happened at the club last night was not the fourth mark. It was as if ma petite slipped into me. We were joined as never before, and it made us unbelievably powerful."

"How did it work?"

"We touched."

"We were in the middle of a crisis of police proportions," I said.

"Oui, but I think it will work with touching. We are of Belle's line, and most of her magic can be reached through physical closeness."

"Physical closeness," Richard said, and he shook his head. "Define physical closeness."

Jean-Claude smiled. "Tell me what you would have of me, Richard. What rules and restrictions would make you feel safe?"

"If I said, don't touch me?"

"Then I say we are wasting our time. Ma petite and I were touching when it happened, not intimately, but the contact was important. Physical contact makes most of my powers easier."

"Define not intimate."

"I think he was holding my hand," I said.

Richard smiled, a quick flash in his tanned face, "Hand-holding I can manage."

Jean-Claude smiled, and it was nice to see them smiling at each other for once. "I would ask that if I need to touch you for balance that that be allowed."

Richard narrowed his eyes a little. "Depends on where you're touching me, but okay."

Jean-Claude shook his head. "That is not Richard's look, that is your look, ma petite. Your look from our Richard's face."

"Well, you know what they say, couples start looking like each other after awhile."

Richard looked at me. "Couple?"

I shrugged. "If I'm going to be lupa to your Ulfric, then yeah. That's how your pack will see it."

He nodded, then smiled again. "Just like that, you agree to it all."

I reached out my hand, and after a moment's hesitation, he took it. There was no flash of munin or Raina, it was just his hand so warm in mine. "We'll try it, see if it works, depends on what I have to do as your lupa. I just want you to know that you can walk out the door right now, and I'll still try to play lupanar with you."

He squeezed my hand. "You won't force me?"

"Not my kick."

"Nor mine," Jean-Claude said. "I have been victim too many times over the centuries. It has given me no taste for it."

Richard took in a big breath, which moved his chest and shoulders, and raised his stomach up and down, as if he'd drawn air all the way down to his toes. He let it out slowly, then nodded. "Let's try. If I can't do it, then I can't do it, but I'll try."

I kept my hand in Jean-Claude's, but stepped away from him, until I was standing in front of Richard. I went up on tiptoes, and he bent down so I could kiss him, gently, on the mouth. "Have I told you recently that I think you are very brave?"

His eyes filled with something warm and good. "Never."

"Then I'm saying it now."

"Thank you," he said, and his arm slid around my waist, the warmth of his skin pulsing even through the silk. No, not his warmth, his power.

Jean-Claude stood up, and I drew him into the back of my body. Richard tensed when Jean-Claude's body pinned his arm, but he fought it. Fought to relax. He wasn't entirely successful, but he tried. A for effort.

"Now, let's get naked," I said.

I actually made them both choke and laugh at the same time. "Ma petite, what has made you so bold?"

"It takes the three of us forever to do anything. We discuss it, we argue it, we fight, we make up, we fight. I don't want to discuss anymore. If we're going to do this, let's do it."

"Just like that," Richard said, "off with the clothes, no sweet talk first."

I leaned into the circle of his arm, and the weight of Jean-Claude behind my back. I looked up Richard's face, and said, "I want to see if I can deep throat you."

He blinked at me, then started to laugh, then stopped, and finally said in a strained voice, "You couldn't before. It was great, but you never quite--"

"I've been practicing," I said. I smiled up at him.

"That smile," he said.

"What smile?" I said.

Jean-Claude answered, "The knowing smile."

"The one that says you're thinking dirty thoughts, and you want to do them all with me. You're the only woman I know that can put innocence and evil into the same look."

"Evil," I said. "Am I supposed to be offended?"

"I just never expected to see that smile directed at me again." He kissed me on the forehead. "For that smile, I'd do a lot."

"I still don't get the idea of innocence and evil in the same smile."

"You have the look of a fallen angel, ma petite. An angel does not stop being an angel merely because they fall from grace; their wings are not so easily taken."

I remembered thinking almost the same thing about Richard earlier. Like a fallen angel. Should it have bothered me that Jean-Claude and I were using the same analogy? Yeah, but out loud all I said was, "I thought you were the dark angel here?" I turned so I could see his face.

He smiled and whispered, "Nothing I could have offered would have gotten him out of his pants."

"I heard that," Richard said.

Jean-Claude laughed. "And will you refuse her offer?"

He looked from Jean-Claude to me, then back to Jean-Claude. Richard laughed, a very masculine laugh. "No."

I was suddenly very aware of the two of them pressed on either side of me. Enough foreplay, off with the clothes.

59

The clothes came off, then Richard argued with me on what position I'd be better able to deep throat him. Like I said, the three of us together have to argue about everything. Jean-Claude settled the argument by simply saying, "Let ma petite try her way, and if it does not work, we can try yours." I began to realize that Richard and I as a couple was truly impossible, but as a threesome, if the third was our diplomat, it might work. What does it say when you need another adult in the bed to referee? Nothing I wanted to think about too deeply, not at that moment. At that moment, I let all the doubts go, all of them. I knew Richard and I too well not to suspect that we would wreck this later. But for now, right now, we had this moment. I tried to get out of my way and enjoy it, and had to trust the men to do the same.

I'd seen Richard nude, and recently, but it had been a long time since I'd seen him stretched nude on a bed, on his back, with the long length of his body spilled out in front of me. I made him spread his legs so I could lie down between them, rest my head against the muscled swell of his thigh, and gaze up the length of him. It was a form of teasing myself, almost. So close to his groin, but not touching. But it wasn't that I just wanted to look, it was the whole package. And it wasn't just that he was lovely to look at, it was that after I'd looked at the groin, only partially erect, and still impressive, the flat plain of his stomach with its perfect dimple of belly button, the swell of his chest with his nipples like dark brown punctuation to all that permanently tanned muscle; the swell of his shoulders, and finally his face. His face gazing down at me. The pure brown of his eyes like chocolate, the look in them already a little unfocused, when all I'd done was lay my cheek against his thigh and breathed out along his testicles. A feather of a touch, and already his face was showing the effect, as were other parts of his body.

It wasn't just the body, it was Richard looking down at me. The weight of him in his eyes. Him staring down the line of his own body, while I lay between his thighs. I used to think that only death would take someone away from me. But I had learned that so many lesser things can steal someone away, just as completely, just as forever. They live, they breathe, but you never get to touch them, you never see them nude, you never wake to their smile, the smell of their skin on your sheets. There are things so much less dramatic than death that are just as permanent. If I never got to be here like this with Richard again, I wanted it to last. I wanted to take my time.

Where was Jean-Claude? Sitting in the far corner of the bed opposite us. He was nude, but sitting with his back against the wall, one knee drawn up so that he was covered, for the most part, even if you looked directly at him. He looked like a great pale cat curled on the pillows. Once I would have said he looked utterly relaxed, but I knew him too well now. I saw the way he held his shoulders, the tension in one leg. He was holding himself in check, being oh, so careful.

I settled my cheek against Richard's thigh, the way a cat will scent mark you, rubbing back and forth. Just that, nothing more, but it made him writhe. His legs tensing around me, so that his legs flexed on either side of my body. The feel of even that much made me close my eyes and rest my cheek between his legs, so that my face was cradled, oh, so gently against the soft warmth of his testicles. I nestled my mouth against that silky skin. The tiny stiff hairs tickled along my face as I licked that soft, moveable skin. More hair to tickle along my lips. I preferred smoother skin, a little less fuzzy. But of course, I could have that by simply moving up.

I went up on my knees and licked along the front of his shaft, licked it like it was a big piece of candy, and I didn't want it to melt. Licked it back and forth, up and down, just on the front of the shaft, until he cried out, and his hands convulsed on the red sheets.

"Anita, please, no more teasing."

I raised up so I was kneeling between his legs. "Teasing, that's not teasing, that's foreplay."

He swallowed, and it looked like it was an effort, or maybe his throat was dry. "Then less foreplay, at least for me. I don't need it."

I looked down at him, the eagerness in his eyes, his face, his whole body. I could feel what he wanted, feel it almost like he was yelling it in my head. I looked at Jean-Claude. "Some men like a lot of foreplay."

Jean-Claude gave that Gallic shrug. "But it is not me that you are pleasing now."

"I thought you said we had to all three be touching for this to work?"

"I thought I would give you and Richard a chance to reacquaint yourselves before I joined you."

I climbed over Richard's thigh, so I could kneel beside his hip. "Sometime during all this sex, the boundaries between us will come crashing down. If we aren't all three touching when it happens, we may miss our window to bind ourselves closer."

"Perhaps," Jean-Claude said, "what do you propose?"

"Come hold Richard's hand."

"Anita," Richard began.

I wrapped my hand around the base of him, and found that he wasn't quite as hard as he had been a moment before. The thought of Jean-Claude joining us did not do it for him. I was sorry that it bothered him, but I hadn't crawled into this bed for just sex. It was an all-or-nothing deal. Sex and more metaphysical muscle, not just sex.

I squeezed him, one quick pulse, and it stole his words, made his breath shudder from between his lips. "Richard's going to need something to hold on to soon, and there's no headboard."

Richard found his voice. "That was oversharing," and he sounded a little angry.

"You know you like to hold on to something solid while I do this."

He gave me sullen eyes. It was not a look I wanted to see today, not from him. "Hold his hand, Richard, that's all I'm asking right now. Just hold his hand, or let him hold yours. Is that so much to ask?"

I turned so that I was facing away from him, but facing directly another part of his anatomy, which also had a head. I kept my hand on the base of him and slid my mouth over him. He wasn't completely hard yet, and I fought to take as much of him in as I could before he stiffened. It was easier a little softer, less hard to swallow past a certain point. Even soft, there came that moment where my body said, no, we're choking, that nothing this big should be coming down this far in one piece. It was as if I was swallowing him down, but because he was still attached and so big, it was more like I walked my throat over him, up him. I'd found that if I didn't struggle, that I could breathe with this much down my throat. I could breathe, if I didn't struggle. I could fight my way down the long, thick shaft of him, if I relaxed while I fought for it. It was a struggle to get all the way down, but at the same time, the trick was not to fight. Only I could make oral sex into a zen moment.

When my lip felt the solid touch of the front of his body, then, and only then, did I let myself begin to slide back up. It was always so much easier going up than coming down. I came up off of him, breathless, but pleased. I'd only recently been able to do that with Micah, after some very embarrassing failed attempts. Like in throwing up embarrassing. It's one of the reasons you should never try this stuff with people unless you love them. People who love you don't point and laugh.

I didn't give him time to catch his breath, only for me to catch mine. I slid my mouth back over him, swallowed him down, until the back of my throat convulsed around the end of him, and I could feel my throat close around the end of him, so deep, so terribly deep. I slid back up the long, thick, shaft of him, then forced myself down, down, until I met his body with my lips, and there was nowhere else to go, no more of him to take inside me. Then it wasn't that I tried to squeeze him in my mouth, but that my throat convulsed on its own, tightening down around him, my body trying to get rid of something so big, so impossible to swallow. I swallowed my own saliva, so I didn't choke on it. Only when I knew I couldn't take anymore, that one more time shoving him so deep in my throat would hurt, did I let myself stop swallowing. I let the wetness of my own mouth trail behind my lips, slide down the thickness of him, trail in thick, wet, lines down the shaft of him, until he was as wet from my mouth as he would have been between my legs.

Richard's voice, "God, Anita, God."

I raised my mouth off of him, my own saliva trailing in thick lines from my mouth to his body. I raised up and turned carefully, slowly, so he'd get the full visual.

He was staring down his body at me, his eyes too wide, face almost frantic. "Anita," and then, he saw me, and the visual threw his head back, spasmed his hands out, searching for something to hold on to. He'd already thrown off every pillow near him. Richard's hands searching for a headboard that wasn't there, searching for something to hold on to. His hand hit Jean-Claude's hand with a sharp smack of flesh on flesh.

Richard stopped his frantic flailing, looked at the other man, who had been so quiet, so still, pressed against the wall and the top of the bed. They had a moment when they were meeting each other's eyes. I don't know what Richard would have said, or done, because I rolled my hands up and over his groin, used the thick liquid to smooth over him, to glide over the head of him. It closed his eyes, and bowed his spine.

I turned, so that I was facing them. I wanted to watch their faces. I wrapped my hand around him, about halfway down, then bent my face back over him and slid him into my mouth, until I came to my hand. It was easier to take him in, faster, harder. With all of him it had been a fight, and no matter how good it felt having him in my mouth, down my throat, I was still fighting my body to keep him down, to breathe, to swallow, so that saliva didn't build up and make me choke. There was so much to concentrate on that I didn't have time to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. With only about half of him to work with, it was just fun. It wasn't just the feel of him, so ripe and hard in my mouth, but the skin was so soft, softer than any other skin on the body. It was like rolling muscled silk on my tongue, pounding it inside my mouth.

I watched Richard's body while I did it. His whole body writhed, his frantic breathing making everything from his stomach to his shoulders move. Both his hands were clasped in Jean-Claude's hands now. Richard's hands convulsed, until the muscles in his arms bulged, and he came up off the bed, crying a sound that was both a moan and scream that ended with my name. He settled back to the bed, his eyes closed, and I had a moment to look into Jean-Claude's face without Richard watching. For an instant Jean-Claude let me see how much this meant to him. The feel of all that strength in his hands, that Richard's struggles had pressed more of his body up against Jean-Claude's legs, that he was able to be here while Richard gave himself over to such abandon. For an instant it shone in his eyes, and I knew in that moment that as patient and careful as he'd been with me, it was nothing to how careful he had been with Richard.

"Stop," Richard said, "stop, or I'll go. Oh, God, stop." He raised his head up, laughing, breathless, and the look on his face was joyous, free in a way that he seldom looked these days.

I slid him out of my mouth, while I watched his face. He let his head fall back to the bed, his arms, shoulders beginning to relax, beginning to slide away from Jean-Claude's hands. I licked the head of him, and he convulsed again, muscles cording in his arms and chest, his hands crushing around Jean-Claude's. If there'd been a headboard, it might not have survived. But vampires are made of sterner stuff than wood, or metal.

"Please, Anita, please, stop. Let me catch my breath, or I won't last."

I stroked my hand up the wet, thickness of him.

He shuddered, and said, "Hand, too, God, just stop, please!"

The last please did it, an element of franticness. I took my hand away and knelt beside his body, my hands in my lap. It's hard to be demure when you're naked in a bed with two men, but I did my best.

Richard let himself relax into the bed, let the tension of pleasure slide away. His head rested against Jean-Claude's thigh, his hands still loose in the other man's hands. Either he was too high on sex to think about it, or he didn't mind. As a shapeshifter he shouldn't have minded mere physical contact with someone. Hell, the shapeshifters slept in big naked puppy piles, but Richard had always made a very clear line between vampires and shapeshifters. Vampires didn't get the up-close and personal stuff, period.

He turned his head, found that he needed a better angle, and used Jean-Claude's thigh like a pillow, to raise his face up enough to look at me comfortably. He moved his hands out of the other man's, but he kept his head propped there, and the two of them were framed against the dark of the wall and the crimson of the sheets, both nude, both so terribly right. It was as if I'd waited a long time to see them like this. If we hadn't been shielding so tight, I'd have wondered if it was my thought, or someone else's.

"Give me a few minutes, or the next thing we do will be the last thing we do, and it won't last long. God, you were good before, but not like that." He rolled his head back so he could look up the line of Jean-Claude's body to his face. "Did you teach her that?"

"Why is it that all men assume that only men can teach a woman how to have good sex?" I said.

Richard turned back to me and smiled--a smile more relaxed than any I'd seen in so long from him. "Are you saying you learned this from another woman?" He was teasing and let it show in his voice.

The teasing tone made me smile. "No, I figured it out on my own, thank you very much. Like I said, I've been practicing."

He rolled his head back to look at Jean-Claude, who obliged him by looking down to meet Richard's gaze. "On you?"

Jean-Claude smiled, "Non, man ami, I am well-endowed, but not so blessed as to help ma petite learn such technique."

Richard looked back down toward me. There was a look on his face that I'd seen all too often lately, a not-happy look. "Who?"

"I'll make you a deal, Richard. You don't ask me about my lovers, and I won't ask you about yours."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means if you weren't a lycanthrope, I would never have gone down on you like this until you proved you were disease free. You can get AIDS, gonorrhea, hepatitis, all just from oral sex. But lucky for you, you can't get anything. The lycanthropy destroys everything but itself, so you're disease free. Do you even know how many of the women in your pack and Verne's you've slept with?"

"Yes," he said, and the anger was still there.

"Do I want to know the number?"

"No," he said.

"But I'll bet I've never even come close to a number that large in my bed."

"I thought you said you hadn't kept track of what I was doing."

"I've heard a little, enough to know you've cleared three digits, or close to it. So let's agree not to get too possessive, or too self-righteous. Neither of us has the room for it."

He covered his face with his hands and made a sound, almost a growl.

Jean-Claude looked at me, his face was fighting for neutral, but not quite making it. We were closer than we'd ever been to being a true triumvirate, and Richard and I were blowing it.

"Fine, you're right, you're right. If this is going to work, you're right," Richard said.

I was the only one who saw the relief and surprise on Jean-Claude's face. By the time Richard lowered his hands and sat up, Jean-Claude's face was back to pleasant and unreadable.

I guess my face was surprised enough for both of us.

Richard smiled at me, though his eyes were still not happy.

"I wanted you in this bed. I'm not going to throw it away being stupid." His smile brightened and finally filled his eyes. "Alright, I'll try not to be too pigheaded, but lately I can't seem to help it."

"Welcome to my world," I said.

The smile got warmer. "Trade me places," he said.

I frowned. "What?"

"Trade me places." He scooted away from Jean-Claude and patted the bed next to the other man.

"You here."

I was still frowning, but not unhappy. I was more puzzled than anything. "Why?"

"I want to return the favor."

"The favor?"

"Lay down," he said, and patted the bed again. "Let Jean-Claude hold your hands."

I couldn't help frowning harder. "I'm not a headboard rider. He doesn't need to hold my hands."

"I felt how strong he is. Strong enough that when he holds your hands down you won't be able to get free."

I looked at his face.

"I am to be your ropes," Jean-Claude said.

Richard nodded, but kept looking at me.

"And what will you be doing while Jean-Claude holds me down?"

"Whatever I want to do."

I frowned harder. "Uh-unh, I need more of a clue than that."

"Don't you trust me?" And just the way he said it, the look in his face made me want to say no. If we'd been alone I don't think I'd have let him tie me up without a detailed list of planned activities. But Jean-Claude I trusted to referee. This new, more reasonable, more seductive Richard, I wasn't sure of yet.

"Anyone who's said 'trust me' or 'don't you trust me' to me couldn't be trusted."

"So you don't trust me," he said, and the smile faded at the corners.

"I didn't say that."

"What did you say, ma petite?" Jean-Claude asked.

"Yes."

Richard frowned at me. Jean-Claude made a small line in his forehead, for him a frown, when he was trying not to show anything.

"Yes," I said.

Jean-Claude smiled. It took Richard a moment longer to get it. "Yes," he said.

I nodded.

"Yes," he said again.

I nodded, again.

He smiled, and the smile was that wonderful smile. The one that made him look younger, more relaxed, more... himself, somehow.

I felt a smile spread across my face, a smile that I couldn't stop and didn't want to.

"Yes," he said, still smiling.

"Yes," I said.

"At last," Jean-Claude said, and he was smiling, too.

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