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I hit Jean-Claude’s bedroom door, as Richard was catching glimpses of the deer that darted just ahead of him, sprinting for its life. There were other wolves in the forest, most of them in true wolf form, but not all.

I flung the door open and the guards on the door, closed it firmly behind me. I don’t know what they sensed, or what they saw, and that was probably just as well.

There were still blue silk sheets on the bed, and Asher was still framed in them, motionless, dead. Only the Master of the City was awake, only he moved. I sent a questioning thought and felt all the vampires asnooze in their coffins, tucked in their beds. I touched Angelito for a moment, and found him restless and pacing, confused, wondering why his mistress hadn’t succeeded in her diabolical plan.

He looked up as if he saw me, or felt something, then I was back at the bathroom door. Richard had his deer down and struggling. A hoof caught him across the stomach, tore the skin, but there were other wolves there now, and the doe had no chance. A black furred wolf tore into her throat, and I felt Richard riding the deer in human form, holding her as the struggles grew slower, spasmodic, involuntary. The deer’s fear faded, like champagne opened and left to go flat.

The bathroom door flung open, hitting the wall, and I didn’t remember touching it. I was through the door before it slammed shut behind me, and again, I didn’t remember touching it.

Jean-Claude was in the black marble tub. He was kneeling, his long black hair clinging to his shoulders. He’d cleaned up. Feeling me coming towards him like a storm of need, he’d run a bath. Of course, he’d felt me like a storm of desire before, it didn’t always mean the storm would fall on him.

I could smell the fresh, hot blood, as Richard leaned down towards the deer’s throat. The wolf that had actually made the kill had backed off, so the Ulfric could feed. The deer’s skin smelled acrid, almost bitter, as if the fear had bled out of the skin. I did not want to be in Richard’s head when he put his mouth to that flesh.

I climbed into the bathtub in my clothes, the hot water soaking my jeans almost to the tops of my thighs. “Help me,” it came out in a whisper that I’d meant to be a scream.

Jean-Claude stood up, water streaming down the perfect whiteness of his skin, drawing my eyes down the length of his body, finding him soft and not ready for me. I screamed, and Richard sank teeth into skin that was covered in hair.

Jean-Claude caught me, or I would have fallen into the water. I suddenly couldn’t feel Richard anymore. It was as if a door had slammed in my face and there was a second of blessed silence, a quietness that went all the way to my soul.

Jean-Claude spoke into that silence. “I can shield you from our Richard, ma petite, and he from you, but I cannot shield us both from the ardeur.”

I stared up at him, where I’d half-swooned in his arms, his hands at my back, my body bowed down towards the water, my legs soaked with the hot liquid.

I opened my mouth to say something, then he was as good as his word, and the ardeur came roaring back. I convulsed in his arms, and he nearly dropped me, trailing my hair in the water, pulling me upwards, pressing our bodies against one another. My hands, my mouth, my body swarmed over him, traced that slick, perfect skin, caressed the faint tracery of whip scars on his back, which were just another part of his perfection.

He drew back from my mouth enough to gasp, “Ma petite, I have not fed, there is no blood to fill my body.”

I gazed up at him and found his eyes as normal as they ever got, midnight blue, lashed with black lace. But there was no power in them. Usually, by the time we’ve gotten this much foreplay in, his eyes had bled to pure pupilless blue.

I had to swim up through the ardeur, through the need to finally understand what he meant. I pushed my hair to one side, and said, “Feed, feed, then fuck me.”

“I cannot roll your mind, ma petite, it will only be pain.”

I shook my head, eyes closed, my hands tracing over the skin