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“It’s been my expereince, Requiem, that people become more of who they are in extremes, both good and bad. Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.”

He looked at me, with an odd expression on his face. “That was a very wise thing to say.”

I had to smile. “You sound surprised.”

He gave an almost bow from the neck, as much as he could sitting in the seat. “My apologies, but in truth I’ve always thought of you as more muscle than brain. Not stupid,” he added hastily, “but not wise. Intelligent perhaps, but no, not wise.”

“I guess I’ll just take the compliment, and leave the insult alone.”

“It was not meant as an insult, Anita, far from it.” There was a look on his face, a feel to him, that was anxious.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. A lot of people underestimate me.”

“They see the delicate beauty, but not the killer,” he said.

“I’m not a delicate beauty,” I said.

He gave a small frown. “You are most assuredly delicate in appearance, and you are beautiful.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. Not beautiful, pretty, maybe, but not beautiful.”

His eyes widened a little. “If you do not think yourself beautiful, then you are using a different mirror from the one in front of my eyes.”

“Pretty words, but I’m surrounded by some of the most beautiful men living or dead. I may clean up well, but when comparing beauty, I don’t rank that high, not in this company.”

“It is true, perhaps, that your beauty is not a flashy beauty, as is Asher’s, or Jean-Claude’s, or even your Nathaniel’s, but it is beauty nonetheless. Perhaps the more precious, for it grows not at the first sight of the eye, but a little more each time one speaks with you or watches you move so commandingly into a situation, or watches the truth in your eyes when you say that you are not beautiful, and I realize that you mean it. That you are not being humble, or playing silly games, you simply do not see yourself.”

“See, that’s not beauty, that’s pretty with a personality that you like.”

“But do you not see, Anita, that there is beauty that hits the eye like a bolt of lighting, that burns and sears and blinds. It is more disaster than pleasure. But yours, yours is a beauty that lulls one into comfort, into not protecting one’s eyes from the light, then one night you realize that the moon, too, has its beauty.”

I shook my head. “I have no idea who you’re talking about, but it’s not me.”

He sighed. “You are a very hard woman to compliment.”

“You know, you’re not the first person to say that.”

He smiled. “That does not surprise me at all.”

Graham let out a long, long sigh, and sort of spilled himself back up onto the seat. It was like watching liquid fall upward. He had that same liquid grace that all the wereanimals seemed to have. He leaned his head against the headrest, but at least he was upright again. He gave me a slow, lazy blink, and his eyes were a dark, wolf amber, almost brown, but I knew the difference. I’d seen it often enough.

He smiled, and even that was lazy. “That was amazing.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.

“I don’t care.”

I frowned at him.

“Can you do it again, is all I want to know.”

I frowned harder.

Some of the laziness began to seep away from his face. “Look, you give me one of the most amazing orgasmic experiences of my life, and now you’re acting like the injured party. You’re the one that spilled all over me.”

“Not on purpose,” I said.

“You keep saying that, like you’re apologizing, why? Why are you apologizing?”

I looked at Requiem for help, though I didn’t hold much hope. But he did help. “I believe that Anita sees it as unasked-for sexual contact. A sort of rape, if you will.”

“Can’t rape the willing,” Graham said, and he stretched himself taller in the seat, settling