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I sighed. “Look, this is an area that I’ve only recently embraced myself. Sometimes my pain and pleasure centers get confused. What would hurt most people feels good to me, at least during sex.” It was my confession, so I didn’t have to meet his eyes, since it was my pain and not his.

“Me, too,” he said.

I looked at him. “Well, that would explain a lot.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The sex was always great, Richard. Even when everything else was going to hell, the sex never stopped being great.”

“You mean that?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

He smiled, and it was almost a real smile, except for that flinching in his eyes. “So you think I was too rough for Clair, because of my size?”

“And your technique is vigorous.”

He gave that frown again.

“Richard, haven’t you ever been with anyone where you weren’t as . . . vigorous?”

He gave me a look that said more clearly than any words that the answer was no.

“Okay, a friend of mine told me that men are ducklings, they tend to imprint on their first lovers. Which means they tend to make love the way they are first trained to make love. You were trained by a woman who was a sexual sadist and made porn movies, violent porn movies.”

He looked shocked, then horrified. “You’re saying Clair is right. I was too rough. I did hurt her.”

I shook my head. “Did she ask you not to be so vigorous during the lovemaking?”

“She never asked about my . . . technique at all. She just blew up and said I was too rough. That I enjoyed making her beast come. That I enjoyed her clawing me up. That I enjoyed making her a monster. That I always made love like an animal no matter what shape I was in.”

Eeeah. I said what I was thinking, “Did Clair mean to hurt you as much as possible, or was it just an accidental hit?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, that if I were trying to hurt you as much as possible, I couldn’t do better than that.”

“I think she just meant it. I mean if I’m having sex rough enough for Raina, then how can it be anything but rape to anyone else?”

I shook my head and waved a hand in front of his face, so he’d look up and at me. “Don’t ever use the word rape to me again, Richard, because you don’t do that. If you’re with someone who likes sex the same way you do, then it’s just good sex.”

“But rough,” he said.

I shrugged. “You don’t start out rough, but yeah, you usually end up there, but it was never anything I didn’t want to do. All Clair had to do was ask for what she wanted, but she treated you like so many women treat men, like you should be able to read her mind. You aren’t a mind reader, Richard, just a man, and men are usually less able to read a woman’s mind than another woman is.”

“I’m not a man, Anita, I’m a werewolf. I’m an animal.”

I grabbed his upper arms. “Don’t let me hear you say that, ever again. You say animal like it’s a dirty word, Richard, it’s not. But until you own that it’s not, don’t let anyone make you feel that bad about yourself.”

He smiled then, a little sad around the edges, but it was a real smile. He touched my arms with his hands, and I pulled away. I was so not going to hug and make up. I would help him through this, if I could, but we were not a couple anymore.

“If I didn’t hurt you, then why did you pull away just now?”

I hugged my arms tight and paced a little farther away from him. “You came here for truth, fine, here’s truth. We’re not a couple anymore, Richard, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel . . . oh, hell, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“And what would that be?” His voice was back to being guarded.

“You were very clear at my house yesterday. I was in your head, Richard. I know what you were thinking, what you were feeling. I was there inside your head.”

“Then you saw what I wanted to do to you.” He turned away, so that all I could see was the back of him in jeans, and the jean jacket that was a few shades bluer than the jeans. His hair was beginning to have waves, but it still looked shorn to me. “It was sick, Anita. I wanted you afraid of me. Having you afraid while I fucked you, would have been . . . would have