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By Root 6518 0

to control what she can,” Jean-Claude said, nearly from the end of the bed, the robe sliding over his upper body until almost everything above the still-tied sash was naked to light. There was something about the way his body caught the flames, shining and pale, almost unreal, as if he were some kind of living work of art, that you would touch and he would fade, too beautiful to be real.

Richard snapped his fingers, and the sharp noise brought my attention back to him. He was frowning. “Are you actually turning me down?”

This was too hard a question for me. I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see either of them. “Not exactly, but I need to know what to expect, Richard. I need to know what this changes.”

“Every third day or so, I come to your house, and you feed the ardeur.”

I opened my eyes then. “Just a little sex, and that’s it.”

“What do you want from me, Anita?”

I pushed away from the door, because now I was getting angry. “Not dating, just fuck-buddies, is that it?”

“You’re living with two men now, I don’t think there’s room for me in your life.”

What I wanted to say was, if you can just fuck me and nothing else, then we were never really in love. What I said out loud was, “It’s not just the sex I miss, Richard. I miss weekend movie marathons. I miss going places with you. I miss you, not just your body, Richard.” I almost kept the next part to myself, but I had to know. It was time. “Do you miss me, Richard, or just my body?”

I managed to make it neutral, very neutral. Brownie points for me.

He looked down, and emotions fought across his face. His power flared like a warm wind, then died down. When he looked at me, there was pain and anger in his eyes. “You’re the one who said it first, Anita. We don’t work as each other’s one and only. I’m working hard to accept my life as it is, but I can’t live like you do. I still want one woman to be my forever person. I still want marriage, and maybe kids. I want a life, Anita. I know now that I can’t have what I want with you.” He reached out toward me, then his hands curled into fists. “But I miss you. Not just the sex. I miss the smell of you on my pillow, on my skin. I owe you an apology. When everything happened in Tennessee, I blamed my beast first, then I blamed you. It took six weeks of therapy to get me to see that I was pissed at you for saving my mother and brother when I couldn’t do it.”

“You would have given your life to save them,” I said.

“Yes, but then we’d all be dead.” It wasn’t just pain in his eyes, it was anguish. The kind of emotion that eats you up and spits you back out. “You did horrible things, Anita, horrible things to find out where they were in time. You tortured a man, cut him up to get the information. I couldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have let anyone do it in front of me. It wasn’t just that you saved them and I didn’t, it was when I heard all that happened, I realized that even if I’d been there with you, they would have died. My mother and Daniel would have died because I wouldn’t have let you do what was necessary to save them.”

I just looked at him, because I couldn’t think of anything good to say. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done in Tennessee, not all of it anyway, but I didn’t regret any of it, because to save Charlotte and Daniel, I would have done worse. My only true regret had been that I didn’t get there before they were raped and tortured. I would go to my grave regretting that part, because I’d seen Charlotte break into tears in her kitchen. She would say, “I don’t know why I’m crying. So silly.” It wasn’t silly, and I’d recommended a good therapist I knew. The one I usually recommended to people wanting to join the Church of Eternal life, as a forever member.

“You’re the Bolverk for my pack. The evildoer, the one who does what the Ulfric won’t, or can’t do. Raina was Bolverk for Marcus.”

“Yeah,” I said. See, I could still talk, but I still didn’t have anything good to say.

“I want the white picket fence, Anita, and I know you don’t.”

“It’s not that I don’t want it, Richard, it’s that it’s too late for me. My life won