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I took in a lot of air, and let it out slow. I reached out and let his fingers brush mine. He came that fraction closer so he could take my hand, and that was the deed. He took my hand, and I knew that nothing he’d whispered in my head had been a lie. What would I do to keep my leopards safe? Anything. What would I do to undo the damage that Richard had done to his wolves? Almost anything. What would I do to keep Jean-Claude’s vampires from being at the mercy of masters like Belle Morte? Anything.

A night of metaphysical, or not so metaphysical, sex, with one man that I loved and another man that kept breaking my heart, so I must love him, too, or he couldn’t keep doing that, seemed a small enough price. Or maybe I just wanted to be with them both in a bed for the first time. Yes, the first time, contrary to all the rumors. Maybe I feared the chance would never come again, and I simply didn’t want to be the one who said no. Maybe.

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