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By Root 6763 0

in this room would think it was wrong that I liked seeing Jean-Claude kiss another man, but I did think it. I was waiting for someone to tell me to be ashamed of myself. I’d seen someone I loved kiss another man, and not only hadn’t I been horrified, but I’d liked it. Was that wrong? I had waited for it to feel wrong, but it hadn’t. It had felt strangely right, as if I’d been waiting my whole life to see it. It had felt right in that way that only the things that truly speak to your heart can feel. I hadn’t felt bad when it was happening. I was feeling bad now. Why? Was it guilt? No, I felt uncomfortable, and a little squeamish, but not guilty. So what was it?

Micah touched my arm. “So many thoughts flying over your face—what are you thinking?”

“That I don’t feel bad, and shouldn’t I feel bad about it.”

He looked puzzled, frowned. “Bad about what?”

“Shouldn’t it bother me that I saw Jean-Claude kiss another man, a stranger at that?”

“Did it bother you?”

I shook my head. “Not at the time, no.”

He smiled, eyes still a little uncertain. “But it’s bothering you now. Why?”

“Did it bother you to watch us like that?”

He gave me a look. “I’ve watched you have sex with other men before, Anita.”

I suddenly felt thirteen again, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing.

“I believe, ma petite, he is asking how you felt about watching me with Augustine.”

I looked at him, happy he’d helped me, but uncomfortable that he’d had to help me.

“Did it bother you?” Micah asked me.

I shook my head. “No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was…” My breath shivered out of me. “It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together.”

“Then it’s okay,” Micah said. “Don’t feel bad because you don’t feel bad.”

Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. “It sounds stupid when you say it out loud.”

He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. “It’s not stupid, Anita. It’s how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes.”

I drew back enough to see his face. “You’re okay with everything we did tonight. You don’t think we’re evil or something.”

He chucked me under the chin. “That’s Richard’s voice in your head, not mine.”

I nodded. He was right, on part of it.

He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. “Take off the robe and let me hold you all naked and warm.”

I wanted to, in fact I couldn’t think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn’t touch my robe, and I didn’t climb on the bed.

Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.

I turned with a little gasp. “You’re naked.”

He frowned at me. “Yes, we always sleep naked.”

I shook my head, and said, “But…,” then I realized what was wrong. I’d sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true ménage à trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn’t been fact, until tonight.

I tried to put it into words. “I knew in theory you liked men as well as women,” I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I’d ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he’d vanish.

“But now you know in fact, and you think less of me,” he said, in a voice as empty as his face.

“No, not less, just…,” I tried again. “In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy catagory for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don’t sleep with them, or…oh, hell.” I looked up at Micah. “Won’t it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?”

Micah laughed. “Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?”

I frowned at him. “I don’t…” I pushed him hard enough that