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“When you first met Micah, what did you need in your life?”

“Stop trying to make me reason this through, Jean-Claude, just tell me.”

“You will not like it,” he said.

“I’m getting that impression, but remember I’m a jerk-the-Band-Aid-off kind of girl. Just tell me.”

“You needed help with the wereleopards, and with all the other shapeshifters that you were beginning to try to help. It was your willingness to help many kinds of shapeshifters that laid the groundwork for our so-lovely coalition. You yourself said that so much that was wrong with the lycanthrope community could be fixed if they would only talk to each other.”

“I remember all this, so what?”

“You needed a man in your life who simply said yes, instead of arguing with you or running his own agenda. You needed someone to put your needs first.” He looked at me, as if he’d been very clear. It wasn’t clear to me.

“Doesn’t everyone?” I said.

“I think I get it,” Micah said, softly.

I turned to him. “Then tell me.”

“My heart’s desire was safety for my people, and a partner powerful enough, passionate enough, to help me save them. We both got what we wanted most, out of each other.”

I frowned, trying to think, then said slowly, “Are you saying that I caused Micah to be everything I needed him to be?” I looked at Jean-Claude. “Are you saying that even now, he’s like under my power? That that’s why he never argues with me? That he’s under a spell?” I looked back at Micah, to see if his face was as horrified as mine felt.

He looked the same as ever, calm, ready to do what was needed. So practical, so…so everything I needed in a man. Shit.

He smiled at me. “Don’t look so horrified, Anita.”

“Do you normally argue more than this?”

He shook his head. “I was always pretty easygoing, and years trapped in Chimera’s group took care of most of my rebellion. It was too expensive to the people around me to be a smart-ass.”

“Is everything we have just vampire tricks, except I’m the vampire? Is it all a lie?”

“This was the reaction I feared you would have,” Jean-Claude said.

“What reaction am I supposed to have?” I asked, and it was almost a yell.

“You missed part of his point,” Micah said.

“What part?”

“If the ardeur made me into your perfect mate, then it made you into mine. It’s a double-edged sword, remember.”

Was I under a spell? My own spell? It was too complicated for me. I turned back to Jean-Claude. “I don’t understand this. I mean, if this is true, then how could we not have noticed?”

“But, ma petite, you did notice. Your Nimir-Raj is the first man you have ever had sex with on first meeting. He is the first man you have ever allowed yourself not to push away, is he not?”

I wanted to argue, and I couldn’t. Damn it, but I couldn’t. “Shit,” I said.

I turned, and looked at Nathaniel. He gave me a gentle smile, like you’d give someone in the doctor’s office who just got bad news.

“If this is true about Micah and me, then…”

“Oui, ma petite, the same would be true of Nathaniel.”

“No, it was different, very different with both of them.”

“But they are very different men. One heart’s desire is not the same as another’s.”

“I resisted Nathaniel for months before we had sex.”

“Oui, but it was not sex that Nathaniel wanted, not truly; he wanted to be loved and valued for himself, not just for his body. By denying him sex, but loving him, you gave him what he wanted most.”

I felt like I was choking. I couldn’t breathe. My back hit the wall. I leaned against it, trying to think, and failing.

“The only two men in my life that I haven’t seen all the way through are you and Richard.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “I knew how to keep you out, and Richard was strong enough, and conflicted enough, not to know his own heart’s desire.”

“But everyone else,” I stared at him. “Asher, Damian, maybe even Jason, hell, I don’t know.”

Requiem spoke then. “I think that your ardeur holds not just lust, Anita, but love, as Belle’s ardeur did. As my Ligeia’s ardeur did.”

“I’ve been inside Belle’s head. She wouldn’t know real love if it bit her on