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Auggie gave me flat eyes.

“You evil bastard.”

“It’s not me that’s left his pride open, ripe for the picking, Anita. He did that himself.”

“He loves his wife, that’s not a crime,” I said.

Auggie shrugged.

“Anita.” Noel’s small voice brought me back to look at him. He inched closer to me, his hand out, his face showing his fear. “Please, Anita, please, try me.”

I wanted to say, I won’t let them hurt you and your people, but I couldn’t. Not and be truthful. We had an alliance with the lions, true, but if Joseph had truly let his pride get this fucked up, and it was truly the lion’s way to take over the pride like this, then no other animal could interfere. We could help each other, but we couldn’t interfere directly in the dominance hierarchy of the other groups. Not unless we wanted to start glomming us all into some kind of super-group. Wereanimals didn’t do well in mixed-species groups. Too many cultural differences.

The only way I could send Haven home was to find another lion that my lioness liked. Shit. Noel stared at me, hand outstretched. The fear in his face made him look even younger and more inexperienced. No animal group could operate without dominants. You needed muscle and strength, and strength of will. If Joseph had truly done what Auggie said, then his pride was in the gravest of dangers. If it wasn’t Haven or Pierce now, it would be someone else later. Of course, if one of them were my semipermanent pomme de sang, then other lions might hesitate to attack them.

Hell, master vamps from around the country who hadn’t had the ballet troupe go anywhere near them were offering up pomme de sang candidates. We’d be seeing potential feeds for months even after this batch went home. We’d already had inquiries from animal groups that weren’t aligned with any vampire. You know you’re big fish, when all the sharks want to come play.

I did the only thing I could think of. I took Noel’s hand and drew him toward me. I wasn’t sure what we’d do when he got to me, but we’d think of something.

43

NOEL SMELLED OF fear. He smelled like food, but not food for the ardeur. He smelled like meat that just hadn’t stopped squirming yet. I pushed him onto the floor, raised his shirt to his shoulders. I stared down at his bare chest and stomach. He was breathing so fast, so hard, that his stomach rose and fell with it. I lowered my mouth over that pale, soft flesh. I stopped with my face just above his skin, so close that my breath came back warm against me. With that warm breath, came his scent, stronger, richer. It made me close my eyes. But I was too far into beast mind for sight to help or hurt that much. It was all about the smell of him, the sound of his breathing, and his heartbeat. I laid my ear against his chest so I could hear that frantic beating, so clear, so wonderfully afraid. I put my hand on his stomach so I could ride the movement of it, as he breathed.

“Slow your breathing, Noel,” Micah said, “or you’re going to hyperventilate.”

“I can’t help it,” Noel said, voice breathless, “she’s not thinking about sex.”

“If you act like food, then you’re food,” Travis said from behind us.

I lay there on the floor, my head over his heart, my hand on the quick rise and fall of his stomach. So soft, so…tender.

The thought slid my face down his body, until I rested at his sternum, the upper edge of his stomach. So close now that I could not so much see the fast rise and fall of his body as feel it under my cheek. I rolled my face over, and kissed his stomach.

He jerked, as if I’d bit him, and made a wonderful whimpering sound.

I buried my mouth in the soft, easy flesh of his belly. I took as much of his flesh into my mouth as I could hold, and not draw blood. I bit him, hard and deep, and it took all my willpower to rise up from that flesh, and leave it whole.

I pushed back from him, crab-walked until the wall stopped me. The sensation of all that warm, tender flesh filled my mouth. I could still feel it, a sensory memory that would haunt.