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He nodded, his face still pressed to my hands. “Losing her virginity,” he said, voice muffled, low.

“Did you say virginity?”

He pulled away from me then, dropped his hands in his lap, and I noticed for the first time that he was wearing a towel knotted at his waist. “Yes.”

“You mean she’d never tried to control her beast during intercourse?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They’d been engaged for more than two years before Louisa was attacked and became one of us. They both wanted to wait for the wedding night.”

“Commendable,” I said. “And orgasm, to a certain extent, is orgasm. If she could control herself during nonintercourse orgasm, then she should have been able to control herself during intercourse, too.” I touched his shoulder again. “You did all you could for her.”

He jerked away as if I’d burned him, coming to his feet so suddenly that the chair crashed back against the kitchen island, then the floor. I sensed rather than saw people in the doorway. I said, “We’re alright.” I turned to see Shang-Da, Merle, and the two wererats, still hesitating in the doorway. “We’re alright, go away.” They all pulled back, but I knew now that we had an audience, because they wouldn’t go far.

Richard stood in the middle of my kitchen wearing nothing but a towel and the golden first light of dawn. Normally it would have distracted me from anything reasonable, but not this morning. The pain in his face was more important than his body right now. Looking at him, standing there so defiant, so hurt, I had an idea, an awful idea.

“Please tell me you don’t mean she wanted to wait for any sexual contact until the honeymoon?”

His chin raised, and that arrogance tried to slide over him. But it was a mask, and I saw through it now. Underneath he was scared and guilty. “I taught her to control the beast during anger, sadness, fear, pain, every extreme of emotion, but not sex. I respected her convictions.”

I stared at him. It was so something Richard would do. Theoretically, I even approved, but theory and practice aren’t the same. In real life it had been a bad idea, and Richard should have known that better than I did.

I felt my face go blank, empty. It was a good cop face. I didn’t want anything I was thinking to show for this. “So this Louisa shifted in the middle of sex and killed her husband, and the cops caught her.” I didn’t add that I was surprised they hadn’t shot her on sight. Finding the big bad wolf eating the body of the nice little human would be cause enough for shooting to kill.

“Louisa turned herself in. I think if she didn’t think suicide was a sin, she’d have killed herself.” He turned my way walking to the sliding glass doors, leaning his forehead against the glass, as if he was tired.

I wished I could have said it wasn’t his fault, but it was. He was her sponsor, the one who was supposed to teach her how to be a shapeshifter. I’d learned from dealing with the wereleopards, and Richard, and Verne’s pack in Tennessee that orgasm of any kind was one of the true tests of their control. Orgasm was supposed to be a release, but to truly give up all control meant shifting form, and that was the ultimate nightmare when you had a human lover. Richard had lectured me often enough when we were dating that he didn’t trust himself the night of the full moon, or even the day before. He didn’t fear losing control and killing me, just losing control and scaring me to death. Or more honestly, grossing me out. He had shifted on top of me once, and that had had nothing to do with sex. And that one experience had sent me running to Jean-Claude. Well, Richard changing on top of me and seeing him eat someone.

I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was that I had to say something, that silence was almost worse than anything.

He spoke without turning around. “Go ahead, Anita, tell me I’m a fool. Tell me I sacrificed both of them on the altar of my ideals.” His voice was bitter enough to choke on, just hearing the pain in it.

“Louisa and her husband wanted to hold true to who they were. You wanted to help them do