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“So you’re not sleeping with him?”

The towel was not helping the jeans. “No, I’m not.” I threw the towel in the corner. “I can’t believe you’d even ask.”

“If you’d found me on the floor with a naked woman on top of me, you’d have thought the same thing,” he said.

Hmm, he had me there. “All the women I’d find you with would be strangers who are either dating you, fucking you, or both. What you saw on the floor was Jason being Jason. You know how he is.”

“You used to threaten to shoot him if he touched you.”

I stood. “Do you really want me to shoot him because he made a pass? I thought one of our main problems was that you thought I shot first and asked questions later. I think you called me bloodthirsty.” I pushed past him and where our skin touched power flared like an invisible flame.

He moved back clutching his arm like it had hurt. But I knew it hadn’t hurt. It had felt wonderful, a rush of power to make your hair stand on end. It was little touches like that that let us both know what it could be between us.

I walked out. So there was power between us, so there was heat, so what? It didn’t change the fact that I was sleeping with Jean-Claude. It didn’t change the fact that Richard was sleeping around. The fact that I was jealous of his girlfriends and he was jealous of any man he thought I might be having sex with was just a nasty cosmic joke. We’d get over it.

23

THERE WERE THREE people in my bed; none of them were me. Cherry and Zane had curled up around Nathaniel like fleshy security blankets. I’d been informed that the physical closeness of your group, whatever the animal flavor, was healing both emotionally and physically. Richard had backed up this bit of werelore, so the wereleopards got the bed, because Nathaniel had hysterics at the thought of being without me.

So the wereleopards got the bed, and I got the floor. I managed to get a blanket and a pillow to go with my bit of carpet. We were in a new cabin. Verne was going to try to clean the old cabin, but the bed and carpet were probably a lost cause.

I apologized for that, but Verne seemed to think I could do no wrong. He was tickled pink, purple, and blue that I’d fried Colin’s vamps. I was not so happy. Revenge can be a very scary thing. If someone had done to Jean-Claude’s vamps what I did to Colin’s vamps, I’d . . . we’d have killed them.

The bathroom door opened and closed quietly.

I sat up, hugging the blanket around me. Jason threaded his way between the two coffins. He was wearing a pair of silk boxers. He’d put them on last night in the bathroom and come out without a word. I’d still been trying to convince the wereleopards that they couldn’t all sleep naked.

Jason had wanted to sleep with them, adding his otherworldly energy to theirs, but they refused him. Not because he was wolf instead of leopard, but because Cherry didn’t trust him to keep his hands to himself.

Jason paused in front of the bed, staring down at the pile of sleeping wereleopards. He ran his hands through his sleep-tousled hair. His hair was straight enough and baby fine enough that his hands could smooth the hair into place. He stayed near the foot of the bed, staring down.

I finally stood, wrapping the blanket around me. I was wearing an oversized sleeping shirt that hit me at midcalf. One size does not fit all, but it was still nightclothes, and I wanted something between me and anyone else. At heart, I am a prude. I went to stand next to Jason, covered shoulder to foot in the blanket. It wasn’t Jason I didn’t trust. It was everyone else who made me uncomfortable.

Cherry lay on her back, sheets tangled around her knees. She was wearing a pair of red bikini underwear stretched tight across narrow hips. Her waist was very long so that she got height from there as well as those long legs. Her breasts were small and firm. She sighed and rolled one shoulder, making the flesh of one breast move, settling closer to the bed. The nipple tightened as if something in the movement or the dream was exciting. Or maybe