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“Yeah, it makes me not trust him. Worse yet, it makes me not trust Richard.” I shook my head. “I never thought he’d keep anything from me, let alone things this important.”

“It makes you doubt them,” Damian said.

I stared down at the vampire. Just his cheek rested against my arm. The rest of his body stretched down the length of the bed but didn’t touch me. “This doesn’t seem like you, Damian.”

“What doesn’t seem like me?” he asked. His hand slid from where it rested on his side to the sheets. That one pale hand lay between our bodies, not touching, just . . . waiting.

“This, all this, it’s not you.”

“You don’t know anything about me, Anita. You don’t know what I’m like, not really.”

“What do you want from me, Damian?”

“Right now, to put this hand around your waist.”

“And if I said yes?”

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

What would Richard say? What would Jean-Claude say? Fuck them. “Yes,” I said.

He slid his hand over my waist until his arm rested across my stomach. It would have been natural to cuddle the body after the arm, but he didn’t. He kept that artificial distance between us.

I ran my left hand up and down that pale arm, playing over the small hairs on his arm. It felt terribly right to touch him, as if I’d been wanting to do it for a very long time. I didn’t want him to hold me. I wanted to hold him. It was a very different feeling than what I felt for Richard or Jean-Claude. Damian was right; it was the necromancy. It wanted to touch him, explore the edges of the power that bound us, the power that animated him.

My own personal power is closer kin to Jean-Claude’s than to Richard’s. It is a cool power, like an unfelt wind that plays over the mind and body. I let that cool thread spill out through my hand, down Damian’s arm. I thrust it into him like an invisible hand, shoved it into that pale body and felt an answering spark deep inside him. I felt my power flare and recognize a piece of itself. Whatever had animated Damian before was gone. I animated Damian now. He was truly mine, which, of course, was not possible.

He slid his body that last inch so that the length of him lay against me from my waist to my feet. He slid one leg over my legs, pressing himself against me.

“You’re trying to seduce me,” I said. But my voice was too soft, too private.

He laid a soft kiss on my arm. “Am I seducing you, or have you already seduced me?”

I shook my head. “Get up and get out, Damian.”

“You want me. I can feel it.”

“The power wants you, not me. I don’t want you the way I want Richard or Jean-Claude.”

“I’m not asking for love, Anita, just to be with you.”

I wanted to run my hands down his body. I knew that I could explore that body, touch every inch of it, and he wouldn’t stop me. It was both inviting and frightening.

I slid off the bed, letting Damian have the whole thing to himself. I could stand, no dizziness; great. “We are not doing this Damian. We are so not doing this.”

Damian propped himself up on his elbows, watching me. “If you give me a direct order, I must obey you, Anita. Even if that order contradicts one that Jean-Claude has given me.”

I frowned at him. “What are you saying?”

“Don’t you wonder what else he’s forbidden me to tell you?” Damian asked.

“You little bastard.”

He sat up, swinging his long legs off the side of the bed. “Don’t you want to know?”

I stared down at him for a heartbeat. “Yes, damn you, yes, I want to know.”

“You have to order me to tell you. I can’t do it otherwise.”

I almost didn’t do it. I was afraid of what he would say. Afraid of what else Jean-Claude had been hiding from me. “I order you, Damian, to tell me all the secrets that Jean-Claude has forbidden you to tell me.”

His breath came out in a long sigh. “Free at last. Jean-Claude, Asher, and even my master are all descended from the line of Belle Morte, Beautiful Death. She is our council master. Have you ever wondered why hundreds of years ago, most personal accounts of vampires said they were hideous monsters, walking corpses?”

“No, and what does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ve waited a long