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He gave a pale version of his usual grin and said, “Was it good for you?”

I was feeling better enough to try and sit up, but failed. Jean-Claude said, “Lie a little longer, ma petite.”

Since I had no choice, I did what he suggested. I lay staring up at the dark, distant ceiling with its rows of lights. They’d turned off most of them, so that the club was nearly dark. Like the soft gloom that comes when you close the drapes during the day.

I felt Jason lay down on the other side of me, head resting on my thigh. Not long ago I’d have made him move, but I’d spent my time away learning how to be comfortable being close with the wereleopards. It had made me more tolerant of everyone, apparently. “Why are you tired?”

He rolled his head up to look at me without raising it from my leg, one hand curving over my calf as if to keep his balance. “You spill sex and magic through the whole club and you ask why I’m tired? You are such a tease.”

I frowned at him. “One more comment like that and you’ll have to move.”

He snuggled his head on my hose. “I can see that your underwear matches.”

“Get off of me, Jason.”

He slid to the floor without being told twice. He could never leave well enough alone, our Jason. He always had to get the last joke, the last comment, that one bit too many. I worried that someday with someone else that little quirk might get him hurt, or worse.

Richard propped himself up on one elbow, moving slowly as if he wasn’t sure everything was working. “I don’t know if that felt better than anything else we’ve ever done, or worse.”

“It feels like a combination of a hangover and mild flu to me,” I said.

“And yet it feels good,” Jean-Claude said.

I finally got upright and found that they both had a hand at my back to support me, as if their movements had been simultaneous.

I actually leaned in against their hands, rather than telling them to move. One, I was still shaky; two, I just didn’t find the physical contact unpleasant. All these months of trying to forge the wereleopards into a cohesive, friendly unit, and it was me that had learned to be cohesive and friendly. Me that had learned that not every helping hand is a threat to my independence. Me that had learned that not every offer of physical closeness is a trap or a lie.

Richard sat up first, slowly, keeping his hand on my back. Then Jean-Claude sat up, keeping his hand very still against me. I felt them exchange glances. This was the moment that I usually pulled away. We’d have some fantastic sex, metaphysical or otherwise, and that was my cue to close down, hide. We were in public, all the more reason to do it.

I didn’t pull away. Richard’s arm slid cautiously up my back, over my shoulders. Jean-Claude’s arm moved lower around my waist. They both pulled me into the curve of their bodies as if they were some huge, warm vinyl-covered chair with a pulse.

Some say that that moment during sex when you both have an orgasm your auras drop, you blend your energies, yourselves together. You share so much more than just your body during sex, it’s one of the reasons you should be careful who you do it with. Just sitting there on the floor with them was like that. I could feel their energies moving through me, like a low-level current, a distant hum. In time I was pretty sure it would become white noise—something you can ignore, like psychic shielding when you no longer have to concentrate on it. But now it was like we would always walk, move, through that dreamy afterglow where you were still connected, still not quite back in your own skin. I didn’t push them away, because I didn’t want to. Pushing them away would have been redundant. We didn’t need to touch to breach the barriers anymore. And that should have scared me more than anything else, but it didn’t.

Narcissus walked out into the middle of the floor and a soft light fell upon him, growing ever so gradually brighter. “Well, my friends, we have had a treat tonight, have we not?”

More applause, screams, and animal noises filled the dimness. Narcissus held up his hands until the