7

THE BED WAS done in red and black tonight. Jean-Claude changed all the bedding including the bed curtains between different color combinations. I'd never seen it being changed. I'd just come into the room and it would be blue, or red, or black, or even gold and silver, and various combinations of all the above. It was like magic: always fresh, clean sheets, always impeccably made.

Asher had stopped halfway between the door and the bed. He turned back, staring at us, his ice-blue eyes framed by all that golden hair. The look on his face was eager, but there was that edge of cruelty that I hated in him. I knew that whatever he was about to say, or do, would be unpleasant. He'd said he wanted this, but he was about to do something to wreck it.

"I want to see you nude," he said, and his voice held an echo of what Jean-Claude's could, as if the last word caressed down the body in a shivering line.

I waited for Jean-Claude to say something, do something, help. But it was Richard who said, "You're angry, Asher. You say you want me, all of us, but now you're angry and you're going to sabotage it."

I could feel a sort of sadness from Richard, not upset, just a deep, almost calm sadness.

I felt Jean-Claude's hand in mine, but he started to shield, to cut down the connection between us. I think he was afraid of what was going to happen. We were standing in the bedroom with the two men in our lives most likely to fuck up a good thing.

"What do you know about what I will do, Ulfric?" Asher asked, and his voice already held that edge of derision that he could do so well.

"It's what I would have done a few months ago."

"I am not you, wolf."

"I came here to make things better, not worse, Asher. So I'll tell you all a story."

"Is it a long story?" Asher said, voice thick with scorn.

"A little," Richard said.

"Then we should all sit down." Asher went to the bed and laid himself down in the middle of all the black and red pillows. His hair spilled out like a gilt-edged frame of foaming gold. His scarred cheek was pressed against the pillows so that he was once again that perfect face that had helped Belle Morte nearly rule Europe centuries ago. The blue of his shirt gleamed, the sapphire-and-diamond pin at his throat catching the light as he patted the bed beside him and said, "Come, Ulfric, sit beside me. I won't bite . . . yet." He smiled at Richard and made it everything a heterosexual man never wants to see on another man's face.

Richard laughed. I jumped and Jean-Claude went even more still beside me, as if should I let go of his hand he would simply vanish in plain sight. Most vampires couldn't really do that, but the old ones could be so still that you were forced to remember this was not a truly living being, but something else. Live human beings didn't ever feel like this with their hands in mine. Moments like this were one of the reasons I'd been able to resist his charms for so long. His hand was still wrapped around mine, but it was like holding a "living" mannequin.

I pulled at my hand, and he let me go. He knew how I felt about moments like this, and I also knew that it was his way of protecting himself from what was about to happen. The two men he was probably more attracted to than any others were about to tear us all apart again. Fuck.

"And what have I done to amuse you, Ulfric?" There was no teasing now, but the beginnings of anger made Asher's eyes gleam.

Richard started for the bed, taking his jean jacket off as he moved, so that by the time he got to the bed his upper body was painted against the red of his shirt. He'd been keeping up with his gym time. I knew that because it was one of the few places I'd seen him since summer. When you can bench-press a small car, as he could, you couldn't really get a challenging workout at a normal gym. Thanks to Jean-Claude's vampire marks I was stronger than I should have been, too. Micah, Jason, and Nathaniel had been taking me to the gym that was designed for that.

Richard threw his jacket on the foot of the bed and stood there looking down at Asher. He looked back, his face locked in an arrogant mask that  meant whatever he was thinking was something he didn't want to share. I knew part of it; no one who was moved by a handsome man could gaze up at Richard and not want him.

I looked at Jean-Claude. He was more unreadable than Asher. There would be no help from him, and I had no clue what to do.

Richard turned back and held his hand out to us. "Are you joining us?" He was smiling and he didn't look angry.

I shrugged and walked toward the bed. I knew I wasn't going to stay frozen by the door like a scared rabbit. If it was all going to go down in flames, the least I could do was run into the smoking building and try to salvage something. I let Richard take my hand and help me onto the bed. It was tall enough that in hose I tended to slide off the black satin coverlet.

We crawled onto the bed, and Richard used his hand in mine to direct me onto the side of Asher closest to the door, while he crawled around Asher's legs so he could lean into the pillows on the other side. I sat there, a little stiffly, and had a moment to share a look with Asher. He let me see that he was wondering what the hell was going on, too. Glad it wasn't just me.

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and lay back on the pillows still fully clothed including heels and my weapons, so not exactly comfortable, but so far we weren't completely fucked. It was a record for the four of us alone in a room.

Jean-Claude looked at us. For a moment he was that almost two-dimensional stillness, and then he took a step and from one moment to the other it was as if he came to life. It was like the difference between a photograph and film. He had that easy smile on his face, and was all ease and grace. He walked toward us as he'd probably walked into a thousand rooms over the years, smiling, pleasant, beautiful, and still hiding what he was feeling just as surely.

He stopped by the bedpost, his hands stroking the black and red curtains. He looked at us all and shook his head. "Too good to be true," he said.

Richard nodded. "I've been a bastard and I'm sorry."

We all looked at him, including Asher. It startled him enough that he didn't even worry about how his hair fell so that his scars were bare to the soft glow of the bedside lamps.

"The apology is a wondrous thing, mon ami, but forgive this old vampire if he asks, what exactly are you sorry for?"

"What he said," I said.

"When you and I first met, Anita, I'd just gotten away from Raina and Gabriel."

"The vampires still speak of Raina, the old Lupa of your pack, and Gabriel, the ex-leader of the wereleopards. They make some of Belle Morte's court sound kind, and they are not kind," Asher said.

Richard nodded. "They were both true sexual sadists."

"In that real serial-killer sort of way," I added.

Asher turned his head to look at me. "I heard you killed them both while they were trying to make a rape-and-snuff film starring you and Gabriel. I thought the story had grown in the telling."

I shook my head. "I don't know if the details have grown, but the basics are true." I shivered. Gabriel and Raina had been the couple from hell, and it had been part luck that helped me kill them and save the others. I had some scars from Gabriel that I'd have for the rest of my life.

Asher reached out and took my hand in his. "I am glad you killed them."

"We all are," Richard said.

"They are not a loss," Jean-Claude said.

"Like I said, when I met Anita I'd just gotten away from them. They'd tried to make me into a more dominant version of Nathaniel, just another pet."

"They never understood that you would never be that," Jean-Claude said.

Richard nodded and said, "I fought high enough in the pack structure to have more choices, and I beat the shit out of Gabriel one night. But that didn't stop Raina from trying to hurt me in other ways. She made our Ulfric, Marcus, give me to Jean-Claude. I had fought my way into dominance enough to stay out of the beds of people I didn't want to sleep with, and then they give me to a vampire whose power is all about sex. Raina told me that you'd seduce me eventually and she'd get to watch us together."

"I was Master of the City by then, Richard; I would not have let her do that to me, or to you."

Richard sat up, drawing his knees in, his strong, summer-tanned arms hugging them to his chest, making the muscles in his arms work. "I know that now, but she'd been my Lupa for six years. I believed her. So I looked at Jean-Claude as just one more person who was trying to corrupt me. I  realize that he was just as trapped as I was, but I couldn't see that then." His eyes looked haunted.

I sat up, still holding Asher's hand, and reached across him to touch Richard's arm. That made him smile, but he turned those serious, haunted eyes to Jean-Claude. "You were the only one left of the three of them. Almost every time I looked at you I thought of them. Then I blamed you for stealing Anita away from me. I know now that I drove her to you. I made her watch me eat Marcus." He sat up a little straighter as if he'd realized he was hunching. He held my hand against his arm and looked at me. "I did everything I could to make sure the first time you saw me shift to animal form that it was frightening and terrible. I am sorry about that."

"You hate being a werewolf. You wanted me to hate it, too."

He nodded. "I did, I just didn't realize that's what I was doing at the time."

"Your doctor must be very open-minded," Jean-Claude said.

Richard looked at him. "My therapist, yes, she is open-minded. We didn't really make a lot of progress until Anita was able to take back her anger this past summer."

One of the things about being a triumvirate of power is that you share parts of yourself and not just power. I'd gotten the ardeur and a craving for blood from Jean-Claude. From Richard I'd gotten his beast and a taste for flesh. Jean-Claude had gotten a certain ruthlessness from me; I wasn't sure what he'd gotten from Richard, or what Richard had gotten from him, but what Richard got from me was my rage.

I'd gained the ability to feed on anger, the way Jean-Claude could feed on lust. I could feed on sex, but found it harder to feed on the "emotion" of lust. Anger, though, I understood that. That had been my emotion of choice for years. Last summer I figured out how to call my rage back home from Richard. It was the one thing we'd shared with each other that one of us knew how to feed on. The other hungers were literally hungers for flesh, blood, and sex. You can feed a hunger, but you can't feed on a hunger.

I took my hand back and Richard let me. I settled back on my side of Asher. The vampire continued to hold my hand while we watched Richard.

"I hadn't understood how much the rage kept me from forgiving anyone, or working my issues, until Anita fed off it and took it back. The anger was almost like another beast inside me, but full moon didn't bring any relief. It's a horrible way to live, Anita."

I shrugged. "You get used to it."

He shook his head, sending his hair sliding across his shoulders. "I didn't. It was killing me. I had my own problems with self-loathing, but the anger made it all worse."

"I'm sorry about that," I said. I almost didn't want to say anything else, but I knew now that every time we left things unsaid between us, it came back and bit us down the road. "The anger is gone, Richard, I get that," I said, "but the self-loathing was all you. You hated being a werewolf. You broke up with me because I was more at home with the monsters than you were."

"My turn to apologize again," Richard said. His arms loosened and he sat back against the pillows. "I can't stop being a werewolf. It's like trying to stop being human. It is what I am. I could give up being Ulfric, but I'd still have to belong to the pack, and being king is better than being a follower. I learned that the hard way. I am Jean-Claude's animal to call, and the third leg of the triumvirate of power that allows him to run the city and have enough power to keep everyone safe." He looked at Jean-Claude now. "You are a good Master of the City, Jean-Claude. I didn't realize that the Master of the City is like the boss of a business. If the boss is a crazy bitch, then she hires more crazy people, and she keeps everybody else crazy. Nikolaos was that kind of Master of the City. Anita killed her to save all of us, but it was you that took control of the city and made everything work better than it had ever worked. You had managed all the vampire businesses in town for years. You'd been the financial leader all along."

"Thank you, mon ami."

"No, all of the wereanimal leaders think things are a thousand times better with you in charge."

Jean-Claude bowed just from the neck. "I have done my best."

"You have, you really have, and so has Anita. The only one that hasn't helped secure our base of power is me. I've spent the last few years alternating tightening my grip on the wolves like a tyrant, and letting go of so much control I was practically forcing some of my dominant wolves to challenge me for leadership. I've apologized to Sylvie for that. She's my second-in-command, and she's earned it putting up with me."

I hadn't seen him in nearly four months, and now he was sitting there saying things I'd given up on hearing. It was all too good to be true. I must have tensed, because Asher began to stroke the back of my hand with his other hand as he held me.

"I have longed for you to understand some of this, Richard," Jean-Claude said, "but I admit I had given up."

"Some of the other wereanimal leaders had an intervention, I guess you could call it. They told me that I was endangering them all. That by crippling the best Master of the City they'd ever had, I was hurting everyone. I reminded Rafael that his biggest taboo for all his wererats had been that they didn't feed Nikolaos, so how could he let his rats be food for you."

Richard looked down, not meeting anyone's eyes. "Rafael said, 'Nikolaos demanded I give her my people. Jean-Claude never asked, I offered, because every animal group that gets close to Jean-Claude and Anita gains in power. They do not steal power away; they help everyone grow more powerful.' I thought about what he said, and it was true. You both help everyone around you be better. I tried to think if I'd helped anyone be better, or stronger, in the last few years, and you know what?"

He hesitated, so I said, "What?"

He gave me a quick smile. "I helped the kids I taught, but other than my job I hadn't helped anyone, not even me."

"This is wonderful, mon ami," Jean-Claude said, "but I have to ask. Why are you here tonight? Why have you come?"

"Rafael told me he'd offer up his own body and blood in my place if he could help make St. Louis a safer place for his people. I know that the swan king, Donovan Reece, is already feeding Anita on a regular basis, and his swans are now doing blood donations to the vampires. Micah and his leopards are with Anita, and through her, with you. Everyone is trying to build us into a unit with you as its head, except me."

"Grand talk, Ulfric," Asher said, "but talk is very cheap, so I've found."

Richard looked at the vampire. "I'm working my issues, Asher; you need to do the same."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means you're pissed. You want Jean-Claude to love only you, and he doesn't. I wanted Anita to love only me and for us both to stop being part of the monsters. Neither of us is getting what we wanted. We need to make the best of what we have."

"Mon Dieu, you sound too good to be true, Ulfric, and too boring."

I drew my hand out of Asher's. He looked at me then. "You wanted Richard for you to touch, but it's like you're angry that you can't be here alone with Jean-Claude, or Jean-Claude and me. You're so angry and so  conflicted that you're going to pick at us all until something breaks. You do that when you're angry; you always did."

He sat up. "So, because I have not spent the last four months in therapy I am to be cast out of the bed. Well, while you were doing therapy I was here doing my part as his temoin, his second-in-command."

"I know that, Asher, and I'm sorry that I wasn't here to help," Richard said.

Asher started to push himself out from between us and move for the side of the bed. Richard grabbed his arm. "Let go of me, wolf," Asher hissed.

"I thought you wanted me to touch you."

That stopped the vampire and made him turn to look at the other man. He made sure his hair hid the one side of his face as they looked at each other. "I do."

"Then where are you going?"

Asher looked at Richard's hand where it still held his arm. He relaxed slightly, but said, "Did your therapist put you on drugs? Is that why this new calm?"

Richard smiled. "No, nothing much works for werewolves. Our body processes them too fast."

"Then you cannot mean this, and if you run away from Anita, who you love, and Jean-Claude, who you feel truly drawn to, you will not be able to tolerate my touch."

"There are limits to what you can do to me, and with me, that's true, but I share some of Jean-Claude's emotions and memories. I remember loving you, Asher, and I still have a body that could do it."

I stared at Richard, and then at the look on Asher's face. I'd never seen the vampire so surprised. He laughed, a wild, abrupt sound. "Are you offering what Jean-Claude has denied me?"

Richard smiled. "I think that would be pushing my newfound resolutions, but I am offering to try. You are powerful enough to have your own territory now with Narcissus; by staying here you make Jean-Claude stronger, which makes us all safer."

"And what are you willing to do to make me stay, Richard?" There was derision in his voice again.

Richard pulled him backward with that one hand on his arm. Asher let himself be pulled. Richard settled back against the pillows and drew the  other man's back in against his chest. He had his legs to one side so Asher was against only his chest, but it was more touch than I'd ever seen him do with any other man but Jean-Claude. Richard wrapped those strong arms around the vampire and held him. "I'm a shapeshifter; we like to sleep in big puppy piles."

Asher stroked his fingers down Richard's bare arms. Richard settled back deeper against the pillows, cuddling the other man closer to him. Asher bent his head and laid a kiss against that tanned, muscular arm.

"No biting, not yet, remember," Richard said, but he raised the arm that Asher wasn't kissing and stroked his hand through the other man's hair.

I looked at Jean-Claude and he looked at me. I held my arm out toward him. "Pinch me, because this has to be a dream."

Jean-Claude nodded. "You have read my mind, ma petite."

Asher rubbed his cheek against Richard's arm like a cat scent-marking. "Come into the pool, Jean-Claude, it is warm and smells so good."

"Don't just look at us - come cuddle," Richard said.

"Sorry, Richard, I just don't quite trust the change," I said.

"You mean you don't trust me," he said.

Asher was petting his arm with his hands and small kisses. "Don't the Americans have a saying, 'Do not look a gift horse in the mouth'?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Then what are you waiting for, Anita, unless you do not want either of us?" He looked at me over Richard's arm, giving me the weight of those beautiful eyes. Did I want both of them? Yes, yes I did.

I looked back at Jean-Claude, who was still standing beside the bed watching them. I held a hand out to Jean-Claude. "If you trust it, so will I."

"Trust," Jean-Claude whispered.

"When I realized how stupid I'd been toward both of you I thought about sending flowers, but didn't think there were enough roses in the world to make up for what I'd almost done to all of us." He rose up, and Asher made a small protesting noise as he took his arm back. Richard took hold of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head in one smooth movement. "I thought you'd like this better than flowers."

Asher hesitated, looking back at him. Richard drew him in against his chest, as he had before. Asher turned and laid a tentative hand on his bare side. Richard held his hands out, one to me and one toward Jean-Claude.

"I can always call a florist if you'd prefer that." His words were joking,  but his face was so serious. "But I was hoping that this would say, I screwed up and I'm sorry better than anything else."

Jean-Claude said, "If you mean this, then it will."

"If you don't mean it," I said, "and you bail again on us, then that's it, Richard. I can't let you keep cutting us up like this."

Asher laid his head on the other man's bare stomach, his arm hugging all that bare flesh. "Oh, for the love of God, stop talking and join us. He won't get out of his pants for just me."

I laughed, I couldn't help it. Richard didn't laugh. He ran his hand through the other man's hair and grabbed a handful of it, jerking his head back. I had a moment to see Asher's face. I knew that look, the wide, almost unfocused eyes, the slightly parted lips. I'd seen it on Nathaniel's face often enough, and caught it on mine in the mirror a time or two. That look said that Asher had gone from dominant to submissive, switched over by the pain, the suddenness, and the strength in Richard's hand.

Richard used Asher's hair as a handle to move the other man so they looked at each other. I saw the muscles in his forearm tighten. Asher made a small sound, and though pain caused it, it wasn't a pain sound. It was a good sound. One I'd heard Jean-Claude drive from Asher more than once, one that Nathaniel and I had gotten from him when we worked as a unit.

"I'm a dominant; I don't bottom to anyone, so if anyone is losing their pants it's not me." Richard dragged the man a little upward using that painful, pleasurable grip on his hair. Richard lowered his own face a little toward the vampire and said, "I am not food. I am not prey. I am the Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, and the next time you forget that, I will hurt you." He whispered the last almost into the other man's lips, close enough to kiss. I watched him use all that beauty on Asher as he had, in different ways, with me over the years. Beauty can be a weapon as devastating as any gun.

Richard sat back up and let go of Asher so abruptly he fell into the other man's lap. Asher lay there passive, his face to one side lost in the tangle of his own golden hair. Richard looked at Jean-Claude and me. "I haven't just been running from being a werewolf or Jean-Claude's animal to call. If pain and pleasure didn't move me, Raina could never have seduced me. I blamed her for me being a pervert, but she didn't invent this part of me, she just unleashed it." He laid his big hand on Asher's head and stroked his hair. The other man shivered under that small touch. "I don't want to have  sex with Asher, but causing him pain appeals to me. Making him want me, and denying him what he wants, that appeals to me, too." He laid his head back against the back of the bed and closed his eyes; when he opened them they had gone to a dark amber. "It appeals to me a lot."

Just the look in his eyes made me shiver. Jean-Claude touched my arm and I jumped. "Ma petite, shall we join them?"

I just nodded, because saying Wow out loud just didn't sound cool enough for what was lying in the bed looking at us with wolf amber eyes.