"I thought Jean-Claude explained all this to you."
"I asked him why not me, and he said the power was unpredictable. But that wasn't the truth, was it?"
"Not all of it," I said, and cursed my vampire lover for being a chickenshit.
"Tell me all of it," Richard said.
"Micah knew what he wanted: his people safe at any cost. He said from the moment he came to me that he'd do anything, be anything, to be in my life. The ardeur made that happen for him. Nathaniel wanted a home and to be loved for himself, not just for sex, and the ardeur made that happen. Both of those desires are very clear. Do you know what you want most, Richard? Do you have one single heart's desire?"
"I want you."
I shook my head. "That's not your deepest darkest wish, Richard."
"I should know what my deepest wish is, Anita."
"Richard, if a genie appeared before you right now, what would you wish? Really, truly, if you could have anything, what would it be?"
"You."
"Liar," I said.
He sat up, and that otherworldly energy swirled through the room. "How dare you?"
"Richard, be honest with yourself. What would you have if you could have anything, no matter how impossible?"
He blinked at me, and the energy level in the room seeped away. He stared at me. "I don't want to be a werewolf."
"That's your deepest wish, Richard, and the ardeur can't give you that. I can't be that for you, so the ardeur doesn't work between you and me, because what you want most doesn't have anything to do with sex and love."
He stared at me and sat back in the water, almost like he was faint. "Oh, my, God." He whispered it.
"We thought at first you were just too conflicted for the ardeur to pick and choose, but I was the one who figured it out."
"You're right," he said. A look of soft horror covered his face. He looked at me, and such pain filled his eyes. "I did this to myself."
I shrugged.
"I was so afraid I'd become a monster that I took the inoculations against lycanthropy. That's how I caught it."
"I know," I said softly.
"And I lost you because I hate what I am more than I want you."
"You haven't lost me, Richard."
He looked at me, and I had to fight to keep meeting that look. "You'll never be just mine. We'll never have a life together."
"We can be part of each other's lives, Richard."
"Not in the way I want."
"Maybe not, but, Richard, don't throw away what we have. Was it so bad last night, sleeping with all of us? Was that so awful?"
"No," he said, "and if I hadn't been in bed with you, then Marmee Noir could have done something awful to you. You need me to protect you."
"Sometimes, yes."
"But I can't live with two other men, Anita. I can't share my bed with them every night. I just can't."
My eyes felt hot, my throat was tight. Damn it, I would not cry. I managed to say, "I know."
"Then where do I fit in your life?"
"Where do I fit in yours?" I asked.
He nodded. "That's fair." But that was all he said.
I sat on my side of the tub feeling lost and horrible. Only Richard could make me feel this bad; only he managed to cut me this deep. Damn it.
I felt Nathaniel like a distant tug. He wasn't feeling well, which meant that Damian, in his coffin, would be feeling worse. Damian hadn't woken for the day yet, and I needed to feed the ardeur before he tried to wake. Jean-Claude had explained to me that if one morning I didn't have enough energy to make Damian's body wake, he would never wake again. He would simply remain dead, forever.
"I've got to feed, Richard, now. Nathaniel is starting to feel bad, and I won't risk killing Damian."
Richard nodded. I expected him to say he'd get someone else for me to feed on, but he didn't. "We need to do enough foreplay so you can feed from me."
"We're fighting, that's not good foreplay."
"Are you saying you don't want to be with me now?" He said it low, careful, as if he were balancing a world of emotions on a very thin stick. One wrong comment and the stick would break and the world would fall. Shit.
"I'm saying I don't have time for lengthy foreplay. I need to feed, right away. I'm trying not to cry; that's not conducive to sex. Not for me, at least."
"I'm sorry, Anita."
"Don't be sorry, Richard. Fix it. Fix yourself, fix us, or don't fix us. But whatever you're going to do, we need to do it now. I won't risk lives because we're having another fight."
He nodded his head as if that were fair. Maybe it was. He started moving toward me through the water.
"What are you doing?" I asked, and sounded suspicious.
"I want you to feed off me, Anita."
"I'm pissed and hurt, and that doesn't lead to sex for me."
"If I leave you'll still be pissed and hurt. You'll still have trouble concentrating on the sex, won't you?"
I couldn't argue his logic. I almost said, But the others are smaller than you, and this is one situation where bigger isn't better. But I didn't say it out loud. I didn't want to hurt him that badly. I also knew that if Richard and I couldn't come to some kind of understanding, one day we'd be finished as a couple. He'd always be Jean-Claude's wolf to call. He'd always be bound to us in a triumvirate of power, but we'd be broken up. It would be like being trapped in a relationship with someone you'd divorced but could never completely get rid of. A little slice of hell, that.
He was kneeling in front of me, the water just above his waist. The edges of his hair were wet, but the top was still dry, and still held some of the slick stuff that had gotten on us when I ripped Travis into his animal form. Truthfully, a little mess wasn't enough to take away from how handsome he was, but the constant fighting was. The picking at it all, and his deep unhappiness with being a werewolf, that was unattractive. I gazed up at him, all that way to the nearly heart-stopping face, so handsome. Handsome enough that I'd have been embarrassed around him in high school. But handsome and well-endowed wasn't enough to keep letting him hurt me like this. I stared up at him, and for the first time my heart did not leap up, and neither did my libido. I was tired of the fighting. I was tired of his inability to accept our reality. He didn't believe I was a succubus. He thought it was something that would go away if we got me away from Jean-Claude. Didn't he understand that there was no going away from Jean-Claude, not for either of us? His comments said no, he didn't understand that, and that made me sad.
He stood up. He stood up with water dripping down his body. I was suddenly staring at a certain part of his anatomy with water drops decorating it. We all have our weaknesses, and one of mine was water. Richard had dated me long enough to know that. He was betting that seeing him wet was enough to distract me from being mad at him. I had a moment to decide to hold on to that angry sadness, or do what I wanted to do. Do what the suddenly rapid pulse in my neck wanted to do. I felt Nathaniel sway against a wall. I went to my knees, steadied my hands against the warm, wet sides of Richard's thighs, and lowered my mouth to his body.
Chapter Sixteen
I LICKED THE water off him with the tip of my tongue. I drank water from the looseness of his body, licking water from the testicles where they hung so heavy and large. I licked and drank the water until his body lengthened and hardened. I couldn't reach the tip of him now, not without wrapping my hand around the base of him and lowering all that hardness toward my mouth. He made small noises for me, and when I gazed up his body, the eyes that looked back had changed to wolf amber. Sex was supposed to be about losing control, but all lycanthropes could never completely lose control—because to lose control for them meant to change shape. At least once a year some new lycanthrope lost control and cut up a lover during sex. Sometimes the lover survived, sometimes they didn't, sometimes they got to be furry, too.