"It's not about being with men, or women, is it?" I said, "It's because none of the men I'm picking will ever put you at the center of their world."

"I want to be loved, Anita, as I once was."

"Julianna," I said, softly.

He nodded. "Once it was Jean-Claude, but he could never truly love an­other man the way he loves a woman. Belle's tastes and demands sent many of us to the arms of other men, but Jean-Claude could never be content with just men in his bed. He is a lover of women above all else."

"And you?" I asked, because he seemed to want me to ask.

"I think if it were the right man, I could be in love, and content, but I think the same of a woman. It is love I seek, Anita, not the package around it. I have always been needier of attention than Jean-Claude. I sought a woman for my human servant when I realized that Jean-Claude would never be content with just men, with just me."

I didn't know what to say to the pain in his voice. An emotional burden he'd carried for two or three hundred years, and I was supposed to fix it, or at least make it better, how? How was I going to do that?

I felt Damian reach out for me. It made me stagger against Asher. He had to catch me. "I'm draining Damian."

"Then I must stop being an enfant terrible, and let you feed."

"I do want you, Asher. I do love you. But right now, I don't have time to..."

"To heal my wounds," he finished for me.

"To make love to you the way I want to."

He gave me a look, like he didn't believe me.

"We have to feed and get back to the party, but you are not just emer­gency food to me. You are not just someone I share with Jean-Claude. You are special to me, Asher, you, just you. I don't have time to make you believe me tonight, but I'll try to do better later."

He drew me in against his body, held me close, whispered into my hair, "Later you will have to feed upon someone else, for I will have had my turn."

I drew back enough to see his face, and said, "Remember one thing, that I didn't make love to you that first time because I had to feed the ardeur. I made love to you because I wanted to, because Jean-Claude and I wanted to."

"You did it to protect me from Belle Morte's agents."

"Yeah, we did it so that Belle couldn't call you home, so you'd belong to us by her rules, but you're still the only new man in my life that I had sex with because I wanted to take care of you, not because you were food."

"Take care of me?"

I nodded. "It's what you do when you love someone."

He smiled then, and it was that rare smile. The smile that made him look terribly young, and not at all like himself, as if that smile was all that was left of what he might have been centuries ago. "You can't possibly love all the men in your life, Anita."

"No," I agreed, "but I love you. I love Jean-Claude."

"And Micah, and Nathaniel," he said.

I nodded.

"And London, and Requiem," he said.

I shook my head. "No, not them."

"Why not love them? They are beautiful and perfect."

I grinned. "Not perfect; handsome, but not perfect. Requiem's too damn moody by half. London, I'm a little embarrassed about him."

"Why embarrassed?"

"Not sure, maybe because I'm not sure I even like him, and I had sex with him." I felt Damian slumping at the table where he sat. Nathaniel

caught his arm, kept him in the chair. Asher had to catch me or I might have fallen.

"You need to feed," he said.

I nodded.

"Then we have talked enough. Tonight I will take care of you, because that is what you do when you love someone."

Heat rose up in my face, and I wasn't sure why.

He laughed, not a magical vampire laugh, but a very masculine laugh. That laugh that lets you know you've pleased them in some very guy sort of way.

"What?" I asked, and wouldn't look at him, because I knew that would make the blush worse.

"You blushed because I said I loved you."

I nodded, and tried to sound churlish, as I said, "So?"

"So, I know you love me."

That made me look up at him. "Just because I blushed?"

He nodded.

"I blush a lot."

He drew me into the circle of his arms. "Yes, but this one was for me." He laid a kiss upon my forehead. "I would like to feed while you feed."

"Haven't you fed yet?"

"No, the blood hunger did not rise."

"Isn't that unusual?"

"Very."

"Then feed." I thought about it. "Though I'm sort of running out of spots for fresh fang marks."

He touched the side of my neck where Requiem's bite lay. He traced his hand over the mound of my breast, dipping a little lower than the corset top until he caressed London's bite. He dipped his fingers lower, so that he touched my nipple. Just that brought my breath in a gasp.

He laughed again, that pleased sound. His hand slid up my thigh, forced me to move my legs apart so he could find Jean-Claude's bite in my very inner thigh.

My voice came breathy, "How did you know it was there?"

"I smelled it," he whispered. "Are you ready for me?"

I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice.

"Then look at me, Anita, look into my eyes."

I looked up slowly, and found his eyes full of light like blue ice, glittering in winter moonlight, all shadows and shimmers. His eyes dazzled me.

He was carrying me, and I hadn't remembered him picking me up. "Where are we going?" I whispered.

"The couch," he said.

"We have to be quick."

He laid me down upon the couch, my knees bent, and him kneeling be­tween them. "We can be quick now, because I know that there will be long later."

"All because I blushed for you," I said.

"Yes." He laid me down on the couch. There wasn't room for him to lie beside me, so he stood, and began to take off his clothes.

"If we take off the corset it will take forever to get it back on."

"The corset can stay." He threw his shirt and jacket on the arm of the couch. He stood there for a moment nude from the waist up. I stared up at him, stu­pidly, that golly, wow look on my face. I couldn't help it. He was so beautiful, and I knew that the rest of him was just as beautiful. I could look at him with knowledgeable anticipation. It made me shiver just staring up at him like that.

"The look on your face, Anita, mon Dieu, the look on your face."

I had to swallow twice to say, "What do you want me to take off?"

"Panties."

"Just panties," I said.

He nodded, and started unfastening his pants.

My pulse sped up. I had to sit up to take the panties off. It also helped me look away from him while I did it. Was it just that we had never been alone before? Was that this incredible anticipation? Or was it more than that? I wanted him. I wanted him to touch me. My body ached with the need, not just to be touched, but for Asher to touch me.

His hands slid over my bare shoulders, where I sat facing away from him. The smoothing of his hands down my skin made me hold my breath.

He leaned down and whispered, "What do you want?"

"Your hands on my body."

"What else do you want?"

"You inside me."

"What else?"

My pulse was hammering in my throat so hard I could barely speak around it. "Bite me while you fuck me, make me come both ways while you're inside me."

"Inside you both ways?" he whispered.

"Yes."

He grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled until it hurt, just a little, just enough. "Say please."

"Please."

"I have to take blood to enter you. To bring you a second time with my bite, I will have to take blood again."

I tried to reason that out, and failed, but finally said the only thing I could think to say. "Please."