It didn't. I felt that weight begin to build between my legs, slow and steady, but faster than normal because of all that had gone before. "Close," I whispered, "close." My hips began to rise up and down with his move­ments, so we danced for each other, my hips thrusting upward as his thrust down, so that we met again and again. The orgasm caught me, and there was no more dancing for me. There was just screaming, and nails along his sides, me writhing, but no rhythm, no control.

I came to myself panting, double-visioned, and found his body back in the same rhythm. He kept going in and out of me, as if he could do it all night. He damn near could. He brought me again, and this time I wound my upper body around him, pressed our chests together, dug claws into his back. He pressed his upper body against me, putting his upper chest against my mouth, while his body kept pumping away. I knew what he wanted, and I gave it to him. I bit him, bit him until I tasted blood. I held his upper body against mine, so that he wouldn't jerk away and cause me to hurt him more than I planned. My mouth filled with blood, and his rhythm faltered. Plea­sure he could fight off all night, but pain, pain would bring him faster.

But he brought me again first, and I tore my mouth away from his body, so I didn't bite him too much. I turned my face to the side, and screamed. I wrapped my legs around his body, locked my heels at the top of his ass, and pinned him to me, so he couldn't get the rhythm he wanted.

He raised himself up on hands and knees, with me clinging to the front of his body. He crawled us both to the head of the bed, and used one hand on my ass, and the other on the headboard, to lift me up, and put my back against the headboard. His voice came in a strangled whisper. "I want to move more." And he did, he moved in and out of me, over and over and over, while I clung to him with my arms and legs. He brought me again, and again, and finally one more time, and then he asked, "Please, please."

Some nights he liked to beg before I said yes, but tonight I didn't think either of us could stand much more. I whispered it against the sweet smell of his neck, "Yes, go, go, go inside me. God, go, please!"

He stopped trying for rhythm and thrust inside me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me again; I dug my nails into his shoulders and back, and he finally thrust up inside me. Thrust as far and hard as he could. He stayed there like that for a heartbeat, forever, then he slumped lower on his knees, while I still clung to him.

Our bodies were slick with sweat, and blood, and other things. He clung

with his hands to the headboard, his heart beating so fast I could see it. "God, that was good," he said, voice breathless, and not quite like his voice at all, yet.

I tried to say yes, and couldn't do it. It was as if I couldn't figure out how to form words, and I still couldn't make my eyes work. The world was still a white-edged blur, like something wrapped in cotton.

"Anita," Micah said, "are you all right?"

I managed to give him a thumbs-up, because it was the best I could do. It wasn't the first time that Micah and Nathaniel had fucked me wordless.

"Damn," Micah said, "I thought with three of us we might finally fuck you unconscious." His voice was teasing.

It took me three tries to say, in a very hoarse voice, "You need more men."

Micah leaned in close, kissed my cheek. "I think we can arrange that."

I managed to whisper, "Not tonight."

He kissed my cheek again. "Not tonight." He turned to Nathaniel. "You need help?"

Nathaniel nodded, wordlessly.

Micah and Jean-Claude helped peel us apart, then they went into the bathroom to clean up. Nathaniel and I still couldn't move enough to leave the bed. We lay side by side, touching, but not in each other's arms. Our bodies weren't working well enough for that, yet.

"God, Anita, I love you," he said, voice still breathy.

"I love you, too, Nathaniel," I said. And I did.

21

I fell asleep like I did most nights with my stomach cuddled against the back of Nathaniel's nude body, the warm curve of his ass tucked up tight against my stomach, one arm up so I could touch his hair, the other around his waist, or maybe a little lower. Micah cuddled in behind me, mirroring me almost exactly, except that his arm didn't curve in around my body but stretched across so that he was touching a little of Nathaniel. Jean-Claude cuddled in against Micah as if he'd done it before, putting his arm across Micah so that he could touch me. His hand curved around me, and I raised the arm around Nathaniel's waist, so I could touch Jean-Claude's arm. Dawn was close, and that warm, living arm wouldn't be warm or living for long. Vampires lost heat faster than a dead human. I wasn't sure why, but they did.

I enjoyed the warm curve of him while I could. Nathaniel snuggled closer to me, as if he'd pressed his ass through me into Micah, but I didn't mind. I liked it close. Besides, I knew he was missing me holding him tight. My fin­gers played on the small hairs on Jean-Claude's arm, back and forth, tracing his skin. The feel of him like that made me regret for an instant that it wasn't my body he was pressed up against.

I fell asleep in a nest of warm bodies and silk sheets. I'd had worse nights.

I came instantly awake in the pitch black, my heart in my throat. I didn't know what had woken me, but it was something bad. I lay there pressed be­tween Micah and Nathaniel, looking around the room in the dim light from the half-open bathroom door. It was the light Jean-Claude left on for us when we slept over. The room looked empty, so why was my pulse in my mouth? Bad dream, maybe.

I lay there pressed between the men, straining to hear something, but there was nothing but their quiet breathing. Jean-Claude's arm was across

Alicah's body, but it was no longer warm. Dawn had come and gone, and taken him from me again.

Then I saw a shadow. A shadow sitting on the foot of the bed. When I looked directly at it, it wasn't there, but out of the corner of my eye I could see it: a blackness that began to take on a shape, until there was a dark out­line of a woman sitting at the foot of the bed. What the hell?

I shook Micah's arm, trying to wake him, but it didn't work. I tried Nathaniel, and the same thing happened, nothing. Their breathing never changed. What was happening?

I couldn't wake them. Was I dreaming and didn't know it? I drew breath to scream. If it was a dream, it wouldn't matter; if it wasn't a dream then Claudia and the guards would come. But the moment I drew a sharp breath, the voice floated through my mind. "Do not scream, necromancer."

The breath left me, as if someone had pushed on my stomach. I finally managed a whisper: "Who are you?"

"Good, this guise does not frighten you. I was hoping it would not."

"Who ..." Then I smelled it: night. Night out of doors, night some place warm and soft with the scent of jasmine on the air. I knew who it was. "Marmee Noir" was the least rude of the nicknames the vampires called her. She was the Mother of All Darkness; she was the first vampire, and the ruler of their council, though she'd been in hibernation, or a coma, for more than a thousand years. The last time I'd seen her in a dream she'd been as big as the ocean, as black as the space between the stars. She'd scared the shit out of me.

The shadow smiled, or at least that's what it felt like. "Good."

I struggled to sit up, and the men slept on, not even moving in their sleep. Was this a dream, or was it real? If it was real we were in deep, deep shit. If it was a dream, then I'd had powerful vamps invade my dreams before.

I put my back against the wood of the headboard. It felt real and solid. But I didn't like sitting there naked in front of her. I wished I had a gown, and the thought was enough. I was suddenly wearing a white silk gown. Dream, because I'd been able to change it. Dream, it would be okay. It was just a dream. The knot in my gut didn't believe me, but the rest of me tried to believe.