I didn't give him time to catch his breath, only for me to catch mine. I slid my mouth back over him, swallowed him down, until the back of my throat convulsed around the end of him, and I could feel my throat close around the end of him, so deep, so terribly deep. I slid back up the long, thick, shaft of him, then forced myself down, down, until I met his body with my lips, and there was nowhere else to go, no more of him to take inside me. Then it wasn't that I tried to squeeze him in my mouth, but that my throat convulsed on its own, tightening down around him, my body trying to get rid of something so big, so impossible to swallow. I swallowed my own saliva, so I didn't choke on it. Only when I knew I couldn't take anymore, that one more time shoving him so deep in my throat would hurt, did I let myself stop swallowing. I let the wetness of my own mouth trail behind my lips, slide down the thickness of him, trail in thick, wet, lines down the shaft of him, until he was as wet from my mouth as he would have been between my legs.

Richard's voice, "God, Anita, God."

I raised my mouth off of him, my own saliva trailing in thick lines from my mouth to his body. I raised up and turned carefully, slowly, so he'd get the full visual.

He was staring down his body at me, his eyes too wide, face almost frantic. "Anita," and then, he saw me, and the visual threw his head back, spasmed his hands out, searching for something to hold on to. He'd already thrown off every pillow near him. Richard's hands searching for a headboard that wasn't there, searching for something to hold on to. His hand hit Jean-Claude's hand with a sharp smack of flesh on flesh.

Richard stopped his frantic flailing, looked at the other man, who had been so quiet, so still, pressed against the wall and the top of the bed. They had a moment when they were meeting each other's eyes. I don't know what Richard would have said, or done, because I rolled my hands up and over his groin, used the thick liquid to smooth over him, to glide over the head of him. It closed his eyes, and bowed his spine.

I turned, so that I was facing them. I wanted to watch their faces. I wrapped my hand around him, about halfway down, then bent my face back over him and slid him into my mouth, until I came to my hand. It was easier to take him in, faster, harder. With all of him it had been a fight, and no matter how good it felt having him in my mouth, down my throat, I was still fighting my body to keep him down, to breathe, to swallow, so that saliva didn't build up and make me choke. There was so much to concentrate on that I didn't have time to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. With only about half of him to work with, it was just fun. It wasn't just the feel of him, so ripe and hard in my mouth, but the skin was so soft, softer than any other skin on the body. It was like rolling muscled silk on my tongue, pounding it inside my mouth.

I watched Richard's body while I did it. His whole body writhed, his frantic breathing making everything from his stomach to his shoulders move. Both his hands were clasped in Jean-Claude's hands now. Richard's hands convulsed, until the muscles in his arms bulged, and he came up off the bed, crying a sound that was both a moan and scream that ended with my name. He settled back to the bed, his eyes closed, and I had a moment to look into Jean-Claude's face without Richard watching. For an instant Jean-Claude let me see how much this meant to him. The feel of all that strength in his hands, that Richard's struggles had pressed more of his body up against Jean-Claude's legs, that he was able to be here while Richard gave himself over to such abandon. For an instant it shone in his eyes, and I knew in that moment that as patient and careful as he'd been with me, it was nothing to how careful he had been with Richard.

"Stop," Richard said, "stop, or I'll go. Oh, God, stop." He raised his head up, laughing, breathless, and the look on his face was joyous, free in a way that he seldom looked these days.

I slid him out of my mouth, while I watched his face. He let his head fall back to the bed, his arms, shoulders beginning to relax, beginning to slide away from Jean-Claude's hands. I licked the head of him, and he convulsed again, muscles cording in his arms and chest, his hands crushing around Jean-Claude's. If there'd been a headboard, it might not have survived. But vampires are made of sterner stuff than wood, or metal.

"Please, Anita, please, stop. Let me catch my breath, or I won't last."

I stroked my hand up the wet, thickness of him.

He shuddered, and said, "Hand, too, God, just stop, please!"

The last please did it, an element of franticness. I took my hand away and knelt beside his body, my hands in my lap. It's hard to be demure when you're naked in a bed with two men, but I did my best.

Richard let himself relax into the bed, let the tension of pleasure slide away. His head rested against Jean-Claude's thigh, his hands still loose in the other man's hands. Either he was too high on sex to think about it, or he didn't mind. As a shapeshifter he shouldn't have minded mere physical contact with someone. Hell, the shapeshifters slept in big naked puppy piles, but Richard had always made a very clear line between vampires and shapeshifters. Vampires didn't get the up-close and personal stuff, period.

He turned his head, found that he needed a better angle, and used Jean-Claude's thigh like a pillow, to raise his face up enough to look at me comfortably. He moved his hands out of the other man's, but he kept his head propped there, and the two of them were framed against the dark of the wall and the crimson of the sheets, both nude, both so terribly right. It was as if I'd waited a long time to see them like this. If we hadn't been shielding so tight, I'd have wondered if it was my thought, or someone else's.

"Give me a few minutes, or the next thing we do will be the last thing we do, and it won't last long. God, you were good before, but not like that." He rolled his head back so he could look up the line of Jean-Claude's body to his face. "Did you teach her that?"

"Why is it that all men assume that only men can teach a woman how to have good sex?" I said.

Richard turned back to me and smiled—a smile more relaxed than any I'd seen in so long from him. "Are you saying you learned this from another woman?" He was teasing and let it show in his voice.

The teasing tone made me smile. "No, I figured it out on my own, thank you very much. Like I said, I've been practicing."

He rolled his head back to look at Jean-Claude, who obliged him by looking down to meet Richard's gaze. "On you?"

Jean-Claude smiled, " Non, man ami, I am well-endowed, but not so blessed as to help ma petite learn such technique."

Richard looked back down toward me. There was a look on his face that I'd seen all too often lately, a not-happy look. "Who?"

"I'll make you a deal, Richard. You don't ask me about my lovers, and I won't ask you about yours."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means if you weren't a lycanthrope, I would never have gone down on you like this until you proved you were disease free. You can get AIDS, gonorrhea, hepatitis, all just from oral sex. But lucky for you, you can't get anything. The lycanthropy destroys everything but itself, so you're disease free. Do you even know how many of the women in your pack and Verne's you've slept with?"

"Yes," he said, and the anger was still there.

"Do I want to know the number?"

"No," he said.

"But I'll bet I've never even come close to a number that large in my bed."

"I thought you said you hadn't kept track of what I was doing."