I put one hand in the middle of his ass, so that one finger could rub back and forth even through the jeans, but my other hand slid up his back, got tangled for a moment in the thick curls of his ponytail, then touched the warmth of his neck. I knew who was inside my head, even as I put a hand in Micah's hair and pulled his head to one side, so his neck stretched long and clean. Because we were almost the same height, his neck was just in the right position for me to lick along the meat of it. So warm, so incredibly warm. I wrapped my mouth around his neck, felt the pulse of his blood under his skin, and set teeth into that warmth.

Micah cried out, but not in pain. He ground himself against me tighter, giving me more of his neck, like an eager woman would press against a man. I set my teeth into his skin and fought the urge to bite down, to draw blood. Jean-Claude filled my head with images. Images of him and Asher, and Julianna, Asher's long-dead human servant. There was sex, but there was more laughter, more games of chess, and her doing needlework by the fire. There was more holding than fucking. Images of him and me, and Asher, but also of Micah. Micah's neck under his fangs, while I watched them both. Jean-Claude coming to find both of us asleep in his big bed, curled on the silk sheets, Micah's brown curls lying so close to my black curls that he could not tell where one ended and the other began. Jean-Claude let me feel his emotions, as he drew back the sheets and felt the first breath of our warmth. The sensation of him sliding his cold body between us, and how we moved in our sleep, waking slowly to his hands on our bodies. How much he valued that Micah would simply give him blood and not argue, or make less of the gift and the need than it was. Of how much it meant to him, that he could turn from Micah's willing, still bleeding body, to my body, and pierce me in a different way, while Micah watched, or helped. Seeing it from Jean-Claude's point of view was uncomfortable and made me want to slide away, but he whispered through my mind, while my mouth tasted Micah's skin. "If this is not love, ma petite, then I know nothing of it. If this is not love, then no one since time began has ever loved. You ask yourself What is love? Am I in love? when what you should be asking, is What is not love? ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love?"

I wanted to argue, but Jean-Claude was too close in my head, and Micah's neck was between my teeth. So many hungers could be fed off this flesh, so many needs, so much... so much. The sweet tang of blood trailed across my tongue, and it brought me back into myself, helped me pull back before I hurt him. But he collapsed around my body as if we'd finished sex. He shuddered against me and let his breath out with a sigh.

I held him with my arms at his back, or I think he'd have fallen. He'd given himself completely to me. He hadn't tried to protect himself or worried that I'd eat his throat out, and he should have. But he'd trusted me. Trusted me not to hurt him more than he enjoyed. I'd never bloodied him before, never gone past teeth marks and hickeys. It had felt so good to hold his flesh between my teeth and not to stop, until I tasted that first blood.

He gave a shaky laugh and said in a hoarse voice, "Nathaniel's going to be jealous."

"Yeah," I whispered, "he's always wanting me to mark him." The thought that came was, Would it kill me to give Nathaniel so me of what he wanted? Not kill me, no. The question was, would it break me, and if so, how much? Jean-Claude's echo in my head was, "Perhaps it will not break you, ma petite, perhaps it will heal you, and him."

"Get out of my head," I said.

"What?" Micah asked.

"Sorry, nothing, just babbling to myself." Jean-Claude did what I asked, but his laughter trailed inside my head like an echo for the rest of the morning.

26

I was in the kitchen eating biscuits with butter and honey slathered all over them. The biscuits were good, but the show was Gregory. He was still in leopardman form, but he was eating biscuits. Have you ever watched someone eat bread with teeth that are designed for tearing out the throats of gazelles? It was interesting. If he'd just put the whole biscuit in his mouth at once it would have been okay, but he didn't. He ate the rounds of bread dripping with butter and red currant jelly in pieces, delicately. Except that his jaws weren't made for delicate, so his fur was spotted with jelly, and he kept licking it off with an impossibly long tongue. It was disturbing, distracting, and vaguely fascinating. Like a combination of Animal Planet and Food Network.

It was good that I had something to amuse me, because Nathaniel was being very unamused. I'd known he might be upset about me marking Micah's neck, when he'd practically begged for me to do it to him, and I'd refused, but I had no real clue how upset. He'd been banging things around the kitchen. A cabinet door didn't just close, it slammed. Opening the refrigerator was a chorus of bangs, slaps, and the like... I didn't even know that plastic food containers could make that much noise.

In between slamming things around, he was agreeing with everything Gregory said, but his tone of voice sounded like he was fighting. "We've been advertising a leopard for tonight, if they can't have me, you're it," Gregory said, then licked that long pink tongue all the way around his "muzzle."

"Fine, it's not like I'll be doing anything else tonight." Somehow I thought that last was directed at me.

Micah was giving me the look, the one that said as clearly as if he'd spoken, fix this. Why was it always me that had to fix it? Because I was usually the one who screwed it up in the first place. Oh, that was why.

My teeth marks were imprinted into Micah's neck. The marks had been smeared with Neosporin, but he hadn't had to bandage them. Good for him, and for me. I'd stopped before I'd hurt him too badly. It was actually less blood than the one and only time I'd let myself mark Nathaniel. It had been when the ardeur was new and I was still trying to find ways to feed it that didn't involve intercourse. Silly me.

The last straw was when he took the butter dish off the table, before everybody was finished with it. Gregory grabbed for it, and claws were wrong for grabbing china. The plate fell and broke all over the floor. The butter slid across the floor in a long yellow line, like a really nasty snail trail. I don't know what I would have said—probably something not helpful—but just then the phone rang.

"Someone else get that," Nathaniel said from the floor where he was wiping up the mess, "I'm a little busy."

Micah just kept eating his breakfast, I think because he was upset with me for not saying something to help Nathaniel feel better. Problem was I didn't know what to say. So I got the phone.

"Anita, it's Ronnie."

"Ronnie, hi," and I was thinking furiously. Oh, yeah, I wasn't the only one having personal problems. I still couldn't believe that she'd turned down Louie's proposal. Out loud I said, "How ya doing?"

"Louie left a message on my phone, so I know you know." She sounded defensive.

"Okay, you want to talk about it?" I didn't take offense. It wasn't me she was mad at.