"Pick a different word, okay? If we're going to have this talk, pick a different word."

"Sorry, okay, you haven't made love to him, that better?"

I nodded.

"Why haven't you made love to him? He obviously wants you to."

I shrugged.

"No, I want an answer on this one. Has Jean-Claude decided to draw the line at sharing you with this many men?"

"No," I said.

"Micah has a problem with it?"

"No."

"Then why not?"

I sighed. "Because when I first let Nathaniel move in, he was like a wounded puppy, something to take care of and help heal. He was so submissive that he wanted someone to run his life and order him around. I've got enough to do to run my own life, so I sort of demanded he change, become more independent. He did it, he's doing really well."

"He's a lot more confident than the last time I saw him," Ronnie said. "I mean he's almost like a different person."

I shook my head. "He's a stripper, he has to have a certain level of confidence in himself."

She shook her head. "Nope, had a roommate in college that stripped her way through school on the weekends. She had a terrible self-image."

"Then why did she strip?"

"It made her feel like someone wanted her. Her childhood makes yours and mine read like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. "

"Ouch," I said.

"Yeah, stripping made her feel good and bad all at the same time."

"What happened to her?" I asked.

"She graduated, found a job, found religion, and is now married with two kids and an attitude so holy that you can't have a conversation with her without her trying to convert you."

"They say that no one is as holy as a reformed sinner."

"Stripping isn't a sin, Anita. Being naked isn't a sin, it's the way God sends us into the world, how bad can it be?"

I shrugged.

"Sex isn't a sin either, Anita."

"Intellectually I know that, Ronnie, but part of me just can't shake my grandmother's voice. Sex was evil, men that wanted to touch you were evil, your body was dirty. It was all bad, and the nuns didn't help change that attitude."

"I guess once a Catholic always a Catholic," she said.

I sighed. "I guess." Truthfully, I thought a lot of the damage had been my grandmother's doing, and my stepmother, Judith, who made every touch some sort of favor. Physical touch was not a big thing in my family after my mother died.

"You feel guilty about Nathaniel, why?"

"I'm supposed to take care of him, Ronnie, not screw him."

"Anita, you can take care of someone and still have sex with them, married couples do it every day."

I sighed again. "I don't know why he weirds me out, but he does."

"You want him."

I covered my face with my hands and almost yelled, "Yes, yes, I want him." And just saying it out loud like that made me cringe inside. "He started life with me on the I'll-take-care-of-him list, not the future boyfriend list."

"Don't you and your boyfriends take care of each other?"

I thought about that. "I guess so. I mean, I hadn't thought about it."

"Why are you so busy trying to find reasons to talk yourself out of Nathaniel?"

I frowned at her. "Jason told me that it's because Nathaniel won't be aggressive enough. That if a man's just a little commanding, I feel like the choice isn't all mine, and the guilt isn't all mine either. Nathaniel's sort of forcing me to make the move, to be in charge, to be..."

"The one to blame," she offered.

"Maybe."

"Anita, I am terrified of spending the rest of my life with one man. I mean, what if a body like Nathaniel's comes walking up to me the day after I say yes to Louie? I'm going to turn it down?"

"Yeah," I said, "that's what being in love means, doesn't it?"

"Spoken by the girl who's sleeping with more men than I've dated in the last three years."

"I was raised that marriage would make everything that was dirty okay. Suddenly, all those feelings were legal, holy. Part of me has trouble letting that go."

"Letting what go?" she asked.

"That I'm never going to get married. That I'm never going to do anything to make how I feel about Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel, or Asher, or, hell, Damian, okay. That no matter what happens, I am going to be living in sin."

"You mean that you'd like to be in love with just one man and do the marriage thing?"

"I used to think so. Now..." I sat down at the table. "Oh, Ronnie, I don't know. I can't see being with just one person anymore. My life wouldn't work with just one of them in it."

"And that bothers you," she said.

"Yes, it does."

"Why?"

"Because this isn't the way it's supposed to be."

"Anita, 'supposed to be' is for children. Grown-ups know that it's what you make of it."

"My life is working, Ronnie. Nathaniel is like my wife, and Micah is the other husband. He works for the coalition and helps me take care of the leopards and all the other shapeshifters. It's partnership the way I always thought marriage could be, but never seems to be."

"And where does Jean-Claude fit into this little domestic scene?"

"Wherever he wants, I guess. He runs his business and polices his territory, and we date."

"You, him, and Asher date?"

"Sometimes."

She shook her head. "And Damian?"

"I don't know yet."

She looked down at her hands on the tabletop. "I guess we've both been having some interesting personal choices to make." She looked at me and frowned—a little frown. "Why is it that your choices seem so much more fun than mine?"

I smiled. "You have issues with commitment, marriage, and being tied to just one man. I have issues that anything short of that monogamous setup means you're a slut. We're both being set up to deal with our issues."

"You do sound like you've been to therapy."

"Glad to hear it shows," I said.

"So you're saying that we've fallen into the love lives we have so that we can face our demons and slay them?"

"Or realize that what we thought were monsters aren't that much different from us."

"You really did think that vampires were walking corpses once, didn't you?"

"Down to my toes."

"That must make it really hard to be in love with one of them."

I nodded. "Yes."

She took my hands in hers. "I'm sorry I've been pissy about Jean-Claude. I'll try to do better."

I smiled and squeezed her hands. "Apology accepted."

"I'm thirty, and I've never been this happy with anyone. I'll talk to Louie about giving me a little space and maybe finding a premarriage counselor."

"Can I say I'm happy to hear that, without you accusing me of wanting you to marry him?"

She smiled and had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah, and sorry about that, too."

"It's alright, Ronnie, we all have our hangups."

"Trust you to find a witch for a counselor, but if you can do therapy, I guess it's not too late for the rest of us."

"I was talking to Marianne for months before I realized what it was."

"You're saying that you went to therapy by accident."

I shrugged, squeezed her hands, and got up. Please, God, let some of the coffee still be warm.

"So you went to therapy by accident. You became the lover of the Master of the City, kicking and screaming that you wouldn't do it. Now you've fallen into one, or is it two ménage à trois, when your goal in life was monogamous marriage."

The French press was cold, but the coffeemaker was not. Yeah. "That about sums it up," I said.

"And my goal was to never tie myself down to any one person and never to marry. Now here we are, each getting what the other one thought she wanted."