Even wet and eager, he had to work himself inside me. I writhed around him, just from the feel of him working his way inside. I gazed up at him, let my eyes see his face, the wolf eyes in his face as he fought himself, his arms supporting him above me, so that most of his body was above me, so that I could see him as he pushed his way into me.

"Feed, Anita, feed, please."

A please like that usually meant that a man was close. I called the ardeur to life. I called it, like coaxing a spark to life, to flame, to burn. The power spilled over me, through me, and into him. The ardeur poured over us in a warm wash of power. It opened my body to him so that he could push in and out of me. I could watch him in the mirrored walls around us, his body above mine, pushing in and out, in and out. He knew with the ardeur on us he didn't have to be careful, and he wasn't. He pushed all that length into me as hard and fast as he could. He grabbed my hips, lifted my lower body off the marble, held me in his big hands as he pounded himself into me, so hard and fast that our bodies made a wet, thudding noise. The end of him found the end of me, so that each stroke hit as far into my body as it could, and still he came in and in, so hard, so fast, he was almost a blur in the mirrors. He wasn't human, and he had speed and strength that wasn't human. Once he'd worried that he'd hurt me, but we'd found that I wasn't human-fragile anymore. We'd found that Richard could be as rough as he wanted, and he wouldn't break me. He was that rough now, then he found a new speed, a new hardness. It was as if he'd always been holding back, and I just hadn't known it. Faster, harder, until he was a blur in the mirrors, pounding himself inside me, until I cried out, orgasming around him, body spasming. I felt his body spasm inside me, felt his body buck against mine. All movement ceased, his head flung backward, eyes closing. His fingers dug into my ass, holding us both in that moment, as his body spasmed and went inside mine, with him buried as deeply inside my body as was possible to be. In that frozen moment, as our bodies rode each other, the ardeur fed. I fed. I fed on Richard's energy, fed on the part of him that was wolf, and human. I fed on all of him, took in every last delicious inch of his power, as I took in every last delicious inch of his body. When he let himself go like this, he gave so much energy.

He lowered me back to the edge of the marble tub. He slid out of me, and even that made me writhe. He collapsed onto his side, because there wasn't enough room for his shoulders otherwise. He lay gasping with his head near my waist. I managed to move my hand enough to touch his hair, but that was all I could manage. My pulse was still thundering in my ears.

He found his voice first. "Did I hurt you?"

I started to say no, but the endorphins were fading around the edges. There was already an ache beginning between my legs. To Micah I would have said, A little, but to Richard I said, "No." He had more issues than Micah did.

I felt his hand slide clumsily over my thigh, as if he couldn't quite make his hand work just yet. He brushed between my legs. I said in a voice that was half-laughing, "Not again, not yet."

He raised his hand so I could see that he had blood on his fingertips. "Did I hurt you?" His voice sounded surer of itself and less post-coital.

"Yes, and no," I said.

He managed to raise himself up on one elbow. "You're bleeding, Anita. I hurt you."

I looked at his fingertips. "A little, but it's a good hurt. I'll remember what we did with every ache."

His face closed down, and he stared at the blood on his fingertips as if it were an accusation.

"Richard, it was wonderful, amazing. I didn't know you'd been holding so much of yourself back."

"I should have kept holding back."

I touched his shoulder. "Richard, don't do this. Don't make it bad when it was good."

"You're bleeding, Anita. I fucked you so hard you're bleeding."

I thought of one thing to say, but wasn't sure if it would make things better or worse.

He moved away from me to sit on the edge of the tub with his legs dangling over the side. He washed the blood away.

"I'll be all right, Richard, honest."

"You can't know that," he said.

I rose, and I ached, deep inside my body. Maybe more than normal. I rose enough to see the blood on the marble, but there wasn't much of it. "If this is all the blood, then I'll be fine."

"Anita, you've never bled after sex before."

Truth time; I prayed that it was the right choice. "Yeah, I have."

He looked at me, frowning. "No, you haven't."

"Yeah, I have, just not with you."

He started to say, "Who… Micah?" He said the word like he wasn't happy to say it.

"Yes."

"This much blood?" he asked.

I nodded and sat up; now that the endorphins were leaving at a rapid rate, the marble felt cold. I held my hand out to him. "Help me back into the tub."

He took my hand almost automatically, as if he did it because it was there more than because he wanted to. He helped me slide back into the tub. I made a small pain noise. I was hurt, no doubt about that, but I wasn't broken. I'd had this hurt before with Micah. I didn't want it this rough every night, but I could do it, and when it was the right time, it was amazing.

"Has he hurt you this badly before?"

"It isn't hurt the way you say it, Richard. I'm not hurt, I hurt; it's not the same thing."

"I don't see the difference."

I lay back in the water, easing into it, letting the abused parts of my anatomy relax a little at a time. Strangely, the ache inside me was the only ache. The muscle soreness was gone, washed away on a wave of sex and the ardeur. Good for that.

"I wanted to fuck you, Anita. I wanted to fuck you as hard and fast as I could, and I did."

"Didn't it feel wonderful?" I asked.

He nodded. "It did, but if I hurt you, then think what I could do to someone who doesn't have vampire marks to make them harder to hurt. Think what I could do to a human woman."

I settled back into the water enough to wet all my hair, then sat up so I could look at him. He looked so sad, lost. "I've heard the stories, Richard. Broken pelvises, crushed organs, women and men who needed surgery to put themselves back together."

"When we're with humans we always have to be careful of them."

"So I've been told."

"I didn't know if you could take this, Anita. I didn't know if I would break you. The thought that I might fuck you until I pushed my way into parts of your body that should never be touched, excited me. I didn't want to do it, but the possibility of it excited the hell out of me. How sick is that?"

I blinked at him, not sure what to say. "I'm not sure it's sick at all. You didn't do it. You just thought about it. The thought excited you, but you didn't rip me apart to make it come true. I think maybe it's like a lot of violent fantasies: if the reality happened, it wouldn't be sexy at all, but the thought of it, a violent thought in the middle of sex, can drive the sex to the next level."

"Weren't you afraid of me?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I trusted you not to hurt me," I said.

He took off the condom and said, "There's blood on the condom."

"I'm not hurt, Richard, or at least no more than I wanted to be." Truthfully, maybe I was more hurt than I wanted to be. A pleasant ache between the legs was fine, but I was starting to hurt somewhere close to my belly button. That usually meant you'd overdone it. But I couldn't say that to Richard.

He looked at me. "You flinched just now."

I closed my eyes and floated back in the water. "I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

I felt the water move, knew he'd gotten in the tub. I sat up, but he was already standing over me. There was something menacing about the way he loomed over me. Most of the time I could ignore how physically large he was, in every way, but sometimes, like now, he made me see it. He wasn't trying to be intimidating, or I didn't think he was. Not on purpose, anyway.