That otherworldly energy began to flow off him as if the water were getting reheated. I moved so I was sitting against the side of the tub. Standing up wouldn't help; he'd still loom over me. Besides, my stomach, or rather lower things, were beginning to cramp. I wasn't entirely certain I could stand up without bending over. That wouldn't help the situation. Was I hurt? Was I really hurt? Not a question I wanted to have to ask.

"You're hurt, really hurt, aren't you?"

His question was a little too close to what I'd just thought. We could accidentally share thoughts and feelings. I fought to put the shields back in place. Sex can bring them crashing down.

He knelt in the water, putting an arm on either side of me. He leaned in, the heat of his power beating against my body. It made things low in my body tense, and that hurt. I fought not to make little pain sounds. I managed not to, but Richard put his face against the side of mine and whispered, "Are you hurt?"

"Please, Richard." I whispered it.

"Are… you… hurt?" His power pulsed through me, and this time I made a small sound, but not a good one.

"You're going to raise my wolf if you don't control your power better." I said it through gritted teeth. One, I was hurting; two, I was getting angry.

He leaned in against my face and drew a deep breath. He was smelling my skin. His power was like a warm, wet heat pushing against me. I was shielding as hard as I could against him, his power, all of it. I thought of rock, stone walls to hide behind and put them in his metaphysical way.

He spoke against my cheek, his breath hot on my skin. "Pain has a smell to it, did you know that?"

"No. Yes." I'd smelled it myself once, twice, when the beast was first prowling around inside me.

"Are… you… hurt?" He said each word, slowly, carefully, his lips brushing against my cheek as he spoke.

Another cramp hit me, and I fought not to bend over my stomach. I fought to sit in the water, with him pressed against me, and not react. He'd implied he could smell I was hurt. Most lycanthropes can smell a lie. I said the only thing I could say: "Yes."

He kissed my cheek and said, "Thank you." Then he stood up and climbed out of the tub. He reached for one of the towels in the pile that always seemed to be in the bathroom.

"Where are you going?" I asked, though frankly I was ready for him to go.

"Away from you," he said.

I let myself fold over the next cramp. I didn't fight that it hurt. He wanted to be a bastard, fine. When I looked up again, he had the towel wrapped around his waist. He'd swallowed all that otherworldly energy, as if when he covered his nakedness, he'd covered more than just his body.

"I'll send for a doctor."

"No, not yet."

"Why not yet?"

"Because it may pass."

He frowned at me. "You sound like you've done this before."

"I've had cramping before—not this bad, truthfully—but it faded."

"Micah." He said the name like it was a curse.

"Yes." I was tired of protecting Richard's ego. Frankly, in that moment, I was tired of Richard.

"He always gets there before I do."

"There isn't a single thing that Micah got to do that you didn't have the chance to do first."

"My fault again," he said.

"Your choices," I said. I couldn't keep the strain out of my voice. Fine, let him know how much I was hurting.

"I love that," he said.

I frowned up at him, my hands pressed over my abdomen. "What?"

"That sound in your voice, I love it. The last time I heard it was in Raina's voice."

I frowned harder. "What are you talking about?"

"You know that she was a sexual sadist, and God knows she was, but she also liked pain. She liked rough sex from both sides; dishing it out and being the dish."

I couldn't frown harder so I said, "I actually did know that. I have some of her memories, remember."

"That's right, you carry her munin, her ghostly memory."

The munin were the ancestral memories of the werewolves. When a wolf died, they ate a little bit of the deceased and made them a permanent group memory. For real, not just ritual—though most werewolves couldn't "talk" as directly as I could with Raina's munin. It was supposed to enable you to access memories, get advice, but Raina had done her best to try to possess me for real. I had almost complete ability to keep her contained inside me. She wasn't like the beasts, or the ardeur. Raina was something I could keep caged. Using her powers, that was chancier.

"You used her to heal the cross burn in your hand. Maybe you could use her to heal yourself now?"

I looked at him. The cross-shaped burn on my hand was a shiny, permanent scar. Raina's ability to heal was something I had retained.

It had been one of the reasons that Richard had made her munin, instead of leaving her body to rot. She'd been a sexual sadist and tried to kill us both, but she had been powerful. So I could sometimes use her abilities to heal myself and others, but the cost was always high. I could cage her inside me, ignore her, but if I let her out, well, she demanded payment. Her payment was usually painful, or sexual, or both.

I shook my head. "I don't think that would be a good idea right now."

"Have you ever seen memories of her and me together?"

"Some. I try to steer clear of them."

"The last time I was able to do what we did today was with her." He looked at me, his face almost peaceful, waiting.

"You miss her."

"I miss some things about her. Remember, Anita, I was a virgin. I didn't understand how unusual what she was teaching me was."

"Nothing to compare it to," I said.

"Exactly."

"There are other sexual positions where you can be as rough as you want, and I won't hurt this much afterward, Richard. Part of it is that you don't do it this rough during the ardeur. The ardeur steals my ability to guard myself."

"Don't you understand, Anita? I hate, and I love, that I hurt you. I love the sound of strain in your voice. I love the thought that my body did this to you. That just flat does it for me. That I was so big, so powerful, so violent, that you're hurt inside. You're right, if I hurt you enough for hospitals, it wouldn't be fun. That I wouldn't enjoy. Raina tried to get me to enjoy that level, but for that she had to turn to Gabriel."

Gabriel had been in charge of the local wereleopards before I had to kill him. He'd being trying to rape and kill me, on film, at the time. Raina had been offstage urging him on. They'd made a lovely couple, in that lower-circle-of-hell sort of way. I'd sent them to hell together on the same night; talk about a double date.

"Yeah, Gabriel liked it serial-killer bad."

"So did Raina," Richard said, "though not her body, not for the worst of it."

"I'm told a good dominant in the bondage and submission scene never asks of their sub what they aren't willing to do to their own body."

"That's the rule," Richard said, "but we both know that Raina wasn't a good dominant."

"No," I said, "she wasn't."

"The cramping easing?" He made it a question.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Your face is smoothing out. You're not clutching as much at your stomach. And I watched Raina work through the same kind of pain, a lot. She said one of the things she liked about me was that I could be as rough as she wanted in exactly the way she wanted it."

"For future reference, don't ever fuck me this hard in that position again, okay?"

He nodded. "What position do you like?"

I opened my mouth, closed it. Tried to think of how to phrase it. "I don't like it this rough on a nightly basis. After a session even close to this rough, it takes a day or two to feel like doing it again."

"You'll have to feed the ardeur in a few hours."

"There are gentler ways to feed it, Richard."