“Don’t do this,” Micah said.

“There are no leopards here to help you, little king. There are no wolves to aid Jean-Claude, and the rats belong to no one. I am the only master in this room who has help at hand.”

“Not true,” Micah said.

“Do you mean our kitten? I don’t think you want to risk him against me.”

“I’m not talking about me at all,” Micah said. He looked at me.

I shook my head. “Don’t make me do this.”

“He’s setting up the rules, not me,” Micah said.

“If you mean Anita, then save your breath, leopard. She and I established that she’d bow to me long ago.”

I looked at the vampire. “What does that mean exactly?”

“You let me dominate you in the bedroom along with our kitten.”

“In the bedroom is different.”

“You once let me feed until I almost drained you dry. You and I both know that I stopped myself from killing you; you would have let me do it, and enjoyed it right up until the moment you died.”

He was talking about the last time we’d been alone and he’d fed from me. His vampire power was to make his bite orgasmic, and it was, and what he’d just said was absolutely right. In that one moment I wouldn’t have fought to live; it had felt too good to stop. He and I had never told anyone the entire truth of it before. We’d simply avoided being alone together for feedings.

“Don’t push me, Asher.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me? I don’t think so.”

“Just as you won’t kill us,” Jean-Claude said, softly, “and if death is off the table, then what is left to prove?”

“That I have grown too powerful to be your second. I need a territory of my own and lovers who aren’t ashamed of me.”

“We aren’t ashamed of you.”

“The men are, and he”—he pointed at Jean-Claude—“says he refuses my body because you would reject him if you saw us together. I told him you were with him and Augustine, Master of Chicago, and you did not turn from what happened, or from Jean-Claude. But it was when I saw your cats kissing in public that I knew that Jean-Claude had lied. You have no problem sharing yourself with men who are sharing each other; it is Jean-Claude who doesn’t want to be with me again. You are his excuse to keep me from that last part of him.”

“I don’t know what you thought you saw at the recital,” Micah said.

“I saw two men who love each other and aren’t afraid to show it in public. Don’t deny it.”

“I had no intention of denying how I feel about Nathaniel.” Nathaniel laid his head on Micah’s shoulder, and Micah reached a hand up to touch the taller man’s face. It always seemed odd that Nathaniel was taller than Micah, but dominance isn’t always about height.

“Please, can the guards go for the rest of this discussion?” I asked.

“See, you are embarrassed by me.”

“I’m embarrassed in general.”

“I am not.”

I met his too-calm, too-arrogant face, and said, “Fine, fucking fine, let’s do this.” I turned to Jean-Claude. “Are you telling me that you haven’t been his lover because you thought I’d leave you?”

“You’ve gone away for months for much lesser offenses of your small-town morality.”

“That was a while ago, Jean-Claude, give me some credit here. If you and Asher want to be together . . .”

“Be lovers,” Asher said.

I gave him an unfriendly look, but turned back to Jean-Claude. “Fine, if you and Asher want to be lovers when I’m not in the bed, that’s okay with me.”

“Non, ma petite, non.”

“It is you who is afraid of being with me,” Asher said. “I cannot live like this, and eventually I will give in to Narcissus if I have no one else to turn to.”

“If I say I’m fine with it, then why not?” I asked.

“Asher assumes that Micah and Nathaniel are doing what I will not; are they lovers?”

I wanted to squirm and fought not to. “Why don’t you ask them—they’re standing right here.”

He looked at the men. “Are you lovers?”

Nathaniel said yes, and Micah said no, at the same time. Asher laughed, and this laugh held humor. “How can you not know?”

“Micah loves me. He takes care of me. We sleep nude in the bed even if Anita is out of town. I clean his house, I fix his meals. We touch each other in private. We just don’t do certain things.”

“You don’t sodomize each other,” Asher offered.

“Yeah,” Nathaniel said, and he almost smiled, but not like he was happy. “We don’t do that.”

“It’s not to every man’s taste. Even those who like men are not always sodomites,” Jean-Claude said.

“But Micah doesn’t think you are lovers, do you, Micah?” Asher asked. I realized that Asher wasn’t just going to try to tear down what he and Jean-Claude and I had; he was going to try to tear down everyone.

Micah took a deep breath and let it out in a loud rush. “I guess I thought that if we weren’t fucking each other, we weren’t lovers.”

“So Nathaniel is trapped as I am trapped, wanting, but never having.”

Nathaniel said, “I think I like girls a little better than you do, so it’s not as big an issue for me.”

“If Micah would fuck you in the ass, would you say no?”

I so wanted out of this conversation, but it was like a car accident: Once you started spinning you could only wait and see what you hit.

“No,” Nathaniel said.

“Liar,” Asher said.

Nathaniel started to smile, fought it off, and said, “You’ve seen him nude. I’ve never had anyone that large do anal sex on me. I think it might hurt.”

“You are a pain slut. You like hurt,” Asher said.

“In most ways, yes, but I was raped as a kid, so I like anal sometimes and I miss it, but I don’t like it to hurt. Hurting like that is a trigger event. It throws me back into being raped.” He shook his head, a little too rapidly. “I think if I’d been treated better, then I probably would like it, but I wasn’t, and we do together almost everything that I want to do.”

Asher said, “I am sorry, Nathaniel; in my own hurt feelings I forgot that other people have been hurt, too. But I will not let even your sad story stop this conversation. We will have it out, and then when I am rejected one last time I will go and stay with Narcissus until arrangements can be made for us to leave.”

“The werehyenas are a third, or more, of the security for Jean-Claude,” Micah said.

“Not my problem,” Asher said.

“You’d really cut our manpower that badly, knowing that there are masters out there who would see that as weakness and try to kill us?” I asked.

“I cannot stay here and have my heart broken over and over, Anita. I will go mad. Either I must be someone’s lover, or I must go.”

“Wait,” I said, “you’re my lover. You’re my lover in every way that any other man has been. I haven’t denied you any part of me.”

He looked at me, and I gave him a look back. “Oh, come on, just because I don’t like anal. No one else gets to do that, either.”

“It’s not you he wants,” Micah said.

Asher looked at him. “Are you saying it’s you I’m pining over?”

“You said that Jean-Claude loved Anita better than you; well, don’t you love Jean-Claude better than you love Anita?”

Asher looked at Micah, and finally he nodded. “Touché, Nimir-Raj. I have loved Jean-Claude for centuries, so yes. Did you know that I chose Julianna as my human servant because I feared I was losing Jean-Claude’s love?”

Jean-Claude said something rapid in French. He was sitting forward and looked startled at last.

Asher went on. “I never told you because it was too pathetic. You know I like women, but I like men more. Didn’t you ever puzzle at why I chose to tie myself to a woman as my human servant?”

“You loved her,” Jean-Claude said.

“Eventually, but I chose her for you. I knew what you liked and I shopped with an eye for keeping you, not for satisfying myself, and it worked. It worked better than I could have dreamed. I should have realized that I had set myself up for the two people I loved most in the world to love each other more than they loved me.”