Again, I felt like I was missing something. “Glad to hear it, so who’s up first?”

“Up first?”

“Kiss, a kiss, who’s first?” I asked.

They looked at each other again. “When we go to the human clubs, the women are a little more eager,” Pride said.

I pointed behind me. “They’re my guys. It’s not that you aren’t cute, but when this is already waiting at home it makes a girl a little less eager to add new men.”

They did that look again. Pride nodded. “That seems reasonable.”

Reasonable, that was an interesting choice of words, but I let it go. “Fine, let’s reason together. Who kisses me first?”

“See who smells the best,” Pride said.

It was a perfectly reasonable wereanimal thing to say. Since I had no better suggestions to offer, it was as good as any other. I expected them to offer their wrists for me to smell, but they both slipped their shirts over their heads. I was suddenly looking at their bare chests from inches away. My head came to just below Pride’s pectoral muscles, and a little lower down the ribs on Mephistopheles. Either way I was suddenly staring at a lot of muscled half-nakedness. You’d think I’d get used to that sort of thing.

They both moved in closer. I put a hand on both their stomachs to keep them from sandwiching me. It was a mistake to touch them. But it was like so many mistakes; it looks harmless until you do it, and then it’s too late.

40

EACH OF THEM pressed one of my hands to his stomach. The tiger inside me looked up and growled. The other tigers all came out of the dark and sniffed the air. I’d never seen all the colors at once. The gold stood in the middle, with the other colors fanning out in a half circle. They didn’t try to trot down that long metaphysical road and become real. They didn’t do anything but stand there in a soft line and sniff the air.

I felt the men bend over me and sniff along my skin. I had to blink to clear my inner vision enough to see them and not just the tigers inside me.

“She smells of all the tigers,” Mephistopheles said.

“It’s not possible,” Pride said, but his face was against my hair. He rubbed his cheek against me, and then seemed to catch himself and straightened up. “It’s not possible,” he repeated. He stepped away from me, rubbing his arms as if he were cold, but that wasn’t it. He was rubbing at the line of goose bumps on his skin.

I stared up into Mephistopheles’ blue-hazel eyes and knew he wouldn’t move away. Hands on my shoulders turned me to find Envy at my back. She leaned over my upturned face and kissed me. She tasted of tiger and sweet lipstick. The fact that I didn’t pull away encouraged her more than I knew what to do with, and I had a moment of thinking, loudly, “Jean-Claude.”

He was there, his arms sliding around her waist, pulling her away from me and turning her to him. Auggie had asked me how I’d feel to see Jean-Claude with another woman; in that moment I felt relieved.

Mephistopheles bent over me, his arms sliding behind my back, drawing me into the warmth of him. “We’re supposed to be proof against vampire powers, but I want to touch you, and I want you to touch me. Why?”

I answered him with his mouth inches from mine. “The other tigers are looking for someone who smells like home.”

“I have a home,” he said, and his lips moved against mine as he said, “I just want to put as much of my body against as much of your body as you’ll let me.”

I tried to be reasonable. I tried to think, but in that moment it sounded like such a good plan. I heard myself say, “Yes, please,” before I’d finished thinking anything.

Envy made a bedroom sound, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her and Jean-Claude kissing. She was pushing his jacket off his shoulders, while she made small eager noises at his mouth.

Jean-Claude drew back enough to say, “Ma petite, the bedroom?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I did, or I knew what I wanted to do.

Micah’s voice. “The bed is more comfortable.”

I turned and saw one of the loves of my life calmly urging me to take the bed. Nathaniel was on his feet. “I want to watch.”

“Yes,” I said.

Mephistopheles said, “Sure.” He kissed me, and he tasted so good, so right. His hands lifted my shirt out of my pants, and the moment his hands slid around my bare waist it was my turn to make eager noises. It was the way I’d been with Micah from the beginning, and Haven. That thought helped me swim up through all that skin hunger.

I looked for Micah and found him watching with calm eyes.

Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite.”

I turned in Mephistopheles’ arms while he played with my hair and kissed down the side of my face. Envy was kissing her way down the side of Jean-Claude’s neck. Her hands had managed to strip off his jacket, and her fingers were fumbling at his shirt. “The tigers seem eager,” he managed to say.

“Do you want to touch her, like roll around naked on top of her?”

His eyes fluttered back into his head as he answered, “Eagerness can be contagious, ma petite.”

That was a polite way of saying yes. Mephistopheles pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it to the floor. Whatever we were going to do, we needed to do it soon. He dropped to his knees so he could nuzzle my breasts above the black lace of my bra. Yeah, soon.

The big wolf got to his feet growling softly, but even soft it was like listening to the deep, bass growl of some dangerous motor. If you heard that sound in the dark, you’d be afraid.

“Don’t make this harder, Richard,” I said.

He gave me a look out of his wolf eyes that was all too human, and even through the fur and the wolf face I knew that look. He was back to pouting. I so didn’t need this.

I turned to Micah as Mephistopheles bit into the mound of my breast. It made me gasp. I looked down to find his blue and gold-brown eyes staring up at me. His eyelashes were very long, very dark, and framed his pale eyes as if they’d been picked especially to make his eyes stand out, as if whoever shopped for him had paid extra for the pretty parts.

He rubbed his face against my hand, closing his eyes and luxuriating into it as only a cat can. He was gorgeous and I wanted him, but I didn’t know him. I was tired of trusting my life and everything I loved to strangers, no matter how pretty they were. I held my other hand out to Micah. He put his head to one side, sending all those deep brown curls sliding across one shoulder, but he came to me without any questions. He simply took my hand, and the moment he did it was as if every beast inside me looked up at once. My skin ran hot with the brush of every beast I had. The hair on my body rose and made me shiver. I realized why I hadn’t been able to bond with Haven, or any other animal king: because I was truly Nimir-Ra to Micah’s Nimir-Raj. I had my king.

Mephistopheles opened his eyes, and I could see the hairs on his arms standing up in a golden shiver. “You smell like everything at once. What is that?”

“Micah is my Nimir-Raj. We are a true mated pair.”

“Then there is no room for me,” he said, and he sounded sad.

“There is always room,” Micah said.

“But not for another king,” I said. “You can be mine, but I already have a king.”

“He’s only leopard. You need a golden tiger.” Pride said it, from the side where he was hugging his arms tight. I didn’t know if he was getting the goose-bump run of energy, or if he was fighting not to touch one of us.

Envy gave a soft moan behind us. It made me turn to find that she had climbed Jean-Claude, wrapping her long legs around his waist. His hands were on her ass, holding her in place. The clothes were still in place, but if we didn’t go to the bedroom soon he’d be doing her here.

“What do you think, Mephistopheles?” I asked the man kneeling at my feet.