Mephistopheles’ body began to lose its rhythm, and I felt him fight to keep it, to last. He recovered the thick, stroking rhythm of his body into mine, and I felt that deep, heavy build of orgasm begin. I said in a voice gone breathless, “Close, I’m close.”

“When she goes you won’t last,” Micah said, “trust me.”

“I believe you,” he said, and I felt his body shudder as he fought to keep stroking himself in and out of me, faster, harder, deeper, but never too deep, never too hard, as if he could feel that sweet spot inside me and knew he was stroking over and over and over it. Micah’s body danced behind me as his body grew hard and wet against me. Then the next stroke of Mephistopheles’ body filled me up and spilled me over so that I screamed and drove my body harder onto his, pushing my back harder against Micah. He kept my arms pinned to my body, and I fought and danced between them, my body bucking and writhing as the pleasure filled me, spilled me, and then Mephistopheles shoved himself into me one last time. I felt his body spasm above me and inside me. I felt his release, and it made me cry out again. I felt Micah’s body spasm behind me and spill out in a hot wash of pleasure. I cried out again, at the feel of them both going at once in me and on me, and finally ended in a limp, twitching puddle of happy between the two of them. Micah lay behind me against the bed. I could hear him breathing hard, feel his heartbeat against my body.

Mephistopheles half collapsed, pulling himself out of me as he moved. That made me writhe more, and Micah cried out behind me as my body danced over him. Mephistopheles lay over my lower body and Micah’s. His breathing was heavier, more labored than Micah’s, but then he’d been working harder.

Asher cried out, and I turned to see his body bowed in a line of desire and release. Nathaniel was pressed as deep to his body as he could get. Nathaniel reduced him to eye-fluttering writhing and only then did he rise up from the other man’s body. Nathaniel’s eyes were soft focused, lips parted, as if he’d orgasmed, too.

“Devil,” Mephistopheles gasped.

“What?” Micah asked.

“Anita . . . asked what to call me . . . Family calls me Devil.”

I managed to focus my eyes enough to look at him where he lay half on us. “I know that Mephistopheles is the devil in the play, but why is it your nickname?”

“My twin sister’s full name is Good Angel. When I was little I asked what my name meant. My mother told me it was the name of the devil in the play. My sister said, ‘I’m the Angel, and you’re the Devil.’ It stuck. Besides, almost anything is better than Mephistopheles.”

He had a point, but . . . “So your twin sister is Angel and you’re Devil?”

“Yes.”

“Did that give you a complex of some kind as a kid?” I asked.

It took him two tries to turn more on his side so he could look at me better. “Do you mean did we live up to our names?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled, sudden and bright. “Are you asking if I’m the evil twin?”

It made me smile. “Yeah,” I said.

The smile faded around the edges, and his eyes were all serious when he said, “You better hope not.”

44

NEWS OF WHAT happened in Atlanta had spread through the vampire community faster than the human one. Those who had been reluctant to give up their power to Jean-Claude earlier were suddenly on board with the plan. The Lover of Death and his dark rider had done in hours what would have taken us days, or even weeks. They had frightened the vampires into turning to the only one who had a plan. When people are scared enough, they’ll give up their freedom, their rights, everything, in a bid to be safe. Being undead didn’t change that. Scratch them deep enough and vampires were just people, and people will follow a calm leader with a plan.

The first part of the plan was to introduce me and Jean-Claude to the tiger clans now that I had a gold tiger bound to us. It was an us. Micah and me, me and Jean-Claude, him and Richard, us and Asher, me and Nathaniel and Damian, none of it was solitary. It was as if the power and loneliness of the vampires’ world had combined with the group-oriented puppy-pile world of the shapeshifters and made something new.

But as usual with Jean-Claude and the vampire world, the next step involved a party. All right, a big gathering, but if I have to get dressed up it’s a party and not in a good happy way. We were in Jean-Claude’s bedroom when the door opened and the guards let in the women who were going to help me dress to impress.

High heels clicked sharply over the stone floor. Cardinal strode toward us in four-inch spike sandals as if she were on a catwalk and photographers were snapping her picture. The dress looked like it had been inspired by a 1920s beaded flapper dress, but the colors were orange and yellow, in every shade they could come in; with her red curls spilling around her shoulders she looked like she was wearing fire. The dress was short enough that her bare, creamy legs went on forever. With the sandals she was well over six feet.

Meng Die was behind her in a dress just as short, but black, with a collar of clear faux gemstones catching the halter top of the dress. Her black high heels were spike-toed, with at least four inches of spike. Her straight black hair was shiny, bobbing as she moved. The hair caressed her bare white shoulders, the ends of the hair flipped under. They were both wearing distinctive but artful makeup, so that Meng Die’s brown eyes looked huge and even more exotic than usual. Cardinal had gone for the fresh-faced, sexy girl-next-door look, which meant she was wearing more makeup than it looked, but most men wouldn’t figure it out. Hell, even I didn’t know everything she had on her face.

What really bothered me was that she had a clothing bag over one arm and her makeup case in the other. Meng Die was carrying a shopping bag.

“We don’t have time for me to get dolled up,” I said.

“We don’t have time for you not to,” Cardinal said. She held up the garment bag over her arm and started unzipping it as she towered over me.

“Don’t be a baby about this, Anita,” Meng Die said, as she knelt on the floor and started taking shoe boxes out of the bag.

“You have great skin. We won’t need much makeup. You’ll be ready in twenty minutes or less,” Cardinal said as she shook the dress free of its bag. It was as short as I’d feared, but the real problem was that the black material was utterly sheer from the scoop neck to the hem. There were black sequins catching the light here and there sort of randomly around the hem and skirt and a little on the bodice.

“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” Meng Die said, and drew a black slip out of the bag of shoes as if it had been on the bottom of everything.

“Where are my weapons going to go in that?” I asked.

“If you need a gun today, then we’ve lost,” Meng Die said as she held the slip up to Cardinal.

“I’m lost now,” I said.

Meng Die looked up at me from where she knelt. “Anita, you need to go in there on Jean-Claude’s arm and sell this dress, this attitude, all of it. I’d do it if I could, but I’m not his lady, you are.” There was real bitterness to that last, as well as the implication that if she were, then this would all go so much smoother.

“Off with the clothes,” Cardinal said.

“How much am I going to hate all of it?” I asked.

“You have no idea what we went through to get these. We had to send someone out shopping, because we can’t go out in daylight,” Cardinal said. “The guards may be good at guarding us, but they are not personal shoppers. You should see the crap they brought back. This is the best of the lot, Anita. Most of the dresses won’t fit your curves. It would work for either of us, but once breasts pass a C cup they’re just a real challenge for cocktail dresses.”