"That's your issue in your head. I did not think it or imply it, and wasn't trying to."
"That's fair," he said. "What did you want when the power rose, Anita?"
"I remember thinking life would be easier if more of the men were actually bisexual."
"And you say Damian took it well? I mean, he's truly homophobic. I just wasn't into guys before Nathaniel."
"He seems fine, in fact eerily so. Jean-Claude thinks that Nathaniel literally bespelled him."
"And you, because you lost time, too."
"I know."
"How did the spell work on you?"
"I told you I'm more attracted to Damian than I ever have been."
"So much so that you're taking other lovers to make sure you and Nathaniel don't get carried away romantically with him." Micah's voice was a little dry.
"Yeah," I said.
"Fortune, Echo, and Magda--I understand they're all Harlequin and your lovers."
"Hey, you're lovers with all the women, too."
"You don't need to get defensive on my part, Anita. I'm not criticizing."
"Sorry. I think I feel bad that I'm taking all your lovers out of town."
"Don't. You explained why you can't take any of the rats and you need people you can feed the ardeur on anyway. With Magda you also get her master, Giacomo, and they are some of the toughest warriors we have. I like you taking good people with you and Nathaniel."
"We'll have Nicky, too. He'll keep us safe."
"I never doubt Nicky. He'd give his life for you and Nathaniel, so I'm good with him going, too."
"Jake and Kaazim, Pride, Dev, Domino, Socrates, and probably Ethan."
"We don't have any bad people working security for us, Anita, and you've got to weight the list toward ones who would be willing to feed you and the vampires that will be traveling with you. What's bothering you that you feel like you have to explain it all to me? Usually you just grab your choice of backup and go. You take Nicky the way I take Bram, but other than that we both pick the people best for the job."
"You told me that you had an issue with Dev."
"No, I have an issue with me that I didn't realize until Dev started dating Nathaniel, you, and Jean-Claude."
"Dev and I don't really date."
"He dates both the men."
I nodded, realized he couldn't see it, and said, "Yes, he does."
"He's also completely and comfortably bisexual with both of them and I'm not."
"You and Nathaniel are lovers, and you're . . . more than just friends with Jean-Claude."
"There are still things I don't do with Nathaniel that he misses. It's one of the reasons I agreed to Dev dating him. We're polyamorous, not monogamous, so it seemed logical and fair that he have another man in his life who could give him what I couldn't."
"Anytime you make romantic decisions that are logical and fair, they usually end up making someone feel that they are very illogical and unfair," I said.
"Now you tell me." He tried to make it a joke, but it didn't quite work.
"Jean-Claude still won't be in bed with Dev and Nathaniel without at least you or me."
"He won't be with Nathaniel without you in bed with them. Jean-Claude wasn't meeting all of Nathaniel's guy-on-guy needs any more than I was."
"You told me that you were having issues with Nathaniel getting more serious with Dev than you expected, or something like that."
"Yeah, something like that. I totally underestimated how much it would mean to the man I love to have a man in his bed who was happy to do everything possible with him."
"And Dev is frustrated that Jean-Claude isn't responding to his charms with as much enthusiasm as Nathaniel," I said.
"I don't think Jean-Claude is as into men as either of them."
"He likes men," I said.
"I just said he doesn't like men as much as Dev and Nathaniel."
"Nathaniel is one of the most evenly bisexual people I've ever met, and Dev is a close second."
"He leans a little bit more to the guy side," Micah said.
"Probably, but it's hard for me to judge, being a woman."
"Fair enough. Where would you put Jean-Claude on the Kinsey scale?"
"Wherever he wants to be."
"That's probably truer than we understand about him."
"I said it. Maybe I do understand him."
"You've known him longer than I have."
"I'm taking Dev specifically to help me buffer Nathaniel from falling too much in love with Damian. That's the part I'm not sure you'll like."
"When you know that I'm a little worried that Nathaniel is already too in love with Dev for my comfort."
"Yes," I said.
"Dev is your golden tiger to call, and that is an amazing power boost for you and for me as your Nimir-Raj. A combination of your panwere lycanthropy and his power as gold tiger helped me find a second form as a black tiger. Being able to shift into a second beast has helped me win fights I might have lost, and just plain scared some of the shapeshifters who would have fought us on these trips. A panwere is the rarest form of lycanthropy. They're almost legend among us. The extra power I've gained through our ties to Dev has saved my blood and body more than once."
"And that makes me very happy," I said.
"Me, too," he said, and there was that edge of a smile in his voice that I loved to hear.
"You told Dev if he gave you enough power to do exactly what you just said, that you'd put a ring on it, on him."
"He wants to be the weretiger in the commitment ceremony with you and the men you choose."
"If I could I'd just marry you, Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude."
"Legally you can only marry Jean-Claude, and if you can only marry one of us it has to be the vampire king."
"You're the leopard king."
"Of St. Louis, not the whole country."
"I'd still marry the three of you legally if I could."
"I know, and I appreciate that."
I was quiet for a second and almost didn't say it, but finally I had to. "You know it's not the boy-on-boy sex that's made Dev move up in Nathaniel's estimation, right?"
He sighed heavily. "I know I was stupid. I know I'm being stupid."
"I didn't say that."
"I didn't expect Nathaniel to propose to me that he and I get married for real the way you and Jean-Claude are going to."
"You proposed to both of us once, Micah. You said you'd marry us both if you could."
"I meant I'd marry both of you, not just one of you."
"Micah, be honest. You'd marry just me if you could, so you can't blame Nathaniel for being hurt that you won't marry just him."
"I told you I was being stupid. It's just he's the first boyfriend I've ever had. If I got married I just always saw myself with a woman."
"A lot of us get stuck on what we think we should have, should love, should want, should lust after. Therapy helped me get over my white-picket-fence fantasy, because it so wasn't going to work for my life."
"Fine. I feel threatened by Dev, because he would marry Nathaniel."
"I don't think they would work as each other's primary partner," I said.
"They don't have to, Anita. That's what makes the thought of Dev putting a legal ring on Nathaniel's finger so possible. They both want to get married. Nathaniel asked me and I'm hesitating. Dev proposed to Asher and got turned down flat."
"Asher was a shit about it. We all broke up with him because he's such a shit," I said.
"I didn't break up with Asher. I do not see what any of you see in him."
"You don't like bondage and rough sex enough to appreciate Asher's finer qualities."
"I know he's really good at being mean both for pretend in the dungeon and in real life. The last part sort of makes the first part not work for me."
"You don't like the first part," I said.
"You don't like the second part," he said.
"None of us do, which is why Jean-Claude, Nathani
el, Richard, and I all broke up with him."
"From all accounts he's miserable with just Kane as his lover and moitie bete," Micah said.
"Asher is one of the least monogamous people I know and one of the kinkiest. He's now stuck being monogamous with Kane, who is totally vanilla and doesn't do kink at all. Of course Asher is miserable. He's created his own living hell."
"Some people would say that homosexuality is a type of kink," Micah said.
"Then some people haven't been around enough homosexuals, because they can be every bit as conservative and narrow-minded as any heterosexual."
"My experience is limited, and most of the bisexuals I know are also kinky."
"Bisexuals seem to have a higher kink level than either end of the scale," I said.
"At least the ones we know," he said.
"Fair enough, so do you want me to leave Dev at home?"
"You'd really do that just because I'm blaming him for something that is my fault?"
"No, because Dev is charming and I don't want to make this problem between Nathaniel and you worse. I don't know if I want Dev living with us constantly. He doesn't work with our entire poly group as well as some of the others do."
"Nicky works great, but neither Jean-Claude nor I will do a commitment ceremony with him. Sin works great, but neither you, I, or Jean-Claude will commit to him."
"He's a nephew to Jean-Claude and a brother-husband to the rest of you."
"I'll call Sin that, but not Nicky."
"Nicky is only a lion, so he doesn't help us over the whole tiger issue anyway," I said.
"I know that the tiger clan leaders won't rest until you're married off to one of the clan tigers."
"Legend says that if I don't marry a tiger, the Mother of All Darkness will return from the dead and destroy the world."
"Nice to know they backed off on the tiger being your legal spouse and are content with a commitment ceremony," he said.
"Yeah, it was big of them."
"You're being sarcastic, but it really was a compromise for them."
"So we need a tiger as part of the commitment ceremony that we're all willing to live with, and the group of us can't agree on one."
"Welcome to one of the serious downsides of polyamory when everyone has veto power over everyone else's lovers," Micah said.
"Lovers, schmovers, it's the living-with part that's making the choice impossible."
"Agreed. I'm being signaled that it's time to talk some more here. Have a safe flight. I wish I were able to go with you and help keep Nathaniel's and your minds off Damian."
"Me, too."
"I love you, Anita Blake."
"I love you more, Micah Callahan."
"I love you most."
"I love you mostest."
"I've got to go make sure they don't start trying to kill each other."
"And I've got to go to Ireland and stop them from killing each other."
I heard a voice on his end, someone talking low to him. He had to go, and so did I. Both of our jobs saved lives, and both of us would take a life if we thought it would save more lives down the road. Most of the time I did it with the legal blessing of my country. When Micah killed someone in a duel it was never legal, because duels were illegal no matter if you were human or more than human.
26
I FOUND NATHANIEL and Damian back in Damian's bedroom. I almost didn't recognize the room. There was a large mirror that covered the half wall that held the bathroom door. The mirror had a heavy antique-looking frame and the glass would reflect anything happening on the bed. Nathaniel was both a serious voyeur and exhibitionist; mirrors seemed to satisfy both needs for him. He'd been asking Micah and me to put one in our shared bedroom, but we'd been resisting. I didn't want to sit up in bed and see my reflection every morning, or in the middle of the night when I was half asleep. There'd been an incident on an out-of-town business trip where I'd damn near shot the full-length mirror in the hotel room, because I thought it was an intruder. That had been years ago when I was new to hunting killers and carrying a gun, but the moment had stayed with me. Micah didn't really want the mirror either, but obviously Nathaniel did, and Damian had let him do something that his two fiancees had refused him for years.
The bed was now covered in a very dark green bedspread with pillows in browns, dark purples, and a shade of orange that had brown undertones so it all matched. If you'd set me loose in a store with this as a color scheme, it would have looked like it had been put together by a partially color-blind lover of autumn, but this was magazine perfect. The brown and orange were a new addition, but they echoed the purple and green of our own room, though our shades were brighter, shinier, more vibrant, and this was muted, more autumn leaves than summer flowers. It still had Nathaniel's touch everywhere.
It had taken months of negotiations for Nathaniel to do our room; this had to have happened in less than two hours. Either Damian was more bespelled than I was, or he was always this easy a touch for a lover to control the decorating. Maybe it hadn't been all Cardinale's fault that the room had reflected mostly her, which said something important about Damian. I just didn't know exactly what.
They were sitting on the bed, their heads together over Nathaniel's iPad. He looked up, smiling. "We're looking online for new towels for the bathroom, so we can get rid of all the pink ones."
"Nothing wrong with pink if you like the color," I said.
"I don't," Damian said, looking up.
Their faces were very close together, the bright green eyes and the lavender ones, milk pale skin and the darker pale that let you know Nathaniel might tan if he ever tried. His face was wider through the cheekbones, Damian's longer and narrower. Was Nathaniel more beautiful? Yes, but it was like saying a rose is more beautiful than a lily. They were both beautiful flowers. It just depended on whether you wanted something rounder, fuller, more lush, or if you wanted something leaner, taller, more careless summer garden instead of formal rose garden. I preferred roses to lilies, but they grew well next to each other if you were willing to have your rose garden a little less formal and a little more cottage.
Nathaniel put the iPad down on the bedspread and met my eyes with his; he knew how distracted I suddenly was, because he'd watched himself affect me like that for years. It was closer to the way I got distracted with Jean-Claude and Asher, back when he was in our bed. Did Micah and Nathaniel together make me this stupid-faced? Maybe. It was like I couldn't remember, which let me know that I needed to walk out of the room and find Jean-Claude, or find a phone and talk to Micah--again. But I didn't. I stood there and drank in the beauty of them, the possibility of them.
I couldn't seem to leave the room, but I found my voice. "You couldn't have ordered the bedspread and pillows online. There hasn't been time for them to ship." My voice sounded a little hoarse, so I cleared my throat, trying to sound and feel more like myself.
"No, we ran out and picked up a few things," Nathaniel said.
"We? You and Damian went out during the day just to shop?" I asked.
"Sunlight doesn't burn me anymore," Damian said, studying me with those pure green eyes of his.
"I know, but you still don't like going out in it."
"Nathaniel was with me," he said.
"And that made you feel safer," I said.
He put an arm around the other man's shoulders. Nathaniel put his head a little to the side so his auburn hair and Damian's red intermingled like two streams of some blood-colored sea where the tides meet. It was like Damian's eyes were the color of leaves to complement Nathaniel's flower-colored ones.
I shook my head forcefully and looked at the floor. The carpet was new, too. It was dark brown with a pattern of green leaves and autumn-colored flowers on it. I wondered if Damian realized he'd just given up one color of flower for another.
I heard the bed move before Nathaniel crawled into sight, gazing up at me from the ground so I couldn't hide behind the thick fall of my hair. He gazed up at me with
those large lilac-colored eyes. He was improbable, too beautiful, but it was his eyes that tipped the scale from beautiful to something exotic and unreal, like an orchid grown in some hothouse. I could almost feel the heat and humidity of it. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see him, and it was better. The air was less close. I should have started backing out of the room and run for it, but I just closed my eyes, as if that would save me. That hadn't been a good strategy since I was five and I believed that if I couldn't see the monster under the bed he couldn't get me. If there'd really been something under my bed it wouldn't have worked then, either.
Nathaniel traced his fingers along my arm, the lightest of touches, but it was enough to make me open my eyes and drown in that violet gaze. I was better than this, damn it! I knew how to escape vampire gaze, but then he wasn't really a vampire and I'd never met a wereleopard who could capture me with his eyes.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight and shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. He caressed my arm again, but I was able to keep my eyes closed this time. I'd played this game with Jean-Claude for years. Of course, that had been back when he wasn't sure I wouldn't tell him to go to hell and mean it. It had limited what he would risk, how far he would push. Nathaniel didn't have those kinds of doubts. Nothing gives you courage like believing someone loves you absolutely.
He ran his fingers along my arm again, and another hand echoed him on the other side of me. It made me open my eyes. Nathaniel was still kneeling in front of me, but Damian was kneeling beside him now. It was his hand caressing my right arm, while Nathaniel stroked the left. I opened my mouth to protest, but I wasn't sure what I was protesting. We were all lovers already, and the pilot had informed Jean-Claude, who had informed me, that we had a couple of hours more before we could take off.
As if he'd read my thoughts, Nathaniel said, "We have at least two more hours before we need to be at the plane. We had sex, but you didn't feed the ardeur, because I didn't know how."
I had to cough to clear my voice before I could say, "Jean-Claude wishes Rafael were here so I could feed on all the rats through him before we leave."
"Rafael won't get back in time to feed you," he said, rising higher on his knees so he could bring his face closer to mine.
I straightened up so that I wasn't half-bending over toward him.
Damian leaned in to lay the brush of his lips against my arm, too delicate to even be called a kiss. It made me shiver and wrap both my arms around myself as if I were cold, but it wasn't cold that had made me shiver. I should walk out, leave . . . now.