Dino looked at both of us. "That was Anita's explanation out of your mouth, right?"
Nathaniel nodded. "Yes."
"Yeah," Nicky said.
"It's that couple thing again," he said.
"What couple thing?" I asked.
"Couples start using each other's sayings, speech patterns, jokes, and specialized information after a while, because you hear it repeated over and over."
"Coworkers and military units do it, too," Nicky said.
"Yeah, but that's usually more narrowly centered. Couples can go all over the board. I'd like to know someone that well someday."
"Are you saying you've never been part of a couple?" I asked.
"I've dated, but no, not really."
"This is my first real couple," Nicky said.
"What do you mean, real?" I asked.
"I was told to seduce people for work sometimes, or go undercover. People are less suspicious of you if you have a romantic partner. They thought we were dating, and I went along with what they thought that should be, but it was all pretend for maintaining my cover or gaining information from them."
"How long was the longest you dated someone like that?" I asked.
"Almost six months."
"That's a long time," Nathaniel said. "And you didn't care about her at all?"
"The sex was good."
I looked up at one of the men I was in love with and couldn't wrap my head around it. "And if the sex hadn't been good?" I asked.
"She was cover, so I'd have found someone who was better in bed."
"What happened to her?" Nathaniel asked.
Nicky looked at him as if he'd asked a dumb question or one that he'd never thought of before. "I don't know."
"Did anything you do bring her into harm's way?" I asked.
He thought about it for a second and then made a little waffling motion with his head. "I don't know."
"How can you not know?" I asked.
"I completed my assignment and then I ditched the cell phone and walked away. It was the only number she had for me, so if anything happened, she had no way to contact me. She didn't know my real name, background, nothing. The person she dated for six months didn't exist."
"Not once you left," I said.
He shook his head. "No, Anita, that person never existed. I was undercover as a social, charming extrovert with lots of friends, with a new party, or show, or something almost every night."
"You hate going to parties and shit," I said.
"Yeah, but socializing was the best way to gather information and to move around without arousing suspicion. The more friends I made, the closer I got to the inner circle I wanted to break into, so I could get close to my target."
"So you didn't just lie to the girl, you lied to every friend you made," Nathaniel said.
"If you want to call it that, yeah."
"What else do you call it?" he asked.
"Work."
"You scare me sometimes," Dino said, "just so you know."
"I know," Nicky said.
We all looked at him and he gave perfect blank face back.
"But you also give me hope," Dino said.
Nicky narrowed his eyes at him then. "I give you hope?"
"Yeah."
"How?"
"If you can fall in love and make a family for yourself, then I have to have a shot at it, because I'm way more charming than you are."
Nicky grinned. "You haven't seen me try to be charming."
"Yeah, I have," Dino said.
"No, you haven't," Nicky said with a smile.
"Yeah, I have."
"No, you really haven't."
Dino frowned at him.
"Anita knew what I was from the moment she met me; so did Nathaniel and Micah, Jean-Claude, all of them. I never had to pretend that I was someone else, something else. I didn't even have to pretend I was this big, tough crazy guy who would do anything, so don't mess with me."
"So even that was pretend," I said.
"People don't fuck with you as much when they think you're crazy. It scares them more than calm."
"When I met you, I thought you enjoyed the violence, or the threat of it," I said.
"Only in the bedroom. When I'm working, I'm working. It's not personal."
"Oh, come on, sometimes it feels good to hit someone as hard as you want, no holding back," Dino said.
Nicky grinned suddenly, but it was more a baring of teeth, closer to a snarl as if his lion were peeking out. "Okay, yeah, just the physicality of it, yeah."
"Yeah," Dino said, and gave a low, very male chuckle.
Nicky joined him with his own version of it.
Nathaniel and I looked at each other. "You understand this moment of male bonding?" I asked him.
He shook his head. "Nope, I've spent most of my life not understanding the 'hit 'em as hard as you can' kind of guy. Whatever it means to be a man, I'm not that kind."
"But you don't have a problem with me being that kind of man," Nicky said.
"No," Nathaniel said.
"I make a lot of guys nervous."
"And me being bisexual makes a lot of guys nervous."
Nicky grinned. "I'm secure."
Nathaniel grinned back. "Me, too."
Nicky raised his fist and Nathaniel bumped it softly.
Dino shook his head. "You guys are just fun to see and I like it, but I don't think I'm that secure."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I'm not as pretty as either of these two. Nicky beats me in the gym, and from what I hear the two of them are both great in bed. They both cook, and we won't even get into Jean-Claude and Micah. One is the prettiest man I've ever seen, and the other one is, well, Micah. He's this tiny guy, but he walks into a room like he owns it, and like everyone should know that."
"Anita does the same thing," Nicky said.
"Yeah, she makes us all feel a little less like 'the man.'"
"Not me," Nicky said.
"Me, either," Nathaniel said.
"We're all pretty secure," I said.
Nathaniel's phone rang, and it was his ring tone for Micah. "Hey, baby," he said, and then something Micah said made his face go serious, and he walked a little away from us.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He shook his head and spoke to Micah. "Okay, but I'm not sure how it's going to go on our end."
"Nathaniel, what's wrong?" I asked.
He turned with a face as serious as any I'd seen, which sort of scared me. "Is Micah all right, is everyone all right?"
"There's a . . . mixer set up for you to meet the weretigers."
"A mixer, what the hell does that mean?"
"It means there wasn't time to plan a formal dinner, or a cocktail party, but they're putting something together so that all the weretigers Jean-Claude and Micah like for us, and who are interested in the position, can be in one place at one time, and we can interact with them."
"Is this the tigers bitching about not being included in the commitment ceremony?" Nicky asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"Anita agreed to look at more weretigers, including female."
Nicky looked at me.
Dino whistled softly, grinning.
I pointed a finger at Dino. "You stay out of this."
He pressed his lips tight together but couldn't quite stop looking like he was about to laugh.
To Nicky I said, "Say something."
"When did you agree to do all this?"
"On the drive here," Nathaniel said.
Nicky looked at him, not even trying to keep the surprise off his face. "What the hell did you say to her to get her to agree to date more women?"
"I just brought it up, I swear."
Nicky turned and gave me a very narrow eye, nearly suspicious. "It's not like you to agree that easy, Anita."
"C an't I just be reasonable for once?"
"No," he said, and Dino had to walk away from us all because he burst out laughing and
didn't want me to yell at him for it.
"We have time to get to the Circus and change before it starts," Nathaniel said.
"You and Anita, you mean."
"You live with us, too," Nathaniel said.
"He's right; whoever we bring in will change our domestic arrangement, so you should at least be there to wave off anyone you hate."
"What does it matter? I won't be sleeping with any of them."
"Probably not," I said, "but you're an important part of our household and you should be there to give your opinion."
He looked back and forth between us. "So if you love one of the tigers and I veto them, you'll just agree with me?"
I shrugged. "I don't know for sure, but I certainly wouldn't want to add someone to our poly that you really clashed with, because right now we all like each other a lot. I don't want that to change."
"I'm just your Bride, Anita."
I wrapped my arms around his waist and gazed up at him. "I love you, Nicky; you're a hell of a lot more to me than just Dracula's Bride."
He studied my face, then smiled a little, wrapping his arms around me, so that I was surrounded by all that muscle. Just feeling the potential of all that strength made me shiver a little in his arms.
He grinned then. "That reaction just from hugging you?"
I nodded.
"I don't think Jean-Claude and Micah will allow me to veto anyone that they like, but I appreciate that you and Nathaniel would."
Nathaniel came in from the side and hugged us both. "I love you like a brother, you know that."
"You know that most brothers don't share women, right?" Nicky said.
Nathaniel drew back enough to shrug. "It works for us."
"And for Cynric, too," Nicky said. "I really thought you'd just put a ring on his finger."
I shook my head. "If we can add someone that everyone will sleep with, including Micah, it would just work better."
"Cynric is going to be hurt," Nicky said.
"You're a sociopath--why should you care?" I asked.
"I'm a made sociopath, not a born one, which means I have some emotion, and I like the kid. He's the closest I've gotten to a little brother since I lost my own."
"He'll be at the mixer tonight," Nathaniel said.
I sighed and stepped back so that Nicky just let me go. "I can't help that."
"Are you angry with Sin?" Nathaniel asked.
"No!" I snapped, and then had to take a few deep breaths before I could say, "Let's get home and change for this party thing."
The men exchanged a look.
"What?" I demanded.
Nicky shook his head. Nathaniel said, "You are mad at Sin."
"If you want me to go to this party at all, we leave now."
We left. Dino drove the truck that he and Nicky had brought the cow in, but Nicky rode with us. They both tried to get me to talk, but I finally convinced them to leave it the fuck alone and be grateful I was looking at other women at all. I sounded angry even to myself. I really wasn't in a party mood.
16
SOMEWHERE ON THE drive some horrible tension in me eased. The anger began to slip away on the sound of Nathaniel and Nicky discussing food for the week, and if there were enough ingredients at both the Circus and the house in Jefferson County to make the meals as planned. I liked listening to them plan our domestic stuff. I loved that Nathaniel truly enjoyed that part of living together. I loved that Nicky and he worked so well together both in the kitchen and in the bedroom. Our core group worked so well together and I knew that every time we tried adding a new person even to the edges of the group, we ran the risk of upsetting all of it. Cynric was already in our life and he worked for all of us, some better than others, but he didn't make anyone unhappy. Now I knew some of the issues that made me not want to commit to him, and I hated the issues. It was like victim-blaming him for being another victim of the same trauma. Even in my own head it sounded convoluted and wrong.
"Anita, you missed the exit."
I glanced at Nathaniel. "What?"
"You drove past the exit to the Circus."
"Sorry, I'll hit the next one and backtrack."
"Are you upset about having to meet the tigers this soon?"
I took the exit carefully, forcing myself to pay attention. "Yeah," I lied. Normally he'd be right, I'd be all resistant about having to meet people to be not only a new lover, but potentially someone we'd have a commitment ceremony with, but tonight all I could think about was Cynric and how I'd thought the issue was his age, when it was just an excuse not to look at the truth. I hated that I'd been that blind about myself. I could go have hors d'oeuvres and drinks or whatever with the weretigers and chat, be charming and vague. They could parade tigers all damn night in front of me; I didn't have to pick anyone, and the moment I thought that, I realized that I was lying to Nathaniel, and Micah, and every important person in my life. Damn it, our relationships weren't based on lies.
"What's making you feel so unhappy?" Nicky said.
I didn't want to explain, but I realized that the one person I really owed an explanation to was Cynric. "Cynric, I should have called him to let him know about tonight. He's living with us and I didn't even call him to give him a heads-up about tonight and the other weretigers."
Nathaniel touched the side of my face, and my thoughts were too close to the surface. He got some of them direct, but the sharing made me swerve the car. "Jesus, Nathaniel," I said, over the thudding of my heart in my throat.
He'd jerked back. "You usually shield better than this, Anita. You're worried about Sin, but not just about calling him. I called him and he was pretty stoked at the idea that you'd be willing to look at another woman being added to our inner group."
"Really, then why won't he date anyone but me? I know some of the girls at school have been heartbroken about him being all poly-monogamous."
"He sees it as adding to our family, and the woman would be your lover, too. She'd also be a clan tiger, so she wouldn't expect her relationship with him to supersede yours."
I glanced at him. "You and he have talked about it, haven't you?"
Nathaniel nodded.
"We have to do something when you're off raising the dead and chasing bad guys," Nicky said.
I glanced behind at him, then forced myself to pay attention to the road again. I wanted to get angry about the fact that the men in my life had conspired against me to add another woman to our merry little band, but they all shared me with multiple men, and as Nathaniel had pointed out, most of them didn't even get sexual contact from the rest of my lovers. They really were very good sports about it all, so it would just be churlish to complain, but . . . I so wanted to.
"Now you're mad," Nicky said. I shook my head. "I'm not."
"I can feel it."
"I'm trying not to be mad, because it's not logical or fair."
"Feelings aren't fair, Anita," Nathaniel said. "They're just how we feel."
"True, but I'm trying to be less bitchy about mine."
He smiled. "You're grumpy, not bitchy."
I gave him a raised eyebrow. "And the difference between the two is?"
He laughed. "If you were bitchy you wouldn't be trying to do better."
I smiled, then laughed just a little. "Fine, okay, but I am trying."
"We appreciate that."
"We love you," Nicky said.
"We do," Nathaniel said.
"But you'd like a chance to love a few more people," I said.
"If more of the other men were bisexual it wouldn't be an issue for me."
"Another woman would be nice, but she's not going to enjoy sex the way I like it," Nicky said.
"You don't do super-rough all the time," I said.
"No, but even my mild is too much for most women."
"You had to have vanilla sex with some of the women you pretended to date when you were undercover," Nathaniel said.
"Yeah, and it's better than masturbating, but it's still holding bac
k."
"When sex is supposed to be about letting go," I said.
"Yeah."
"So, you don't think another woman will do you any good."
"Not really, but that's okay."
"Is it really okay?" I asked, as I turned into the back entrance to the employee parking lot at the Circus of the Damned. I had a reserved spot near the door, because after dark the lot filled up with all the people it took to run the permanent carnival midway, the one-ring circus in its tent, the freak show, and all the things that made it into the Circus of the Damned. Here you could have that summertime traveling carnival experience under one roof, regardless of the weather, if you were willing to wait until nightfall. But then all carnivals are at their best after dark.
Nicky leaned on the back of my seat, his face resting against my hair. "Yeah, it's really okay."
"Why is it okay? Why are you content with only me?"
"I'm not content, I'm happy, and sociopaths don't get to say that very often."
That made me smile. I reached up and touched the side of his face. He rubbed his face between my hand and my hair and said, "Your touching me like this means more to me than more sex with anyone else."
I kept touching him, but I was puzzled and said so.
"I get it," Nathaniel said.
I moved my head so I could look at him, my hand sliding further around Nicky's face, so I could curl my fingers in his hair. "Explain it to me, then."
"That small touch says love, not just lust. We've both had a lot of lust aimed at us, but not so much love."
"Yeah," Nicky said, tracing his fingers down my arm.
"The fact that you worried about Sin and his feelings, even though I know you've got this weird conflict about his age, says just how caring you are. Nicky and I haven't had a lot of people in our life that cared for us, not in the way you do, or the way Micah does."
"Micah doesn't really like me," Nicky said.
"That's not true," I said.
"Do you really like him?" Nathaniel asked.
"I think he's a good leader. He's a better Nimir-Raj for the wereleopards than I am a Rex for the lions."
"That didn't answer the question."
"No, not really. I mean I like him as a leader and a person, but he and I have less of a connection in the poly group."
"You and Jean-Claude don't have much connection either," Nathaniel said.
"No, but I could donate blood to him, if I wanted to, and that would make me more important to him in the poly group. Micah and I don't have anything to bargain with, or offer each other, that will deepen our relationship. He doesn't even like rough sex or bondage much, so we can't even play."
"We should be working on the group we have, not adding to it," I said.