"So really you guys have been training your whole lives for just three bloodlines: the Dragon, the Lover of Death, and Belle Morte."

All three of them agreed with that.

"Which brings us back to our original problem: How do I find out if my tiger likes your tiger?"

Pride, who was the only one still sitting down, said, "A kiss may do it, but s.e.x may be necessary." He said it as if he were talking about the difference between getting an inoculation or having to have surgery.

"Since you seem as thrilled with the whole idea as I am, why don't we just kiss and call it done."

Mephistopheles said, "You don't want to have s.e.x with us?"

This was a tricky question from a man. I tried to answer it carefully. "You're both handsome. It's nothing personal, but you just seem to come with a lot of baggage and I don't want to mess with it."

"Baggage, what does that mean?"

"You're angry just from this. I have my own anger issues; I don't need yours."

He balled his hands into fists, and his power went up a level. Something moved inside me, a golden shadow among tall, dark trees. I caught a glimpse of the golden tiger, but she wasn't trying to walk down that long road. She was hiding in the shadows, her skin cream with stripes of yellow-gold.

Pride stood then and sniffed the air. "You don't smell like vampire."

"She smells like us," Envy said from the doorway. She took a few steps onto the white rug.

Mephistopheles came to stand in front of me. I thought he was going to try to kiss me, but his hand darted out in a movement so fast I wasn't sure what he was going for, but it wasn't a kiss. My gun was just suddenly in my hand and pressed against his chest. My pulse was trying to push out the side of my throat. "Don't move," I whispered, afraid to shout because my finger was on the trigger.

"No human, and few vampires, would have been able to see I was going for their gun, let alone gotten to it in time to turn it on me." He sounded impressed with me.

"If you have a death wish, you're messing with the right girl," I said.

"We're supposed to make sure whatever vampire tries to possess us is worthy of us." He was a little afraid, but not really. He didn't believe I'd shoot him. I'd pa.s.sed his test.

"Are there any more tests that I should know about so I don't accidentally kill you?" I asked.

"Don't you want us to prove that we're worthy of you, too?" he asked.

"Hold that thought." I backed away from him, carefully, and began to take off my weapons. "If we end up killing these guys, let's not make it because we had a cultural misunderstanding."

"What do you mean?" Micah asked.

"He really believes I want him to prove he's a warrior. He really believes that I need to prove myself worthy of him. It's like they've been raised in a culture that I don't understand." I divided my weapons up between Micah and Nathaniel. When I was safe, or at least weaponless, I went back to the two men.

"Are we done with the warrior stuff ?"

They looked at each other. Pride said, "If you were male we'd probably do hand-to-hand, but we outweigh you by a hundred pounds or more, and we're at least seven inches taller. Hand to hand, you won't win. It's not about training. It's about size, and you can't help that you're small. We won't hold that against you."

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.

CHAPTER 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 b.u.mps 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 pet.i.te, 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 pet.i.te." "Ma pet.i.te."

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 pet.i.te ma pet.i.te."

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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, ba.s.s 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-b.u.mp 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 a.s.s, 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.

"I don't know," he said, as if thinking were hard. He rubbed his face against my hand again. "As long as you touch me, I don't think I care what else happens."

I squeezed Micah's hand. He reached out and touched the other side of Mephistopheles' face. Our leopards rose and poured down our hands. Normally they would have slid into and out of each other as if we could be rubbed inside and out by warm, muscled fur, but our beasts poured down our hands and into Mephistopheles. It shouldn't have worked. He was tiger, and Micah and I as Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra were so not, but the muscled fur flowed into him and through him so that it was like a metaphysical ribbon flowing from us to him and tying in a soft, eager, silken knot inside him, around the golden tiger that looked up at us like a golden haze around his face.

"They're not going to make it to the bedroom," Claudia said, and she was walking away from us. "I'm sorry, but I can't do this again, not this soon."

I said, "It's not the ardeur ardeur."

"Not yet," she said and kept on walking. The other guards spread around the room so that Jake wasn't left alone, and Pride was a little closer to them.

There was a p.r.i.c.kling rush of energy and the scent of pine and forest was thick on my tongue. Richard flowed from wolf to human, gentler and more instantaneously than I'd ever felt. He knelt on knees and one hand, nude and human, his hair spilling around his face. The look that had been in the wolf's eyes made me dread seeing his human eyes when he raised his face to the light. There was a moment of anger and resentment in his face, and then I watched him struggle to control himself. He succeeded. The effort showed, but that didn't make it any less good. He said, "I know that I was supposed to be your king, Anita."

I don't know what I would have said to that, but Richard looked away from us and to Jean-Claude and Envy. He went to the other man and left us to our own devices. I waited to be jealous, but I wasn't. Part of it was that he'd used up that part of me that wasted that kind of emotion on him. The other part was that look in his eyes made me remember why we weren't together, and why Micah was the one holding my hand.

Our beasts wove in and out of the three of us like some sinuous sea creature. It was as if someone had a fur glove and was caressing us all over and over, except it was warm and alive. I felt the weight building low in my body, and knew if we kept doing this it was going to work for me.

"If we're doing more than this, we need to do it soon," I said in a voice that was already breathy with antic.i.p.ation.

"Do you need s.e.x to make him your tiger to call?"

"I didn't with Domino or Haven."

Mephistopheles opened his eyes and said, "This is amazing, but G.o.d, please tell me I'm getting s.e.x, too."

We stared down into those lovely eyes, that handsome face, and I remembered the last wereanimal who had said something similar to me over and over again: our dead Rex.

"s.e.x, ma pet.i.te ma pet.i.te, no more holding back. They are ours, or they are not."

"Ours," said a growling voice, and I knew it was Richard. Just the sound of his voice made me glance at them. Jean-Claude was still holding her, but Richard on his knees was sliding a pale silken thong down her thighs. Richard liked giving oral s.e.x. The thought of it tightened things low in my body so sudden and sharp that Micah had to steady me.

The energy that had been so warm, so alive, suddenly spiked and Mephistopheles cried out. His hands reached out, clutching at the front of my belt and Micah's arm. His eyes were closed and I doubted he even knew what he'd grabbed. It was s.e.xual because s.e.x had caused him to reach out, but it was more about holding on so he didn't fall.

Micah steadied the other man, grabbing wrist to wrist. To me he said, "What made you react like that?" But he glanced behind as he asked it, and he turned back to me with an "Oh."

I glanced back too and found Richard kissing his way up her thighs while Jean-Claude peeled the party dress over her head to show that there was no bra to match the thong. She was just suddenly naked except for the silver spike heels. Jean-Claude grabbed a handful of her curls and laid his lips against the side of her neck. He'd wait for Richard to bring her, and then at that critical moment he'd bite her and because she wasn't tied to him as I was, it would be like a double o.r.g.a.s.m. The only vampire in St. Louis who could roll me like that was Asher.

The thought made me search the room for him. He had moved back to the far corner, as far away from us as he could get and not step off the carpet. His hair spilled around his face, leaving it half in shadow, the other half in stark light, so that his beauty was the beauty in the painting above the fireplace. The illusion that all the sadness to come hadn't happened. He leaned against the wall, his hands behind him as if he didn't trust what he might do with them. Nathaniel liked to watch, but Asher only enjoyed it if he knew he could play later.

Micah saw where I was looking. "He looks lost again," he said.

Mephistopheles' hand convulsed on my belt so hard it almost pulled me over on him. Our faces were close and it just seemed natural to bend over and kiss. His lips were soft and warm, and he tasted of honey. Had that changed? He hadn't tasted this good a few minutes ago, had he?

He let go of Micah's arm and his hands went to my belt buckle. He started sliding the leather through the metal, his face uncertain, his eyes looking up at me, waiting for me to say no.

There were sounds from behind us that let me know without looking that Richard was making progress with Envy. I wanted to be doing something of our own before he hit that golden moment. He was new, and I wasn't good with new unless I raised the ardeur ardeur, but I was good with familiar.

I leaned over Mephistopheles and whispered against his lips, "I promise you s.e.x. I promise you intercourse, but I don't know your body yet. I want to do what they're doing for foreplay."

His eyes flicked behind me and he frowned. "We're short a vampire," he said.

"Not for long," I said, and I called to Asher. There were more ways to gain power and solidarity than metaphysics and magic. Love mattered, in the end. A house without love would always fall, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the end without love nothing could endure.