Nathaniel stared up the line of my body; his eyes were the darkest they had ever gone, true purple, and his fingers teased between my legs. He licked water off my thigh, and just that made me shiver. Damian's arm tightened across the front of my body, pinning me against him, and just that much extra force made me catch my breath.

"Pull her hair to hold her for your bite," Nathaniel said, raising his mouth off my skin enough to speak.

Damian hesitated. I ground my ass against the front of him, and said, "Please."

He grabbed a handful of my hair and used it to pull my neck taut for him. I said, "Harder."

"Harder," Nathaniel said.

Damian hesitated.

"Do it!" I said.

He grabbed a bigger handful of my hair and pulled harder. I made small happy noises for him.

"I'm going to bite her thigh when you bite her neck."

I had enough of myself to ask, "Where are you going to bite me?"

He set his teeth lightly in my thigh, marking his spot.

"Yes," I whispered.

Damian's heat had cooled; he had such control of himself, and that was part of the problem with him and me. We were both so controlled that together we were more so, and it was enough to help us climb back into our heads.

Nathaniel said, "No, not this time!" He bit me hard enough that I screamed for him more from surprise than pain.

Damian still hesitated.

"God, please!" I cried out, shuddering from the feel of Nathaniel's teeth in my thigh. I looked down to find that his eyes had bled to his pale, almost blue-gray leopard eyes. His beast poured heat over me and over the vampire at my back. It was enough. I felt Damian tense as Nathaniel growled around the piece of me in his mouth. Damian bit me, driving his fangs into my neck.

I screamed for him, then felt him beginning to suck. Nathaniel raised his mouth from my thigh, my blood decorating his lips. He growled up at me as he leaned over to lick between my legs. I both wanted him to and was afraid for him to; how much was his beast in control? How much of him was in there as he began to lick over that most intimate part of my body? He'd left a bloody imprint of his teeth on my thigh. I didn't want that there, but with Damian feeding at my neck it was like I couldn't talk, couldn't do anything but make small noises. Nathaniel loved me; he would never hurt me more than I wanted to be hurt. I trusted him. I trusted him. That's what I kept telling myself as he brought me writhing to my orgasm between them as the vampire drank me down, and the wereleopard licked the last bit of orgasm from between my legs and then grabbed more of me in his mouth, so I was like meat between his teeth, as he began to bite down.

13.

NATHANIEL LET ME feel the grip of his teeth around the meat of me, his teeth pressing in slowly like a threat, or a promise. Damian's body was growing thicker against the back of me. He drew back from my neck and took a long, shuddering breath as if he'd come up for air. The feel of his body shuddering against me made me shudder in return, which moved the part of me between Nathaniel's teeth. It pulled more and it was all my fault. Nathaniel half growled and half laughed with me still in his mouth. I fought not to writhe from it while his teeth closed slowly down. It still didn't hurt, but the game was the promise of hurting to come without ever actually doing it. Damian tightened his hand in my hair and across my body, more reflex than choice as his body reacted to mine, but I liked it and let him know it, whispering, "Yes, Damian, yes."

Nathaniel bit down a little harder, and I said, "No, Nathaniel."

He bit down more.

It made me gasp, but I said, "Yellow," which meant to ease up.

He bit down even more.

I called, "Red!"

He stopped biting down and, with one more long lick across me, moved back to gaze up at me with flower-colored eyes, which tried for innocence but held too much evil mischief to be believed.

He stood up and I was suddenly sandwiched between both men. Nathaniel put his arms around both of us, encouraging Damian to push himself even tighter against the back of me and pulling himself as tight against the front of me. The combination made me writhe between them, which made them both harder and thicker, so hard that I wondered if it was painful to be that hard. If I remembered later I'd ask, but right that second the sensation of all that hardness pressed so tight against me was almost overwhelming. I cried out just from that.

Nathaniel licked my neck where Damian had bitten me. The vampire licked over it, and then they took turns licking over the wound, until I cried out half in protest and half that it felt good, but I wanted them to do other things.

Nathaniel leaned over my shoulder and it was Damian's body suddenly startling that helped me realize he'd kissed the vampire, before I turned my head to watch. In all the negotiating Damian had done, he hadn't mentioned kissing the other man as either a negative or a positive. Anything not talked about in detail gave you room to maneuver. Damian was immobile in the kiss but hadn't pulled back. I wasn't sure if he was enjoying it or so shocked he'd frozen.

Nathaniel took the lack of protest as consent and kissed him thoroughly, putting more lip action into it. He wasn't a mind reader, so until Damian said something he had no way of knowing that the other man's body had gone so still and that he was less happy to be pressed against me. I loved watching the two men kiss from inches away, while I was sandwiched between them! But was I supposed to tell Nathaniel that Damian might not be enjoying it, or was the vampire supposed to speak up for himself?

Jean-Claude's power whispered through my mind. "Ma petite, why have you not fed?"

"We're too controlled," I said out loud.

Nathaniel turned to me, kissing me with the taste of the other man still on his lips. He drew back enough to say, "I can fix that." He lowered his mouth to my breast and began to kiss and suck on it the same way he'd kissed my mouth, as if he wanted to lick the taste of every inch of me. It was the way he'd kissed Damian, so he could bring the scent and taste of his mouth to mine.

He drew my nipple out with his teeth in a line of flesh that felt so good, it was almost pain, almost but not quite. Damian's body was pressed tight against me again. I was making small, eager noises as Nathaniel sucked my breast, then turned to the other breast, whispering, "Oh, look, a second one."

"Be less controlled then, ma petite," Jean-Claude whispered through my head, as Nathaniel began to suck at my breast as if he were trying to feed from it. Since lycanthropes fed by biting off chunks of flesh I had to call, "Yellow." He eased down to a point where it felt good again, and I moaned for him. Damian pressed harder against my ass, and I rubbed against him, feeling him grow achingly hard. I wanted him inside me, wanted it so badly. It was as if all the months of avoiding each other, of letting him be with Cardinale and not us, were concentrated down to this one moment in time. Desire . . . It was as if desire were a drug that someone had injected straight into our bodies.

"Fuck me," I said.

"Fuck her," Nathaniel said.

"Please," I said.

"Fuck her," Nathaniel repeated, kneeling down in front of me, letting the water pound against the front of my body and pour over his head, plastering his hair against the back of his body like a second skin. He pushed his hands against my hips, driving me even harder against Damian's body.

Damian cried out, "Gods!"

"No more control," Nathaniel said, "no more waiting."

There were too many words in the sentence. I couldn't think with Damian pressing against me, his hands cupping my breasts. Nathaniel's fingers digging into my hips, his body covered in water and the drowning color of his own hair. "What?" I asked.

Nathaniel stared up at me, and the lavender of his irises spilled out over his eyes, so that he stared up at me blind with his own power. "I want this," he said.

"I want this," Damian said. I turned to look over my shoulder to find that the vampire's eyes were a solid, shining green.

"We want this," they said, and their voices echoed each other just a second out of sync.

"We want this," I said, even as I knew that I wasn't a hundred percent sure that was true.

"Ma petite, lower your shields and let them inside."

"I don't know how," I said.

"I do," Nathaniel said.

I stared down into his flower-colored eyes and said, "What?"

"Look at me," he said.

"Look at us," Damian said, but I couldn't look at both of them at the same time. I stared down into the drowning lavender of Nathaniel's eyes and couldn't look away. Jean-Claude couldn't capture me with his eyes-no vampire could-but staring down into Nathaniel's eyes I couldn't look away. I couldn't do anything but stare down as his eyes started to glow like that streak of lavender in a sunset. I fell into that glowing sunset as if the world had become light and all I could do was fall into the light and wait for something to catch me.

14.

I WOKE IN a welter of sheets on the bed in our room. I didn't remember leaving the bathroom, or getting into the bed. Nathaniel's arm pinned me around the waist, his hair lying in a tangled mass as if he'd gone to sleep with it wet. Damian lay on the other side of him. He was on his back, his face peaceful with sleep. Nathaniel's other arm was flung across his waist, so he had gone to sleep hugging us both. I lay there trying to remember what had happened earlier. I remembered getting in the shower. I remembered some foreplay, and then . . . nothing.

My body was letting me know that we'd had sex, because what goes in has to come out eventually. From the feel of things we hadn't used condoms. I didn't use them with Nathaniel, but I would have with Damian. Had I? Had I just had multiple intercourse with Nathaniel and that was what I was feeling? I'd check the trash can in the bedroom and bathroom to make certain. If I didn't find a used condom in any of them, then I'd know we all forgot the most important safety rule of safe sex. I was on birth control and neither the vampire nor the lycanthrope could carry any sexually transmitted diseases, but still . . . what the fuck were we all thinking?

I tried to sit up, but Nathaniel snuggled tighter so that his arm pinned me to the bed and tight to his body. Damian hadn't moved at all. I looked at him and held my breath while I looked to see if he was breathing, but his chest never moved. Vampires didn't have to breathe. I stretched out a hand across Nathaniel's shoulders until I could touch Damian's arm. His skin was cool to the touch, and for the first time ever, I found my lover's flesh gone cold comforting. He'd died like a good vampire should. There'd be no nightmares for us the rest of today, so at least whatever we'd done had helped.

But what had we done to cure him? I couldn't remember a damned thing after we got in the shower. Okay, we got in the shower, and then . . . What?

I lay there with Nathaniel hugging us both while he slept, and there was something. A memory, a thought, a . . . something. It was like the harder I thought at it, the more my mind shied away from it. Sex, even sex with the ardeur, had never been like this unless something else was interfering with us. The Mother of All Darkness could cause blackouts, and so had Belle Morte and the Lover of Death. Two of the three were dead, because I'd helped kill them; that left Belle Morte, but this was too subtle for her. She liked you to know that she'd fucked you over. So if it wasn't another vampire, then why couldn't I remember what had happened?

I glanced at the bedside clock and had to do a double take. It said it was almost one p.m., which meant we'd been in here almost seven hours. That wasn't possible. The first trickle of fear tightened my stomach and made it a little harder to take a deep breath. The last time I'd lost this much time had been because of the vampire council, or Mommy Darkest. We'd destroyed the power of the first and killed the second. I remembered Kaazim's words, that the Mother's power was inside me, and that her power might be acting in ways that I didn't understand at all.

I tried to move and again Nathaniel's arm tightened around me, holding me in place, but this time it panicked me. I had one of those claustrophobic moments where I had to get out of the bed. I had to find out what had happened and how long we had really been in this room. I was able to sit up, but Nathaniel's arm squeezed around my waist, so that moving off the bed wasn't happening. Nothing was wrong, no one was hurting me, but I was suddenly choking on panic. I pushed at Nathaniel's shoulder hard enough that he raised his head and blinked at me groggily.

"Up!" I said, my voice strident.

"Up what?" he mumbled.

"I need up, out of bed."

He rose up on one elbow, letting me go and asking, "What's wrong?"

I looked down into his lavender eyes and I remembered his eyes glowing in the shower. I backed out of the bed so fast I half-fell to the floor. He came to the edge of the bed and looked down at me.

"Anita, what's wrong?"

"I don't know." But that was a lie. I did know, or thought I did. I just didn't want to say it out loud.

"Did you have a nightmare?" he asked.

I got to my feet and shook my head. "No. Did you?"

"No, I slept great. How about you?"

"I'm not sure."

"What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"What do you remember from after we got in the shower?" I asked.

He gave a very self-satisfied grin, like the proverbial cat that ate the canary. "Everything."

"Define everything."

"The sex was amazing, even for us."

"We had sex with Damian," I said.

Nathaniel's smile began to dim. "Are you saying you don't remember having sex with Damian?"

I shook my head.

He sat up in the bed, and without him to hold Damian in place the vampire slid down the pillows to lie awkward as a broken doll. The angle of his head alone let me know for certain that he was dead to the world, because asleep he'd have changed position. The angle of his neck was so awkward that it looked almost broken. If I could have changed it without getting back on the bed I'd have done it, but at that second nothing would have gotten me back on the bed. I was so scared my skin was cold.

My voice was only a little breathy as I said, "I don't remember the actual sex."

He frowned and sat up in bed, the sheets pooling behind him so that he was nude as he sat there looking concerned. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I," I said.

"You look scared."

I nodded.

"Are you scared of . . . me?"

"I'm scared of whatever made me not remember the last few hours."

"Are you seriously saying you don't remember any of the sex?"

"The last thing I remember was your eyes glowing and you said, I want this."

"Then we had amazing sex," he said.

"I don't remember that part, Nathaniel."

"You don't remember Damian fucking you?"

"No, I don't."