“You’re saying that Jean-Claude wasn’t truly part of the prevailing attitude toward women, so he can’t share it with me.”

“Exactly.”

“We’re wasting all the hot water,” Nathaniel said.

We looked at him, as if we’d forgotten where the hot steam was coming from.

“If we’re going to keep talking, I’ll turn it off and save it for actually getting clean,” he said.

“We all need to clean up,” I said.

“The two of you can clean up in here. I’ll go back to my room.” He actually started to walk past us, but I caught his arm.

“Don’t go, Damian.”

He looked down at me, at my hand on his arm, then at my face. “Tell me why I should stay, Anita.”

“Jean-Claude thinks that me keeping you at arm’s length is why you’re sick. That our triumvirate needs more up-close-and-personal time to be whole.”

“It’s like Kaazim said: sex is the power from Jean-Claude’s bloodline,” Nathaniel said.

Damian looked at him. “We might have to negotiate exactly what sex for the three of us means.”

Nathaniel flashed a grin that was part mischief and just a little touch something more. “Then let’s negotiate while we shower the blood off. I’d like to use some of the hot water for the sex part.”

Damian and I looked at each other. He looked a question at me from those green eyes set in their mask of blood. I shrugged. “It sounds like a plan.”

He smiled. “You smooth-talking devil, you.”

I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

He squeezed my hand. “It means yes.”

I took the yes and left the rest alone. One relationship hurdle at a time; if you try to jump them all at once you fall flat on your face and it all falls apart. We got into the shower together, all three of us trying very hard for it not to fall apart.

12

WHEN WE WERE clean, all our long hair plastered tight to our shoulders, though Nathaniel’s hair was plastered down most of the back of his body, I released the ardeur. Kaazim had accused me of making people into my sex slaves. I didn’t believe that, but this was the power that made him think it. I finally let myself concentrate on it, and the craving was there, like it nearly always was if I allowed myself to hear it. If the ardeur was well fed, then it was like needing another meal, a faint emptiness to be filled, but if I’d gone more than six hours it was like being truly hungry after you’ve missed several meals. I treated the ardeur the way I treated hunger for actual food, something to be forgotten about while I was doing other things, which meant I had eaten almost nothing last night and not fed the ardeur at all. The more real food I ate, the easier the ardeur was to control. I’d slept, but none of us had eaten breakfast. I was supposed to be Nathaniel and Damian’s master. I was supposed to be in charge and in control, and I might have been if I’d eaten a real meal in the last sixteen hours, or fed the ardeur in the last twelve. I hadn’t meant to forget to eat, and I rarely went that long without having sex with one of my lovers, but it had been a busy day. Micah had been called out of town on Coalition business and taken one of my main feeds with him. Damian had requested that there be no sex with him in the bed with Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, and me, so we’d missed that window for feeding me. Jean-Claude had taken blood, which was his main food source; sex was a supplement for him. It wasn’t a supplement for me. It was what kept me from sharing his bloodlust or Richard’s craving for flesh. It was what kept me from sharing Damian’s bloodlust and Nathaniel’s craving for flesh. It was what helped me keep all the beasts inside me quiet and controlled. It was what helped me not become a monster. Feeding the ardeur was like feeding the monster something safe when what it really wanted was to tear people’s throats out.

I freed the ardeur and it roared over all of us, because I’d been arrogant and ignored most of my safety precautions. One minute the three of us were standing in the shower like reasonable naked adults and the next we were hands and mouths that just wanted to touch, kiss, suck, and bite each other. The water pouring over us from nearly every direction became part of the hot, pounding need. Damian was pressed against the back of my body as tight as he could make us, one arm around my waist, the other turning my head to the side to bare my neck. Nathaniel knelt in front of me, his fingers playing between my legs, his mouth kissing along my thigh. Damian’s body was so tight against me that I could feel him tucked up tight against my ass, but he wasn’t hard at all, because he hadn’t fed either. Until he took blood he couldn’t feed my need.

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.