of pleasure."
"Mon Dieu,why not?"
I looked in time to see Jean-Claude give that all-purpose Gallic shrug, which meant everything and nothing. Usually he made it look graceful, today it looked tired.
"Anita," Asher said.
I looked at him, and this time I could make eye contact, except that staring into those amazing eyes wasn't much safer than looking at his amazing body.
"You told me you wanted me inside you, as I remember. And when I bared your neck you said, 'Yes, Asher, yes.'"
"I remember what I said."
"Then how can you be angry at me for doing what you asked?" He took three strides closer to me, and I backed up. The movement stopped him. "How can you blame me for this?"
"I don't know, but I do. How that's unfair, or maybe not unfair, I don't know, but I do."
Jean-Claude spoke then, his voice like the sigh of the wind outside a lonely door. "If you had but restrained yourself, mon ami,we might even now be together in the bath."
"I don't know about that," I said. My voice sounded angry, and I was glad.
Jean-Claude gazed at me with those blue black eyes. "Are you saying that you could refuse such bounty, once having tasted it?"
I didn't blush this time, I paled. "Well, it's moot now isn't it, because he cheated." I pointed at Asher for dramatic emphasis.
He stared at me openmouthed. "How did I cheat?"
Jean-Claude was back to holding his head in his hands. "Ma petitedoes not allow vampire trickery to be played upon her." His voice came muffled but strangely clear.
Asher looked from one to the other of us. "Ever?"
Jean-Claude answered without moving, head still in his hands. "For the most, oui."
"Then she has never tasted you as you are meant to be tasted," Asher said, and his voice held a soft astonishment.
"That is her choice," Jean-Claude said, he raised his face up slowly, so I could meet that blue gaze, and there was something of anger in his eyes.
I didn't understand all of this conversation, and I wasn't sure I wanted to, so I ignored it. I've always been damn good at ignoring what makes me uncomfortable. "The point is that Asher used vampire wiles on me. He's done something to cloud the way I think about him. Now I won't know, won't ever know, if what I'm feeling is real, or a trick." There, I felt sure of moral high ground on this one, at least.
Jean-Claude did a sort of voila gesture with his hands, as if to say, see, I told you.
Asher's face began to lose its anger and work towards that blankness they both did so well. "So it was just a lie."
I looked at both of them. "What was a lie?"
"That you wanted me to be with you and Jean-Claude."
I frowned. "No, it wasn't a lie. I meant it."
"Then this faux pas changes nothing," he said.
"You've messed with my mind, I don't think that's just a faux pas. I think that's damn serious." My hands were on my hips, better than clinging to myself to keep from touching anybody. I embraced my anger, because it made them less beautiful. Of course, it made everything less beautiful.
"So you did lie," Asher said, his face almost empty of any expression.
I hated watching him shut himself away like this, but I didn't know what to do to stop it. "Damn it, no, I didn't lie. You're the one who changed the rules, Asher, not me."
"I changed nothing. You said we would be together. You offered me your bed. You begged me to be inside you. Jean-Claude said that your sweet ass was not to be touched, and the deep pleasure of your body was full, where was I supposed to go?"
I fought not to blush and failed. "It was the ardeurtalking, and you knew it."
He backed up until he came to the edge of the bed, and he half-collapsed on the blue sheets, grabbing the post to keep from sliding off the silk. His face was blank, but the rest of him acted as if I'd struck him, and I knew I'd said the wrong thing.
"I said that once the ardeurwas cooled you would find a way to reject me, to reject this," and he gestured at Jean-Claude at the far end of the bed, and the bed itself, "and you have done just as I said you would do." He pushed himself up from the bed, clinging to the wooden post for a moment, as if he wasn't sure his