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he’d seen some danger that I was still oblivious to.
“Will you come over here and offer up your neck to me, leopard king?” Asher asked.
Nathaniel moved in front of Micah. “I will.”
“And you are tasty, mon minet, but I know you will not fight me. You and I have no quarrel about dominance.”
Micah took his arm and pulled him back. “This isn’t about sex; it’s about power, Nathaniel. He wants me to acknowledge him as more powerful.”
“There were other things I wanted from you, Micah, but wasn’t it Machiavelli who said, ‘It is better to be loved than feared, but if you cannot be loved, then fear will do.’ Well, you don’t love me, so I will settle.”
“You are not doing all this just because I don’t like boys,” Micah said.
Asher laughed again, and this one hurt, as if the sound of it had bits of glass to rend the skin. It was an illusion, a vampire power, and I should have been proof against it; that I wasn’t meant that Asher had grown in power since last he’d tried shit like this.
“When I believed that I let it go, but I saw you tonight at the dance. I saw you with your kitten, and you like him well enough.”
“Wait, are you doing all this because you think Micah is . . . doing Nathaniel, but not you? That’s such a girl reason for a fight.”
“No, it’s not,” Asher said. “It’s a very male reason for a fight. A man’s ego can only take so much rejection, Anita.”
“Oh my God,” Micah said.
Again he was ahead of me. “What? What did you figure out that I haven’t?”
Micah looked at Jean-Claude. “You sleep in the same bed with him almost every night. We find you naked together dead to the world during the day when none of us are with you. Are you really telling me that you and he aren’t—”
“Aren’t what?” I asked.
Nathaniel answered, “Lovers.”
“What?” I asked.
“They aren’t lovers.”
“Who aren’t lovers?”
“Jean-Claude and Asher,” Nathaniel said.
I turned and looked at Jean-Claude. I just looked at him. “Are you telling me that even when I’m not with you, you’re still not . . .”
“No, he’s not,” Asher said, “and when I say not, I mean not anything. He thinks that if you came into the room and caught us doing it, it would distress you.” Since that could be a long list, I just stared at Asher.
Asher laughed, and this one was almost ordinary. “Look at their faces, Jean-Claude; our nearest and dearest all thought we were together as of old.”
I turned to Jean-Claude. “Are you saying that you’ve had him in our bed, in your bed, naked all this time and you still haven’t . . . been, oh, hell, you aren’t completely lovers?”
“And what would you have done if you walked in on us being lovers, ma petite?”
“I’d have been a lot less upset than if I caught you with another woman,” I said.
“But you would be upset,” he said.
“I don’t know, I . . . we do Asher together. We’ve all been in the bed together, the five of us, in various ways. I mean . . . I honestly thought you were saving the more intimate stuff for when I wasn’t there.”
“You have taught me to fear your moral compass, ma petite. I never wish to be on the wrong side of it again.”
“But it’s Asher, it’s him, you love him, you have loved him for centuries.”
“He loves you more,” Asher said. “He loves you enough to have refused me again and again, to have stopped my touch, my body, and if you attract one more mostly heterosexual man to our little group I am going to do something violent,” Asher said. Then he laughed again, and it held sorrow and something bitter in it. “But wait, I’ve decided to do something violent tonight.” He looked at the guards who were frozen by the curtains trying to pretend they weren’t listening. “Perses, Dares, come stand by me.”
The two werehyenas looked at each other, and then the blond said, “We’d rather just leave you two to discuss things. This sounds more personal than bodyguard.”
“I don’t want you to leave. I want to make my point and the two of you will help me do that.” He held out his arm and called them to him. He called them the way Jean-Claude could call wolves and I could call so many animals. He opened up his power and it filled the