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bottom to anyone, so if anyone is losing their pants it’s not me.” Richard dragged the man a little upward using that painful, pleasurable grip on his hair. Richard lowered his own face a little toward the vampire and said, “I am not food. I am not prey. I am the Ulfric of the Thronnos Rokke Clan, and the next time you forget that, I will hurt you.” He whispered the last almost into the other man’s lips, close enough to kiss. I watched him use all that beauty on Asher as he had, in different ways, with me over the years. Beauty can be a weapon as devastating as any gun.

Richard sat back up and let go of Asher so abruptly he fell into the other man’s lap. Asher lay there passive, his face to one side lost in the tangle of his own golden hair. Richard looked at Jean-Claude and me. “I haven’t just been running from being a werewolf or Jean-Claude’s animal to call. If pain and pleasure didn’t move me, Raina could never have seduced me. I blamed her for me being a pervert, but she didn’t invent this part of me, she just unleashed it.” He laid his big hand on Asher’s head and stroked his hair. The other man shivered under that small touch. “I don’t want to have sex with Asher, but causing him pain appeals to me. Making him want me, and denying him what he wants, that appeals to me, too.” He laid his head back against the back of the bed and closed his eyes; when he opened them they had gone to a dark amber. “It appeals to me a lot.”

Just the look in his eyes made me shiver. Jean-Claude touched my arm and I jumped. “Ma petite, shall we join them?”

I just nodded, because saying Wow out loud just didn’t sound cool enough for what was lying in the bed looking at us with wolf amber eyes.

8

AS HER LOST HIS pants and everything else, though there was a moment when he hesitated on his shirt, because the most severe scars were on his chest and stomach on the one side, and his hair wasn’t long enough to be used as a shield as he did for his face. Jean-Claude and I had done our reassuring months ago. It was Richard with his perfect upper body that made Asher embarrassed, shy, some word that I never thought to use for him in any circumstance.

Jean-Claude and I looked at each other, and we were both wondering how to get the two men to work the issue, when Richard said, “Jean-Claude told you to strip; do it.”

Asher scowled at him, holding his unbuttoned shirt closed. “He told me to undress, actually.”

Richard opened his mouth to say something harsh, I think, but something made him look at Jean-Claude. More than a look passed between them. I think Jean-Claude whispered in his head as he could mine. Whatever was said softened Richard’s face. He turned to Asher. “You didn’t get to see the scars from the silver bullets that nearly killed me last summer.” He traced that broad, untouched spill of muscle. “This half was a mass of scars. I thought it was permanent. It usually is if it scars at all. I didn’t think of myself as vain, but I didn’t like the scars. I didn’t like being less than perfect. When Jean-Claude started using energy to heal his own wounds, I learned how to heal mine. He let me take enough energy from the triumvirate to put me back to this.” He spread his hands, framing all that nice smooth skin.

I’d known they used energy from our power as a unit to heal themselves—it was one of the serious perks to having the vampire marks—but I hadn’t realized that if we hadn’t had enough power, there would be three men in the room with serious scars on all that creamy and tanned goodness, respectively.

“I had no triumvirate to turn to,” Asher said, holding his shirt tight, voice sullen.

Richard went to him. “I’ve tried nice, but sympathy just makes you angry. I understand that, so let me try something else.” He moved in a blur, his hand grabbing a handful of Asher’s hair, the other hand going around the man’s waist, jerking him against Richard. It was sudden, violent, but with that edge of kissing closeness again. Asher’s anger seemed to float away on the strength of Richard’s hands.

Richard stared into those