40

EACH OF THEM pressed one of my hands to his stomach. The tiger inside me looked up and growled. The other tigers all came out of the dark and sniffed the air. I'd never seen all the colors at once. The gold stood in the middle, with the other colors fanning out in a half circle. They didn't try to trot down that long metaphysical road and become real. They didn't do anything but stand there in a soft line and sniff the air.

I felt the men bend over me and sniff along my skin. I had to blink to clear my inner vision enough to see them and not just the tigers inside me.

"She smells of all the tigers," Mephistopheles said.

"It's not possible," Pride said, but his face was against my hair. He rubbed his cheek against me, and then seemed to catch himself and straightened up. "It's not possible," he repeated. He stepped away from me, rubbing his arms as if he were cold, but that wasn't it. He was rubbing at the line of goose bumps on his skin.

I stared up into Mephistopheles' blue-hazel eyes and knew he wouldn't move away. Hands on my shoulders turned me to find Envy at my back. She leaned over my upturned face and kissed me. She tasted of tiger and sweet lipstick. The fact that I didn't pull away encouraged her more than I knew what to do with, and I had a moment of thinking, loudly, "Jean-Claude."

He was there, his arms sliding around her waist, pulling her away from me and turning her to him. Auggie had asked me how I'd feel to see Jean-Claude with another woman; in that moment I felt relieved.

Mephistopheles bent over me, his arms sliding behind my back, drawing me into the warmth of him. "We're supposed to be proof against vampire powers, but I want to touch you, and I want you to touch me. Why?"

I answered him with his mouth inches from mine. "The other tigers are looking for someone who smells like home."

"I have a home," he said, and his lips moved against mine as he said, "I just want to put as much of my body against as much of your body as you'll let me."

I tried to be reasonable. I tried to think, but in that moment it sounded like such a good plan. I heard myself say, "Yes, please," before I'd finished thinking anything.

Envy made a bedroom sound, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her and Jean-Claude kissing. She was pushing his jacket off his shoulders, while she made small eager noises at his mouth.

Jean-Claude drew back enough to say, "Ma petite, the bedroom?"

"I don't know," I said, but I did, or I knew what I wanted to do.

Micah's voice. "The bed is more comfortable."

I turned and saw one of the loves of my life calmly urging me to take the bed. Nathaniel was on his feet. "I want to watch."

"Yes," I said.

Mephistopheles said, "Sure." He kissed me, and he tasted so good, so right. His hands lifted my shirt out of my pants, and the moment his hands slid around my bare waist it was my turn to make eager noises. It was the way I'd been with Micah from the beginning, and Haven. That thought helped me swim up through all that skin hunger.

I looked for Micah and found him watching with calm eyes.

Jean-Claude said, "Ma petite."

I turned in Mephistopheles' arms while he played with my hair and kissed down the side of my face. Envy was kissing her way down the side of Jean-Claude's neck. Her hands had managed to strip off his jacket, and her fingers were fumbling at his shirt. "The tigers seem eager," he managed to say.

"Do you want to touch her, like roll around naked on top of her?"

His eyes fluttered back into his head as he answered, "Eagerness can be contagious, ma petite."

That was a polite way of saying yes. Mephistopheles pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it to the floor. Whatever we were going to do, we needed to do it soon. He dropped to his knees so he could nuzzle my breasts above the black lace of my bra. Yeah, soon.

The big wolf got to his feet growling softly, but even soft it was like listening to the deep, bass growl of some dangerous motor. If you heard that sound in the dark, you'd be afraid.

"Don't make this harder, Richard," I said.

He gave me a look out of his wolf eyes that was all too human, and even through the fur and the wolf face I knew that look. He was back to pouting. I so didn't need this.

I turned to Micah as Mephistopheles bit into the mound of my breast. It made me gasp. I looked down to find his blue and gold-brown eyes staring up at me. His eyelashes were very long, very dark, and framed his pale eyes as if they'd been picked especially to make his eyes stand out, as if whoever shopped for him had paid extra for the pretty parts.

He rubbed his face against my hand, closing his eyes and luxuriating into it as only a cat can. He was gorgeous and I wanted him, but I didn't know him. I was tired of trusting my life and everything I loved to strangers, no matter how pretty they were. I held my other hand out to Micah. He put his head to one side, sending all those deep brown curls sliding across one shoulder, but he came to me without any questions. He simply took my hand, and the moment he did it was as if every beast inside me looked up at once. My skin ran hot with the brush of every beast I had. The hair on my body rose and made me shiver. I realized why I hadn't been able to bond with Haven, or any other animal king: because I was truly Nimir-Ra to Micah's Nimir-Raj. I had my king.

Mephistopheles opened his eyes, and I could see the hairs on his arms standing up in a golden shiver. "You smell like everything at once. What is that?"

"Micah is my Nimir-Raj. We are a true mated pair."

"Then there is no room for me," he said, and he sounded sad.

"There is always room," Micah said.

"But not for another king," I said. "You can be mine, but I already have a king."

"He's only leopard. You need a golden tiger." Pride said it, from the side where he was hugging his arms tight. I didn't know if he was getting the goose-bump run of energy, or if he was fighting not to touch one of us.

Envy gave a soft moan behind us. It made me turn to find that she had climbed Jean-Claude, wrapping her long legs around his waist. His hands were on her ass, holding her in place. The clothes were still in place, but if we didn't go to the bedroom soon he'd be doing her here.

"What do you think, Mephistopheles?" I asked the man kneeling at my feet.

"I don't know," he said, as if thinking were hard. He rubbed his face  against my hand again. "As long as you touch me, I don't think I care what else happens."

I squeezed Micah's hand. He reached out and touched the other side of Mephistopheles' face. Our leopards rose and poured down our hands. Normally they would have slid into and out of each other as if we could be rubbed inside and out by warm, muscled fur, but our beasts poured down our hands and into Mephistopheles. It shouldn't have worked. He was tiger, and Micah and I as Nimir-Raj and Nimir-Ra were so not, but the muscled fur flowed into him and through him so that it was like a metaphysical ribbon flowing from us to him and tying in a soft, eager, silken knot inside him, around the golden tiger that looked up at us like a golden haze around his face.

"They're not going to make it to the bedroom," Claudia said, and she was walking away from us. "I'm sorry, but I can't do this again, not this soon."

I said, "It's not the ardeur."

"Not yet," she said and kept on walking. The other guards spread around the room so that Jake wasn't left alone, and Pride was a little closer to them.

There was a prickling rush of energy and the scent of pine and forest was thick on my tongue. Richard flowed from wolf to human, gentler and more instantaneously than I'd ever felt. He knelt on knees and one hand, nude and human, his hair spilling around his face. The look that had been in the wolf's eyes made me dread seeing his human eyes when he raised his face to the light. There was a moment of anger and resentment in his face, and then I watched him struggle to control himself. He succeeded. The effort showed, but that didn't make it any less good. He said, "I know that I was supposed to be your king, Anita."

I don't know what I would have said to that, but Richard looked away from us and to Jean-Claude and Envy. He went to the other man and left us to our own devices. I waited to be jealous, but I wasn't. Part of it was that he'd used up that part of me that wasted that kind of emotion on him. The other part was that look in his eyes made me remember why we weren't together, and why Micah was the one holding my hand.

Our beasts wove in and out of the three of us like some sinuous sea creature. It was as if someone had a fur glove and was caressing us all over and over, except it was warm and alive. I felt the weight building low in my body, and knew if we kept doing this it was going to work for me.

"If we're doing more than this, we need to do it soon," I said in a voice that was already breathy with anticipation.

"Do you need sex to make him your tiger to call?"

"I didn't with Domino or Haven."

Mephistopheles opened his eyes and said, "This is amazing, but God, please tell me I'm getting sex, too."

We stared down into those lovely eyes, that handsome face, and I remembered the last wereanimal who had said something similar to me over and over again: our dead Rex.

"Sex, ma petite, no more holding back. They are ours, or they are not."

"Ours," said a growling voice, and I knew it was Richard. Just the sound of his voice made me glance at them. Jean-Claude was still holding her, but Richard on his knees was sliding a pale silken thong down her thighs. Richard liked giving oral sex. The thought of it tightened things low in my body so sudden and sharp that Micah had to steady me.

The energy that had been so warm, so alive, suddenly spiked and Mephistopheles cried out. His hands reached out, clutching at the front of my belt and Micah's arm. His eyes were closed and I doubted he even knew what he'd grabbed. It was sexual because sex had caused him to reach out, but it was more about holding on so he didn't fall.

Micah steadied the other man, grabbing wrist to wrist. To me he said, "What made you react like that?" But he glanced behind as he asked it, and he turned back to me with an "Oh."

I glanced back too and found Richard kissing his way up her thighs while Jean-Claude peeled the party dress over her head to show that there was no bra to match the thong. She was just suddenly naked except for the silver spike heels. Jean-Claude grabbed a handful of her curls and laid his lips against the side of her neck. He'd wait for Richard to bring her, and then at that critical moment he'd bite her and because she wasn't tied to him as I was, it would be like a double orgasm. The only vampire in St. Louis who could roll me like that was Asher.

The thought made me search the room for him. He had moved back to the far corner, as far away from us as he could get and not step off the carpet. His hair spilled around his face, leaving it half in shadow, the other half in stark light, so that his beauty was the beauty in the painting above the fireplace. The illusion that all the sadness to come hadn't happened. He leaned against the wall, his hands behind him as if he didn't trust what  he might do with them. Nathaniel liked to watch, but Asher only enjoyed it if he knew he could play later.

Micah saw where I was looking. "He looks lost again," he said.

Mephistopheles' hand convulsed on my belt so hard it almost pulled me over on him. Our faces were close and it just seemed natural to bend over and kiss. His lips were soft and warm, and he tasted of honey. Had that changed? He hadn't tasted this good a few minutes ago, had he?

He let go of Micah's arm and his hands went to my belt buckle. He started sliding the leather through the metal, his face uncertain, his eyes looking up at me, waiting for me to say no.

There were sounds from behind us that let me know without looking that Richard was making progress with Envy. I wanted to be doing something of our own before he hit that golden moment. He was new, and I wasn't good with new unless I raised the ardeur, but I was good with familiar.

I leaned over Mephistopheles and whispered against his lips, "I promise you sex. I promise you intercourse, but I don't know your body yet. I want to do what they're doing for foreplay."

His eyes flicked behind me and he frowned. "We're short a vampire," he said.

"Not for long," I said, and I called to Asher. There were more ways to gain power and solidarity than metaphysics and magic. Love mattered, in the end. A house without love would always fall, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the end without love nothing could endure.

Asher pushed away from the wall with a smile on his face that lit my heart and made me smile back. Jean-Claude breathed through my mind, "Thank you, ma petite." I had a moment of feeling his hands on the other woman. Her body began to buck in small precursors to the orgasm from Richard's mouth between her legs. Was I jealous? Maybe a little, but I watched Asher walk toward us and the new tiger didn't protest it; I pushed the jealousy away. It wasn't who we were. There was enough love, enough sex, enough for everyone. When there's enough, you don't have to be jealous of anyone.