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"I am not going to have sex with Nathaniel, or Jason. Keep this up, and you won't even be on the list."
"I would rather have you angry with me and not in my bed than accidentally pregnant by one of them."
"I think I can keep from f**king them." I sounded angry, but it wasn't anger that I felt, it was a seed of doubt. That hesitation made the anger worse. I always hid behind anger when I could.
"And before this morning, you would have sworn even more strongly that you would not f**k a strange man you had just met."
The blush was so hot, it almost hurt. "I didn't mean to." That sounded weak even to me. "I couldn't ..."
"You could not control yourself, ma petite, I know. But if you lose control again, would you not rather be safe?"
I shook my head. "If I can't control myself better than this, we're not going to do this."
"And if you do not feed from the lust in this room, how will you go into the lupanar tonight? How will you see your wereleopard lover tonight when he accompanies you to the lupanar without losing your precious control? How will you stand this close to our Richard and not offer yourself to him? Ma petite, you have had sex with a stranger."
"He is her Nimir-Raj," Nathaniel said. "They are meant to be a mated pair."
"Pretty to think so," Jean-Claude said, "but I have been where ma petite is right now. I have felt the hunger for centuries, and I tell you that you will not be able to go among the shapeshifters tonight unless you are sated. I ask again, can you delay this meeting for a few nights?"
"I might be able to delay it for a night," I said.
He shook his head. "No, ma petite, one night will not suffice. You are drawn to Richard and now to the Nimir-Raj. I think you will be unable to think around them unless you have fed. Your wereleopard's life is at stake. Can you afford to be that distracted? Can you bear the thought of being that out of control in a public setting, among potential enemies?"
"Damn you," I said.
He nodded. "Yes, perhaps, but is anything I have said untrue?"
"No." I shook my head. "I hate it, but no."
"Then let us at least take precautions, ma petite. It is luck alone that had the Nimir-Raj made safe. Our lives are complicated enough without that."
I knew what "that" meant. An accidental pregnancy. The thought of it made my blood run colder than anything else had. I hid my face in my hands. "I can't do this."
"Then you must call Richard and tell him you cannot come tonight. You cannot go as you are, ma petite. The need will only worsen the longer you deny it."
I raised my face and stared at him. "How much worse?"
He lowered his gaze. "Bad enough."
I crawled across the bed to him, made him look at me. "How bad?"
He tried not to meet my gaze. His shields were back in place, and I couldn't tell what he was feeling. "You would be attracted to all the men. You would ... I cannot guarantee what you would do, ma petite, or who you would do it with."
I just stared at him. "No. No, I would never ..."
He touched my mouth with his fingertip. "Ma petite, if you have not found my memories of my first days with this inside my body, then it is a blessing. I was a wanton thing before I became a vampire. But what I did when the desire first fell upon me ... The desire did not hit me at once, because I craved blood first, then when that quieted, the desire rose inside me." He took my hands in his, pressed them against the cool flesh of his chest. "I did things, ma petite, things that even to a hardened libertine were humiliating. A look, a glance, and it was enough to bring me to them."
"Didn't Belle Morte try to protect you?"
"I did not meet Belle until I had been dead nearly five years."
I stared at him. "I thought Belle was your, whatever, that she made you into a vamp."
"Lissette was my creator. She was of Belle's line, but not a master vampire, not by any stretch of the definition. In France it is customary that every kiss of vampires has at least one vampire belonging to each of the council bloodlines. Lissette was the only one of her kind in a nest descended mostly of far less pleasant vampires. Julian was her Master of the City, and he was my first true master. He brought in people for me, but not people I would have chosen. He brought in ..." Jean-Claude shook his head. "He amused himself at my expense, because he knew I would take whatever he offered, because I would have no choice. I thought I had no room for embarrassment, but he taught me that there were things I did not want to do, and I did them anyway."
I think if he hadn't been shielding so strongly that I would have seen what he was remembering, but he didn't want me to see.
"Let me spare you such degradation, ma petite. You are not as I was. You have never given yourself freely. I fear what you would do, or think of yourself, if you did these things. I do not think your sense of yourself would survive intact."
"You're scaring me," I said.
"Good, you should be frightened. Asher met me before I had mastered the ardeur. He can tell you what I was like then."
I just looked at Asher.
"I had seen the ardeur rise in others before Jean-Claude, and I have watched it since, but I have never seen anyone so crazed by it," said Asher.
"So you helped him learn how to control the ardeur."
"Non. Lissette sent to Belle, telling her of Jean-Claude's beauty. I was sent to, how would you say, look him over for Belle. I advised Belle not to bring Jean-Claude and his master to court."
"Why?" I asked.
"I was jealous of his beauty and his prowess. After ten years she was bored with me, or so I feared. And I did not wish the competition."
"I learned to control the ardeur without the aid of another who had experienced it. For five years I fed on flesh as I fed on blood. Only then did I master the ability to feed from a distance."
"Five years!" I said.
"Belle taught me true control of the ardeur, and I was not hers until I had been dead five years. But I will be there for you from the beginning. It will not be as it was for me." Jean-Claude hugged me against him, and that scared me more. "I would never have married the marks with you if I had thought you could inherit my incubus. I would not knowingly have done this to you."
I pushed away from him and found him crying, and the fear sat like stale metal on my tongue. I was so scared my body went quiet, not racing, but almost as if every beat of my body, every breath, had simply stopped, and all there was to fill me was fear.
"What have you done to me?"
"I thought at first that you were not vampire, and it would not be a true hunger. But watching you today, I know that it is as it was for me. You must feed. You must not deny yourself. To do so is to court madness, or worse."
"No," I said.
"If you had withstood the Nimir-Raj's advances, then I would say that your strength of will might conquer it. If you had withstood the desire to feed on Nathaniel, I would say you would master it. But you fed on him."
"I did not have sex with Nathaniel."
"No. And wasn't what you did instead more satisfying to some part of you than mere intercourse would have been?"
I started to say no and stopped. I could still feel Nathaniel's flesh in my mouth, the touch of his skin under my hands, the taste of his blood on my tongue. The memory brought the hunger over me in a hot rush. Not merely the lust, but Jean-Claude's craving for blood, and Richard's beast--or my beast--wanting to take that last bite and tear flesh for real, no pretending, no holding back.
I had an awful idea. "If I deny one hunger all of them grow worse, don't they?"
"If I deny the lust, I need more blood, and the reverse is true."
"I don't just have your blood lust, Jean-Claude, I have Richard's beast--or mine. I wanted to tear Nathaniel up. I wanted to feed on him for real, the way an animal does. Will that grow worse, too?"
His face started to slip back into careful, neutral lines. I grabbed his shoulders, shook him. "No! No more hiding. Will it grow worse?"
"I have no way of knowing for certain."
"No more games! Will it grow worse?"
"I believe so." His voice was very soft as he said it.
I drew back from him, huddled against the headboard, stared at him, waiting for him to say, "sorry, just kidding," but he just met my eyes. I stared at him, because I didn't want to see anyone else's face. If I saw pity, it might make me cry. If I saw lust, it'd make me mad.
