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Someone sighed, and I wasn't sure which of them had done it. I looked up, slowly, and no one was looking at me like I'd said something awful. I don't know why I thought anyone in this room would think it was wrong that I liked seeing Jean-Claude kiss another man, but I did think it. I was waiting for someone to tell me to be ashamed of myself. I'd seen someone I loved kiss another man, and not only hadn't I been horrified, but I'd liked it. Was that wrong? I had waited for it to feel wrong, but it hadn't. It had felt strangely right, as if I'd been waiting my whole life to see it. It had felt right in that way that only the things that truly speak to your heart can feel. I hadn't felt bad when it was happening. I was feeling bad now. Why? Was it guilt? No, I felt uncomfortable, and a little squeamish, but not guilty. So what was it?
Micah touched my arm. "So many thoughts flying over your face--what are you thinking?"
"That I don't feel bad, and shouldn't I feel bad about it."
He looked puzzled, frowned. "Bad about what?"
"Shouldn't it bother me that I saw Jean-Claude kiss another man, a stranger at that?"
"Did it bother you?"
I shook my head. "Not at the time, no."
He smiled, eyes still a little uncertain. "But it's bothering you now. Why?"
"Did it bother you to watch us like that?"
He gave me a look. "I've watched you have sex with other men before, Anita."
I suddenly felt thirteen again, embarrassed and confused about the whole thing.
"I believe, ma petite, he is asking how you felt about watching me with Augustine."
I looked at him, happy he'd helped me, but uncomfortable that he'd had to help me.
"Did it bother you?" Micah asked me.
I shook my head. "No, it was amazing. We did him. We owned him. It was..." My breath shivered out of me. "It was a rush, power and sex all mixed up together."
"Then it's okay," Micah said. "Don't feel bad because you don't feel bad."
Of course, that was exactly what I was doing. "It sounds stupid when you say it out loud."
He hugged me, and I wrapped myself around the warmth of his skin. "It's not stupid, Anita. It's how you feel. Feelings are never stupid, they just make us feel stupid sometimes."
I drew back enough to see his face. "You're okay with everything we did tonight. You don't think we're evil or something."
He chucked me under the chin. "That's Richard's voice in your head, not mine."
I nodded. He was right, on part of it.
He went to hang up his shirt in the armoire. Nathaniel reached a hand out to me. "Take off the robe and let me hold you all na**d and warm."
I wanted to, in fact I couldn't think of anything better, but still I hesitated. I took his hand, but I didn't touch my robe, and I didn't climb on the bed.
Micah came up behind me, wrapping his body around me. His body pushed against the back of my robe. The silk was thin and parts of him were not.
I turned with a little gasp. "You're naked."
He frowned at me. "Yes, we always sleep naked."
I shook my head, and said, "But..." then I realized what was wrong. I'd sort of known before today that Jean-Claude had had male lovers. I mean, I knew that he and Asher and Julianna had been a true menage à trois. I shared the memories to prove it. But that had been memories, and theory. It hadn't been fact, until tonight.
I tried to put it into words. "I knew in theory you liked men as well as women," I said, and looked at Jean-Claude while I said it. His face was as empty as I'd ever seen it, as though if I blinked, he'd vanish.
"But now you know in fact, and you think less of me," he said, in a voice as empty as his face.
"No, not less, just..." I tried again. "In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other's dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was g*y. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don't undress in front of people who see you as a sex object. You don't sleep with them, or... oh, hell." I looked up at Micah. "Won't it weird you out to sleep nude beside him now?"
Micah laughed. "Are you worried about my virtue more now than before?" I frowned at him. "I don't..." I pushed him hard enough that he stumbled. "Fuck you," I said, but I was starting to smile and that usually meant I'd lost the argument. I wasn't even sure it was an argument.
"Not to take anything away from the attractiveness of your Nimir-Raj, ma petite, but I believe I can restrain myself." His face held a hint of humor now.
I looked at Nathaniel, and he was trying not to grin at me. I was perilously close to being laughed at, and that was just not cool. "Stop it, all of you."
"Stop what?" Nathaniel said in a strained voice, but his eyes were shiny with suppressed laughter.
"Don't you dare laugh at me."
"Did you think that because I had tasted my first man in years that I would suddenly be some sort of rampaging beast?" Jean-Claude's neutral face was beginning to crumble around the edges, humor was filling his eyes, tweaking at the edges of his mouth.
"No," I said, and it sounded sullen even to me.
"Did you expect Nathaniel and me to be more shy around Jean-Claude because we saw him with Augustine?" Micah's mouth was twitching at the edges.
I glared at them all. "Maybe."
"Anita--" Micah said, but he had to stop and fight the smile that kept threatening to get away from him. He started over. "Anita, remember I thought I'd have to be coming across to Jean-Claude when I joined you. The entire preternatural community believed that Richard and Jean-Claude and you were a true menage ?trois. I considered this before I ever asked to be your Nimir-Raj."
I frowned at him. "So it doesn't bother you?"
"No. I'm not into men, but I don't seem to have the same hang-ups that you and Richard do."
"Don't compare me with him," I said, and was all set to be angry.
"If it was another woman sleeping na**d with you, you'd have the same problems that he does," Micah said.
"I've slept with some of the female wereleopards before."
"But never nude, either you or them," Micah said.
I started to deny it, then stopped. Was he right? "I don't know, I... I might be able to sleep nude, if it's just sleep, with another woman. I don't think I'd like it, though. I'd rather sleep pressed between two men."
"And that's fine," he said, "but if you knew for a fact that a woman saw you as a potential sex partner, you'd treat her differently."
"Yes, she'd go in the boy box."
"According to your thinking, Nathaniel and I should put Jean-Claude into a different box now, right?"
I thought about it, then nodded.
He smiled. "Anita, seeing him with Auggie wasn't the first clue I had that Jean-Claude liked men."
I looked from one to the other of them. "Have I missed something?"
"Not what you are thinking, ma petite." Jean-Claude sat more solidly on the corner of the bed, his back against the foot of it, his knees drawn up for his arms to wrap around. "I have not seduced either of your cats behind your back."
I hadn't really thought he had, but... "Then what is Micah talking about?"
"Anita," Nathaniel said, "pay more attention the next time that Jean-Claude feeds off one of us, or Asher feeds off me. You won't have to ask."
"But I've been in the bed while you guys did that. What did I miss?"
The three of them exchanged a look. "No, no looks, just tell me."
"You said you were tired," Micah said. "I think you don't want to know this, or you wouldn't have to ask."
"Don't want to know what?"
Again they exchanged that look.
"Stop that," I said, and I had to fight the urge to stomp my foot at them.
"Let us cuddle together, ma petite. Let us hold you, and give you the comfort that we all need tonight. It has been a long night, a good one in many ways, but long. You are tired."
I was tired, but the rush of anger, and confusion, had chased back the tiredness. "I am tired, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and let you hold me. But damn it, you're all looking at each other like there's an elephant in the room, and I can't see it."
