Sin looked at him then. “You’re afraid to hug me now. Why?”

   “Let us say that I am no longer certain of how to interact with you.”

   A look of absolute pain came over his face, and the emotion of it crashed the shields between us. He was sad and scared that he’d screwed up a relationship that he valued. He suddenly felt very young in my head, because it hadn’t occurred to him that sleeping together even just this much would change things between them.

   Nicky came over and wrapped us all in one huge group hug. “Don’t get weird about it, Jean-Claude.”

   Jean-Claude hesitated for a minute and then finally hugged us all, so that we were entwined and it wasn’t sexual. It was comforting. It was . . . family. Sin’s muscled shoulders began to shake, and it took me a second to realize he was crying. Jean-Claude touched his face and dried the tears away with his hands. The look he gave Sin wasn’t romantic; it was very much Uncle Jean-Claude to his beloved nephew, and that was why he wouldn’t be able to put a ring on it. Sin had to decide if he was willing to lose Jean-Claude as his “uncle,” his father figure, to make him a romantic partner, but he had to decide, because he and Jean-Claude couldn’t do both.

32

   WE SAID GOOD-BYE to everyone at the Circus rather than at the airport for a lot of reasons. One, it made more sense from a security point of view. Two, we were already needing two large SUVs to get the luggage and us to the airport; it would have taken even more to get everyone to the airport who wanted to say good-bye. Three, we could say good-bye as enthusiastically as we wanted to without someone snapping a picture with their cell phone and posting it on the Internet. Jean-Claude was the vampire of everyone’s dreams, which meant that just snapping a good picture with your phone could get you money from some gossip sites.

   The luggage had been carried up the long steps by other guards like overly muscled ants trip after trip. They’d loaded everything into the cars outside, and it was time to go. Jean-Claude and I had kissed good-bye in private, but seeing him standing there made me want to do it again. He broke from the kiss to touch the ring on my left hand. It was platinum, white gold, channel-set with white diamonds and one large oval dark blue sapphire. All the stones were set into the metal and, it was all smooth so that it wouldn’t catch on anything, including the rubber gloves that I wore at crime scenes. The ring was still shining and beautiful, but it was practical, and I needed that for my job. Most cops wore plain bands or nothing to work, but Jean-Claude had wanted me to wear his promise ring always, and his promise would never be just a plain band of gold. No, he was all about the shiny.

   “Ma petite,” he said as he turned the ring on my finger, “I never thought to see my ring upon your finger, and now all I can think of is how much I want to add a wedding ring to it.”

   “We’re working on it,” I said, looking up into that almost painfully beautiful face.

   “Yes. Yes, we are,” he said, smiling down at me. I’d shared enough of his thoughts to know that he thought I was beautiful and sexy and utterly desirable, but I didn’t understand it. I was good at sex, so maybe the sexy part, but I was also a royal pain in the ass in other areas. He had been one of the most beautiful men in the world for centuries. How does one mortal woman, any woman, compare to that?

   Nathaniel put his hand over ours, wrapping his hand so that we were all touching the ring, or maybe the ring was touching us. “It’s a promise ring not just for you and Anita, but for all of us.” He raised his face for a kiss, and who would be able to turn Nathaniel down? They kissed, and just watching them so close, while we all held hands, made things low in my body tighten. It was a less chaste kiss than the one they’d had in the bedroom when Damian was with us. I realized that both times it had been Nathaniel who upped the ante, not Jean-Claude. Was the great seducer being seduced? I didn’t have a problem with it. The men in my life being closer to each other usually worked in my favor. Micah might feel differently, but he wasn’t here right now, so I just enjoyed touching them both and having my ringside seat for their kiss.

   “Jean-Claude, you cannot allow them to go to her island,” said a voice from behind us. It was Asher. He was tall, pale, handsome, with long golden hair spilling around his shoulders. Nothing would ever make Asher physically less than gorgeous, but physical wasn’t everything.

   The bodyguards around the room came to attention, because the last time we’d interacted with Asher it had gotten nasty. I knew they were under orders to not let us be alone with him. His emotional instability made him dangerous, and sometimes that danger wasn’t just to your heart.

   “This is for my job, Asher. Jean-Claude doesn’t control that.” My voice was as angry as I felt. Nathaniel was right—we missed Asher topping us in the dungeon. I missed him being part of a threesome with Jean-Claude and me. I hated that I hadn’t found anyone to replace Asher in those two places in my life. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference, and I wasn’t indifferent to him yet. Which pissed me off, because I knew better.

   Asher had spilled his hair across half his face like a golden veil, and like most veils, it was hiding things. His eyes were as pale a blue as Jean-Claude’s were dark, a brilliant, icy blue. I caught the gleam of one through the lace of his hair, but the other eye was bright and visible, set in a face that was so gorgeous that he’d been the artists’ model for paintings of angels and gods. “I have always respected your job, Anita. Whatever mistakes I have made in the past, I never presumed to tell you your job, and I am not now, but do not take Damian back to his old master and do not give her Nathaniel.”

   “We aren’t taking him back to his old master, and we sure as hell aren’t giving her anyone, let alone Nathaniel.”

   Asher held his hand out toward us, but it was to Jean-Claude he was giving the weight of those eyes, that face. “Jean-Claude, you have been at her mercy as well as I. You know what she is and what she is capable of. Please, by all that is holy, all that is left us, do not put our flower-eyed boy within her grasp.”

   “I’m not your flower-eyed boy anymore, Asher,” Nathaniel said.

   Asher’s eyes glittered and I realized it was unshed tears. “And that is my fault, my flaw that drove you away. You have no idea how much I regret what I have done in the past few months. Only Julianna’s death is a greater regret to me.”

   We all stared at him. Julianna’s death had been the great tragedy that had driven a wedge between him and Jean-Claude. She had been their heart, and when she’d died it died with them.

   “That is a bold statement, mon ami, if only you meant it.”

   “I swear to you, Jean-Claude, that I mean every word.”

   “Your word of honor?”

   “Yes.”

   Asher was an old enough vampire that his word of honor meant something. An oath breaker was not trusted among the older vampires, and for some broken oaths it was a death sentence.