Nathaniel sighed. “I’ll admit it, if neither of you will.”

   “Admit what?” I asked.

   “I miss Asher topping me in the dungeon. I even miss sex with him.”

   “If I did not miss sex with mon chardonneret, my goldfinch, I would have been done with him centuries sooner.”

   “Fine, fine. I miss him in the bedroom and the dungeon.”

   “What we miss is that we can’t find anyone else who tops us like he does,” Nathaniel said.

   Since I was still working through my issues about the whole bondage and submission being an ongoing part of my sexuality, I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

   “The only one I have ever known as talented with such things as Asher is Belle Morte,” Jean-Claude said.

   “I know she tried to contact you and come here after the vampire council fell and she had to flee France,” I said.

   “She seemed most confused that I would not allow her sanctuary in my lands.”

   “She thought you’d take her back,” Nathaniel said.

   “She offered that the three of us could be together as of old.”

   “You, Asher, and her?” Nathaniel asked.

   “Yes.” He looked out into the room, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t seeing anything in front of him.

   I moved to make sure I blocked his line of sight. He looked up at me; his blue eyes looked as black as his hair and the robe he was wearing in the dim light, so that only the paleness of his face and that triangle of chest relieved the darkness of him.

   I held my hand down and he took it lightly with just his long, slender fingers. “I never asked you at the time: were you tempted?”

   His lips moved, and it wasn’t quite a smile, more like he thought about smiling. “What she offered was a lie, ma petite, as it was always a lie.”

   “You and Asher were her main boys for centuries.”

   “We were her favorite pawns, or perhaps tools. Yes, we were her favorite tools, or weapons to be aimed at whoever she wished us to seduce, or embarrass, or help her manipulate for her schemes. Belle almost ruled all of Europe once, the true power behind many thrones. The two of us helped her seduce a great deal of the nobility, church officials, anyone in a position of power that she wished to control.”

   “I’ve been inside your head when you have memories of those days, Jean-Claude; you loved her. You were in love with her.”

   “I was, but she was never in love with me, or Asher. If she was ever able to love anyone, it was not us.”

   “So you weren’t tempted?”

   “For a moment, perhaps, but it is like being tempted by a dream. It is not real.”

   “But while you’re dreaming it, it can feel real,” I said.

   “She kept us all like addicts, ma petite. We were addicted to her charms. We competed for her love, but as you have said before of others in our lives, it is a rigged game. There is only one winner in any game involving Belle Morte, and that is Belle Morte.”

   Nathaniel unfolded from beside the fire and walked on two legs, but there was something about the way he moved that was very catlike, as if his human body were remembering a lighter grace and it was all there as he came to take my other hand and look down at Jean-Claude.

   “We are a game you can win,” he said.

   Jean-Claude smiled then, and offered his other hand to him. Nathaniel took it, smiling back. “Oh pussycat, pussycat, you are right, because all of us are willing to talk about what is true and what we need, or want, or cannot live without. We do not—what is the phrase?—game each other.”

   “You don’t game the people you love,” I said.

   He sat up very straight in the chair, still holding our hands, while we held each other’s. “You are quite right, ma petite. Now, let us follow the recommendation of our clever cat and find Magda before her master wakes for the day and she becomes more clever.”

   “She’s not stupid,” Nathaniel said.

   “No, but she is not a deep thinker either.”

   “Her body awareness and physical intelligence are amazing,” I said.

   “That makes her an excellent warrior,” Jean-Claude said.

   “And a really physical lover,” Nathaniel said.

   I felt the first heat of the blush that was creeping up my face. I didn’t blush as often anymore, but occasionally . . . Jean-Claude laughed and kissed my hand. “Oh, ma petite, you never grow jaded. It is one of your many charms.”

   “Dating women is new, okay?”

   “We don’t date Magda,” Nathaniel said. “She’s more a bodyguard with benefits.”

   I drew him into a hug and put my arm across Jean-Claude’s shoulders, bringing us into a sort of group huddle. “I’m dating as many people as I can do justice to; ‘with benefits’ is okay.”

   We all agreed with that; though I hated the concept of “with benefits,” sometimes it was all I had to offer. If someone didn’t think that was enough, they were free to stop being part of our poly group. I’d finally realized that I didn’t have unlimited time and energy to date this many people. We were looking at closing our circle and making it closed poly, which meant eventually we’d start saying no. The trick was to figure out who was a yes before the door of possibilities closed, but right now, we needed to figure out what had gone wrong with the vampires in Ireland. Once I’d thought that Damian’s master was so powerful and evil that she should be destroyed, and now I was worried about why she wasn’t powerful enough to protect her turf. Sometimes evil was in the eye of the beholder, right along with beauty.

16

   JEAN-CLAUDE HAD to take a business call, because though he was now head of all the vampires in the country, he was still running his own businesses and finances. Sometimes I forgot that part of what had led him to become king was his ability to do business, but he didn’t. It was part of our power base that I was no help at all with; my idea of investments was my 401(k) plan at work. Nathaniel and I went to find Magda to ask about Ireland, because we could handle that part while Jean-Claude did things only he could do. It was delegation at its best, though usually Nathaniel didn’t go with me when I was working on crime busting, but then this really wasn’t about the police work; it was more about trying to figure out why a country that had worked fine for eons was suddenly going apeshit. Had Jean-Claude and I done something to fuck it all up? If we had, how did we fix it? If we hadn’t, then what had changed in Ireland?

   Before we could find Magda, Nicky found us. He was tall, blond, blue-eyed, and so in shape it was almost intimidating. He wasn’t the tallest person in my life, but as he strode toward us down the hallway he seemed like he was; it was part attitude and part that his shoulders were almost as wide as I was tall. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his black workout shirt. He was wearing the new shorts that were split up the outer thighs to accommodate men who had awesome muscled thighs like Nicky, so they’d have full range of movement in the octagon during MMA—mixed martial arts—matches. I’d seen them first on a pay-per-view match that I’d watched with Nicky and other friends among the guards.