“He was not allowed guards . . .”

“Stop talking,” I said.

He gave me narrow eyes.

“Be angry with me, that’s fine, but you have to start treating Asher like he is, not like you want him to be. He is childlike, in that throwing-temper-tantrums way. He breaks things and regrets it afterward, but the damage is done. I don’t want you to be part of that damage one day, Jean-Claude.”

“I would like to say that I would never hurt Jean-Claude, but Anita is too right. I do not think when I am in certain . . . moods. I don’t know why I do such things.”

“Then talk to that therapist we found for you, and figure it out, before you force me to kill you. Nicky’s right, Asher, it would kill something in me to do it, and Jean-Claude would never forgive me, but mark me on this, Asher.”

I went to him and touched his face, made sure he was looking down at me with all that golden hair and those eyes, that kissable mouth. I stared up into all that beauty and I said the truth. “Mark me on this, Asher, if you ever do anything that damages Jean-Claude’s power structure, or Micah’s work with the Coalition, without consulting them first, then you will be punished, and if you won’t take good treatment, I’ll find someone to give you bad treatment. If the only way you learn is by having the lesson carved into your skin, or painted in blood, or echoed in screams of pain . . . we can do that.”

“That will not be necessary,” he said quietly, and very slowly, very carefully, as if waiting for me to protest, he put his hand over mine where I touched his face.

“I hope not, because if pain doesn’t work, the only thing left is death. Do you understand that?” I spoke slowly, as carefully as his hand had touched mine.

“I do now,” he said.

“Good, good. Kane’s afraid of me now and that will help, but you aren’t afraid of me. I can’t make you afraid of me without damaging our relationship more than you already have today.”

“I am sorry, Anita, truly. May I kiss you?”

“No, I don’t want your touch to make me forget this moment, and I don’t want you to think a little sex and bondage will fix it all, because it won’t. We may get back to that, but that doesn’t make all this okay, it just means I’ll have decided it’s not a deal killer.”

“Are you . . . would you refuse me?”

“Right now the thought of letting you tie Nathaniel and me down, and being at your mercies, and trusting that you’d honor our safewords, just doesn’t seem like a good bet.”

“And for that, I am even more sorry. I value you both, I love you both.”

“Then act like it, Asher, because right now I’m not feeling very valued, or loved.” I took my hand away from his face, his touch, and stepped back.

Nathaniel came to me looking handsome in a black suit tailored to his body like a European glove, lavender shirt and a black tie with tiny purple fleur-de-lis. It made his skin look darker, his auburn hair tucked back in a long braid redder, his eyes almost purple, though maybe that was him being angry. He took my hand in his and said, “I hope you can earn back our trust, because I’ll miss your body if you don’t.” Not I’ll miss you, but I’ll miss your body. I thought that was interesting phrasing; apparently so did Asher.

“My body, but not me; then I have been a bad dominant to you, for you should love me as I love you, my flower-eyed boy.” He touched Nathaniel’s face, but all he got was a very cold look from that handsome face.

“You’ve been so into Kane that the rest of us haven’t really counted for much,” Nathaniel said.

Asher let his untouched hand fall back to his side. “I did not realize that I had neglected all of you.”

I said, “You and I pretty much just have bondage sex with Nathaniel, and sometimes without him, but I’m just your bottom, not your submissive. Submissive needs more caretaking.”

“I will do better by all of you, I swear it.” He looked at Jean-Claude and Richard standing off to one side.

“Does Dev count in all that?” Nathaniel asked.

Asher looked past us to the guards still waiting at the edges. Dev had stayed with them, not moving forward even as far as Nicky had. I wondered if he’d stayed back because he’d been ordered to, or because he didn’t trust himself not to hurt Kane, or Asher. It would have been the perfect excuse.

Asher looked at Dev, and it was . . . dismissive was the only word I had for it. It must have cut Dev to the heart. “I am committed to Kane now. I will be keeping the relationships that give me things he cannot, but what Dev and I have is too . . . standard. I could not come up with a need he met that Kane, Jean-Claude, you, and Nathaniel did not.”

My chest ached just hearing him dismiss Dev’s love like that. I realized I was feeling some of the bleedover of emotion from my golden tiger. He was hurting too badly to be able to shield himself off completely, and in that moment I didn’t want him to. What good is being able to sense someone else’s emotions if you can’t help them cope with them sometimes?

“God, Asher, aren’t anyone’s feelings real to you but your own?” Sin said it from the far side of the room, where other guards had forced him back from the potential danger. He practiced fighting, but he wasn’t a guard, and when the emergency happened they’d treated him like what he was, a guardee.

Sin went to Dev and hugged him. He was almost as tall as the six-foot-three guard, but there was still something very young in his wanting to hug and make it all better. Dev startled and tried to stay in stoic bodyguard mode, and then he hugged Sin back, blond head bowing to mingle with the dark blue. They broke apart and it was Sin who had tears trailing down his face, as if he were crying tears Dev couldn’t, or wouldn’t, shed.

Micah went to him next and offered his hand, and then did that one-armed guy hug, which was a little awkward since Dev was about a foot taller, but I heard Micah say, “You deserve someone who treats you better than this, Dev.”

Nicky hugged him next, and then ended with his hand on the back of Dev’s neck, underneath his longish blond hair. Nicky kept his hand on the man’s neck, so they touched foreheads, faces apart enough that I could see Nicky’s lips move as he said something—I couldn’t hear what he said, but whatever it was it made Dev smile.

Domino hugged him, too, and just said, “Dude, I’m sorry.”

Dev said, “Thanks, brother.”

Nathaniel hugged Micah, and said something so quietly that like with Nicky I could only see his lips moving, but heard nothing. Micah nodded, then motioned me over. I went to them, taking his hand. We put our heads together and Micah said, “Nathaniel wants permission to be with Dev as friends with benefits.”

“I thought the two of them had been talking about that, but I thought you were against it,” I said.

“Was I jealous at first, yes, but I can’t, or don’t want to do certain things with Nathaniel. I’ve learned that I don’t know how I feel about some things until we try, but I promise not to be mad at Dev for the one night even if I can’t deal with more.”

Nathaniel looked at me. “Are you okay with it?”

“I think so, I mean I’m already able to have sex with both of you, and I know how much you miss certain guy-on-guy sex from being in the bedroom with you and Asher, so if Micah is okay with it, then I don’t see a problem. Should we ask Jean-Claude?”