THE WICKED TRUTH and Ethan went ahead of us because they wouldn’t let us go through first. Buzz and the other security people were locked shoulder to shoulder trying to keep the crowd away from the door. They had their heads down or an arm raised to shield their faces. I could see fingernail marks bleeding on them. The crowd turned toward us as one, a beast with many faces, and I knew that wasn’t my thought, but Jean-Claude’s. He’d seen a crowd like this before, more than once. I was suddenly flooded with memories of other rooms, other crowds; the clothing was a lesson in centuries of fashion. Belle Morte, the creator of Jean-Claude’s bloodline, had enjoyed the chaos of it, and what came next.
Jean-Claude gripped our hands harder to steady himself, and he reached out through both of us for help. Graham was a doorway to the werewolves, though it was an imperfect door because we weren’t connected to Graham, only to his wolf. I was a doorway to the wererats, the clan tigers, and the wereleopards, because I had my own animals to call of each; my lioness and hyena were still waiting for their special connection, so there was less for Jean-Claude to use. My wolf had chosen its other half, and because the need was great we had a moment of feeling Jason on a very different kind of stage, him hesitating because he felt us thinking at him too hard. Jean-Claude drew us back so we wouldn’t make him fall, or drop a ballerina, and we were solidly back amid the overturned tables and chairs and the crowd flowing over the stage like ants over a piece of candy, so that all you can see is their bodies but not what lies underneath. I had a second of almost pure terror, as if when they stepped away from the stage there would be something underneath them, in the midst of them.
Jean-Claude didn’t have to tell me he sensed it, too; I could feel what he was feeling, thinking, and I had a dizzy moment of not being sure if I was walking in the stiletto heels or the soft leather boots. Graham couldn’t meld with us, he wasn’t a part of us, only his wolf half belonged to Jean-Claude because all wolves belonged to him.
I wasn’t sure which of us thought it wasn’t enough, this wasn’t enough connection to our wolves, and then I knew it was Jean-Claude, because I thought wolf, not plural. It will have to do, he thought, and I was stumbling in the stiletto heels, unable to walk in them when I wasn’t sure what body I was driving.
Graham moaned. “What did you do to me?”
“My apologies, lupe, but you are not the big bad wolf that I need.”
Graham was having trouble focusing as he said, “I can be big and bad if that’s what you need.”
Jean-Claude smiled at him, and Graham smiled back like he was happy to have said a smart thing that pleased him. Graham so wasn’t a dominant, which meant he so wasn’t a big bad anything, but he was willing to stand with us and be our wolf, and that counted for a lot. Jean-Claude stopped trying to reach for more energy and concentrated on what we had.
I knew Jean-Claude had grown in power, but I hadn’t really understood what it meant until now. He filled the audience with new memories; there had been a contest for them to vote on which of the security people they’d most want to see dance onstage at Guilty Pleasures. I felt that some of the women had small scrapes and bruises and the pain made them doubt the story, but he took their pain away as his gaze could take the pain of the bite away, except he did this without meeting their eyes, or needing to; they just went back to their tables, and the security walked or limped over to put the overturned chairs back so they could sit down. Jean-Claude took their confusion of rushing the stage and trying to claw their way past the guards into them seeing the guards try to dance onstage, take their shirts off, some were awkward, and it was endearing. Some of the women laughed, as if it were happening in front of them. Some of the guards moved well onstage, and then Jean-Claude had asked them to vote on who they most wanted to see, and Graham had won.
Jean-Claude was busy implanting the memory that I had come back to guest-star tonight using the name that Nathaniel had given me the first time I’d stepped onstage with him. I was Nikki long before our Nicky came into our lives. I had a moment of missing Nicky so hard that it made my chest tight. He should have been at my side tonight. He would have helped me control things, because we’d worked our issues together, unlike Rodina and Ru.
Jean-Claude breathed through me, “Happy thoughts, ma petite, we will see your lion later tonight, but in this moment I need you to feel my hand in yours and be joyful of it.” He squeezed my hand as he said it, and I squeezed back. I let him see that I was happy to be with him; I chased back the next thought, which was not happy with the metaphysics going wrong and having our only wolf option be Graham. He’d grown as a person, but he still wasn’t one of my people, our people. The stray thought came, But he could be. I didn’t know if it was from Graham, Jean-Claude, or one of the audience. Jean-Claude was driving the bus, because I had no idea how to do this. I was powerful, but I was a better battery than a witch, and whether you called it psychic ability or magic, what Jean-Claude was doing took training and practice that I didn’t have.
I thought of running my hands over Jean-Claude in nothing but the thong and boots and that was a happy thought. It helped chase back the stray thought about Graham. Jean-Claude raised my hand and laid a gentle kiss on the back of it to let me know he appreciated me getting into the spirit of things. I did want to run my hands over him and a lot more once we had privacy. He planted images in the audience’s mind of me flirting and teasing with the men as they’d come up onstage for the first time. He made me more suave and debonair than I was capable of with strangers onstage. I’d been Nikki for Nathaniel and Jean-Claude here, but never to a bunch of people I’d never touched before.
He swung us around so that the entire audience could see us like we were being presented to them. They screamed Graham’s name, or just screamed in excitement. They called out Jean-Claude’s name, too, because he was showing more skin than they’d seen from him in years. A few even called my stage name and I waved and smiled like that made me happy. I could pretend to get off the stage sooner.
“Our new werewolf is overdressed, is he not?” The women screamed and called out agreement.
It was one thing to plant Graham being sexy and dancing onstage, and it was another for him to do it, so Jean-Claude thought of something simpler for all of us. Graham knelt in front of us, and the moment he stopped touching Graham the energy felt wrong. He touched the side of Graham’s face, and it was as if his power got a boost. I was supposed to help Graham take his shirt off, but that left Jean-Claude not touching either of us, and that seemed like a bad idea.
Jean-Claude moved me like we were dancing so that I was in front of Graham where he knelt, and he came in at the werewolf’s back. Then he let go of both of us for moment and it was as if the world contracted so fast and hard I was dizzy. I reached out and he gave me his hand, the other back on Graham. Touching made the energy expand again; it was as if Jean-Claude’s area of control was expanding and contracting, which wasn’t possible. He was the king of all the vampires in this country. They were blood-oathed to him, which meant he gained power from all of them.
“What was that?” Graham whispered.
I gave a bare shake of my head because I didn’t know. Jean-Claude smiled and flirted with the crowd, but in his head was the thought, “The other vampire has left something behind.”
What? I mouthed.
He thought, “Power.”
That didn’t answer the question, but before I could ask a better question, he called out to the audience, “Shall Nikki and I help our wolf strip?”
“Yes! Please! God yes!” And more enthusiastic encouragement from the crowd so that the noise was almost too much. It made me wish I’d worn ear protection like I did when I went to the gun range.
Jean-Claude helped me kneel in front of Graham and then went gracefully to his knees behind him. Graham was simultaneously excited to see me and a little apprehensive about Jean-Claude at his back. Not a lot, but a little. Jean-Claude laughed and pressed himself to the other man’s back as he drew me closer, so we hugged him together. The crowd loved it, but Jean-Claude whispered to Graham, “Your virtue is safe tonight, lupe.”
Graham was embarrassed then that he’d let his momentary fears show. He forced himself to relax between us and not be a big baby about it, his thoughts or mine, I knew they weren’t Jean-Claude’s. I slid my fingers underneath Graham’s shirt. His skin was so warm, his body heat caught underneath his shirt, so it was like warming my hands as I caressed upward, tracing the smooth firmness of his stomach while Jean-Claude did the same to his back. I had a confused moment where I wasn’t sure if I was touching the softer flesh of his stomach or the firmness of his back. Graham shuddered between us as if we’d done a lot more than just touch his stomach and back.
Jean-Claude looked at me over the other man’s shoulder and we stared into each other’s eyes as we ran our hands up his body, forcing his shirt to bunch around our arms, slowly exposing his upper body to the crowd. They went wild, screaming and catcalling. I sensed security moving into place around the stage just in case, but they didn’t rush us because Jean-Claude was in charge of the energy this time and he didn’t want violence, he wanted lust. Safe, teasing promises of lust, which is what a good strip club is, the promise but never the fulfillment of the fantasy.
Jean-Claude smiled at me over Graham’s shoulder, and I smiled back; we could feel each other’s hands on his body. Graham’s breath came out in a long sigh, his pulse speeding from being in the middle of our power exchange. The shirt lifted, revealing his nipples; the small tips of them were hard with excitement. It made me speculate about how hard other things might be, and I got the pleasure from Jean-Claude that we had made him excited. Part pride in workmanship, part dominance; I almost never felt that way about people I wasn’t emotionally connected to, but for Jean-Claude that was always a high. No wonder he enjoyed being onstage here.
I kissed Graham’s bare chest carefully, leaving a perfect imprint of my red lips on his skin. He sighed again, and Jean-Claude kissed the side of his neck, oh so gently. Graham’s eyes fluttered closed, and I felt the effort in his body not to shudder again. I couldn’t help myself; I flicked my tongue across his nipple, and he cried out. I kept his shirt bunched up underneath his shoulders, as Jean-Claude stood over us both. There was a moment when the leather of his boots prevented him from touching Graham’s back, and the power contracted again, until he touched Graham’s hair, and then the power flexed outward again.
Loud enough for the crowd to hear he said, “It is time he lost his shirt, is it not?”
“Yes! Take it off! Take it off!” The crowd chanted it as Jean-Claude reached over Graham to touch my hands where they held the shirt in place. He placed his hands over mine and it felt amazing to touch each other directly, as if hands meant so much more than normal. I gazed up into his cobalt-blue eyes and I knew what he wanted me to do. He slid his fingers underneath the cloth and lifted as I leaned in to lick the other nipple. Graham’s arms went up without being asked, and Jean-Claude stripped the shirt off him to fling it into the crowd. I rose up from his chest to find Graham’s face inches from mine, his brown eyes wild with need. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss him. It was gentle and he did not kiss me back but stayed still under my touch as if he was afraid to move, afraid I’d stop if he was too eager. I traced my hands on either side of his face and whispered, “Kiss me.”
Jean-Claude stood above us stroking Graham’s hair and called out to the crowd, “Has our good wolf earned a better kiss than that?” The crowd roared its approval. The chant became “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss!”
I kept my hands on either side of Graham’s face as I tilted my head up toward him. He made a small eager sound and then he bent over me, and our lips met. He made a soft sound against my mouth, and then he kissed me. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off my knees so that I had to wrap my arms around his bare shoulders to help hold me in his embrace as we explored each other with lips and tongues, he was so eager. He’d wanted permission to touch me for so long. It was as if his eagerness was contagious, so that when his arm tightened around my back and his other hand slid downward to touch my ass I didn’t say no. We weren’t getting out of our clothes, Jean-Claude was right there, we were onstage, and I suddenly felt safe, in control of the uncontrollable. I wrapped my legs around Graham’s waist too high for anything serious, but I’d forgotten how short the dress and how small the thong, and suddenly his hands were on my bare ass, holding me in place as if I needed the help to stay in place around his body, but tentatively as if he wasn’t sure it was okay. I had a moment of thinking Either grab my ass or let me go. Jean-Claude knew what I was thinking, feeling, so he said, “Grab her ass like you mean it!” He called it out to the crowd, and they shrieked their eagerness. Graham tried to hesitate, but I kissed him harder, using just a touch of teeth against his lips, and he grabbed my ass so hard and sudden that it was my turn to make a small, surprised sound. I wrapped my arms tighter around his neck and he took that as the invitation it was to move his other hand down to dig his fingers into my ass, but my extra arm movement had raised the short skirt up so that he touched bare skin where the thong didn’t cover.
He froze for a moment, breaking away from the kiss, searching my face for outrage, for a no. I said, “This may be the only chance you get, I’d take advantage of it if I were you.”
He finally allowed himself the eager smile he’d been trying to hide, because he was afraid I’d back off, but not tonight. I smiled at him, willing him to be as eager as we needed him to be. He stared straight into my eyes from inches away and filled his hands with my bare ass, cupping and caressing, so that I wound my legs around his waist, pressing the front of me in the thong against the front of him in his jeans, and found him as hard and eager as I could have wanted. Jean-Claude had moved out of the way of my spiky heels, because he’d known exactly what I was going to do. He kept his hand on Graham’s shoulder as he moved to the side of us. Graham’s hands convulsed, digging his fingers into my ass, pressing me tighter against that hard center inside his pants. The suddenness and the force of it made me cry out and wrap my legs tighter around his waist, driving myself tighter against him. He shuddered, closing his eyes, shoulders bowing as he fought to control what he wanted to do next.
“Do it.” I whispered it against his face.
“I want to fuck you.”
“No,” Jean-Claude and I said together.
“Then what?” he asked, and he sounded wild, trapped and too eager to think clearly.
I knew exactly what I wanted. “Grind me into the stage.”
“Won’t that hurt you?” That he thought to ask when his body wanted me so badly gained him points.
“I want to feel you on top of me, Graham, pushing that hard, solid piece of you against me.”
He didn’t ask again, just straightened his knees and took us to the ground with my legs wrapped around his waist and the dress up around mine, the thin thong all that was between me and the roughness of his jeans. In the right head space, I like the sensation, and I was in that head space. I let go of his shoulders so he could raise himself up above like he was trying to do a push-up with me in the way. It pressed him tighter against me and I loved it. The crowd’s screams seemed distant as I stared up into his face above me. I stared down the bare length of his chest to his waist still safely in his pants. Jean-Claude leaned over me to whisper into Graham’s ear, and just seeing them both above me sped my pulse and made me want more.
Jean-Claude leaned down to kiss me as Graham rose up higher and began to rub himself over me, dry humping is what it’s called, but I was already wet. Jean-Claude kissed me, soft and eager as Graham gained rhythm against my body. I wrapped my hands in Jean-Claude’s hair, crushing those thick, soft curls of his as I came eager to his mouth as my hips started rising and falling with Graham’s. I felt a sharp pain like a piece of candy that you’ve sucked too long until it cuts your tongue, then tasted blood, sweet copper pennies. Jean-Claude drew back from the kiss, his eyes drowning in eager blue light, a dot of crimson on his lower lip. He licked my blood from his lip and whispered, “Ma petite.”
I whispered his name back to him, and then in the power that we had raised was another power creeping like a dark thread through our nice, clean lust. Jean-Claude spoke in my mind, “It is in the crowd.”
I tried to speak mind-to-mind, but with Graham’s body rubbing against mine, his desire riding the air, I couldn’t focus enough for it. I whispered, “What is?”
He kissed me again, but this wasn’t for pleasure, it was to let me taste the power that wasn’t us. It was like . . . mist clinging to each person in the audience. Some people were covered in more of it, others were a spiderweb wisp, but none of them was clean. Something, another vampire, had ridden in on Jean-Claude’s power like a Trojan horse, and now unless we could cleanse the audience of this taint the vampire would possess these people, and it would be our fault. We had to save them. He rose back from the kiss to gaze into my eyes. He was thinking we needed to raise more power.
Graham had stopped moving against me as if he was sensing some of what Jean-Claude had shared, or maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention to him. No one likes to be ignored when they’re doing something that sexual with you. I looked up at him not sure what to say, because the threat to the audience and the fact that any vampire could have infiltrated the crowd with us right here and not noticing had scared me. That kind of fear wasn’t an aphrodisiac. I didn’t know what to tell Graham or how to raise enough power to rescue all the nice people who had come to enjoy the show tonight. Jean-Claude knew just what to do. He reached down and cupped his hand over the front of my body, tracing the front of the thong where it clung to me. It felt amazing and the crowd screamed his name, urging him on.
He raised his voice, addressing the crowd. “Shall we raise the heat between Graham and our lovely Nikki?”
Screams of approval and suggestions ranged from just yes, do it, to pornographic. Jean-Claude gazed back at me, his hair falling around his face to hide what he said next from the room. He rubbed his hand over the thong and my body underneath. My breathing was already starting to change.
Graham started to move to all fours instead of the odd push-up position. Jean-Claude said, “Graham, we need you right where you are.” He raised his voice and said, “Is that not so, ladies, we need Graham to stay, right, where, he, is.” They roared their approval.
“But Nikki must say yes to being your surrogate onstage tonight.” He looked down at me while his hand rested on the cloth of the thong; his hand felt heavier and more important than it should have been. The audience was chanting, say yes, say yes. Jean-Claude looked down at me and said, “Say yes.”
I stared up into his face and felt his fear, and guilt that all these people would be victims for the vampire if we could not save them. I said the only thing I could think to say. “Yes.”
He whispered, “Je t’aime, ma petite.”
“I love you, too.”
He slid his finger inside the thong, so that my eyes fluttered closed for a second, and then he slid more of his hand underneath the cloth and ripped the thong partially off me. One of my pleasure triggers was having lingerie ripped off me. It helped clear my head of doubts and put me back into the head space we needed. Graham hesitated, staring down at us, at me. Jean-Claude pulled the thong free and made sure the crowd saw him toss it to the stage.
Graham made a sound that was half pain and half growl; I liked both. He went up on his knees, which spilled my legs open so he could see that I shaved, but his body still hid me from anyone’s gaze but Jean-Claude’s. Graham stared down at me, and I didn’t blame him for looking where he was looking. This wasn’t a moment for eye contact. The look on his face was tormented, like he was in real pain. Maybe something inside his jeans had twisted on him. Jean-Claude took Graham’s hand in his so he could keep contact with our wolf while he leaned down next to my face. It was the crowd’s eager screams that made me realize he was flashing a very nice view to the audience behind him. He was still wearing only the blue thong and boots. He was making every move onstage as much a part of the show as he could. I knew that the more reality he could give the audience on which to hang the false memories that he needed to plant in their minds, the better. Lying in someone’s mind was just like lying in real life; the best lies are the closest to the truth.
He kissed the side of my face so he could whisper, “I would not share you with another man, but his eagerness at being denied for so long is even greater than anticipated.”
I nuzzled against his face and whispered back, “Enough energy to free the audience?”
“And enough to allow me to trace the taint in the audience to its source.”
I hid my expression in his long hair because I knew I couldn’t control my face to match the sexy tableau we were creating. I’d thought without Richard we wouldn’t have enough energy to save us all once we needed wolf. I had thought our absent third was going to sink us again, and now we were saved. I was so relieved that I said a quick prayer of gratitude, and then I asked Jean-Claude, “How do we sell it to the crowd, so that they don’t remember something we don’t want them to remember?”
“Concentrate on the man in front of us, while I work on creating the physical illusion.” I turned my face away from the blindfold of Jean-Claude’s hair to the man who was waiting for us. Graham knelt above us, and I knew what the pain in his face was now: desire. He was as close as he’d ever gotten to me, but he stayed where he was, waiting for us to tell him what to do next, and maybe not trusting himself to move until he had permission. He met my gaze and the look in his eyes was frantic with need. He closed them as if afraid what I saw in his eyes would piss me off like it had in the past. If he’d been his usual lecherous self earlier tonight, then it might have, but he’d done his best to be a gentleman in circumstances that most men wouldn’t have been able to manage.
I reached my free hand out for him. He glanced at Jean-Claude, who said, “Do not look to me, look to her.” Graham looked at me then, his face a mix of desire and confusion; he wanted to touch me but hesitated trying to find words to ask. I helped him. “Feel how wet you’ve made me.”
He used two fingers to stroke over my most intimate parts. He began to stroke and explore, and my breathing quickened. I wanted him to explore me, to bring me, but not onstage, and in that moment where things make sense that later might not I asked for what I wanted him to do. “Put them inside me.”
He did what I asked, sliding two fingers inside me so that I writhed for him, eyes closing, because it was almost too much. He crooked his fingers inside me and found that spot that is harder to find than the one most men search for; it made me open my eyes and look up at him to find Jean-Claude’s face next to his so they were both staring down at me, and I knew who was giving Graham tips and hints for how my body worked. Jean-Claude smiled down at me, and I smiled back.
“That’s cheating,” I said, but my voice was breathy, and my eyes were having trouble focusing.
“Non, ma petite, this is cheating.” And he started playing over that sweet spot that was outside my body while Graham continued to flick his fingers over the deeper one. It wasn’t just that their fingers seemed to know exactly what to do but them looking down at me together, the delighted heat in Jean-Claude’s face and the amazement in Graham’s that he was getting to touch me. We all have our kinks and one of mine was two men at once. Jean-Claude’s fingers knew exactly how to touch me, and through him Graham knew exactly what to do, too. I kept thinking I’d protest but then the sensations distracted me and they brought me together, one larger orgasm chasing the deeper one so that I screamed my pleasure for them, my upper body coming up off the ground like I was reaching for something to hold on to in the air above the stage. When I lay quiet and twitching on the stage Jean-Claude’s voice filled the world. “Two men giving you pleasure but taking none of their own, because this night is all for you.”
Graham stayed kneeling between my legs, but Jean-Claude stood to talk to the audience, to send them home with lust and happiness and then the power, our power, contracted like it had been slapped away from them, out of them. He dropped to his knees to grab my hand and touch Graham’s arm; the moment he touched us both his power, our power, flowed out and filled the audience again.
The other vampire had laid a compulsion inside the audience; that meant that if we didn’t free them of it come tomorrow night the vampire would be able to call them out of their houses, out of their lives, and take them one by one.
I stared up at Jean-Claude and thought, How do we free them?
“You have pushed propriety as far as you are comfortable onstage, I would not ask more but I must have at least wolf to touch, but I need enough energy of the ardeur to chase out the evil that has been laid inside them.”
A voice came out of the darkness offstage: “You have more wolves to touch.” Jake was still in his workout clothes. He was ex-Harlequin and looked like James Bond should have looked: medium skin tone, brown hair, brown eyes, medium height. He was so medium that you would never pick him out of a crowd in most of the world, he would just blend. Other figures moved in the dark, it was every wolf we had on security. Not the regular pack like Graham, but the ones who had been SEALs and had fought to the last man against a group of shapeshifters and lived to tell the tale; they’d also failed their blood tests for lycanthropy, so now they worked for us. Jean-Claude had promised not to call the werewolves without talking to Richard first, but any wolves who worked for us, that was different.
“I did not call you, so how did you know of my need?” Jean-Claude asked.
“Nathaniel called us,” Jake said.
Nathaniel moved up beside the stage where I could see him. I was suddenly embarrassed and a little chilly with my dress around my waist. He opened the link between us to let me know how much he’d enjoyed the show. He was a serious voyeur and his eagerness traveled through me so that I wasn’t embarrassed or cold. Graham did help me to scoot down my dress and sit up, but holding on to Jean-Claude and Graham with Nathaniel in my head was like new foreplay. It chased away any discomfort.
“Take my hand and see if it is enough,” Jean-Claude said. Jake got up onstage and touched the vampire’s bare shoulder, and Jean-Claude’s power flexed. “Try more wolves,” I said. They came to him onstage, most of them in exercise gear because they’d been helping to test Edward and Peter. I had a moment of panic that they might have come to try and help. Bad enough Edward, but I did not want Peter in the audience tonight.
Nathaniel reassured me that he’d made it clear it was an ardeur emergency and anyone not cleared for it needed to stay away, except for the wolves. We needed the few we had on staff too badly. As each wolf gathered around Jean-Claude, his energy grew stronger and filled the room and the alien energy inside the audience began to push back, as if it finally recognized a threat.
“I would that I could come with you, but I must stay here and control the crowd. Go, feed, and grant me all the energy you can, so we may cleanse them of the other’s taint.” He let me go and I was less sure, until Nathaniel took my hand and suddenly I felt solid again. Graham started to hang back, but Jean-Claude said, “One wolf must go with you, ma petite.”
I looked out at the smiling crowd who were sitting so quietly in their seats. He had calmed their minds, would mess with some of their memories, but if he couldn’t find enough power to save them from what the other vampire had done to them, they were all dead, they just didn’t know it yet. He, or she, or whatever, would call to them in the middle of the night, and they would go like sleepwalkers unknowing and unresisting to be food. If they were lucky they’d survive the three times it took for the last draining bite to turn them into vampires. Unwilling vampires, which was still classed as murder, or at least manslaughter. If they were unlucky the vampire would just slaughter them, or turn them into a Renfield, a person with one or two bites that the vampire controls utterly, some with the promise of immortality eventually, and some just too weak-willed to fight the mind control. A Renfield had put the cross-shaped burn scar on my arm with a brand, so I’d look like a vampire who’d survived an attack, and because it was torture while we waited for his master to wake for the night. These people had come to Guilty Pleasures for some safe flirting, a chance to cut loose and be a little wild, not be enslaved to the newest master vampire in town, because that’s what it was, a new master. One powerful enough to roll Jean-Claude and me with us surrounded by other supernatural bodyguards, and none of us had sensed what was happening until it was too late. Once we saved these people who had trusted us with their safety, then we had to find the new master in town and kill his, her, their, or its ass.
Graham was trying to control his expression and not seem eager, but the tension of it rode down his arm and into our clasped hands. Nathaniel took my other hand, and he didn’t try to hide his eagerness. Voyeurism was one of his major kinks, and apparently we’d put on a really great show, because he was almost bubbling with excitement. I frowned at him, and he leaned in for a kiss, smiling. I smiled and kissed him back. “Why aren’t I angry with you?”
“Because you knew I was kinky as fuck before you fell in love with me.”
It made me laugh, because he was right, and because he could make me laugh in the middle of something potentially dark and horrible. Nathaniel had dragged, pushed, and just loved me into owning parts of myself that I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with. He was supposed to be the most submissive of my men, but he’d been the one who pushed when the others backed off, even Jean-Claude. If Nathaniel hadn’t forced me to confront certain things about myself, tonight would have sent me running for the hills and away from Jean-Claude. I was polyamorous for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was that without all my people in my life, I might not be with any of them.
Graham was very still as he held my hand like a rabbit freezes when the fox is near. No, he’d frozen like the fox hiding just outside the henhouse waiting for his chance to go inside and eat his fill. He was sorry for the emergency, but he wanted to go with us and help feed the ardeur. He’d wanted it for years. It was part of what would make him a high-energy feed for me. I squeezed Graham’s hand a little tighter and let Nathaniel lead us toward the staff-only door. Looked like Graham was finally going to get his wish; he was going to be food.