I FINALLY GOT OUT of the beautiful but progressively more uncomfortable heels but was still wearing the shiny designer dress. Jean-Claude had taken off his fabulous boots, but the robe stayed on, and Richard and Nathaniel were still in their short-shorts. I had time to notice that Nathaniel was more muscular, more cut, just in fiercer shape than Richard for the first time. Richard was still taller by inches and that wasn’t going to change, but the lack of access to a supernaturally rated gym meant that he’d lost some of the definition and bulk that he’d worked so hard for, at the same time that Nathaniel had increased the intensity of his workouts. We’d found workouts that helped him get cut without bulking so much that he lost the flexibility he needed to dance. It seemed wrong, like parts of them had switched places. We were ready to get in the shower, but then it got awkward. “I’m not sure all four of us will fit in one stall,” Richard said.
“It will be a tight fit,” Jean-Claude agreed.
“Three fits, because we’ve done that before,” Nathaniel said.
“The three of you?” Richard made the statement a question with an uptilt in his voice.
“Yeah.”
“Oui.”
Nathaniel slipped his arm around Jean-Claude’s slender waist and laid his head on the taller man’s shoulder. I realized then that while we weren’t in the middle of a pissing contest, it was a who-belongs-where moment that can happen when your polyamory is as complicated as ours. Jean-Claude put his arm around Nathaniel, because to do anything else would have been seen as a rejection, but it upped Richard’s discomfort. I reached out to him so he could at least be holding someone’s hand. He took that as more invitation than I meant it to be and drew me into a one-armed hug, so we damn near mirrored the other two.
“I know it sounds weird for me to say I’m new to polyamory, because I’ve been on the sidelines of yours for so long, but I don’t know how to navigate this without upsetting some of you, which is the last thing I want to do.” He hugged me sort of nervously, and I stroked his back like you’d do to soothe someone. Touch isn’t always about sex, even when you’re nude and negotiating to have sex later.
“Who are you comfortable with in the shower, Richard?” Jean-Claude asked, no nickname this time, which meant he was either upset, cautious, or maybe mon lupe wasn’t going to be his permanent nickname for the big werewolf. I’d ask Jean-Claude later in private.
“Anita and you; sorry, Nathaniel, but I’m not ready for more men.”
“And I don’t want to have sex with you either,” Nathaniel said.
Richard startled so hard I felt it like a full-body movement. It must have showed on his face, because Nathaniel laughed, which made Richard start to get defensive and angry enough for that edge of heat to play along my skin where I touched him, his wolf waking up with his emotions. I stopped stroking his back and hugged him instead, hoping to help.
“Nathaniel, he has admitted his attraction to another man for the first time tonight, would you laugh at him for it?” Again, no nickname, Jean-Claude was serious.
Nathaniel’s face sobered. “I’m sorry, Richard, that was shitty of me, but you come in here and sweep Jean-Claude and Anita off their feet, then you reject me, and when I reject you back, you act offended like you can’t believe I would turn you down. Just because I’m bisexual doesn’t mean I want to sleep with everyone I meet.”
Richard’s anger and that hint of heat faded as he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know that being bisexual doesn’t mean you want to sleep with everyone, but I’m used to how women react to me, and I hadn’t thought about how I’d feel if men don’t react the same way.”
“What way is that?” I asked, as the only woman.
He seemed embarrassed now, as if having to explain it meant something I didn’t understand. “Women want to date me, or at least have sex with me. I don’t think I’ve ever set my sights on anyone and not at least gotten a first date.”
“You’ve been tall, dark, and handsome your whole life,” I said.
He hugged me. “Yes, and I’m used to women seeing me that way. It hadn’t occurred to me until Nathaniel said no that now I’ve got an entirely new group of people that I’ll want to see me as attractive.”
“But you don’t want to sleep with me,” Nathaniel said.
“I don’t, sorry.”
“That’s okay, because I’m not attracted to you either.”
Richard frowned. “Is it weird to say that I’m both relieved and bothered by that?”
I hugged him tighter. “It’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling, Richard.”
“It’s not weird,” Nathaniel said, “it’s just how you feel. I went through something similar when Anita wouldn’t sleep with me for so long. I’d never met anyone who didn’t want me before and it really hurt my sense of self.”
I reached my hand toward him, and he came forward to take it, his arm leaving Jean-Claude’s waist. The vampire caught his hand so that they didn’t stop touching, though, which made Nathaniel look back and smile at him.
“But you’re together now,” Richard said.
“We are. In fact, Anita being the first person who ever valued me without sex helped me see myself as a whole person. I think if we’d just fucked from the beginning I wouldn’t have had all the breakthroughs that I’ve had.”
“I valued you without sleeping with you, mon minet.”
“But I was your mentee to be taught how to use the right fork at fancy dinners and to dance onstage at your club without cheapening the show. I never dreamed that you had any interest in me as more than that.”
“You were very young when we first met and seemed even younger in so many ways. I could not have breached your trust like that even if I wished to; far too many other people had taken advantage of you, and I would not add my name to that sad list.”
Nathaniel took his hand back. “You make me sound like a stray puppy.”
“I do not mean to, mon minet. I once was also everyone’s victim and thought my worth lay only in my beauty. You were like a shadow of my own past. I could not abuse you, and when we first met, you were almost incapable of saying no. When a person cannot tell you no either through your power over them or their own powerlessness, then it is rape, and that is repugnant to me.”
“It took me a long time to understand how you saw our relationship. I thought you were just my boss, all business.”
“I do not date my dancers; it has been a hard-and-fast rule until very recently.” He said that last with a smile, holding his hand out toward Nathaniel, who came and took the offered touch.
“I had no idea that you and Nathaniel were dating,” Richard said.
Nathaniel looked at Jean-Claude and I knew that he would wait for the vampire to answer the question, because it was Nathaniel who had pursued Jean-Claude, and he had said yes only recently, and now suddenly Richard was back. Someone Jean-Claude had pursued. Jean-Claude said, “Nathaniel and I are not dating, Richard; we are living together.”
I felt Nathaniel let some tension go, like he’d expected Jean-Claude to dump him the moment that Richard returned. Our beautiful flower-eyed boy was secure in his beauty and sexual prowess, but not in his emotions about relationships. We all have our issues.
“Okay, I shouldn’t be surprised by that but I’m not sure what it means for all of us right now,” Richard said.
“What do you want it to mean, mon lupe?” Jean-Claude asked.
“It means I’d planned on the three of us sharing the shower, but now knowing that Jean-Claude and Anita are both living with Nathaniel I don’t know what to say.”
“So, if I hadn’t been closer to Jean-Claude than you expected, you’d have just assumed I could be brushed aside, and you get Anita and Jean-Claude to yourself?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Richard said.
I drew away from Richard. “How did you mean it? Nathaniel is my fiancé.”
Richard frowned. “You’re marrying Jean-Claude, or did I miss something?”
“You missed a lot,” I said.
“If it were possible to marry more than one person, there would be multiple grooms at our wedding, mon lupe.”
Richard looked stricken. “Who else would you marry?” His emotion was so strong that I heard/saw him thinking through all the people in our lives, and he left out some important ones, ones that he knew were in our lives. We hadn’t added any new people to our polycule since he vanished on us, but he had no sense of the dynamics. That was interesting and so blind that I wasn’t even angry.
Jean-Claude raised Nathaniel’s hand and laid a kiss on the back of it. “Nathaniel has become the heart of our home, our domestic god.”
“I knew Nathaniel was Anita and Micah’s like 1950s wife, but I didn’t realize he’d become yours, too.”
“Who do you think chose the dishes in the new kitchen at the Circus of the Damned, or helped design it in the first place?” Jean-Claude asked. Nathaniel wasn’t as close emotionally to Jean-Claude as he was to Micah and me, but in that moment Jean-Claude acknowledged the truth that Nathaniel made it all work. He planned the menus, did most of the grocery shopping, had been the go-to for the remodel of the kitchen and the extra guest rooms. Nathaniel had chosen all the new colors and pieces at the Jefferson County home and not only had Micah and I both liked what he chose, but it had been a wonderful mix of all three of us. Jean-Claude’s tastes ruled at the Circus of the Damned, except for people’s private rooms, which they were allowed to decorate themselves, but everything else was him except for the kitchen and the guest rooms, which were Nathaniel’s—well, and the exercise areas. The last had been part mine, part Nicky, Claudia, and Fredo, because the last two oversaw our private security, including their training, but then any important guests who saw the gym area were there to work out, not to admire the decor.
“I’m sorry,” Richard said, “I didn’t mean to offend anyone.”
“Apology accepted, mon lupe.”
“Accepted if it doesn’t keep happening,” Nathaniel said.
“That’s fair, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Nathaniel said.
I stood there and let the men work it out. Poly had taught me patience; therapy had taught me to shut up and let other people talk and work their shit and only interject if I really had something to add. They stopped talking and we all looked at each other. I was debating on how to move the conversation forward and actually get a chance to clean up in the showers. Not for sexy reasons, but just to wash all the makeup off and get out without a fight breaking out. We were almost at a record with the four of us being together without arguing.
There was a sound in the hallway, which made us look that way. Wicked was in the doorway. Tall, broad-shouldered, with blond hair falling straight and thick to his shoulders. He was movie-star handsome with pale blue eyes, high cheekbones, a square manly jaw, and a deep dimple in his chin. He’d put his tailored suit jacket over the Guilty Pleasures staff T-shirt. He looked underdressed without his normal dress shirt.
“Is there something you needed, Wicked?” Jean-Claude asked.
“We were told to help you stay on target for tonight.”
“We are fine,” Jean-Claude said, and the tone alone was enough to make most people back off, but Wicked wasn’t most people.
“Of course you are all fine, but either shower here, so we can move you all to a more secure location as soon as possible, or let us move you now and shower at the Circus.”
“They’re right,” I said, “this was a serious attack tonight, Jean-Claude.”
“We were victorious, ma petite.”
“Whatever attacked us tonight, I’ve never felt a vampire like it, and it left its power in the audience. I didn’t even know that mass hypnosis was possible without the vampire being bodily in the building.”
“It was more curse than vampiric powers,” Jean-Claude said.
I looked at him. “Curses don’t work like that; at best you can influence one person at a time.”
“You speak of modern magic, ma petite, but what I felt tonight was old magic.”
“Older than you know,” Jake said from the hallway. Wicked stepped into the room to clear the way for Jake to move into the doorway. Jake looked short compared to him, but in the exercise clothes he’d had to come to the club wearing, the muscles that he usually hid under layers were on full display. Wicked and his brother Truth, like Richard, always looked muscled in any clothes, but Jake didn’t. His physicality, like everything else about him, wasn’t noticeable unless he wanted it to be or didn’t care if it was. Jake more than any of the other Harlequin made me remember they’d been spies as well as assassins.
“What do you mean, older than we know?” I asked.
“Not you, Anita, older than Jean-Claude would know.”
Jean-Claude went very still beside us. It wasn’t human stillness or even the way snakes can freeze in place, but like I was suddenly holding the hand of a marble statue, pale and perfect, but not alive. I fought the urge to shake him to make him blink, anything for him to not be standing there like he would never move again or need to breathe. The old vampires could just cease, like if I let go of his hand and blinked he’d just vanish.
His voice came distant and careful as if he was trying to move as little as possible when he spoke. “That would be very old indeed.”
“You are not yet seven hundred years old, Jean-Claude, that is not so very old.”
I looked at Jake’s ageless face. If you’d asked me how old he was I would have said he hadn’t seen fifty yet, and barely forty, but I knew he was one of the oldest of the Harlequin. I knew for certain that some of them were thousands of years old, which meant . . . “How old, Jake?” I asked.
“Millions,” he said.
“You aren’t that old,” I said.
“I am not, but the power that I felt tonight is,” he said.
“What are you hinting at?” Richard asked.
Jake’s eyes flicked to him, then back to Jean-Claude and me. “How much do you want me to say in front of others, Jean-Claude?”
“I asked you to stop hinting and tell us what you know,” Richard said.
“Technically you asked what I was hinting at,” Jake said.
Richard’s skin ran warm with anger. It was like my hand had just been plunged into warm, nearly hot water. “I am your Ulfric; if I tell you to do something, I expect you to do it.”
“You are indeed my Ulfric; what would you have of me?” The tone was neutral, but somehow it translated to Go fuck yourself. I’d been accused of having my neutral tone imply the same sentiment, so I really couldn’t throw stones. The thing is, I did it by accident; Jake didn’t do anything by accident.
Richard’s skin ran hot and trailed power up my arm in a skin-tingling rush that made the wolf inside me materialize behind my eyes. She opened golden wolf eyes surrounded by white fur and shook herself like a dog getting up from a long nap.
I pulled free of Richard, and the wolf sat down as if she were looking at us both, waiting for us to figure out what we were doing. Weren’t we all? Nathaniel drew me in closer to him so that I could bury my face against the bare skin of his shoulder. Usually that was enough to make the wolf fade, but not tonight. Watching Richard glare at Jake, who looked calm and unruffled, I realized that things might have been happening among the werewolves that I didn’t know, because leaving Richard alone had meant leaving the pack alone, too.
Jean-Claude remained cold and still in my other hand. What the fuck was going on? I drew my hand out of his, which made him blink and turn toward me and like magic he was “alive” again. “Ma petite, do not pull away, s’il te plaît.” I knew that last part meant “please.”
Nathaniel drew me closer to Jean-Claude, whom he was still touching. Richard was back for one night and I’d pulled away from Jean-Claude and him. Only Nathaniel was still holding on to us—well, two of us. He and Richard didn’t hold hands.
I reached out to Jean-Claude, and he took my hand in his with a squeeze and a smile. I felt his relief that I closed the distance and didn’t force him to stand there alone in the face of Richard’s return. I squeezed his hand back and promised myself I wouldn’t let whatever shit Richard brought with him tonight distract me from the happiness that we’d all built together without the Ulfric.
“Tell us whatever you know about the power that attacked us tonight,” Richard said.
“You are here tonight, Ulfric, but unless you will be here to see this tale to its completion, I do not wish to speak in front of you.”
“How dare you defy me.”
“Has he defied you before?” Wicked asked.
That made Richard stop and think, and then he shook his head, saying, “No, he’s stayed as neutral as pack politics allow.”
“Then it must be something important for him to do so now.”
Richard took a deep breath, let it out, and I felt the heat of his power begin to flow away. “Thank you for helping me think instead of just react.”
“I am happy to do anything that will speed us to a safer location tonight,” Wicked said.
Richard looked at Jake. “Can you tell us in the car as we drive for the Circus?”
“I will share what I know when you are all more secure,” Jake said.
“Then let’s go,” Richard said, and just like that there wasn’t going to be a fight, at least not yet.
“Showers . . .” I started to say.
“Shower at the Circus,” Wicked said.
“Where’s Truth?” I asked, because they were always together.
“He’s outside making sure the way is clear to move you to safety.”
“I only sensed one vampire during the attack,” I said.
“A vampire this powerful does not travel alone, ma petite.”
I nodded. “You’re right. He’ll have Renfields, and human servants, or animals to call with him. Let me get back into the sexy torture devices known as shoes and let’s get out of here.”
“Your clothes got dropped off,” Nathaniel said smiling.
“Change clothes in the car on the drive,” Wicked said.
I looked at him, and that was enough. “Okay, I’ll change in the car.”
“You’re not going to argue with them?” Richard asked.
I shook my head. “If Wicked and Jake are both saying we gotta go, then we go.”
“Put on your comfy boots to walk to the car,” Nathaniel said.
“We don’t have time . . .” Wicked started to say.
“She can run and walk and fight better in the boots,” Nathaniel said.
Wicked and Jake said, “Change,” at the same time.
I gave Nathaniel a kiss and went to find my boots.