He looked at me, and it was that you know look. There weren't many people I'd take that look from, but Jason was on that short list.
"I like that he's rough. Sometimes a brute in bed is exactly what I want," I said.
She shuddered. "You can have him, I'm done."
"I don't want him as a boyfriend either, but the occasional sex is great, that was always fabulous between us."
"You look delicate, like he'd break you."
"Looks can be deceiving," I said.
Jason squeezed my shoulder. "The fact that Anita likes rough sex is one of the reasons I wanted everyone to meet this morning."
The comment made me look up at him. "What does that mean?"
The tea timer went off and he went to rescue it, and also neatly avoided answering my question.
I called after him. "What do my sexual preferences have to do with anything?"
"I'm getting the tea," he said with his back to us as he fished the bag out of the mug.
"What is this little meeting about this morning?" I asked, suspicious now.
Nathaniel spoke as he came into the kitchen. "It's about helping everybody in our poly group feel better."
He'd pulled on a pair of his favorite jeans, the ones that were nearly white with washing and had begun to thread out across the thighs. His knees peeked out of actual holes as he padded barefoot toward me. His ankle-length hair was in its usual braid so that it was mostly hidden behind him with only glimpses of the thick auburn rope peeking from behind him as he moved.
My smile of greeting changed to something less happy. "What does that mean, and why do I feel like you and Jason have been plotting behind my back about something?"
He smiled, and it was the real deal, not the one that he flashed at Guilty Pleasures to get customers to shove hundred-dollar bills down his pants. If they could have seen this smile full of love and lust and just . . . Nathaniel, they'd have found thousand-dollar bills to offer him in hopes that he'd deliver on everything that smile hinted at.
I fought to stay grumpy at him, but found it impossible as he crossed the golden bars of sunlight, turning his lavender eyes almost blue, as if they were paling in the warmth of all that sunshine. His eyes were truly the color of spring lilacs. Only two things made them darken to a truer purple: anger and lust. It had to be enough of both, and anger was a rarer cause for it than lust.
He changed his walk slightly so that I was suddenly aware of just how well he moved, how muscular and yummy his naked upper body was. He'd actually had to tone down his weight lifting because he was bulking up too much for the flexibility he needed as a dancer. He was learning, and starting to perform, some modern dance pieces, but it was the exotic dancer part of him that glided and strutted his way over to give me another good-morning kiss. We'd done more than kiss before I got out of bed to meet Jason in the kitchen.
He bent that handsome face over me where I sat, coming in for a kiss. "You know just how much you affect me, don't you?" I whispered.
"It's my job to know," he whispered back, and kissed me.
I kissed him back, because what else could I do? Hell, what else did I want to do? I wasn't angry enough not to run my hand around his bare waist and caress him as our lips met.
He rose and I smiled up at him, damn near stupid-faced with the kiss, and the memory of earlier, and all the days before. We'd been living together for three years and it just got better.
"That," Envy said, "that's what I want. I want someone to look at me the way you two look at each other, or the way that Jason and J.J. look at each other. I want gentleness and love."
"Doesn't everybody?" Jason said, as he carried her tea to the table.
"No. Anita says she likes Richard being a brute, but she has Nathaniel, and Micah, and Jean-Claude. She has her gentle, and her love."
"You have Jean-Claude," I said.
"No, I have sex with Jean-Claude, I'm his lover, but he doesn't love me."
Nathaniel turned to her, one hand still in mine. "Are you in love with him?"
I stiffened, my hand tensing in his. "Nathaniel!"
"No, Anita, we need to know how we all really feel about each other. If we're not honest it all falls apart."
"He's right," Jason said. He sat down at the table at the end so he could see all of us easily.
I glared at him.
"Don't give me that look," he said, laughing. "You know it's true."
I tried to keep frowning at him, but started smiling in spite of myself. Jason had had that effect on me from almost the beginning when I met him. It was one of the reasons that we were friends and that I hadn't killed him when I first met him; so glad I hadn't.
I finally gave in to the smile, but did my best to smother it in my coffee cup, though since I was still holding hands with Nathaniel, the tough-as-nails attitude was a little compromised.
Nathaniel pressed the back of my hand against his bare stomach and I suddenly had more trouble thinking. I looked up at him. "You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?"
"Doing what?" he asked, violet eyes wide. If it had been Jason I'd have known he was being disingenuous, but with Nathaniel just liked touching so much sometimes he did it without thinking.
"Nothing," I said.
Jason grinned at me from the other end of the table. I started to try to glare at him again, but finally said, "Fuck it, what's wrong, or what's up?"
Nathaniel raised my hand up so he could kiss it, and rub his cheek against it, like a cat scent-marking--mine. I liked it, because we were each other's mine; the fact that the word didn't include an exclusivity clause didn't make the possessive mine any less real, a point I just couldn't seem to explain to my monogamous friends.
"I'll get breakfast started while we wait for Domino. He's still in the shower."
Domino was one of our bodyguards, and one of my lovers, but he didn't sleep at this house much either. We were still organizing our guard rotation since we lost Ares, and I had been willing to believe that Domino was going to be more at the house because of that, but realizing he was going to be in on the talk this morning let me know it hadn't been a coincidence that the weretiger had slept over and shared a bed with Nathaniel and me. Our third, Micah Callahan, was traveling on business again, so the big bed had room for a guest.
"Tigers like water, a lot," I said, and sipped at my coffee.
"I'm not overly fond of it," Envy said, "but that may be because you can never take a shower without a man thinking you want sex."
Nathaniel moved toward the oven, laughing softly. Jason started to laugh, too. I coughed and nearly aspirated coffee.
She gave me the full weight of those exotic blue eyes. "It must be true for you, too. Richard loves shower sex."
Jason laughed harder.
"What's so funny?" Envy asked, looking from one to the other of us.
Jason looked at me with sparkling eyes. This time I managed to glare at him, while I blushed. I'd almost stopped doing that--almost.
"Anita likes water," he said in a voice that was shiny with laughter.
"The new oven preheated just like it was supposed to," Nathaniel said, either because it was what interested him or to prove he wasn't poking this particular badger with a stick. He moved to the fridge to get the cinnamon rolls he'd made last night.
"Yeah, I like sex in water, but see if I climb into the shower with you anytime soon, laughing boy."
Jason quieted his laughter, and seemed trapped between looking pleased with himself and trying to pretend-pout at me.
"You and Richard seem perfect sexually for each other; why isn't he one of your main lovers?" Envy asked.
"Because outside the sex we had a lot of issues, and not all of them went away just because he's doing his therapy," I said, my voice a little hoarse from swallowing the coffee wrong. Awkward was putting it mildly.
"I'd wait to put in the cinnamon rolls, or else everybody will be down to have some once they fill the whole house with that great smell," Jason said.
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Nathaniel looked up from the tray in his hand, nodded, and put it back in the fridge. Jason was right, but the fact that he'd said it out loud in time to keep that delectable scent from waking the rest of the household was the other reason he was my friend; he was smart and practical when he wanted to be, big emphasis on the wanted to be.
Nathaniel came to sit beside me, on the other side from Envy. I put my hand under the table so I could play along the threads and bare skin peeking through his jeans; they were one of my favorite pairs of jeans on him, too.
"Anita's being nice, but the truth is that Richard doesn't like me, and I don't like him," Nathaniel said.
"I've noticed he seems sort of conflicted about you. It's like he's trying to be fair, but he has trouble where you're concerned; why is that?"
I slid my fingers through the threads of his jeans so I could touch more of his bare skin. "You want to explain it?" he asked, putting his hand over mine to stop me from caressing quite that much, and the fact that he'd stopped me from petting him and was trying to force me to talk about Richard was as big a clue as any of how much he didn't like him.
I sighed and said, "Richard is a big, handsome, athletic guy, and even the best of them are used to winning."
"You mean with women?" she asked.
"That, and physical stuff. He's used to being able to date pretty much any woman he wants, and if he gets out of his own way in a fight, he can hold his own against most nonprofessional fighters."
"So?" she said.
"So," Jason said, "he's used to winning."
She looked at all of us, frowning. "I don't understand what that has to do with him and Nathaniel not getting along."
"I won," Nathaniel said.
"Won what?"
"Anita, being permanently in her life, being her main squeeze, her person, hers, and she's mine. Micah and I have what Richard wants."
"You mean Anita."
He shrugged, and half-nodded. "Anita, and a life that works, and makes us all happy."
"He's sleeping with Anita, and he could still have a life with someone else."
"He could, but no one is Anita."
That made me uncomfortable, and I fought not to squirm. "It's not like that."
"I think Richard could have shared you with Jean-Claude, because he sees him as dominant, big enough, beautiful, another guy who's used to winning, so they could have shared," Jason said.
"But other than the beautiful part, I'm none of those things," Nathaniel said, "and Richard can't get past that someone like me won."
"I'm not a prize to be won, damn it," I said.
"I know that, and that's one of the reasons I'm here, and Richard isn't."
I met Nathaniel's so-serious gaze and realized there was more truth there than I wanted to admit. "We're making Richard sound arrogant, and he's not."
"Why do you feel you have to defend him?" Nathaniel asked.
"I don't know, maybe because I was in love with him once, or maybe because he's still my lover and I feel guilty about that."
"Why guilty?" Envy asked.
"I'm not sure, but there's some guilt tied up with him."
"I was there, Anita; he blew his chance to be with you over and over," Jason said, "and he doesn't like me for a lot of the same reasons he doesn't like Nathaniel and Micah."
"We're just friends with benefits," I said.
Jason nodded, and sipped his coffee.
"Richard is your wolf king; is he making your life hard in the pack?"
Jason looked down.
"Talk to me," I said.
"I'll never be high in the pack hierarchy, Anita, but that's because I'm more a lover than a fighter." He grinned, trying to make a joke of it.
"Is Richard taking his feelings out on you?"
"Not really. I can fight enough to hold my own and not be picked on in the pack, but I'll never be good enough to rise much, and honestly I don't want to be in charge."
"I know you're more dominant than you let on, but that you truly don't want to be in charge of the other werewolves," I said.
"Not even a little bit," he said, and took another sip of coffee.
"So, you're all saying that Richard sees Nathaniel, Micah, and even Jason as not worthy to have won the fair maiden," Envy said.
"Something like that," I said.
"I don't think it's in the front of his head," Nathaniel said, and squeezed my hand.
"How he feels about Nathaniel and me is," Jason said. "We are literally further down in the structure of our animal groups, and he's the Ulfric, the leader. Among the wolves, that means that anything he wants is pretty much his, and he knows that he could kick our asses, but here we sit, happier and more a part of Anita's life than he is, and that is what he has trouble accepting."
"But Micah is Nimir-Raj, leopard king, and the head of the Coalition, so he's becoming like the leader for all the animal groups in town, and even across the country. Why does Richard have an issue with him?"
"Because Micah is five-three and Richard is six-one," Jason said.
"What?" Envy asked.
"You know how most women walk into a room and assess the beauty in the room to see where they rate, and who might give them a run for their money?" Jason asked.
"Sure," Envy said.
"A lot of men do the same thing, but they're not looking at who's better-looking, they're assessing threats, physical potential."
Envy gave him wide eyes.
"No, really, they do," I said.
"I don't," Nathaniel said.
"Me, either, but that's because we both know that we are not the biggest, baddest man in the room most of the time. We both made peace with that reality years ago," Jason said.
"So you're saying that Richard looks at Micah and thinks he can take him in a fight, so Micah shouldn't be winning Anita either."
"It's more than that. If it was a fight with referees, Richard would win; I think Micah would concede that," Jason said.
Nathaniel and I nodded.
"But if the fight was for real, for dominance of an animal group, Micah would win," Jason said.
"But wait, how?"
"He'd kill Richard," I said.
Envy looked at me. "Because he sees Richard as a rival for you?"
"No, Micah kills for the same reason I do in a fight, because we're too small not to. If we weren't willing to be more ruthless than a bigger opponent, then we'd both have died years ago."
"Are you serious?" she asked.
"Absolutely," I said.
"He hates Micah the most, because Richard knows he should be able to win the fight, and at some level he knows he wouldn't," Jason said.
"Why wouldn't he?" she asked.
"Because Richard would hesitate going for the kill," I said.
"But if Micah killed Richard, wouldn't you be upset? Wouldn't you blame Micah?"
"You mean if Richard pushed it and Micah finished it, would it mess up our relationship?"
"Yes."
"It would be hard, but I'd understand why Micah did it."
"I don't love Richard, but if Micah killed him, I'd have a hard time getting over it."
"One of the reasons Richard isn't my main lover is that he didn't approve of me being willing to kill to prove my point. He wanted there to be a more civilized way to handle things."
"Anita and Micah are almost equally ruthless," Nathaniel said.
"You're saying they both kill more easily than Richard."
"Oh, hell yes," he said.
"But you're in love with Micah and Anita."
"I am."
"How can you say they're both ruthless, if you love them?"
"Maybe part of what I love is their ruthlessness."
"That's just fucked up," she said.
"Insulting us is not going to win you points," I said.
"Sorry, but I just don't understand. How do you really feel about loving people because they're ruthless?"
"Safer," Nathaniel said.
&nb
sp; I squeezed his hand and we exchanged one of those loving looks. The fact that we did it while talking about the fact that we were willing to kill to defend the people we loved was just part of our special little snowflake of a love.
"The weretigers fight among themselves, but we don't kill each other for dominance," she said.
"You're gold clan, which means there were never enough of you to risk death. You weren't allowed to kill each other over dominance," I said.
"There still aren't enough of us to just kill each other over stupid things like this."
"But there are lots of werewolves, and wereleopards," Jason said.
"I don't understand," she said.
"It's a difference in culture between the animal groups. Tigers are matriarchal, which means the leaders don't fight and kill each other to lead; they have champions for that, or enough psychic powers to just overpower everyone in the clan," I said.
"Leopards don't kill each other as much as the wolves do," Nathaniel said.
"So why does Micah kill so easily when he's a wereleopard?" she asked.
"Because Micah came up through a mixed animal group that was run like lions, wolves, and hyenas, which are three of the most violent subcultures we have," Jason said.
I looked at him. "You've talked to Micah about this, haven't you?"
"Here's this new guy in town who's an inch shorter than me and is everyone's dominant leader. I wanted to know how he did it."
"So you could do it, too?" I asked.
He shrugged, grinned, and then it faded to a smile, his eyes not exactly happy. "I don't want it bad enough to do what Micah and you do. I acknowledged that, and moved on."
"One of the few reasons that we would kill one of our own was if they picked a fight and killed another golden tiger," Envy said.
"The wolves allow you to tap out of a fight before you get killed, but it's up to the winner to grant mercy or take your life," Jason said.
"How have you survived?" Envy asked.
"Most people in our pack like me."
"So they don't want to hurt you," she said.
"And I'm not high enough in the pack structure, so fighting me won't gain them anything."
"And when death is a possibility, there has to be something to gain," she said.
"Yes, or you have to hate someone enough to risk it."
She shivered. "God, that is barbaric."
"Richard prefers fights to be less than lethal, and if he thinks that you killed when you didn't have to, you get punished, so it's a softer pack structure than some," Jason said.
What he didn't say out loud was that I was the pack's Bolverk, the doer of evil deeds. I was Richard's punisher, his threat to bad little werewolves; in effect, I enabled him to keep his conscience and hands cleaner. I hadn't taken the job to help Richard. I'd taken it to keep my friends like Jason, and others, safe from the other wolves, and from out-of-town werewolves trying to move in on our local pack, because Richard's reputation was too soft.