Micah - By Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,2

my control wasn't perfect, and it would be a bad thing to lose control on an airplane full of strangers. Or in a van full of federal agents.

"What am I going to do?" I asked. "I cannot take my boyfriend on a federal case."

"You aren't going as a federal marshal, not really," Micah said. "It's your skills as an animator that they want, so say that I'm your assistant. They won't know any different."

"Why do you get to go?" Nathaniel asked. He lay back on the pillows, the sheets just barely covering his nakedness.

"Because she fed on you last," Micah said. He moved enough to touch Nathaniel's shoulder. "I can feed her more often than you can without passing out or getting sick."

"Because you're the Nimir-Raj and I'm just a regular wereleopard." There was a moment of sullenness in his voice, and then he sighed. "I don't mean to be a problem, but I've never stayed here with both of you gone."

Micah and I looked at each other and had one of those moments. We'd all been living together for about six months. But he and Nathaniel had both moved in at the same time. I'd never dated either of them alone, not really. I mean I'd gone out with them individually, and sex wasn't always a group activity, but the sleeping arrangements were.

Micah and I both had a certain need for personal time, alone time, but Nathaniel didn't. He didn't much like being alone.

"Do you want to stay at Jean-Claude's place while we're gone?" I asked.

"Will he want me there without you?" Nathaniel asked.

I knew what he meant, but... "Jean-Claude likes you."

"He won't mind," Micah said, "and Asher won't mind at all."

There was something about the way he said that last that made me look at him. Asher was Jean-Claude's second in command. They'd been friends, enemies, lovers, enemies, and shared a woman that they both loved for a few decades of happiness in centuries of unhappiness.

"Why'd you say it like that?" I asked.

"Asher likes men more than Jean-Claude does," Micah said.

I frowned at him. "Are you saying that he made a pass at you or Nathaniel?"

Micah laughed. "No, in fact, Asher is always very, very careful around us. Considering that we've both been naked in a bed with Asher, Jean-Claude, and you more than once, I'd say that Asher's been a perfect gentleman."

"So why the comment about Asher liking men more than Jean-Claude?" I asked.

"It's the way Asher watches Nathaniel when you aren't looking."

I looked at the other man in my bed. He appeared utterly at home half-naked in my sheets. "Does Asher bother you?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Have you noticed him looking at you the way Micah just said?"

"Yes," Nathaniel said, face still peaceful.

"And that doesn't bother you?"

He smiled. "I'm a stripper, Anita. I get a lot of people looking at me like that."

"But you don't sleep naked in a bed with them."

"I don't sleep naked in a bed with Asher either. He takes blood from me so he can fuck you. It may be sensual, but it's not about sex; it's about blood."

I frowned, trying to think my way through the tangle that had become my love life. "But Micah's implying that Asher sees you as more than food."

"I'm not implying," Micah said. "I'm stating that if Asher didn't think you and Jean-Claude would be pissed, he'd have already asked Nathaniel to be more than friends."

I stared from one to the other of them. "He would?"

They both nodded in unison, as if they'd practiced.

"And you both knew this?"

They nodded again.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you, or I, were always there to protect Nathaniel," Micah said. "Now we won't be."

I sighed.

"I'll be okay," Nathaniel said. "If I'm really that worried about my virtue, I'll bunk in with Jason." He smiled even wider.

"What's so funny?" I asked. I sounded angry, because I had totally missed the whole Asher-liking-Nathaniel thing. Sometimes I felt slow, and sometimes I felt totally unprepared for dealing with the men in my life.

"The look on your face, so worried, so surprised." He bounced up off the bed, leaving the sheet behind him. He crawled toward me, naked and beautiful. I was at the end of the bed and had nowhere to go. But he came at me so fast that I tried to back up and ended up falling off the bed. I sat naked on the floor, trying to decide if I had any dignity left to save.

Nathaniel leaned over the bed and