He raised eyebrows. "Nice, just nice?"
I smiled. "It was wonderful and you know it. And you know that's not what I meant."
He nodded, hair swinging into his eyes. He brushed it back. "I know. I've missed you, too. I'm lost on weekends without you."
I pressed his hand to my cheek. "Me, too."
He sighed. "So you're going to be with us both?"
I let his hand fall to my lap, still holding it. "You'd go along with that?"
"Maybe." He leaned in and kissed my forehead, ever so gently. "Notice I didn't ask you to give him up and just date me."
I touched his face. "I know, and I'm both relieved and surprised. Thank you for not asking."
He pulled back enough to see my face clearly. He looked very serious. "You don't like ultimatums, Anita. If I push you, I'll lose."
"Why do you want to win, Richard? Why don't you just dump me?"
He smiled. "Now she gives me the choice."
"I've given you the choice before," I said. "I mean, I know why Jean-Claude puts up with me. I help his power base. You'd be better off if you picked out a nice, safe werewolf for your lupa. I hurt your power base."
"I'm in love with you," he said simply.
"Why do I feel like apologizing for that?" I asked.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking about why I couldn't hate you. Why I couldn't let you go."
"And?" I had pulled the sheets around me like a nest so I wouldn't be naked. If somewhere in this conversation he did dump me, I didn't want to be naked. Silly but true.
Naked didn't seem to bother Richard. Frankly, it was distracting to me. "I need a human girlfriend. I need someone who isn't a monster."
"A lot of humans would be happy to be your snuggle bunny, Richard."
"I found that out," he said, "but I didn't have sex with any of them."
"Why not?"
"Farther away from the full moon I have better control. The eyes don't go, let alone the hands. I can pass for human, but I'm not human. You know what I am, and even you almost couldn't accept it."
There was nothing I could say to that, so I didn't try.
He looked down at the bed, fingers playing along the edge of the sheet. His voice grew very soft. "My first year in the pack, one of the other new wolves had a human girlfriend. He crushed her pelvis while they were making love."
My eyes widened. "A little too rough," I said.
Richard shook his head. He let his hair fall this time, hiding most of his face. "You don't understand, Anita. Strength is strength. We can pick up small cars and throw them. If you don't realize your own strength, you can't control it." He looked at me suddenly, staring out at me through his hair. It was a gesture that Gabriel had been fond of, as if the hair were comforting or reminded them of fur. "You're the first nonlycanthrope I've ever had sex with since I became one."
"I'm flattered, I guess."
"I was still scared I'd hurt you like my friend had hurt his girlfriend or in a thousand other ways. During sex you lose control. That's part of the fun. I can never lose control, not completely, unless I'm with another lycanthrope."
I looked at him. "What are you trying to say, Richard?"
"I'm saying you date both of us. Have sex with both of us. I will hate it, but ... "
I stared at him. I didn't like that he didn't want to finish the sentence. Made me nervous. "What, Richard?"
He brushed his hair back with both hands until his face was clean and tight. "You date both of us, and I'll keep dating other lycanthropes."
I just kept staring at him.
"Say something," he said.
I opened my mouth, closed it, tried again. "You mean you'll keep ha**ng s*x with Lucy."
"Not Lucy, she's ... You've met her. She could never be lupa of our pack."
"So you're going to keep auditioning lupas?"
"I don't know if I am or not, but I know if you sleep with Jean-Claude, I have the right to sleep with other people."
I couldn't exactly argue with him, but I wanted to. "You're still trying to get me to give up Jean-Claude."
"No," he said. "I'm just saying that if you're not monogamous to me, then why should I be monogamous to you?"
"No reason, I guess. Except ... I thought we loved each other."
"We do. I do." He stood and picked up his jeans from the floor. "But you don't love me enough to give up Jean-Claude. Why should I love you enough to give up everyone else?"
I stared at him and felt tears begin to fill my eyes. "You bastard."
He nodded. He slipped into his pants without underwear, zipping carefully. "The real bitch is that I do love you enough to give up everyone else. I just don't know if I can share you with Jean-Claude. I just don't know if I can stand the thought of you in his bed. The thought of him being with you like that drives me ... " He shook his head. "I'm going to take a shower. I've still got trolls to study."
I couldn't even begin to think about what he'd just said. It was too much all at once. When confused, concentrate on business.
"I need to come with you and talk to the biologists. We need to find out if Franklin Niley is the buyer for the land. The guy who lost his arm last night was afraid of him. It takes someone pretty scary to make a man hesitate when he's surrounded by werewolves. Your normal real estate types don't have that kind of juice."
Richard strode back to the bed. He picked me up around the waist and kissed me. He crushed me against him, like he'd crawl in through my mouth and pull me around him. I was breathless when he sat me back down on the bed.
"I want to touch you, Anita. I want to hold your hand and do silly, goofy grins. I want us to act like people who are in love."
"We are in love," I said.
"Then for today, let's throw all the doubts out. Just be with me the way I've always wanted you to be. If I want to touch you today, I don't want to be afraid not to. I want what happened last night to change things."
I nodded. "All right."
"You don't look sure," he said.
"I'd love to go around holding your hand, Richard. I'm just realizing that ... Oh, hell, Richard, what am I going to tell Jean-Claude?"
"I asked Jean-Claude how much difference the marks made to you, how much harder you were to hurt physically. He figured out why I was asking. I ended up telling him the whole sad story about my friend and his dead girlfriend."
I looked at him. "What did he say?"
"He said, 'Trust yourself, mon ami. You are not your friend with his so-sad tale. And Anita is not human. Through us she is more than that. Both of us huddle around her humanity like it is the last candle flame in a world of darkness. But by our very love, we make her less human, and more.' "
My eyebrows went up. "You remembered all that?"
Richard looked at me, and it was a long, considering look. He nodded. "I remembered because he's right. He's right. We both love you in our ways for similar reasons. It isn't just power that draws him to you. You saw him as a monster. The fact that you don't anymore makes him feel less like one."
"It sounds like you guys have been having some long conversations."
"Yeah, it's been a real male bonding experience." He sounded bitter, tired.
"It also sounds like you discussed whether you were going to make love to me with Jean-Claude before you discussed it with me."
"Never directly," he said. "Never word for word."
"It still sounds an awful lot like asking permission," I said.
Richard was back in the bathroom doorway. "What would you have done if we'd made love and Jean-Claude had tried to kill me afterwards? Would you have killed him protecting me?"
I just looked at him. "I don't know. I ... I wouldn't have let him kill you."
Richard nodded. "Exactly. Whether Jean-Claude killed me or I killed him or whether you killed one of us, even if we survived the death with the marks dragging us down to the grave, even if you and I survived, you'd never forgive yourself for killing him. You'd never recover from it. We'd never have a life together. Even dead and gone, Jean-Claude would haunt us."
"So you tested the waters," I said.
Richard nodded. "I tested the waters."
"You asked his permission," I said.