“What if I told you I do remember?” Nathaniel asked, and his voice held a hint of warmth to it that prickled along my skin and not in a good, foreplay kind of way. It was more like a mix of standing too close to an open oven and a dance of electricity down the side of my body nearest him. His beast was beginning to answer to his anger.
I took a small step away from him so my beasts didn’t start rising to his.
“What do you remember?” Damian asked.
“All of it.”
Damian shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
“Why not?” Nathaniel stood up then, and I was suddenly very aware that he was only three inches shorter than the vampire. It didn’t seem like nearly the size difference it usually did.
“What’s wrong with you?” Damian asked.
“Maybe I’m tired of being discounted in this relationship.”
“What relationship? I don’t even have a relationship with Anita.”
“And if you don’t have a relationship with the girl, then you can’t have a relationship with the guy—is that it?” He had moved forward so that he was invading Damian’s personal space.
Damian backed up from him; I wasn’t even sure he realized he’d done it. “What are you talking about, Nathaniel?”
“This. I’m talking about this.” And he took his shirt off in one smooth motion, baring all that muscular and well-toned chest. It made Damian take another step back. He looked startled this time and knew he’d given ground, but he didn’t care and gave more as Nathaniel turned his back on him and swept his braid to one side.
Damian didn’t seem to understand at first and neither did I, but then I saw the vampire’s face grow pale, which was a trick since his skin was paper white, pale even for a vampire. “What . . . what is that?”
“You know what it is,” Nathaniel said, and his voice still held anger. He was glaring at me as if I were included in his anger with Damian.
Damian stopped backing up and took a step toward the other man. He took another step forward and put his hand out toward Nathaniel’s bare back. His hand was shaking as he reached out, but didn’t quite touch, as if he couldn’t make himself close those last three inches.
It was too much; I had to know what was spooking him so badly. I started walking to them with Nathaniel glaring at me; his eyes had gone from their usual lavender past lilac to almost a grape purple. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen his eyes that dark with anger.
He bent forward so I could see better, rolling his right shoulder down and a little more out of reach of Damian’s hand, but the vampire wasn’t trying to finish the gesture. He seemed frozen in midmotion. What the hell was it?
I put a hand on Nathaniel’s arm to steady myself as I went up on tiptoe to look at his back, and there it was, a neat vampire bite, not on his neck, but on his back. One higher up near the shoulder and the other lower down nearer the shoulder blade. There was no reason to bite there for blood; it wasn’t a good place to feed. There were only two reasons to bite there: for torture or for pleasure. I was pretty sure which Nathaniel had thought it was at the time. He was a happy little pain slut when sex was involved.
“Are you saying I did that?” Damian asked.
“And this.” Nathaniel showed the bite on the other side of his neck.
“I’ve got one of those, too,” I said.
Damian looked from one to the other of us. “I asked for more blood, so we could keep having sex. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said, standing upright. His anger was beginning to fade. He always had a hard time holding on to a fight. I guess that helped balance out my own temper.
“But the bites on your back—that wasn’t so I could feed.”
“I asked you to bite me,” Nathaniel said, turning around so he could see the other man’s face.
Damian was frowning hard. He was lucky he was eternally youthful or he’d have ended up with permanent creases between his eyes if he kept doing that often. “When? I mean, what were we doing that I’d bite you there?”
“Do you remember biting me here?” Nathaniel turned his leg to one side to expose the inside of his thigh. He moved the leg of his workout shorts to show the bite on his thigh.
“I’ve got one of those, too,” I said, and this time I moved the legs of my shorts until I found the bite very high up on my thigh. If we’d worked out for real today I’d have felt that.
“How many times did we . . . do it?” Damian asked.
I answered, “Four.”
“One per bite,” he said, “except not the back.”
“You still don’t remember, do you?” Nathaniel asked, and he looked sad.
“I remember you kissing me.” I could see Damian struggling to remember, chasing the memory, but sometimes the harder you chase, the faster it runs away.
“That’s right. We kissed.”
Damian looked at me. “Do you remember everything?”
I shook my head.
He frowned and looked at Nathaniel. “Do you remember?”
“More than Anita remembers.”
Damian rubbed his forehead. “Why can’t I remember?”
Nathaniel sighed, and started to say something, but I interrupted. “We raised more power between the three of us than we ever had before.”
“So why don’t I remember? Why don’t you? Why does Nathaniel remember more?”