“Yes.” I turned and looked at him, and what I saw in his eyes both made me feel bad and pissed me off. He looked hurt, and it wasn’t my fault. But saying it wasn’t my fault that I had to have sex with other men sounded wrong somehow, so I didn’t say it. He had every right to be tired of me fucking everyone but him.
“I did the minimum for a snack, just to tide me over,” I said.
“With who?” he asked, and his eyes were wide and careful.
“Requiem.”
“If you were already feeding off of Damian’s energy, then you needed to have fed theardeur earlier, right?” Jason said. I think he actually wanted to know, but I think he was also trying to stop a fight before it started. I wasn’t sure we were going to fight, but I wasn’t sure we weren’t, either.
I thought about Jason’s question and finally said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You gain energy through theardeur, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And now you’re the power source for a new triumvirate. Your energy powers Damian especially, and to a lesser extent, Nathaniel?”
“Why a lesser extent for me?” Nathaniel asked.
“You’re alive. You make your own heart beat; Damian doesn’t.”
Nathaniel nodded. “Okay.”
“What’s your point, Jason? I know you have one.”
“Would I have a point?” he said with a grin.
I shook my head. “There’s a very fine mind hiding behind those baby blues. You just don’t let everyone see it, so yeah, you have a point. What is it?”
“Anita is having to eat more often, right?”
We both nodded.
“What if she needs to feed other things more often?”
I think we both took breath to ask what he meant, then we both got it at the same moment. “Oh, shit,” I said.
Nathaniel said, “Oh, God.”
“Before tonight it was every twelve hours, fourteen if I stretched it,” I said. “How much more often could I need to feed?”
Jason spread his hands wide. “How should I know? I’m just pointing it out.”
“It makes sense,” Nathaniel said. “You fed off of Requiem about how long before we fed?”
I thought about it, tried to do the math in my head, and it was harder than normal, because that little flutter of panic was so loud.
“Two hours, maybe less.” I shook my head. “No, absolutely, not. I cannot feed theardeur every two hours.”
“No, but you could keep like snacks in the Jeep and eat every two hours,” Nathaniel said. “Like I said, if you meet one hunger, the other hunger lessens.”
The panic pulled back a little, not much, but a little. “Are you sure that peanuts in the car are going to do it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think so.” He suddenly looked young, and not sure at all.
I hugged him, and he hugged me back. “God, Nathaniel, God, we were already low on daytime feeds. What am I going to do?” I let some of that panic out in my voice.
He squeezed me tighter. “We’ll work something out. I’m sorry, I got mad about Requiem. It’s just…”
“That everyone gets me, and you don’t,” I said.
He nodded. Then drew back enough to smile at me, that wonderful smile. He took my hand and placed it on the side of his neck. I felt the marks of my teeth under my fingertips. “This was good, Anita. This was exactly what I wanted in that moment, exactly.”
I had to smile back at him, but the smile didn’t last. “What time is it?”
Jason answered, “Ten o’clock.”
Great. Less than two hours of sleep. Out loud I said, “I fed on you at about two in the morning, which means it’s only been eight hours. Eight hours is too soon, Nathaniel.”
He looked at me, and there was a fierceness there, a determination. “Make love to me, Anita. Make love to me, and then you can feed on someone else. But you’re right, I am tired of watching everyone get there before me.” He was on his knees, and he touched my arms, not quite clutching at me, not quite holding me. “Make love to me, and I won’t have a reason to be jealous.”
“I’ll still be having to have sex with other men,” I said. “Why won’t you be jealous?”
“Because I’ll know that you want to make love to me, and you have to have sex with them.”
My head was beginning to hurt. Nathaniel often made me feel out of my depth. I loved him, and wanted him, but, hell, I didn’t know what to say to him. “If it was you in other women’s beds, I’d be jealous, no matter the why.”
He blushed. “Would you really be jealous of me?”
“I wasn’t entirely happy watching you get pawed at the club, so yeah, I think it would bother me.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“That I’m jealous of other women around you?”
He nodded.
“You’ve had girlfriends be jealous of you before,” I said.
He shook his head. “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
I stared at him. I didn’t know what to say. I knew he wouldn’t lie about it, but I just found it hard to believe. “You’ve been in pornographic movies. You’ve-”
“Been a prostitute,” he finished for me, and his eyes never flinched.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, but…”
“Fucking isn’t dating, Anita. Fucking for money really isn’t dating.”
“But…” I said.
He touched my lips with his fingers. “Hush,” he said, “you are the first girlfriend I’ve ever had.”
I stared at him with a sort of soft horror growing in my mind. I was his first girlfriend? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. How can you do porn and be a prostitute and not date? Some of the confusion must have shown on my face, because he smiled and touched the side of my face. The bandage had come off and he traced the healing scratches that Barbara Brown had given me.
“I told you, you’re the first person who ever wanted me, for me.
Not because of the way I looked and what I could do with my body. You love me without sex. You let me take care of you. You let me organize your kitchen.”
“You cook in it more than I do,” I said.
He smiled, and his eyes were gentle, as if I were the child and he was so much older than I was. “That’s it, Anita. You let me buy the tea set, even though I know you think it’s sort of silly.”
“You like the tea set,” I said.
He nodded. “You do things not because you want them or enjoy them, but because it makes me happy. I’ve had people buy me jewelry, clothes, weekends in great hotels and spas, but no one ever let me buy what I wanted with their money, only what they thought I wanted. Let me remake their schedule. Let me make a place for me in their life.”
He cupped my face between his hands. “Maybegirlfriend isn’t the right word, but I think any other word I could think of will make you run away, and I don’t want that.”
My lips were suddenly dry.
“Make love to me,” he whispered and started to lean in for a kiss.
I felt the bed move on the other side. I had to fight the urge not to grab Jason’s arm or something, anything to keep him with us.
Anything not to be alone with Nathaniel. Ronnie was right, it wasn’t rational, but I felt like if I consummated our relationship, I had to keep him. She was wrong. It wasn’t sex that was a commitment for me anymore. Theardeur had taken that away from me. But sex with the right person was still a commitment, and the person bending in to kiss me, oh, so gently, was the right one.
I turned out of that kiss, to see Jason going for the bathroom.
“I’ll turn the shower on, enjoy.”
“Sorry to kick you out of your own bed,” I said. And I was, for more than one reason.
He grinned, and tried not to, as if he were pretty sure it would get him into trouble. “It’s not like I won’t be back in it.”
I stopped Nathaniel from pressing closer with a hand on his shoulder, and stared at Jason. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He fought to control his face, and failed, and finally looked pleased with himself. “You can’t feed on Nathaniel, it’s too soon.
Jean-Claude won’t wake for awhile yet. And if Jean-Claude won’t wake, then Asher is out, too.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “So?”
“If there’s another shapeshifter here that you’d rather feed on than me, I’ll get them for you. Graham is just down the hall.” The look on his face said, plainly, he didn’t expect me to take him up on it.