I put my hand flat on the door, holding it.

Asher looked at me. "Let me go, Anita, you know you don't want this."

"What am I supposed to say to that, Asher? That you're right? That if Musette hadn't come today that I wouldn't be making this offer now? You're right, I wouldn't be." I pressed myself against the side of the door. "But the thought of you leaving, of never seeing you again..." I shook my head, and damn it if I was going to cry again. "Don't go, please, don't go."

"I have to go, Anita." He touched my shoulder, tried to move me out of the way so he could open the door.

I shook my head. "No."

He frowned at me. "Ma cherie, you do not love me, not truly. If you do not love me, and you do not want me, then you must let me go."

"I do love you, and I do want you."

"You love me as a friend, you want me, but you want many men, yet you do not give yourself to them. I have all eternity, but my patience is not good enough to out wait you, ma cherie. You have defeated me. I would have tried to seduce you, but..." Again he almost touched the scarred side of his face, but his hand fell away, as if he could not bare to touch himself. "I have seen the men you have turned down. Such perfection, and you walk away without so much as a regret." He frowned as if he didn't understand it, but he knew it to be true. "What could I offer that they could not?"

He put his hands against my shoulder and gently tried to move me out of the way. I pressed my back into the doorframe, my hand on the doorknob. "No," was all I could think to say.

"Yes, ma cherie, yes. It is time."

I shook my head. "No." I pressed my back into the door so hard that I knew I'd be bruised in the morning. I couldn't let him go. I knew somehow that if he opened that door, we would never get another chance.

I prayed for words. I prayed to be able to speak my heart and not to be afraid. "I let Richard walk out on me. I think he'd have gone anyway, but I just sat on the floor and watched him go. I didn't stand in his way. I figured it was his choice, and you can't hold someone if they don't want to be held. If someone really wants to be free of you, you have to let them go. Well, fuck that, fuck that all to hell. Don't go, Asher, please, don't go. I love the way your hair shines in the light. I love the way you smile when you're not trying to hide or impress anyone. I love your laughter. I love the way your voice can hold sorrow like the taste of rain. I love the way you watch Jean-Claude when he moves through a room, when you don't think anyone's watching, because it's exactly the way I watch him. I love your eyes. I love your pain. I love you."

I closed the distance between us, wrapped my arms around him, pressed my cheek to his chest, dried tears on the silk of his shirt, and was still whispering, "I love you, I do love you," when he raised my face and kissed me, really kissed me, for the very first time.

We broke from that gentle kiss, and I led Asher to the bed by the hand. He pulled back, coming like a reluctant child.

Jean-Claude stood by the bed, his face as blank as he could make it. "There is one thing I must say before we begin. I am controlling ma petite's ardeur, but there will come a point in all this where I will lose control. I cannot guarantee what will happen when that control is lost."

Asher and I stood beside him, holding hands. He was clinging to my hand with a fierceness that was almost painful. His voice did not show the tension I felt in his body. "If I thought it was only the ardeur which made Anita want to take me to her bed, then I would say no, because when the ardeur had cooled, she would cast me aside as she did before." He raised my hand to his lips and laid the softest touch across my knuckles. "I believe Anita wishes me in her bed. The ardeur may rise, or fall, it is all the same to me now."

Jean-Claude looked at me. "Ma petite."

"I would rather do as much of this as possible before the ardeur, but I understand that it's going to be... hard on you." I shrugged. "I don't know. I know I'm committed to this, so I guess it's okay."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You are never convincing when you lie, ma petite."

"Now that's just not true," I said, "I lie very well, thank you."

"Not to me."

I shrugged. "I'm doing the best I can here, Jean-Claude." I looked up at the ceiling as if I could see the sky through all the rock above us. "I know one thing, I want whatever we're doing done before dawn. I do not want you guys to fade in the middle."

"Ma petite still finds it unnerving that we die at dawn," Jean-Claude said.

"What time is it?" Asher asked.

I looked at my watch. "We're down to about two and a half hours."

"Barely enough time," Asher said. And something about what he said, or the way he said it, made Jean-Claude do that masculine chuckle that only men do, and only about women, or sex. I wasn't sure I'd ever heard that sound from Jean-Claude.

I was suddenly very aware that I was the only girl, and they were both men. I know that sounds silly. I mean, I knew that already, but... I suddenly felt it. It was like walking into a bar and feeling all those eyes follow you as you walk, like lions watching gazelles.

If either of the men had turned that same look to me, I think I would have bolted, but they didn't. Jean-Claude crawled onto the bed, still fully clothed, and held out his hand to me. I stared at that long-fingered, pale hand, graceful even in that small movement. Asher's hand squeezed, more gently, on my other hand.

I realized in that moment that if I chickened out, that would be the end of it. There would be no pressure from either of them. But Asher would be gone, not tonight, but soon. I didn't want him to be gone.

I took Jean-Claude's hand, and he pulled me gently onto the silk bedspread. Silk is slippery when you're wearing hose. Their hands on mine kept me from slipping off the edge of the bed. They half pulled me onto the bed.

"Why is it," I said, "that you never slide off the bed when you're wearing silk?"

"Centuries of practice," Jean-Claude said.

"I recall when you weren't so practiced. Remember the Duchess Vicante?" said Asher.

Jean-Claude blushed, a faint hint of pink. I hadn't even known he could blush. "What happened?" I asked.

"I fell," he said, trying for dignity and failing, because he smiled.

"What he will not say is that he cut his chin on a silver mirror that he broke when he fell off the Duchess and her silk sheets. Blood everywhere, and the cuckold husband on the stairs."

I looked at Jean-Claude. He nodded, shrugged.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The duchess cut herself on one of the shards of glass and told her husband it was her own blood. She was a very enterprising woman, was the Duchess Vicante."

"So you both knew each other when you weren't perfectly suave."

Jean-Claude said, "No, Asher watched me learn my lessons, but he had five years with Belle before I came to court. If he had rough edges they were worn away by the time I arrived."

"I had them, mon ami," Asher said, and he smiled. I was overwhelmed with a flood of images of that smile. That smile when his hair was in long locks and the hat on his head graceful with feathers, that smile by candlelight, that smile while we played chess and Julianna sewed by the fire, that smile in a spill of clean sheets and Julianna's laughter.

It had been a long time since we'd seen that smile. We drew him to the bed, and the smile vanished. Jean-Claude swept the bedspread aside to reveal sheets a little bluer than Asher's eyes, blue as the daytime sky, cerulean blue. But Asher stayed on his knees, as if afraid to lay upon the bed. I could see his pulse thudding in his throat, and it had nothing to do with vampire or shape-shifter powers, only fear, I think.