Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘Which one of us?’ Nicky asked.

‘Me,’ Dev said.

We both looked at him.

He smiled and held up his hands as if to say, Unarmed . ‘The last time you did a major feed on Nicky you almost killed him, remember?’

‘I know not to have sex with him twice in a row,’ I said.

‘He’s your Bride, which means he can’t shut off his energy when you feed the ardeur . We don’t want his heart stopping again because of that, right?’

We both agreed.

Then a look came over Dev’s face that I couldn’t quite read. I just knew it wasn’t a happy look. ‘Is it such a hardship to have sex with me instead of Nicky?’

I realized what the look was now. He was feeling bad about himself, worried that I preferred Nicky to him. I did, actually, but it wasn’t because Dev wasn’t wonderful on his own; he’d just gotten to me too late. I was full up for main men by the time our Devil arrived. When he’d first come to us, he’d been so confident he was cocky. It made me sad that I’d made him doubt himself, though I knew that Asher had done a lot to undermine the Devil’s confidence in himself, too.

I went to Dev, touched his arm, and studied his face. ‘You are handsome and yummy, and I’ve never said otherwise.’

‘You mean that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’d rather fuck Nicky than me.’

‘You’re prettier than me,’ Nicky said.

Dev grinned. ‘Thanks, but Anita has a lot of pretty in her life.’ His face sobered. ‘She needs more than just a pretty face and great sex.’

‘I may need more than that, but it’s not a bad place to start,’ I said. I went up on tiptoe to try and kiss him, but at six foot three, if he didn’t bend down to me I wasn’t reaching his mouth.

He bent down and let me kiss him, but his blue-brown eyes stayed serious. ‘It’s not a bad place to start, but I know what it’s like to be in love now and to have someone in love with me. I miss it.’

‘You miss Asher,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘If he could stop throwing jealous rages, I’d miss him more, too,’ I said.

‘I don’t like that part of him either, but I love all of him, and he loved me.’

‘Have you heard from him?’ I asked.

‘He told me to go find a girl and settle down with her, that he’d found a boy who liked just boys. He didn’t have to be second to the next pussy that came along.’

I dropped back to stand flat-footed. I wondered if he’d given the same talk to Jean-Claude; if so, my main squeeze hadn’t shared. ‘Yeah, that sounds like Asher when he’s being shitty.’

‘But the thought that he found another man to replace me really bothered me, Anita. I thought I couldn’t live without more people, especially women, but now I don’t know.’

‘Would you give up women for him?’ Nicky asked.

Dev looked at the other man. ‘I think I might. It would be hard, but for him I might. I didn’t expect to miss him this much.’

‘Have you ever missed anyone before?’ I asked.

Dev shook his head. It made me remember that he was younger than me and had certainly had a more sheltered life than a lot of the other men in my life. I touched his arm again.

He smiled at me, but it was a sad smile.

‘I miss him, too,’ I said.

‘Do you?’

‘I miss the bondage with him topping Nathaniel and me more than anything else, but I’m learning that it can be just as hard to find someone to dominate you in the bedroom as to date outside it.’

‘Will you talk to Jean-Claude about bringing him home?’

‘I was going to talk to him about it when I got home anyway.’

‘Really?’

‘Jean-Claude is wasted as the ringmaster at Circus of the Damned. Businesswise we need him back at Guilty Pleasures, which means we need Asher back to manage and be ringmaster at the Circus.’

‘Who talked to you about the business side of things?’ Nicky asked.

‘Jason told me that he can manage Guilty Pleasures, but he doesn’t have Jean-Claude’s magically seductive voice, and Jean-Claude had some seriously loyal customers who are missing him.’

‘Jean-Claude may like women best, but he’s missing Asher, too,’ Dev said.

‘They’ve been in love with each other for a few hundred years,’ I said.

‘And Micah doesn’t like being introduced as “our Micah” in meetings with other preternatural leaders,’ Nicky said.

‘He hasn’t mentioned it to me,’ I said.

‘There’s a level of intimacy that Jean-Claude is addressing toward Micah just in the last month or so that hints that Micah is more than just your lover.’

‘Jean-Claude hasn’t mentioned wanting to make Micah more than a blood donor,’ I said.

‘If Jean-Claude wants another male lover, why hasn’t he asked me?’ Dev said.

‘You’d say yes?’ I asked.

He grinned. ‘I wouldn’t say no.’

‘I think Jean-Claude is avoiding Dev because he thinks it would piss Asher off to have his two men fucking each other without him involved,’ Nicky said.

I gave him wide eyes.

He shrugged. ‘Asher isn’t really good at the polyamory. He doesn’t like to share unless he’s the main focus.’

‘And he wasn’t the main focus with anyone but me,’ Dev said, ‘and then I had to try to add a woman who wasn’t Anita, and Asher couldn’t deal with it.’

‘You wish you hadn’t done it,’ I said.

‘Sometimes, but if I hadn’t asked for what I thought I wanted, then I wouldn’t have realized that I could miss someone like this. I wouldn’t have known what Asher meant to me.’

‘I don’t think any of you would have realized how much he meant if you hadn’t had a chance to miss him,’ Nicky said.

‘I’ll talk to Jean-Claude when we get back,’ I said.

‘Thank you,’ Dev said, and then he looked even sadder. ‘If he’s found someone to replace me and Jean-Claude, then I’m not sure I want him back in town. I don’t think I could stand to see him with another man and know that I’d lost him.’

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I did the only thing I could think of: I hugged him. He wrapped me in his arms, but there was no heat to it, only comfort. We sort of clung to each other in the debris of Asher’s tantrums.

‘This is very touching, but it’s not going to lead to a quick feeding for the ardeur ,’ Nicky said.

We both turned and looked at him. My look wasn’t friendly, and I expected Dev to be in the same frame of mind, but he said, ‘Nicky’s right. Sad is not an aphrodisiac.’

I pulled back enough to gaze up at Dev. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Are you really turning down a chance to feed the ardeur ?’ Nicky asked.

‘Just this one time. Would it be totally weird to say I have to call Asher and find out if he’s just punishing me with the talk of another guy, or if he’s serious that he doesn’t want me in his life anymore?’ Dev said.

‘You want to know the answer before I talk to Jean-Claude about maybe bringing Asher back to town,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you giving up Anita along with all the other women?’ Nicky asked.

He thought about it and then shook his head. ‘I’m her golden tiger to call, and I need to be free to be that in every way she needs. Because of the kind of vampire she is, that includes sex.’

‘So, she’s the one exception,’ Nicky said.

Dev nodded.

‘Wasn’t one of the reasons you went to other women was that Anita had so many men in her bed that you weren’t getting enough pussy?’

I frowned at Nicky.

‘Sorry, I forgot you don’t like that word, but it’s still a good question. It’s what started the fight that got Asher exiled in the first place.’