Page 109 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

I scooted farther toward the end of the couch away from all of them, but mainly Nathaniel. “Don’t ever roll me like that again.”

“I shouldn’t be able to roll you at all,” he said.

“I don’t care, just don’t.”

“Even when we have date night with Damian?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and let it out while I counted slowly, but I had to breathe again, before I counted enough to not be pissed. “Damn it, Nathaniel, I love you, but this is pushing it.”

“Our triumvirate works because I’m in charge of it; I’m careful, but I make it work so that all three of us are happy with it.”

“Nathaniel embracing the power saved your lives in Ireland,” Jake said.

“But it was my necromancy that let us raise an army of ghosts,” I said.

“But it was Nathaniel who bridged the gap between your power and the battery of energy that he and Damian offered you.”

I sat there for a few seconds, sighed, then said, “No, I don’t want you to stop making the triumvirate work with Damian. Part of me hates saying that, but I may never be ready to take charge of it, and I know Damian won’t be.”

“Good, and thank you. I’m sorry this scared you, but I had to make sure Jean-Claude and Richard understood what could go wrong with the fourth mark.”

“Thank you,mon minet, though perhaps I should stop calling you my kitten, for it seems you have become a very grown-up cat.”

“I love it when you call me your kitten, you know that. I don’t want to be one of the big cats, I’m happy being a little one.”

“With the power you have over Anita and Damian, you could be a major player,” Nicky said.

“I don’t want to be a major player; I just want the people I love to be happy and safe.”

“If you wanted to make me refuse to do the fourth mark tonight with them, then you succeeded,” I said.

“No, Anita, the point is you have to do it.” He turned toward me with Damian draping his arms across his shoulders, still drunk on power. “And you have to do it now, before sunrise, because you cannot leave Jean-Claude that vulnerable.”

I shook my head.

“I love you, so much, but if you don’t do the fourth mark then it’s like having a house with an alarm system but you leave the door wide open. All the metaphysical power in the world won’t save us if Deimos or some other vampire gets in through that open door.”

“We would have gone happy to do the fourth mark if you hadn’t done this,” Richard said.

“Anita wouldn’t have.”

I looked down, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze, but my emotions were so raw it didn’t really matter. I looked up into Richard’s handsome face, but I was strangely alone in my head, and I did not want him. Pretty was as pretty does, and we’d hurt each other too much, too often. I was happy now; my life worked, damn it, and it had never really worked with Richard.

“The fourth mark won’t work if she’s still fighting it,” Nathaniel said.

I looked at him. “You think I’d have said no at the last minute.”

“I’m sorry, but yes.”

I rolled that around in my head, and couldn’t argue with it. “Damn it.”

“Dawn is coming,ma petite, what would you have of me, of us?”

I looked up at one of the loves of my life, my fiancé, and didn’t have a good answer. I looked at Richard standing solemnly at his side, because he didn’t know what to do anymore either.Jesus, Nathaniel, did you have to do it this way?

“If I could have done it differently in time for you to still do the fourth mark tonight before dawn I would have, but you’re a rip-the-bandage-off type of person, you always have been, nothing else works with you.”

I nodded because he was absolutely right on that. I took another deep breath, stood up, and reached my hand out to Jean-Claude, and the other a little slower to Richard. Jean-Claude took my hand immediately with a relieved smile; Richard hesitated, then took the other one. That rush of power as we all touched each other felt like it should blow my hair back from my face.

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