“In retrospect it seems silly, but I was determined not to make Nathaniel my boyfriend.”

“Why?” Damian asked.

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, “but it made sense to me at the time.”

“The fact that she let me move in and be part of her life without sex helped me start valuing myself as a person. Before Anita I thought that all I had to offer anyone was my skills in the bedroom and my beauty.”

“Are you saying not having sex was a good thing?” Damian asked.

Nathaniel smiled. “At the time it drove me nuts, but in the long run, yes, because I could see that Anita valued me, cared for me without sex. It made me start to realize that maybe there was more to me than just sex and looking good when I took my clothes off.”

Damian looked at me. “Okay, I’ll ask what I’ve been afraid to ask: Why am I the only man you had sex with once and then never wanted it again?”

“You’re not. I fed the ardeur on Byron just once!”

“Okay, why am I the only man who prefers women you’ve slept with just once?”

I tried to think what the answer was, because I didn’t really have one. “I don’t know.”

Damian’s face showed that he didn’t believe me. “Every woman knows why she doesn’t want a man.”

“I fought not to sleep with anyone, remember? Not Jean-Claude, or Richard, or Nathaniel. I guess the only two men I’ve ever slept with the first time I met them and then continued to have sex with have been Micah and Nicky.”

“You slept with Sin the first time you met him,” Nathaniel said.

I shook my head. “That’s different. The Mother of All Darkness mind-fucked us both and used him like the rest of the weretigers she chose as a sort of distraction to keep me from messing with her plans.” Damian had asked me why I’d finally gone into real therapy; I hadn’t wanted to answer, because I’d had all sorts of issues with Cynric—Sin. I’d thought it was his age, which had been sixteen when we met, and eighteen when he moved in with us, but I’d finally realized it wasn’t the age difference. It was that I saw our first night together as rape. All the weretigers that had been part of that night were reminders that the Mother of All Darkness had basically raped us all. She’d used other bodies to do it, but it hadn’t been consensual for any of us. Crispin and Domino were within a few years of my own age—one younger and the other older—but I hadn’t made them part of my main lovers either. I’d fed the ardeur on them occasionally, but in the end they’d been painted with the same issue-heavy brush that Sin had been coated with; they all reminded me of that night. They reminded me of the loss of control, the lack of choice, of waking up the next morning in bed with strangers whose names I barely knew and realizing we’d had an orgy. Domino and Crispin had both found other interests, but Sin hadn’t. He’d been the only one who persisted in trying to make his life with me even though I found reason after reason to reject him. He’d been sixteen and a virgin when Mommy Darkest had mind-fucked us both and used my body to be his first time. That gave me more issues than I knew what to do with about Cynric, and then he decided he would go by the nickname Sin. It was like rubbing salt in the wound.

“Whatever you’re thinking can’t be good,” Damian said.

“You’ve been really honest with me, Damian, so I’ll try to be the same. You asked why I finally got into therapy. The truth is that it was Cynric—Sin. I still see our first night together as rape. Our bodies were there, but it was like the Mother of All Darkness used both of us. One of the reasons I’ve managed to stay less attached to him, or keep breaking the attachment we have to each other, is that he reminds me of that night.”

Damian opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, and finally said, “That was honest.”

“Too much honesty for you?”

“No, no, just I’m really sorry that you feel . . . victimized by that night. I didn’t realize you saw it as . . . like that.”

“You can say the word, Damian. You didn’t realize I saw it as rape.”

“I’m a man and I was a Viking when I was alive. I really can’t throw that word around, Anita.”

“I get the man part, but I hadn’t thought about the other. I guess you didn’t see it as wrong back then.”

“I’m not sure right or wrong applies, but culturally we were raiders. We didn’t just rape; we kidnapped them and brought them home with us, or sold them as slaves to other people, so other people could keep raping them. One of the hardest things about living in this century is looking back at some of the things I did hundreds of years ago and living with what I did.”

“You didn’t think it was wrong?”

“Not while I was doing it, no, and if you ask me to explain it, you won’t like any of the answers. I know Cardinale didn’t.”

“I’m not her.”

“No, but you’re a modern woman who sees her body as hers. You don’t see yourself as belonging to anybody but yourself, and certainly not to any man. You just can’t understand how different most cultures were toward women a thousand years ago.”

“I have some of Jean-Claude’s memories from hundreds of years ago.”

“But he was raised by his mother and sisters, and then a noblewoman chose him to come be a companion to her son and heir. He was part of Belle Morte’s court for hundreds of years. She was very much her own woman. He spent centuries surrounded by strong women; I didn’t, not until She-Who-Made-Me took me. She’s evil and makes jealousy into a horror show, but she is ruler of everything around her.”