She looked at me, and her eyes darkened the way that human eyes do when they start to get angry. “Forever. The sex is amazing if he can control himself, but he’s so big that if he just starts pounding it hurts, and it drowns out all the orgasms, or even stops me from orgasming, because it hurts too much.”

“I’m sorry he hurt you,” I said. What else could I say?

“How long has it been since you’ve slept with him?”

“A while,” I said.

“You can’t remember?”

I shrugged again. “He’s not one of my main sweeties. I . . . Maybe six weeks? He’s trying to date some human woman, and it takes time to really date someone. Our booty calls had to take a backseat to him date-dating someone.”

“As opposed to just fucking them,” she said, and she sounded angry again.

“Yeah, dating takes more time than just fucking,” I said. I fought not to get angry, or be offended, not to add any more emotion to what promised to be an emotional minefield.

“I enjoy sleeping with Jean-Claude, he’s wonderful, but Richard is a brute in bed.”

I so wanted out of this conversation, but it was like a train wreck—you knew it was coming, but sometimes you’re still along for the ride.

“He can be, I guess.”

Jason came to stand beside me, touched my shoulder. “Say the rest, Anita.”

I looked up at him. “What rest?”

He looked at me, and it was that you know look. There weren’t many people I’d take that look from, but Jason was on that short list.

“I like that he’s rough. Sometimes a brute in bed is exactly what I want,” I said.

She shuddered. “You can have him, I’m done.”

“I don’t want him as a boyfriend either, but the occasional sex is great, that was always fabulous between us.”

“You look delicate, like he’d break you.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” I said.

Jason squeezed my shoulder. “The fact that Anita likes rough sex is one of the reasons I wanted everyone to meet this morning.”

The comment made me look up at him. “What does that mean?”

The tea timer went off and he went to rescue it, and also neatly avoided answering my question.

I called after him. “What do my sexual preferences have to do with anything?”

“I’m getting the tea,” he said with his back to us as he fished the bag out of the mug.

“What is this little meeting about this morning?” I asked, suspicious now.

Nathaniel spoke as he came into the kitchen. “It’s about helping everybody in our poly group feel better.”

He’d pulled on a pair of his favorite jeans, the ones that were nearly white with washing and had begun to thread out across the thighs. His knees peeked out of actual holes as he padded barefoot toward me. His ankle-length hair was in its usual braid so that it was mostly hidden behind him with only glimpses of the thick auburn rope peeking from behind him as he moved.

My smile of greeting changed to something less happy. “What does that mean, and why do I feel like you and Jason have been plotting behind my back about something?”

He smiled, and it was the real deal, not the one that he flashed at Guilty Pleasures to get customers to shove hundred-dollar bills down his pants. If they could have seen this smile full of love and lust and just . . . Nathaniel, they’d have found thousand-dollar bills to offer him in hopes that he’d deliver on everything that smile hinted at.

I fought to stay grumpy at him, but found it impossible as he crossed the golden bars of sunlight, turning his lavender eyes almost blue, as if they were paling in the warmth of all that sunshine. His eyes were truly the color of spring lilacs. Only two things made them darken to a truer purple: anger and lust. It had to be enough of both, and anger was a rarer cause for it than lust.

He changed his walk slightly so that I was suddenly aware of just how well he moved, how muscular and yummy his naked upper body was. He’d actually had to tone down his weight lifting because he was bulking up too much for the flexibility he needed as a dancer. He was learning, and starting to perform, some modern dance pieces, but it was the exotic dancer part of him that glided and strutted his way over to give me another good-morning kiss. We’d done more than kiss before I got out of bed to meet Jason in the kitchen.

He bent that handsome face over me where I sat, coming in for a kiss. “You know just how much you affect me, don’t you?” I whispered.

“It’s my job to know,” he whispered back, and kissed me.

I kissed him back, because what else could I do? Hell, what else did I want to do? I wasn’t angry enough not to run my hand around his bare waist and caress him as our lips met.

He rose and I smiled up at him, damn near stupid-faced with the kiss, and the memory of earlier, and all the days before. We’d been living together for three years and it just got better.

“That,” Envy said, “that’s what I want. I want someone to look at me the way you two look at each other, or the way that Jason and J.J. look at each other. I want gentleness and love.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Jason said, as he carried her tea to the table.

“No. Anita says she likes Richard being a brute, but she has Nathaniel, and Micah, and Jean-Claude. She has her gentle, and her love.”

“You have Jean-Claude,” I said.

“No, I have sex with Jean-Claude, I’m his lover, but he doesn’t love me.”