CLAUDIA WAITED OUTSIDE against the hallway wall, keeping an eye on both the entrance and exit. The original design for the group showers had been to have only one way in and out, but I'd vetoed that. Yes, it was two entrances that had to be watched, but one way in and out meant trapped. Jean-Claude had pointed out that if anyone got far enough past our defenses to attack the showers, then a second way out of them probably wouldn't help. He had a point, but so did I, and the bodyguards voted with me. Paranoia was our friend.

There was a locker area complete with restrooms for both the men and the women. We actually had enough women living down here that it wasn't as silly as when we'd first had it put in. It was nice not to be the only girl. When we were in the locker area Nicky reminded me of another reason it was nice to be a girl. He took me in his arms, and kissed me.

The kiss was soft, and then he pulled back, and looked at my face with that one blue eye and the fall of his hair over the other side of his face. "Did that hurt?"

"No," I said.

He grinned, a fierce baring of teeth, and kissed me again. This time it wasn't soft. He pushed his mouth hard against mine, and it did hurt.

I drew back. "That hurt."

"I want to taste the blood in your mouth, before the sex helps heal you."

"You aren't a sadist. You don't enjoy causing pain."

"No, but I'm a lycanthrope. I enjoy the taste of blood and meat, and right now your mouth will taste like both."

"Some shapeshifters would lose control doing something like that." I studied his face, searching for a clue as to what it meant to him. Was this a bit of kink that he'd always enjoyed, but it had just never come up before, or was it a test of how much I trusted him?

He was my Bride, so he could feel what I was feeling, but Brides were different from any other metaphysical tie that I had. I couldn't feel his emotions; it was all about his feeling mine, and catering to me. It meant he was, in some ways, a mystery to me.

I realized I was a little spoiled that I could just peek, or share emotions with almost everyone else. I used to hate the intrusive psychic connection; now I counted on it.

"Don't you trust me?" he asked.

Ah, the trust tests. "You're my Bride; I thought you couldn't cause me pain, that it bothered you to do that."

"You like a little pain mixed with your sex. I think it'll translate to pleasure for you, and I know I'll enjoy the blood, meat, and sex."

I nodded. "Yeah, the whole prey-predator-chase thing gets confused with sex for most shapeshifters."

Nicky grinned. "If we weren't kinky before the change, we are after."

I smiled. "Can't argue that."

"Can I kiss you the way I want?"

"Let's take the weapons off first," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because once you get the taste of blood and meat, and if the pain flips my switch, we may forget the weapons and I don't want you tearing the custom-made holsters off me just so you can get my clothes off."

His grin got even wider, filling that blue eye with a shining joy. "Okay." He let go of me and stepped back, hands going to his own holsters and guns. I started with the wrist sheaths and the two silver-edged blades. It would take me longer to strip weapons because I carried blades and guns. Nicky did guns, and kept one folding blade for utility purposes. He didn't actually see the knife as a weapon, though I knew he could fight with a blade if he had to, but it wasn't his forte. He preferred guns or hand-to-hand. He'd proven just how good he was without weapons in the fight with Ares.

"You're all serious," he said, "and not thinking about sex. You're almost sad, what's wrong?"

"You're that finely attuned to my mood, wow."

"You know I live to make you happy."

"I'm sorry that you actually mean that and it's not romantic rhetoric." I paused in taking off the waist holster and the Browning BDM. I'd already put the knives in one of the little open lockers that came with its own key and lock.

"I know you're sorry that you took most of my free will. I appreciate that it bothers you, but I would have killed you, and Micah, Nathaniel, Jason, all of you, if my old Rex had given the order. I'd have done it without blinking."

I was left looking into his face again, trying to figure him out. It was like looking at a wall: smooth, untouched, blank. He was handsome, but his face gave nothing away, and I didn't think it was the blankness Jean-Claude had fought to master, or my cop face. It was more than that, or less. Sociopaths don't have to show emotion; they do it most of the time because they've learned to ape what "normal" people show them, but they never really understand the emotions they act like they have; they are the ultimate actors. It's how they blend in, and most of them assume that the rest of us are pretending just like they are; many never realize that the rest of the human race is feeling emotions that either they never had, or were abused out of them. Nicky was an abuse survivor - that was how he'd lost his eye - so he'd had emotions once; maybe he understood them better because of that, or maybe not?

"That's one of the reasons I rolled you so completely, Nicky. Sociopaths don't help anybody but themselves."

"You're as ruthless as I was, Anita, but it costs you. It makes you feel bad, makes you doubt yourself. I didn't have that problem."

"Because you were a sociopath," I said.

"You say that like it's changed, Anita; it hasn't. I'm still a sociopath, I just can't act on it most of the time because you don't want me to, because it would make you feel bad if I did the things I think about sometimes, and I can't bear the thought of you feeling bad."

"So, what, I'm like your version of Jiminy Cricket?"

"Nathaniel showed me that movie so I'd understand what the hell you meant by that, so yeah, you're my Jiminy Cricket. You tell me when I'm being bad. You make me be good."

"But you still don't have any desire to be good?" I said.

He shrugged, put the last of his weapons in his locker, and closed the small metal door. He didn't lock it; he didn't bother. No one who was allowed in the underground of the Circus would have dared touch anyone else's weapons. People died over misunderstandings like that.

He worked his T-shirt out of his jeans and started lifting his shirt up. He did it slower than normal so that he revealed the flat stomach, the spread of his lats on the side of his lower chest, then the upper chest, and the shoulders swelling with muscle, and last his arms, bare and massive. I looked at his bare upper body, and it caught my breath a little in my throat. I looked up to his face, that yellow, yellow hair that was actually his natural color, with that V of bang that fell across his face in a haircut that should have gone on someone who went to anime conventions, or dance clubs and raves. Nicky could dance, which had surprised me for some reason. If he hadn't been so terribly good at hurting and killing people, he'd have been great as a dancer at Guilty Pleasures. The women would have loved the packaging, and he could be charming as hell when he had to pretend. He probably could have danced there for a weekend just to prove he could do it. He was competitive enough for that, but he wasn't temperamentally suited to make it his permanent job.

"You looked at me and were thinking everything I wanted you to think and feel for a second, and now you've gone all serious." He moved toward me, slowly, as if not sure what I'd do when he got there. "What are you thinking?"

"What am I feeling?" I asked.

"Suspicious, you're suspicious, as if you don't trust me."

"I trust you, because my vampire head games make it so that you are utterly trustworthy to me, but if I hadn't mind-fucked you, you would have killed me, and now you live with me. We've been lovers for almost two years, but I'm not sure you feel anything for me."

"You're wrong there," he said, and he was in front of me now, so that I had to look up at an angle to see his face. He put his hand on the side of my face, and slid his fingers into the edge of my hair. He was warmer now, as if he were a little feverish, but that wasn't it. It was his beast stirring inside him.

"What am I wrong about?" I asked softly.

"I want to touch you. I want to strip off and put as much of my body against as much of your body as I can get. I always want to touch you. I feel bad if you're too far away from me. It's like the sun is missing from the sky. Without you I feel cold, lost." He whispered the last, as he leaned down toward me.

"That's the mind-fuck talking," I whispered back as his lips hovered over mine.

"I know," he said, and he rested his face against mine, holding us just barely away from a kiss.

"Doesn't that bother you?" I breathed the words into his mouth.

His lips touched mine as he said it, so that each word was like a small caress mouth to mouth. "I want to kiss you more than I've ever wanted to do anything. I want to fuck you more than I've ever wanted anything, or anyone."

"You're addicted to me." I moved my mouth a little to the side to say it.

"I'm your mind-fucked bitch," he said, and he moved my face back so our mouths were touching barely again.

"Doesn't that bother you?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Does it bother you to know that I want to lick the blood in your mouth, that the smell of it excites me?"

My breath came out in a shiver as I said, ever so softly, "No."

"I want to trap you in my arms, I want to kiss you so deep, and so hard, that you can't tell me stop. I want to feel your body react to the pain I'll cause you, and taste your blood while I do it."

I shivered and it wasn't from fear, or mostly not fear. There was always that edge when playing with a shapeshifter that things could go too far, but that edge was part of what I enjoyed. It was the truth and I tried to own it. I breathed the words into his mouth, against the warmth of his mouth, "Yay!"

"Is that a yes?" he said, his hand sliding around my head to the back of my neck. His hand was so big.

"Yes," and I kissed him first, but then his hand tightened on the back of my neck, and he kissed me so deep and so hard that I couldn't say anything, not even no. His arm was like muscled steel at my back, trapping my upper body against him, my arms at my sides, so much more trapped than Asher had managed. I'd chosen not to hurt Asher, but Nicky... he made sure I couldn't hurt him. He trapped me as he kissed me, tongue tracing every wound, as he kissed me and licked the blood from the inside of my mouth. The pain was sharp, and I didn't usually like sharp pain, but about the time I might have protested if I could have said something, Nicky would move off the wound and just kiss me. He knew how to kiss me, and I kissed him back, though he held my head so tight I couldn't move into the kiss, and he was in control even of that part. He touched the deepest wound and I tasted fresh blood.

He made a low inarticulate sound, straightening up. Standing, he lifted me off the ground. My feet were suddenly dangling in the air, but my body was pressed so tight against his that there was no way to fall. I was safe, and at the same time trapped. I couldn't decide if I liked it, or it scared me. I hesitated, and because I didn't feel bad about it, the next noise he made into my mouth was a low, purring growl. It seemed to fill my mouth, to vibrate down my body, until it found that deep, deep center of me and there was a stirring inside me. A tawny, gold shadow rose from the dark, and I visualized my lioness padding through tall shadowy trees. It wasn't really what was happening, but it was what my mind "saw," so that I had some reference for the sensation of a lion moving inside my human body. I saw it as the lioness moving through jungle trees, gliding toward the growling heat that Nicky offered. My beast rose up to meet his, warmth for warmth, heat for heat, until my skin ran fever-hot, and so did his.

He drew back from my mouth enough to show me that his blue eye had drowned to lion amber. A growl that should never have come out of a human throat trickled from between his lips, as he held me.

I growled softly back.

Nicky roared, a great, coughing blast of sound that I'd never heard from any werelion. The sound was stunning this close. I was so startled that he had set me on my feet before I reacted.

I said, "What..."

He grabbed the front of my jeans and ripped them open, tearing through the zipper and most of the cloth around it. The strength was startling. He turned me around, roughly, making me stumble a little. He bent me over the bench so that my hands had to catch me on it, or I'd have hit my knees on it. He ripped my jeans open, tearing them down to my thighs. He put one hand around the back of my thong and ripped it off of me in one pull. Did it hurt, or did it feel good? That moment where rough and pain turn to sex and pleasure had switched in my head. I loved the sensation of him ripping my clothes away; the force of it, the eagerness of it, tightened things low in my body.

Nicky slipped his hands around my hips, and growled, "God, I love your ass."

There were other men in my life who whispered sweet nothings during sex, even quoted poetry. I loved them for it, but I loved Nicky for other things.

He kept one hand on my hip, but ran his hand over my ass, stroking, tracing, petting, and finally slid a finger inside me. I was tight enough that even that drew a small sound from me.

"You're wet," he said, in that hoarse whisper-growl of a voice.

"I know," I said, and my voice was hoarse, too.

He slid two fingers inside me, and began to push them in and out like a preview of what he planned to do later. He moved faster and faster, and it felt good, it felt very good, but it wasn't going to hit the mark.

"The angle's wrong," he said, in a voice a little less growling.

"Yes," I said.

"Lie on your back on the bench."

I glanced over my shoulder at him. "It's too narrow to have sex on."

"Just do it," he said, and it was at moments like this that I both enjoyed Nicky being less flowery than most of the other men, and wondered just how blunt he would have been if I hadn't mind-fucked him from the beginning.

I gave him a look the idea deserved, and stood up. "Not with my jeans around my thighs."

"Fine," he said. He knelt, and I had a second to realize what he meant to do before his hands balled into my jeans and jerked downward. I had nothing to hold on to, so it staggered me. He caught me with one hand, while the other one ripped the last of my jeans off. I was left in my shirt with the bra under it, and the ankle-high boots I'd worn in the field. They weren't club boots; they were police/military boots, not exactly sexy.

"I would have said you couldn't get jeans off over these boots," I said, and was half laughing.

He licked one of my cheeks, a long, slow taste of tongue, and I stopped laughing. Then he set teeth into my cheek, and I said, "Ow, too much teeth, too soon."

He licked over where he'd bitten. "You'll like it later," he said.

"Probably, but not yet."

"Lie down, on your back, on the bench."

"It's a really narrow bench," I said, and turned enough so I could look down at him. He looked up at me, his blond hair falling over his face, that one blue eye staring up at me. His face already held that darkness, that surety that most men's eyes get at some point when the clothes are coming off and the sex is happening. It's not exactly possessive, but yet it is, but it is predatory, and it wasn't just because Nicky was a werelion. It wasn't a shapeshifter look, or a vampire look, it was a male look. Maybe women had their own version, but I rarely saw my own face in a mirror during sex, and I had only one other woman to compare to, and she didn't have a look like this one.

I stared down into Nicky's face, and he stared up at me and let me see in his face what he wanted to do to me. "Get on the bench, Anita."

I didn't argue again.