“Maybe,” I said, my voice raspy and almost painful to hear, though it didn’t hurt me. I wanted the sex with them, but I wasn’t completely sold on doing breath play with my chest being squeezed. I was harder to hurt than a normal human, but I wasn’t as indestructible as a lycanthrope. I’d hate to crack a rib because we were doing rough sex and I just didn’t understand what Nicky was doing well enough to understand when to call it for sure. We’d need a lot more negotiating and information sharing before we did anything like this for real.

   Nicky gave me a look. He stopped squeezing me, and my voice was almost normal as I answered that look. “I want the sex with both of you, but I’m not sure about having my rib cage compressed while we do it.”

   “Fair enough,” he said.

   “Even I’ve never had anyone compress my chest for breath play,” Nathaniel said.

   “It would almost be worth it to do something as a bottom in the bedroom that you haven’t done,” I said, turning my head so that I could offer him a kiss, which he took.

   “I’ve been bottoming in the dungeon and bedroom a lot longer than you have,” he said, smiling.

   “I didn’t even know I liked bondage and submission, or rough sex, until the last few years.”

   “I’ve always known that I liked bottoming in the dungeon, but I didn’t know that I enjoyed topping until you came into my life,” he said, and kissed me again.

   “Do you know where Magda is?” I asked.

   “In the gym. I saw her go in as I went to change.”

   “Can you give me fifteen minutes?”

   “Why?”

   “I’ll change and come to practice. There’s a chance I may be going out of the country on a job, and I never know when I’ll get to work out while I’m hunting bad guys.”

   “I’ll change, too,” Nathaniel said.

   We looked at him.

   “What? I work out and you’ve been forcing me to take at least one fight practice a week.”

   “Fighting is my version of your kitchen,” Nicky said.

   “You’re my brother-husband; of course I know fighting is your version of my kitchen. You’re the best sous chef I’ve got.”

   Nicky grinned. “Well, we wouldn’t want you cooking dinner for everyone all by yourself.”

   “Or worse yet, with only Anita to help me.”

   “Hey,” I said.

   Nathaniel hugged me. “I’m sorry, but you really can’t cook.”

   “Maybe I just don’t want to cook,” I said.

   Nicky hugged us both. “So cute,” he said.

   “I am not cute,” I said.

   “Yes, you are,” Nathaniel said. “You just hate being called cute.”

   “Short, delicate-looking people don’t like being called cute.”

   “Micah hates it, too,” Nathaniel said.

   Nicky hugged us both and kissed the top of my head, then turned and kissed Nathaniel on the forehead. It made him laugh. “You’re the one who says we don’t think of each other that way.”

   “We don’t, but you hate being left out when the physical affection is being passed around.”

   Nathaniel just smiled, because he couldn’t disagree.

   “My love, and my brother, if you’re going to change for practice do it quick. This is the first time Jake has asked a non-Harlequin to help instruct. Don’t want him to regret it.”

   We went to our room for our exercise clothes. I wondered how the other Harlequin would feel about Jake choosing Nicky over one of them. Some of them had serious issues with anyone that wasn’t Harlequin. The only saving grace was it was still too early for most of the vampires to be awake. The Harlequin wereanimals were proud, but the vampires were just downright superior to everyone. They wouldn’t take well to anyone making them question that superiority. It promised to be an interesting fight practice.

17

   NICKY WENT AHEAD so he wouldn’t keep Jake waiting, but he agreed to wait for us to get there before the actual practice began, if we hurried. Nathaniel and I changed into clothes that we could wear on the practice mat. The braid that he’d done to help me cope with my hair’s lack of product, and fuzziness, was perfect for working out. Magda was at the gym with her blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail; she was wearing a sports bra and a pair of jogging shorts that would have made Nathaniel happy, which meant that she was wearing very little. I admit to being a little distracted by the way her breasts mounded at the edges of the sports bra, and the way the tiny shorts fit as she stretched over the long legs that made up most of her five-ten height. I don’t think I’d ever been so distracted by a woman in the gym, but then I’d never been lovers with one who worked out like I did. Something about all that tall Valkyrie genetics made her muscle up even better than I did, but you’d never mistake her for a man as she stretched out over first one long leg and then the other. In the right clothes she could dress up and pass for a man, but the clothes that would have allowed that needed layers to hide the curves. Without makeup her face could be stark, her gray-blue eyes cold, and that was enough to make some people think masculine for a woman, especially a tall woman, but those were people who looked on the surface of things, and that wasn’t how I saw most people, and it certainly wasn’t how I saw Magda anymore.

   Cynric was beside her stretching out. His forehead touched his knee, all that long torso bending over the even longer legs. He was six-three now; when I met him he’d been ten inches shorter, but then he’d been sixteen and now he was nineteen. His hair looked black in the gym lights, but in brighter light, it was shades of dark blue from navy to cobalt. He got people asking him where he’d gotten such an amazing dye job, but it was his natural color. It was back in a tight ponytail for the workout; he still hadn’t figured out how to braid his own hair because it, like the rest of him, had been shorter once. Usually one of us braided it for him, but this morning he’d woken up on his own in his bedroom down the hallway from ours.

   His ass looked as nice in his little shorts as Magda’s did, but he’d added a pair of compression shorts and a loose-fitting tank top to cover most of his chest, so only the muscled arms and shoulders gave a hint of how nice the rest of the view would be.

   There were only a few other people stretching out for the workout. The early-morning Saturday class was just whoever showed up and wanted to work on things. It meant that you’d have people working hand-to-hands or weapons drill; it all depended on what they thought they needed to work on most, or what they could get someone to help them work on. But today there were enough people for a full class.