I frowned. Byron had been fifteen when he died, so he was caught forever in that first blush of high school when the guys fill out and muscles seem to happen. He was forever unfinished, never to find out what he’d look like at twenty. “Byron? We only had sex once. It was an emergency feed for the ardeur.”

“Yes, but he actually came inside you, and he’s only done that with three women, ever, counting you.”

“Hmm . . . I didn’t know that.”

“It’s a huge compliment, Anita.”

I frowned harder; I had a headache starting right between my eyes. “Okay, I guess I can see that as a compliment.”

“The ardeur is the other thing that might make us work together. You unleash it on me and I think even I will find you irresistible.”

“Unappealing lady parts and all?” I asked, giving him a look and raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t give me that look; I think we need to be absolutely honest with each other, or this will not work.”

“I don’t think it’ll work now.”

“I understand that, but if we aren’t honest it will surely fail.”

I looked down at him, so serious in the bed, with his eyeliner decoratively smeared, and his hair looking almost artful in its messiness. He was one of those people who wake up looking good; I was so not one of those people.

“One other thing that you need to know before you give your answer,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“You know, they used to call intersexed people like me a hermaphrodite.”

I nodded.

“I have functioning boy parts and girl parts.”

“Yes.”

“Knowing is one thing, actually seeing and touching is another. I’ve had people be intrigued and then get grossed out, or scared, so you should see everything before you decide.”

I looked down at his body where it was covered with the sheet. I hadn’t felt nervous about it until he announced the possibilities; now suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the whole show. “You know, I wasn’t weirded out by the idea of seeing you nude until you said that.”

He studied my face, his own expression cynical. “Really, I find that hard to believe; most people are either intrigued or horrified by my . . . uniqueness.”

“I honestly hadn’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about what your plumbing might look like, sorry.”

“I thought that was part of your issue with me.”

I shook my head. “My issue with you was that when I met you, you managed to let my words and your club rules hurt people I loved and cared about.”

“I am sorry for that, by the way. I honestly didn’t understand what they were doing to them, especially Nathaniel. I would never have let them leave the swords in long enough for his body to heal around them.”

I could still remember that moment when I’d finally gotten a good look at what Chimera’s men had done to Nathaniel. The anger came back to me, so that my hands made fists before I could stop them. “It was your club, your rules, Narcissus, and you had a werehyena in the room, reporting to you.”

“Your eyes are almost black with anger, just remembering that moment.”

I gave him the full weight of that darkened gaze. My hyena rose in the dark center of me and looked up with golden brown eyes; again she wasn’t behaving like most of my beasts around another of her kind. She seemed reluctant to approach him, but why?

“I thought my man was reporting accurately to me that night, Anita, but I swear to you, he was not.”

“I believe you taunted me with comments about it being my fault for ordering you to order them to stop what they were doing and wait for me.”

“I did not know what they had done. I would swear on my honor, but my reputation says I have none.”

“And that would be another reason you and I aren’t buddies.”

“And you have a reputation for being a ruthless murdering bitch, which I didn’t see as a problem, but you were a woman and metaphysically powerful. I did not want you near my hyenas.”

“You thought I’d take them over,” I said.

“Yes.”

“If I feed the ardeur on you, I’ll feed off every werehyena that is tied to you metaphysically. Are you sure you really want to do that?”

“No, but I’ve seen you with Rafael’s wererats. They feel more and more loyalty to you, but they still feel more to him. You have not stolen them away from him. You work with him, and he grows in power because of it.”

“Rat isn’t one of my inner beasts; hyena is.”

“You think that will make a difference?” he asked.

“I’m saying it might. I just don’t know for sure, and I don’t want you to pop this cork and then find out the champagne costs you more than you’d planned on paying.”

He smiled up at me. “I like the metaphor, but I don’t really like champagne, or dry wine. I like sweet things, not bitter.”

“I don’t like dry wine or champagne either. Hell, I don’t really like most wine. I drink it because Jean-Claude can taste it through me, and he misses good wine.”

“So you blamed me for Chimera making Nathaniel suffer.”

I nodded.

“And I avoided you, because I feared you’d do what the Harlequin bitch is trying to do.”

“I didn’t know that Jane was giving you a problem. You should have come to us and said something.”

“Come to you and Jean-Claude and admit I wasn’t king enough to handle one master vampire that could call hyena? No, so no. Kings do not go before kings from a position of weakness, Anita, not if they want to remain king.”

“Then don’t let Asher’s stupidity make you do something you’ll regret,” I said.

“I’m not here out of a position of weakness, Anita. I’m here because the wolves and the leopards, and the lions, and the rats, and all of you motherfuckers haven’t yet got enough new soldiers to be certain of defeating me.”

I fought to keep my face blank but knew my pulse rate and breathing had probably betrayed me to him.

“Did you all think I would be oblivious to what you were doing, or why?” He sat up and snarled in my face, “I am Oba of my clan! I am not so besotted with Asher that I have ceased to watch all the rest of you bastards.” His hyena flowed over him like heat and spilled over my skin. The power of it caught my breath.

He leaned in closer. “Tell me honestly, Anita, if you felt this much power from anyone else, wouldn’t you have been in their bed by now?”

“You in my bed, maybe, but you like boys, and I’m not one.”

“The ardeur can take a person’s preference away and just make them want you, or Jean-Claude. You know that.”

“Yeah, but if you use it to force someone to have sex with someone they don’t want to have sex with, then it’s rape, and neither of us is into that.”

The heat of his beast was just gone, like a candle blown out. He lay back on the bed in the nest of sheets and just stared at me. He looked astonished. “You believe that; you really do.”

“Yes, I really do. Why does that surprise you this much?”

“Asher has told me what Jean-Claude and he did at Belle Morte’s court. Rape was one of her things, and Asher misses some of it.”