"I am fine alone, Nathaniel."
"Good for you; I'm not."
Asher was finally yelling back at Kane behind us. The bodyguards were moving in to help contain them since their fights sometimes erupted into real violence. I looked at Asher, and touching Jean-Claude, I saw him through more years than I'd been alive. I saw him through true love and romance and loss and so much, but all I could think was, did we really want to hit this mess again? The answer from Jean-Claude's emotions was a resounding yes!
Nathaniel touched us both, hugging us close. "I miss him, too, Jean-Claude. I can't find anyone else who can do what he does for me in the dungeon, but look at him with Kane. Asher chose to tie himself to Kane for all eternity as master and animal to call. Kane isn't that powerful. He isn't the head of an animal group. What kind of master vampire would tie themselves to Kane?"
"I tied you and Damian to me by accident, so I don't have many stones to throw on that one."
"You were brand-new to the power. Asher isn't."
"I have never said that Asher was wise," Jean-Claude said.
"Well, that's true," I said.
Nathaniel looked back at the fight. "I was addicted to sex. Asher is addicted to the idea of true love. Addictions never end in anything but misery."
"Do you not believe that Asher could break his addiction as you did yours?" Jean-Claude asked.
"The apology was epic, but the fight with Kane is just the same old shit."
I looked at Nathaniel as if I'd never seen him before. "That was like a mix of me and you talking," I said out loud.
"We all gain something from our metaphysical ties. Maybe I gained a little more toughness."
"What did I gain?"
"You're picking up too much of Jean-Claude's emotions to think clearly," Nathaniel said.
I gazed up at the vampire in my arms. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"Jean-Claude, Jason will be in from New York tomorrow. Micah's hoping to be home in a couple of days."
"You talked to Micah about this?" I asked.
"Of course I did." Nathaniel looked surprised that I hadn't thought he would.
"I guess I thought you were mad at him."
"He didn't say no, Anita. He just never saw himself married to another man, so he's working his way through it."
Jean-Claude hugged Nathaniel. "We all have our drama, do we not, pussycat?"
Nathaniel smiled. "Yeah." He hugged him back and nestled his head against the taller man's shoulder. Again, it was an escalation of physicality between them, and it was Nathaniel who was pushing the envelope again. I was beginning to think that Micah wasn't the only long game he was playing. Hell, Nathaniel had pursued me for years before I finally realized I loved him. He didn't catch me. I just stopped fighting what was already true. My issues had nearly cost me one of the loves of my own life.
Nathaniel was a submissive personality, but I was learning slowly that submissive didn't mean weak, and that really all the power is with the sub, because once they safeword, then everything stops. I watched him cuddling with Jean-Claude and realized that it might not just be the dungeon where Nathaniel had power.
"By tomorrow night you won't be alone," he said. "Can you resist Asher for that long?"
"Do you really think I am that weak around him?"
"Do you?" Nathaniel asked him back.
I watched the two men, the demand in Nathaniel's face and the doubt in Jean-Claude's. "I will not be that weak."
"Just hold out until Jason gets here tomorrow. He'll help you."
Jean-Claude's phone rang. He was going to ignore it, but the ringtone was the one we both had for Richard Zeeman, our almost long-lost third. We hadn't seen him in weeks. He'd been off on some trip for the college he taught at. Jean-Claude hit the button with the sounds of the fight behind us escalating, so there was no way Richard wouldn't hear it over the phone. It made us walk out from the curtained living room, and when Nathaniel opened the big dungeon-looking door to the bottom of the stairs we all went through, so that Jean-Claude could hear.
He made small noises, mostly yes and hmm sounds. He hung up and looked at me. "Richard is coming to spend the night and help me talk to Asher and Kane."
"I didn't call Richard," Nathaniel said.
"Me either."
"He says that Rafael called him after he heard the news from Micah. Apparently, our pussycat is not the only one who does not trust me alone with Asher, even for a night." Jean-Claude stared at the phone in his hand and then looked up at us. "Richard has not stayed overnight in the same bed with me in nearly a year. Apparently no one trusts my judgment about this."
"You were in love with Asher for centuries, and your happiest memories were the twenty years you and he had with Julianna. Jean-Claude, that much history is hard for anyone to resist," I said.
Jean-Claude glanced back at the door. We couldn't hear the fight through the dungeon door. It was nearly soundproof. "I will walk up with you. Richard should be here soon after that." And just like that he acknowledged that he didn't trust his judgment around Asher either.
33
I USED TO think that my fear of flying was based on not knowing the pilot. Had he been drug-tested recently? Was he well rested? Trustworthy? How about the plane? Was it flightworthy? Was the maintenance crew that last looked at it competent? Were the parts going to fall off if everything shook too much? I mean, how well made was this plane? But I knew Jean-Claude's pilot. I knew he was drug-free, well rested, trustworthy, and had a wife and two kids to come home to, so he wanted to live as much as any of us. I knew the jet was well serviced and well maintained, because Jean-Claude saw to it. Micah double-checked it since he used the plane more than anyone. I trusted both of them to value us enough to make sure it all worked. I'd had to own that my phobia wasn't based on any of those things. It was a phobia from a commercial airline flight that had gone dangerously wrong but hadn't quite crashed, and ever since then I'd hated flying. Okay, since then I'd been terrified of flying and hated it.
Jean-Claude's new plane seated fifteen and even had a section that could be curtained off, in case someone wanted some privacy, though since everyone I was traveling with had super-hearing, the privacy was very illusionary. There was a mini-bar and food on board. If we crashed in the Andes--not that we were going anywhere near them on this flight, but if we did--we wouldn't have to resort to cannibalism for at least a couple of weeks.
The seats were comfortable and swiveled so that you only sat two by two, but the seats faced each other in four-person conversation groups, or you could swivel and talk to the people on the other side of the narrow aisle without having to turn your head. I mean why make that much effort, right? I'd been on one flight years ago that had probably been the victim of a micro burst, which you actually couldn't control at all. You could be properly maintained, mechanically sound, with the best crew in the world, and micro bursts didn't care, which led me all the way back to--how was I possibly going to do eight and a half hours on a plane without running screaming up and down the tiny aisle?
I texted all the people that I was metaphysically connected to who weren't on the plane with me and told them, Shields up. I'd started doing that after Sin had requested I always tell them when I was about to fly. Apparently he'd been in the middle of his driving lesson when I took off and it had not gone well. All strong emotions were potentially shareable, and I really was afraid to fly. It was a scheduled, knowable moment when my emotions were going to run amok, so I group-texted everyone. Yay technology, making polyamorous relationships better since the iPhone was invented.
Nathaniel sat beside me, holding my hand. I had a death grip on the armrest as the jet began to taxi down the runway. I was seriously working on controlling my breathing, because to panic, at least to have a full-blown panic attack, you had to lose control of your breathing first. If I controlled my breathing I could control my heart rate, my pulse, and keep myself from spilling over the edge into hysterics. I hadn't actually cried on a plane
in a few years, but I had bloodied Micah's leg through a pair of jeans once when he was my plane buddy. At least if I bloodied Nathaniel's hand he'd enjoy it; Micah not so much.
"Anita, look at me."