Hit List

let me. I want as much of you on as much of me as I can get. I want to do as much as you’ll let me do.” The shy look gave way to something much sadder.

“Once I feed the ardeur we’ll lose a lot of control.”

“I don’t want to lose control too soon,” he said. “I want it to last.”

I nodded. “I do need to feed and get back to crime solving, but . . . How long has it been for you?”

He shook his head, rubbing his cheek against my thigh. “I don’t want to say, it makes me sound like mercy sex.”

I rubbed my foot along his hip, and let him see in my face how amazing he looked cuddled down there. I still hadn’t seen all of him bare of the covers, but if everything else was half as nice as what I had seen, it would be worth seeing. I let him see that I saw him. I saw him as beautiful. I saw him as desirable, and I realized that the ardeur wasn’t just about sex anymore. It was more and more about giving people their heart’s desire. Ethan wanted what a lot of people wanted: to be wanted. We all want to be desired. I did my best to let him see that I did.

His face showed a soft wonder, as if no one had looked at him like that in a very long time. I held my hand out to him.

“I thought I was doing this first,” he said.

“Trust me, I want you to go down on me, but first I want to kiss and cuddle. Once you do me orally I’m just going to want you to fuck me.”

His eyes went wide, and he shivered.

“What?” I asked.

“The way you talk.”

“Something wrong with the way I talk?”

“No,” he said, “it’s great. It’s just . . . perfect.” He went up on all fours to crawl up toward my head, and I was able to see him completely nude for the very first time. All the talk had made him soft again, so that that flat, ridged stomach was edged by the soft, dangling bits of him. It made me, as it usually did, want to go down on him while he was still soft and I could fit all of him in my mouth without working at it.

His face was over mine when he said, “You watch my bits the way some men watch breasts.”

I blushed, I couldn’t help it. I glared up at him with his knees between my spread thighs, a hand on either side of my shoulders, both of us buck naked. I tried for dignity and promptly failed. He was smiling that big dimpled smile of his that I already knew was his really pleased smile.

“I didn’t expect you to blush.”

I kept glaring at him while the blush faded. I tried to fold my arms across my chest but with bare breasts my cup size, it just didn’t work.

He lay down beside me, propped on his side, and watched my face. “I expected a lot of things from you, Anita, but not this.”

“What? That I’d blush?”

“That, and you’re so . . .” He touched my hair where it lay on the bed, gently, as if he weren’t sure I’d let him do it. When I didn’t protest he touched my cheek. “Sweet,” he said.

“I am not sweet,” I said.

He smiled. “Endearing?”

I frowned at him.

He laughed.

“You haven’t known me long enough to be that amused.” But I was smiling slightly as I said it.

“You’re just not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone harder, harsher.” He looked down my body. “You are beautiful.”

I shrugged.

“You are,” he said.

“Thanks, you’re not so bad yourself.”

He grinned. “You are not your reputation.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that rumors say you’re this great seductress. That you eat little weretigers for breakfast and possess their bodies first and then their hearts.”

“I told you that feeding the ardeur could make me own you lock, stock, and heart.”

“You did.”

“I wasn’t lying, Ethan,” I said, and I searched his face, tried to see if he really understood what could happen to him. He was so lonely. He so wanted to be wanted and to belong to someone. The ardeur would give him what he wanted, but the price of belonging to someone was that you belonged to them.

“I have almost a dozen lovers at home, Ethan. If the ardeur binds you to me then you get in line, and Jean-Claude, Nathaniel, Micah, some of the others are always at the head of the line.”

“How often do you make love to the men who aren’t at the top of the list?”

I touched his chest, running my hand over the muscled swell of his pectoral. He was so lean that all the muscles showed. He was almost too lean, but not quite; it just looked like his body type.

He pressed his hand over mine, holding it still against his chest. “How often?”

“I don’t keep count.”

“Average?”

“Three days a week, I guess.”

He laughed a surprised sound. It made me look at his face. “That’s a lot better than I’m getting now.”

“That’s if you’re okay with being in the bed with other men and me. Since there’s so many we do a lot of group scenes. It helps everyone get more turns.”

“And you’re the only girl for all of them?”

I thought about that. “No, a couple of them have other lovers.”

“And you’re all right with that?”

It was my turn to look surprised at him. “Are you kidding? There’s only so much time in the day, so a helping hand is great, especially for the men that I’m not in love with.”

He nodded. “So, I could have a girlfriend if I found someone who would have me?”

“I’d encourage it.”

“Because you wouldn’t be in love with me.”

“But you might be in love with me, do you understand that?”

His face was solemn again. “I do.”

“And you still want to feed me?”

He raised my hand up and laid a gentle kiss on my palm. “You’ve already given me more physical contact than I’ve had from a woman in two years.”

I couldn’t keep the surprise and the near horror off my face. “Dear God, Ethan, not even sleeping in big naked kitty piles?”

“I am an outcast, Anita, barely tolerated. I will be their muscle until the day something faster and stronger than I am kills me. It is my only use to the red clan. You don’t cuddle at night with someone you’re sure is basically a meat shield.”

“That’s harsh,” I said.

“It’s my life.”

In my head I thought, It’s not much of a life. “If you come to St. Louis there will be plenty of people to cuddle with, as long as you don’t insist on it all being weretigers.”

He entwined his fingers with mine. “You have such small hands.”

“They match the rest of me,” I said.

He smiled. “Not all of you is small. Your breasts are amazing.”

“Yeah, yeah, my chest is all breasts.”

“No, breasts, and muscle. You’re in amazing shape. You hit the gym like a guard.”