Yes.
“Benedikt has been assisting me the past six years to uncover who is behind the disappearances of my pride members. It took us until this year to finally pinpoint the group we believed was behind it all, and Benedikt, in an attempt to infiltrate the Agrippans, connected with Naomi. He got her a job at the Faire, since he knew that would give him a cover to travel with her.”
“Wait a second. Did you say pride members? Like gay pride?”
David looked from me to Ben. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?”
Ben shook his head. “No. You swore me to secrecy, if you recall.”
“Tell me what?”
“That’s right, I did. Do you want to tell her, or shall I?”
“Someone better tell me, before Mr. Punchy Hand gets annoyed,” I said with a narrow-eyed look that I split between them.
“David is a therion,” Ben said, just like that explained everything.
“Bully for him. What’s a therion?”
David laughed and stood up. “I think in this case, seeing is believing.”
My eyes widened as his body did an odd sort of shimmer, rippling and twisting until it turned into a sandy cinnamon-colored lion, an honest-to-Pete lion, complete with big brown mane, pale light blue eyes, and what I assumed were exceptionally big teeth.
“Goddess above,” I said, my eyes almost bugging out at the sight of the lion as it turned and faced me. “That’s a . . . that’s a . . .”
“A lion, yes,” David said as the lion form shimmered back into that of a man. A naked man.
Stop ogling him.
I’m not. But . . . holy crickets. He’s naked.
You are ogling. I wish for it to stop.
I’m trying, I’m trying. Oh man! My eyes widened further as David nonchalantly bent to retrieve his pants.
If you wish to ogle someone, you may ogle me.
Yeah? Think Naomi would let me?
He was silent, but I could feel his irritation.
David buttoned up his shirt and gave me a rueful smile as he sat down again. “A therion is a shape-shifter with two primary forms. One of mine happens to be that of an Asiatic lion.”
“You’re like a werewolf, but with a lion instead of a wolf?” I asked, then craned my head to look behind me, where the moon was beginning to clear the horizon. “Is it a full moon?”
“Therions can shift at will, Francesca,” Ben said, taking my hand and rubbing his fingers across mine. It was a possessive move that I knew had its origins in the eye candy David had provided. I smiled to myself. “The myth about the full moon is a human fiction, nothing more.”
“Oh.” I looked back at David, my mind struggling to cope with the fact that he was a lion. “I thought . . . This is really stupid, I know, but I have to ask . . .”
“You thought vampires and werewolves hated each other?” David grinned at Ben. “That’s a fallacy, too. For one, the therions who favor wolf forms tend to be a very tight-knit group, and don’t mingle much with outsiders. For another, therions have no reason to dislike Dark Ones.”
“I’m glad to hear that. So, people in your . . . er . . . pride are disappearing, too?”
“Too?” Ben asked.
“There are a lot of things disappearing around me lately,” I told him. “My mother and the Vikingahärta, to name two. And Imogen’s boyfriend.”
“That’s no great loss,” Ben said in a tight voice.
I just bet Imogen loves it when you give her boy-friends a hard time.
If she had better taste in men, I wouldn’t have to.
Spoken like an overprotective brother.
“These disappearances have been going on for years, so I’m afraid they’re not related to yours,” David said, rubbing his face wearily.
“All right, but what does Naomi have to do with anything? And why is Ben letting her touch him and slobber on him and think she’s his girlfriend?”
Jealous much, sweetheart?
Perhaps. Or perhaps I just don’t like seeing a friend hooked up with someone who’s not good for him.
That gave him something to think about, I noted with satisfaction. Until, that is, it struck me that he didn’t protest being called a friend. And then I realized that I had better take some responsibility for what I wanted, and not dump it all on him. I couldn’t think of anything worse than to realize I had fallen in love with him, only to find out he didn’t reciprocate the emotion.
Okay. I will admit that I’m the teensiest bit jealous. I don’t like her touching you . And kissing you. And pushing her boobs on you. And while we’re on the subject, do you have to put your arm around her? It makes it look like you’re enjoying it when she rubs herself all over you , which from what I’ve seen is pretty much every time you’re together.
Yes, that’s just a teeny bit jealous.
I ignored the laughter in my head to deliver a glare at him before turning my attention back to David.
“Benedikt said you weren’t happy about that. I’m sorry, but Naomi is familiar with members of the European therion community,” David explained. “We needed someone who could get into her confidence, and that required an unknown. Benedikt offered to do the job, and although I know you don’t like it, he’s been tremendously helpful to us by allowing Naomi to believe he’s romantically interested in her. He found the group that we believe is organizing the abduction of therions across Europe.”
“Agrippans?” I asked, remembering the word he’d used.
“Yes. Do you know what an Agrippa is?”
I shook my head.
“Originally, it was the name of a book of mystical spells. A few millennia ago, the word came to be applied to the people who created those books, the seekers of knowledge who spent their lives locating and learning magic, which they offered to wield for a price.”
“Sort of walking encyclopedias of magic?”
“More or less. They hired themselves out to support their endless thirst for knowledge. Today, there are three Agrippan sets: one in North America, one here in Europe, and one in Africa.”
“I don’t see the connection between a seeker of knowledge and missing therions,” I said.
“Neither do we. Yet,” Ben said, his thumb sending little tendrils of heat up my hand with every stroke of it across my fingers.
“Benedikt’s been pressed hard by Naomi to join the local tyro—that’s a ceremonial meeting of Agrippans—so he can be inducted into the group, but he’s resisted so far.”
“Oh? Why?” I asked Ben.
He was silent, his eyes turning dark.
“Why?” I asked David instead.
He looked extremely uncomfortable. “Tyros are . . . The Agrippans tend to celebrate their baser natures, and that’s especially true at their ceremonies.”
He’s talking about sex, isn’t he?
Yes.
He wants you to have sex with Naomi? I asked, ignoring as best I could the cold wave of nausea that hit me with tidal force.
He wishes for me to participate in the tyro. Unfortunately, that would require me to be a part of the group sex that is conducted during the ceremonies.
You can guess how I feel about that.
Yes, I can. And just so you stop thinking lovingly about a serrated grapefruit knife in relationship to my testicles, I will point out that the reason I haven’t attended a tyro is that I have no desire to engage in sex with anyone but you.
I will admit that both his words and the emotion behind them made me feel all warm inside, but David’s next words killed that.
“I know it’s asking more from you than I should, but, Fran, it’s important that we find out as much information as he can before Naomi discovers the truth about him. There’s a tyro scheduled for tomorrow night. Benedikt told Naomi he wouldn’t go, but she’s already suspicious, and if he misses yet another one . . . Well, it could make the last couple of years’ work all for nothing. Not to mention risking the lives of two of my pride members who have gone missing in the last six months.”
I stared at him in horror. “You are not asking me to sanction Ben having sex with a bunch of other people, are you? Because that’s what it sounds like to me, and if you are, you’re seriously in need of some mental counseling.”
“You have every right to be angry, and I completely understand your reaction, but it would be for just one night. You are Benedikt’s Beloved—he would never want to be with any woman but you.”
“No,” I said, wanting very much to punch David again.
“If you understood just how close we are to getting the names of the people involved, and how they are related to the disappearances of my pride members—”
“No!”
“If I can do it without the sex, would you agree?” Ben asked.
I looked at him thoughtfully. “Could you do that?”
“It might be possible.” He was silent for a moment. I could feel him considering and discarding various options. “I might be able to use you as an excuse. Naomi knows you are my Beloved, but that we’ve had some relationship issues. If I told her that you being here is hampering my ability to make a final commitment to her, she might believe it.”
And what if I wasn’t here? What if I was back home where you thought I was? Would you be going ahead with this tyro and all it implies?
He didn’t answer me for a good thirty seconds. When he did, his words were stark with honesty. If you weren’t here now, I would feel compelled to participate in the tyro, but in such a way that allowed me to keep my oath to help David at the same time it honored the bond between us.
You’d have sex with strangers.
No. I’d pretend to have sex with strangers.
How do you pretend to have sex?
You get naked and roll around with a bunch of other naked people.
Fury unlike anything I’d ever felt burbled up inside me. And you think that would be honoring me?
No. I think that would be getting naked and rolling around with other people. That is not sex, Fran.