Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton

curtains.
    Jamil said, “What do you want us to do, Ulfric?”
    “Have guards outside the door, and if we call for help, do your jobs.”
    Wicked said, “Anita, Jean-Claude, this is a bad idea.”
    I nodded. “Yep.”
    “Why do it then?” Truth asked.
    I couldn’t explain and I couldn’t share the mind-to-mind with them, so all I could say was, “It’ll be all right.”
    “Don’t lie to a liar, Anita,” Wicked said.
    Jean-Claude said, “Enough. If we’re doing this, I want enough hours between now and dawn to enjoy it.”
    It was Claudia who said, “We have to tell Rafael.”
    “Do that,” Jean-Claude said.
    “He knows I’m here,” Richard said. “I went to your king for advice.”
    “Rafael did not tell you to come here and bugger him,” Fredo said, pointing a thumb at Asher.
    Richard smiled and said, “He knows why I’m here and what I’m planning to do, I promise you.”
    The wererats exchanged looks, but the promise got them. “Mysterious shit bugs me,” Fredo said.
    Jason gave a small salute as we moved through the drapes and followed Asher down the hallway. Was it wrong to think that Asher’s ass looked really good in his leather pants as he walked ahead of us up the hallway, or was it just true?

7
    THE BED WAS done in red and black tonight. Jean-Claude changed all the bedding including the bed curtains between different color combinations. I’d never seen it being changed. I’d just come into the room and it would be blue, or red, or black, or even gold and silver, and various combinations of all the above. It was like magic: always fresh, clean sheets, always impeccably made.
    Asher had stopped halfway between the door and the bed. He turned back, staring at us, his ice-blue eyes framed by all that golden hair. The look on his face was eager, but there was that edge of cruelty that I hated in him. I knew that whatever he was about to say, or do, would be unpleasant. He’d said he wanted this, but he was about to do something to wreck it.
    “I want to see you nude,” he said, and his voice held an echo of what Jean-Claude’s could, as if the last word caressed down the body in a shivering line.
    I waited for Jean-Claude to say something, do something, help. But it was Richard who said, “You’re angry, Asher. You say you want me, all of us, but now you’re angry and you’re going to sabotage it.”
    I could feel a sort of sadness from Richard, not upset, just a deep, almost calm sadness.
    I felt Jean-Claude’s hand in mine, but he started to shield, to cut down the connection between us. I think he was afraid of what was going to happen. We were standing in the bedroom with the two men in our lives most likely to fuck up a good thing.
    “What do you know about what I will do, Ulfric?” Asher asked, and his voice already held that edge of derision that he could do so well.
    “It’s what I would have done a few months ago.”
    “I am not you, wolf.”
    “I came here to make things better, not worse, Asher. So I’ll tell you all a story.”
    “Is it a long story?” Asher said, voice thick with scorn.
    “A little,” Richard said.
    “Then we should all sit down.” Asher went to the bed and laid himself down in the middle of all the black and red pillows. His hair spilled out like a gilt-edged frame of foaming gold. His scarred cheek was pressed against the pillows so that he was once again that perfect face that had helped Belle Morte nearly rule Europe centuries ago. The blue of his shirt gleamed, the sapphire-and-diamond pin at his throat catching the light as he patted the bed beside him and said, “Come, Ulfric, sit beside me. I won’t bite . . . yet.” He smiled at Richard and made it everything a heterosexual man never wants to see on another man’s face.
    Richard laughed. I jumped and Jean-Claude went even more still beside me, as if should I let go of his hand he would simply vanish in plain sight. Most vampires couldn’t really do that, but the old ones