or steal, our love, but you cannot steal a true relationship with us; that must be won." He turned, and curled his long legs up on the couch. He put his arm across the back of the couch, not quite touching the other man's bare shoulder. He cradled his head on his outstretched arm, letting all those black curls spill along the white of the couch. I couldn't see his face, but I knew the look. It was a charming, seductive look, his teasing look, when he really didn't expect anything to happen. He just wanted to remind you how scrumptious he was. He usually used the look only when he was mad, or I was. It was a look to either end a fight, or begin one.

Auggie looked at him, and the look was pained. He saw Jean-Claude, understood the potential in that body, and knew now that having had it once didn't mean you'd get it again. Jean-Claude played hard to get when he thought it would gain him an advantage. The look on Auggie's face said it was a really big advantage right now.

If it was real love, true love, then shouldn't it have made me feel bad to see Auggie wanting, hurting with doubt? Maybe, but it didn't. It made me happy, in that small, petty, vindictive way that always promises a really bad relationship. There are different kinds of love, I'd learned that—not less real, or more real, just different. Maybe what Auggie could cause a person to feel wasn't true love, after all. Maybe it was that kind of love that seems to come quick, and leave slow, but in the middle it's just fights, and pain, punctuated by great sex, until one of you has the courage to end it, and walk away.

Auggie turned that pained expression my way. "You would both turn me down." He sounded genuinely surprised. He glanced back at Jean-Claude. "I understand Jean-Claude, he's maneuvering for power, though my pride is hurt. I must not be as good with other men as I thought I was."

Jean-Claude answered with his head still poised on his arm. "If I feed your ego now, then I may lose the advantage I have gained."

Auggie nodded. "I understand that." He looked at me. "But her, I don't get her. I know I'm good with women. Hell, I'm an amazing lover."

I laughed, I couldn't help it.

He gave me a dirty look. "Do you disagree?"

I shook my head. "No, you're great." I didn't sound like I meant it, but I did. "Maybe I just like my men a little more modest, that's all."

He stabbed a thumb at Jean-Claude. "If he's ever been modest about his prowess in bed, it was false modesty."

"Why, thank you," Jean-Claude said.

Auggie shook his head. "That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?" I asked.

"That he doesn't have a modest bone in his body."