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"I have spoken with three of them," I said reading aloud, "Hausman, Farrow, and Yerkes - and I expect to see Kalmus tomorrow. They all profess belief in Blount's innocence, which is gratifying but not helpful. I not only profess it, I am committed to it; and whether through your suggestion or mine, or by some device not yet conceived, I intend to demonstrate it."

I marked the place with a bookmark and closed the book. Looking at Aleksandr, lying on the bed on his side next to me, his head propped in his forepaw, I said, "So ... whodunit?"

He laughed. "That's only the end of chapter eight. Even Wolfe doesn't know whodunit yet - he said so himself!"

"Odds-on favorite?"

"I still like Kalmus, but I think he's too obvious for it." My great cerulean-furred lion rolled onto his back and studied the ceiling for a moment. "This one's a puzzler."

Setting the book on the bedside table, I observed, "Rex Stout's stories usually are. I'm rarely clever enough to have caught the clues as they go by, but by the end of the story, it all makes sense."

I lay back against the wall and sighed contentedly. Reading to Aleksandr before sleep is one of my favorite things in the world to do. I think it comes naturally to me; for years, my father read to me and my mother before we all went to sleep. Short stories from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine was the standard, or sometimes from Christie, Stout, Asimov, Hoch, or other great mystery writers. I would sit on a chair in my parents' bedroom, listening intently to my father reading each story clearly and carefully. Mom would often fall asleep long before he was finished, and the next night we'd have to backtrack a few pages. I waited until dad was ready to turn out the light, and I would rise, whisper a goodnight, and close the door behind me, heading off to my own bedroom where, often, I'd sit up for a good twenty minutes poring over clues.

I introduced Aleksandr to the idea not long ago, on the nights when he comes over to stay, and we went through several of my favorite short stories. We decided to tackle Stout's novel Gambit together (I hadn't read it yet either), and we were still trying to figure out what clues we'd missed so far. For the record, at this point, I still don't think anyone has proven that the arsenic was actually in the hot chocolate itself...

Aleksandr rolled toward me, putting his head on my belly and snuggling up. I smiled and pet his silken indigo mane softly. "You're going to have to teach me how to purr," I said softly.

"Is old family secret," he said, adopting his only slightly false Russian accent. He had learned both Russian and English growing up; his favorite activities, then and now, included watching reruns of the Bullwinkle and Friends cartoons, enjoying Boris and Natasha's fabulously thick accents.

"Then you'll just have to put up with me telling you that I love you."

"I'll live with that." He wrapped his arms around me and cuddled closer. "I can hardly believe that it's going to be Christmastime soon. This has been a very long week."

I nodded, grunting a non-verbal agreement. Neither of us begrudged Dasher's stay at my home while he recovered from the attack he suffered from Roy, Aleksandr's former lover; with the cheetah's lover, Reed, and help from my neighbors and other friends, Dasher was waited upon with loving abandon. He felt well enough to go back to his own apartment (with Reed tagging along - purely for health reasons, of course), and tonight - a quiet Sunday night only a week after the attack - was the first time that the house hadn't had at least three other people in it. "Strange, somehow, all this quiet."

"Do you miss the constant ebb and flow of just about everyone we know?" Aleksandr's grin was clearly audible. "Not to mention the occasional grunts and gasps from the guest room at night?"

I chuckled. "Yes and no, I suppose. I'd prefer having my guests arrive and depart of their own free will, rather than being plopped here as an alternative to being in hospital. But the quiet is nice, too. Just some time to be alone with you."

The great lion rubbed his head slowly on my belly. "That sounds suggestive," he murmured happily.

"I'm always open to suggestion," I grinned back. "Although I'd like to talk about Dasher a bit."

"Anything wrong?"

"Not wrong, no. Just a conversation that he and I had a few days ago. Wanted to tell you about it."

Aleksandr shifted himself so that he sat cross-legged across from me, taking my forepaw into his own and looking at me softly. "What happened?"

"Well, there are two parts to it, in a way." I squeezed his paw, smiling gently. "He said to me that Reed, and me, and you... that we were his family now. And I hugged him close and told him that I was honored to be his family." I sighed. "I still hope that he can get his parents to reconcile with him, but I can also imagine that they may never accept him."

The lion raised my paw to his lips and kissed it gently. "You keep finding more and more ways to make me love you even more." He smiled at me. "Should we discuss plans for the holidays? Just how many should we expect?"

"We may have quite a full house, although that's a conversation for later. I want to tell you one more thing." I breathed in deeply and began. "It may be that you know Reed even better than Dasher does, so this might not surprise you. He did finally tell Dasher about you and Reed making love last week. When Dasher and I were alone for a while, last Thursday afternoon, he brought it up, and we talked about it. I think he understands my opinion of it all better than Reed does, so I'm not worried about that. What makes it interesting is that... well, Reed told Dasher that in order to be... 'even' was the word he used, maybe Dasher and I should have sex together."

After a moment of mildly surprised silence, Aleksandr burst into a good-natured full-body laugh that almost made him collapse. I can only guess that he found my facial expression to be equally comical, because he laughed even harder and took my paws into his and, through fits of giggles and snorts, asked me to give him a moment to catch his breath.

"Oh gods," he managed at last. "Dorogoy, I sincerely hope that I haven't offended. Please tell me that you know I wasn't laughing at you."

I nodded, smiling. "I figure that it came from something you know about Reed that I don't."

"Not exactly." Aleksandr took back one paw in order to wipe his eyes gently. "It's just that it sounds so much like Reed. Oh, that sweet, silly kitten..." The lion shook his head, apparently thinking fondly of his relationship with the powerful blank panther who had been his lover for some time before we met. "He seems to view much of life as a zero-sum game. He thinks that he needs to sacrifice something in order to atone for his - as he sees it - making me cheat on you."

"That's what it looks like to me. And to Dasher."

"So, shall you and our favorite spotty-pants be having a tryst?"

I shook my head softly, still smiling. "No, or at least not for that reason. As I told Dasher, if we were to be sexual with each other now, it would be for the wrong reason. If I'm to honor you as you've honored me, then I need to do the right thing for the right reason."

Aleksandr continued smiling, although he sobered a bit. "Tristan, if I may ask... did you want to?"

"Oh, hells yes! My sweet love, Dasher is beautiful, inside and out, and I would have loved to make love with him. Book us a room and don't expect us back before check-out time!" I squeezed my lion's paws gently. "We did share a very nice kiss, and I suspect we may do that again, and more than once. It was good to share our love that way. And it flatters me to know that he wanted me, too. He was the one to initiate the kiss." I sighed, a small sweetly melancholy sigh. "But it wasn't the right moment, or the right reason, to have made sexual love. I helped him bed down for a nap, and later he cuddled up to me on the couch to watch a movie. And just so you know, he's an extremely good cuddler!" I looked into Aleksandr's deep antique gold eyes. "Right after I left him to his nap, I texted you. And I did just as you said - I sat and thanked every deity I could think of, and then every one that I couldn't."

Leaning toward me, Aleksandr kissed me for a long moment. He pulled back and tenderly caressed my face, gazing at me intently, a sweet smile on his muzzle. "In a way, it's strange," he said softly. "All the old ways of thinking about a relationship tell me that I should be afraid of what you've just told me. But in the first place, it's the truth, which is the greatest promise we've made between us. And aside from that, I feel no fear of losing you. That's the phrase that's always used, isn't it - losing a lover, as if we should be looking in the lost and found."

I chuckled. "I hadn't thought of it that way. And no, you won't lose me, my beloved lion. You're stuck with me."

"Don't make me start singing Huey Lewis and the News!" he laughed.

I kissed him again and, feeling strangely shy, asked, "What was it like... being with Reed again?"

My lion looked down for a moment, gathering his thoughts. When he looked at me again, his beautiful antique gold eyes held so much love that it made me shiver happily. "You were right, my dorogoy. He cried. And it was beautiful. It was as if our time together had been preparing us for that one night. I don't know if he felt the same, but for me, it was like finally being able to touch his heart, his soul, for the first time."

He took my forepaws in his own, kept his eyes on mine. "What amazes me is that I somehow knew that I could feel that with him now... because of you. Because of what you and I have found together. I didn't feel as if I wanted to go back to him, to leave you and try to be his mate; it wasn't like that at all. It was real, it was powerful, it was right... and yet..." I saw a tear trying to form in his eye, even as he smiled softly at me. "Can you help me understand it, love? It was almost as if your love helped me to fulfill my love with Reed. Does that make sense?"

I smiled at him. "To me, yes - makes perfect sense. Then again, I'm the crazy guy around here." I kissed his nose playfully. "Riddle me this, Caped Crusader: Do you want to make love with Reed again?"

Blinking almost comically, Aleksandr's face took on a confused look that almost made me laugh. "You're grading this test on the curve, right?"

"No wrong answers," I grinned. "How does it feel?"

The moment protracted. I sensed him searching his emotions far more than struggling with his mind for an answer. His expression didn't show the strain of trying to think; it was more like quieting those thoughts so that he could hear the ticking of his heart. "I'm not really sure," he said at last. "On the one paw, yes, absolutely I want to love him again; it was a wonderful experience, with so much love, so much sharing between us. On the other paw, I don't feel a drive pushing me toward making it happen again. As if... well, if somehow he and I found ourselves in another moment of blissful desire again, we might be sexual again, but it's not something that I imagine planning for."

"Head of the class!" I cheered.

"Right answer?"

"Best ever."

"Glad I don't have to show my work, because I have no idea how I got there."

I laughed and pulled him to me, snuggling up against my great lion again. "You got there by loving, my dorogoy. You and Reed will make love every time you see each other, but it will be expressed sexually only when both of you feel that you need to make that deep connection. It may never happen again, or it may happen more than once again. The point is that both of you will know when it's the right time, the right reason, the right way to love each other."

"How can we know that?"

"By loving. I could ask the question, how do you know when it's the right time for you and me to be sexual together?"

"That's easy," he grinned. "You're awake."

Screwing up my face as it considering carefully, I nodded and began laughing. "Yeah, that's about right. I sure wouldn't want to be asleep and miss out on all this." I ran my forepaws up and down his back, smiling at him. "I hope I'm not that demanding?"

"You haven't worn me out yet!" He kissed me long and warmly, as if to prove the point. "Maybe I should quit thinking about it so much. It's a matter for the heart more than the mind."

"Yes!" I hugged him. "And you're cuddled up with someone who had to work through five decades before finally figuring that out. It was you who taught me."

The lion's eyebrows attempted to creep into his hairline. "Me? I didn't even know that until I said it out loud. How did I teach you?"

"By proving me right, every moment of every day." I sighed, smiling. "Something else I told Dasher. You, your friends, Sylvie and Maggers next door... all of you are showing me just how important, how triumphant love is."

"Perhaps it's safe to say that we've had our share of bonding moments," he chuckled.

I touched his cheek gently. "May I ask you about Roy?"

Aleksandr looked away, as if deeply embarrassed. I waited, unmoving, not quite sure what to do. At length, he took my forepaw in his own, kissed it, and looked back at me. "I didn't think he would... he wasn't like that when we met."

Softly, I smiled. "I kind of guessed." I paused. "Would you rather not..."

He shook his head, his lavish indigo mane dancing gently. "Might be good to see if I can really explain it to myself as well as you. I know that I can tell you this much, right off the bat: He actually prepared me for you. Neither of us knew that, of course, but... you remember when I told you how I'd get cut off in mid-sentence if I started talking about something I'd read? If it were an active conspiracy, Roy was the ringleader. He wouldn't even let me get started if he could break in first. I didn't realize how annoying it was until after you and I started talking... really talking."

Aleksandr rolled onto his back, and I sat up next to him, placing a forepaw gently on his chiseled chest. He gazed up at the ceiling, considering. "After all that you and I have shared together, my dorogoy, it's a little embarrassing to admit that all I really wanted out of him was his body. Part of it was probably rebound from Reed. Our parting as lovers was all very amicable, civilized, no hard feelings... we stayed friends, and I liked Dasher from the day that I met him. Things were a little bit rocky, perhaps because I was friendly with Dasher. Reed needn't have worried about it, but ... now that I think about it, that's another reason I brought Roy in - to fill a gap, so that Reed wouldn't worry about how I interacted with Dasher. Reed and Roy talked sports a lot, and Dasher and I sometimes talked, quietly, about various intellectual matters."

"Forgive me asking, but was Roy really that good in bed?"

The lion snorted softly. "I think I was having a 'bad cat' phase or something. I would never bully or hurt anyone, yet there was a line that Roy pranced around that made me think of being a rebel, just a little. And he was ... let's say, sufficiently pliable to be an adequate partner. Being canine, he offered some... interesting variations on a theme. And he was always quite buffed, even though he ate like a garbage compactor. He took me through a very brief period of leather and bondage ideas - all on his part, actually, I didn't really see the point of it." He looked at me, smiling. "Not ruling it out, mind you, if you want to talk about it."

"I'm not usually one for accoutrements," I admitted with a grin, "but I'm loathe to slam any doors completely shut."

"Ooo, I'll make a note." He chuckled, then looked back to the ceiling, sighing. "I loved Reed, and I still do, but Roy... I find it hard to imagine that I really loved him. Or at least, not in the way that I've come to understand what love is. I may have tried to love him, but I think it more likely that it was just about physical attraction and not wanting to be the odd-fur-out, so to speak."

"I have the feeling that Dasher didn't think much of him."

"Not really, no. And after I met you, and Roy started showing his real colors, even Reed didn't think much of him." My lion sat up and hugged me. We held each other, rocking gently side to side, letting the quiet speak softly to us. He pulled away slightly and kissed me. "I heard someone say once that everything in your life, every choice and action, has led you to this moment that you're experiencing now. So I guess I can't hate Roy as much as I did, because in a way, he prepared me for you - for finding the fur who would show me what love was all about."

I pet his silken mane tenderly. "I'd like to think that you're wise enough to have figured it out on your own one day, but don't for a moment think that I'm not grateful for being that fur."

"So, you wanna keep for a while longer?"

"I'll settle for forever, if you don't mind."

"Done." He kissed me again and gently guided us to a more vertical position. "Sleep?"

"That's certainly an option."

He grinned. "I love having choices."

I can safely say that we made several truly delightful choices before we finally curled up to sleep.