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both.”
    “Brath?”
    “Tad.” He lifted his hand and ran his finger over her cheek. “Surprised?”
    “But, you’re exactly like him.”
    “You knew that.”
    “The way you look, yes.”
    He laughed. “You thought me tame, didn’t you? You thought I didn’t have my own beast inside me.”
    She had thought all that. She’d judged Tad safe and, well, boring because he’d seemed so civilized. She ought to have known better.
    “Don’t underestimate me,” Tad said. “I can be even more deadly than Brath.”
    “I believe you, but tell me…” She bit her lip and looked up into the blue fire in his eyes. “Can he be gentle?”
    He sighed. “Still more interested in my twin, are you?”
    “Would you be unhappy if I am?”
    He shrugged and sat up, and finally his sex slid from hers. “I think I’d better release you.”
    “Tad?”

    Alice Gaines
    Eria’s Ménage
    - 28 -
    He made a show of searching among his things by the side of the bed and didn’t meet her gaze. When he found the metal band he’d worn around his arm, he hit a hidden switch and the bands of light disappeared from her ankles and wrists.
    She rubbed one arm and sat up beside him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
    “Yes, Brath can be gentle. His kind deals softly with their mates and children, or so I hear. He was performing at dinner.”
    “That isn’t the question I meant.”
    “You ask too many questions for me to keep up with them all.”
    “Would it bother you if I preferred Brath?”
    He turned and studied her. Both men had a way of staring straight into her.
    Sizing her up. In Brath, the expression made her think of an animal sense. In Tad, it seemed more calculating. Both caused a fluttering around her heart.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said finally.
    “It doesn’t? You don’t care what I think?” That shouldn’t have hurt. She’d only met them a few hours ago. What they thought shouldn’t matter. Damn, but it did.
    “It doesn’t matter, Excellency.” He leaned toward her, took her chin, and brought her mouth for a brief kiss. Too brief. “Because you’ll never know for sure which one of us is touching you.”
    * * *
    He let himself in again in the morning. Or, one of them did. The light of two suns spilled through the filmy curtains as she watched him moving silently to close the door behind him.
    Tad or Brath -- whichever -- wore a robe that looked soft and warm. Some kind of bushy cloth in a deep blue. The color echoed the hue of his eyes. When he took a step, the sides of the garment opened enough to show the flesh of a leg. The man was naked underneath just as she was under the fresh gown she’d put on after he’d left the night before.
    If he was Tad. Brath hadn’t visited her the night before. Damn, she really couldn’t tell them apart.

    Alice Gaines
    Eria’s Ménage
    - 29 -
    She sat up and scooted backward in the bed. “Which one are you?”
    He didn’t answer, but reached into a pocket of his robe and produced a small jar and held it out to her.
    “Just because you won’t talk doesn’t mean you’re not Tad. I won’t be fooled like that again.” But, could she feel sure of that? For all she knew, Brath could string together language every bit as flowery as Tad’s. Because he didn’t usually do it didn’t mean he couldn’t.
    She crossed her arms over her chest. “All right, I’m supposed to think you’re Brath. Are you?”
    He made a sound in his throat. Yesterday, she would have called it a growl or grunt. In reality, it was subtler than that. He’d answered yes, and he’d done it in a way that confirmed he told the truth. Something in the inflection -- in the slight downward pitch at the end. She had underestimated them both. What a puzzle they made.
    Yes, the riddle. What burns and freezes, kills and gives life, is common and yet unique?
    The two of them burned her with their touch and froze her with the icy stare of their eyes. They had only to look at her to make her shiver