My mother raised me well, Diary. I promise you. She taught me good manners. She instructed me to say, "please" when I asked for something and to say "thank you" when a wish was granted. She didn't let me put my elbows on the table. She made me make my bed each and every morning. She demonstrated, on numerous occasions, how ladies were supposed to sit, stand, walk and talk.

But, despite her best efforts, I hadn't turned out perfect and I didn't always act like a lady.

"I am sorry," I whispered against his neck where I was hiding because I couldn't meet his eyes. "I made a mistake. It won't happen again."

Okay, now, one thing I've learned in my professional life is to own up to a mistake and say you've learned from it. It always makes others forgive you and it restores their trust in you, Diary.

"I don't believe you are sorry," he replied.

But he was still holding me. And that had to count for something. And I clung to that realization as hard as I was clinging to his body.

"Terry. Don't be this way," I said. "You and Bud are making me feel like I've committed some crime. It was a mistake, I've learned the lesson, I won't joke around with Hando anymore and it's just that simple."

"Nothing with you is ever simple." He raised my chin so he could kiss me. Soft. Gentle. Invasive. Commanding.

Reminding me who he was. Reminding me of the bond we'd forged.

He had me on my back on the couch before I even took a breath after the kiss. "Damn. You have such a great mouth, Terry."

Making him lose it. He laughed and shook his head at me. "Stop it. I'm trying to stay mad at you, Ann."

"This is you being pissed at me? You kiss me like that when you're angry with me?" Smiling at him and letting my fingers stroke along that jaw of his. "For some odd reason, I figured if you were ever mad at me, you'd punish me instead of rewarding me."

But he was ... well, not mad, not exactly. It was really more about disapproving of my taking an action I had promised him I wasn't considering. I had sensed something was up with him from the moment we'd confirmed he was coming to visit. I had asked for him to come visit me again, even though he'd just barely left, because I wanted to explain this whole sorry thing with Hando that had happened after he left to go visit someone else. And, oh my, Diary, I was feeling guilty for lots of things that had occurred in the wake of what I'd done.

He chose the hotel this visit. His choice surprised me, my sweet Diary. I figured we'd stay in the French Quarter again. But he chose the Pontchartrain Hotel, that grand place on St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District.

The Pontchartrain is a classic, a landmark, rich in our history and local color, an inspiration to untold thousands of writers who have dreamed up stories that seem to hatch from here in numbers rivaling the abundant sparkles of light cast by the chandeliers hanging in its impeccably decorated lobby. I don't say this lightly, this thing about writers being inspired by their stays in the Pontchartrain. It's quite true; you'll find references to the hotel in books written by authors who have stayed there since it opened in the late 1920s. Even when the stories aren't about the hotel, they germinate here. I've read so many stories that I know began when the writers were sitting in the hotel's lobby bar or in the Caribbean Room upstairs and just observing the panorama of humanity that presented itself in full and splendid romance.

I myself had never actually stayed overnight in the Pontchartrain. Maybe I hadn't ever needed to. Just walking in the lobby ... my feet loving the feel of the polished floors ... my hands never able to resist gentle, affectionate caresses of the cool marble columns ... my eyes never knowing which they loved more: that beautiful blue, impossibly high ceiling or the magnificent main chandelier. It was always enough to set my mind free and I could hear them talking to me, those voices that whispered plots and characters and ambiance and secrets and words that needed telling.

A classic, he'd intoned to me when I questioned his choice, never goes out of style. And this visit is about style.

He called me when he got to town. I was still stuck in a meeting and I was actually glad to be delayed. Because I could hear it in his voice; that something indefinable that told me that he already knew all about the mistake I'd made with Hando. And that this visit was not getting off on the right note. But what I couldn't know was that it wasn't going to end on a very good note, either.

So by the time I was free, he had checked in and left me a voice mail giving me the room number. When I walked into the lobby, I absent-mindedly wandered into the Bayou Bar. Usually, almost without fail, in the evenings you'll find either local royalty or visiting celebrities hiding out in this grand salon. So it's just a habit, really, to poke my nose in and see who's there.

But I caught myself and remembered that for once in my life, I wasn't coming here just to have a drink in the bar or attend a function in the Caribbean Room. It made me smile and I wondered if there was any way I'd ever be able to explain to Terry just what a thrill it was for me to finally be one of those writers who'd be actually staying for a few nights in this place.

He'd never understand that. How could he? All he really wanted to know or hear was how thrilled I was to be seeing him again. Which I was. Absolutely. It was just that, by accident, he'd chosen this hotel that not in a million years would I have chosen for us and it was ... a brilliant happenstance.

I stepped off the elevator and my shoes sunk into the carpet. Followed the directional signs until I was standing in front of our room and ... he opened the door before the second knock. He claimed later that he'd just felt me and had simply been waiting for me to knock.

"Oh. God." I felt my breath slide out of me.

Barest of smiles and he stepped into me. Hungry hands. Thirsty mouth. 

He pulled me into the room and we settled on the couch. Sitting on his lap. Kissing with him. Reveling in the feel of his body. I kept waiting for him to take it further but he didn't. When I decided to start undressing him, he stopped my fingers in their avid attention to the buttons of his shirt.

"You promised me," he said. "It was the one thing I asked you."

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I sighed. Issued my apology. Then held on to him and waited to see if his mood passed.

After he had me on my back on the couch, his arms hugged me in close. His lips nuzzled at my neck. He sighed back at me. "I warned you he would get to you, didn't I? And you promised me that you'd be careful and not get messed up with him. Not yet. Why would you want to worry me like that?"

"It just happened. I didn't plan it, Terry. Honest."

"But you told me ..." I felt him shake his head against me. "Why did you even start with him?"

"I sure didn't think he'd really come to New Orleans ... I thought it was a joke, Terry. And then he just showed up and ... I didn't know what else to do. I called Bud and ..."

"Yeah. You called Bud."

"I couldn't call you."

A hand on my cheek, stroking me with his thumb. Then touching my lips with a finger. "You can always call me, Annie. I'll always be there for you."

It was Hando. But it wasn't Hando. See? Terry's right about me, Diary. It's never simple with me. Oh, but it's so fucking hard, and ultimately futile, to explain.

See, it was really about a secret I'd told Terry during our first visit. About me. About my past. And Terry had told me that Hando was one of those who would take advantage of it. Of me. And I had admitted to Terry, right then and there, that the thought of being with Hando scared me to Hell and back. But that it also was something I thought about a lot more than I felt I should.

"He won't give you anything that I can't give you better," Terry had told me, during that visit. My first time with any of the Crowe Brothers. And since he was telling me that after we'd been together for four days, by then I was pretty well convinced he wasn't just bragging.

Before he'd left me that time, Terry had made me promise that I wouldn't play with fire. It had made me grin like a fool when he said if I didn't promise him, he'd just worry about me whenever we were apart. "No Hando," I had told him. "Not until I've gotten stronger in the Game. I promise."

But, of course, I was actually already breaking that promise. Not exactly on purpose but let's be honest, Diary, we both know that there was a part of me in total control of that 'accidental invitation' to Hando.

"So, love, tell me. Did he do it for you?" Terry asked me, his voice dropping into that soft rumble that I can feel vibrate throughout my body.

My hands on the sides of his face drew him up where I could look into his eyes. Concentrating on him, making him connect with me again.

"I understand myself a bit better. And I know I needed to get it out of my system. It's out." Pausing to bring him down to me for a light kiss, then whispering against his lips, "You're the one I'll never get out of my system. How does that make you feel?"

His eyes dropped to my chest. I know, Diary, I know. But for some reason, I loved that that's where he looked just then. It's why I giggled. It's the only reason his eyes came back to mine. And it's the only way I would have ever seen the hunger there.

No words. None necessary. His mouth rough on mine. And his hands restless in their examination of my body. As if searching to see if anything had changed since the last time he'd touched me.

Mumbling. Muttering. Soft groans. Telling me to get my clothes off even while his hands were making them disappear from my body. Yanking me up behind him as he rose from the couch. Not bothering to look at me as he dragged me into the bedroom. Once there, guiding me by the waist, prodding me onto the big bed. 

"You want to hear it, don't you? Okay then. I've missed you," he said soft and yet so heartfelt. He was undressing himself in a rush, like if he didn't instantly kick off his shoes and shed his pants something bad was going to happen.

I watched the show as if it were a first-run feature and I was sitting in the dark waiting for the opening credits to finish so the action would start. "Terry, baby. Tell me we're okay."

He was part way toward me, crawling up the bed, his hands on either side of my calves. Stopping and just looking at me. And then placing his body down on the bed where he'd stopped, his head on my knees, one hand trailing softly down my calf to my ankle. Just breathing, not talking, surely not looking at me.

I didn't know what to do. What did this mean? Surely nothing good, but nothing to do but wait on him. I laid back and looked up at the whitewashed ceiling. And as soon as I did, I felt him shift and his mouth was kissing the skin just above one of my knees. Looked down into his eyes and saw his eyebrows go up.

"You taste good," he whispered to me even as he wriggled up my body a bit and let me feel his hard cock pressing against my leg.

"You feel good," I replied with a slow smile, because I'd heard in his voice an unanticipated answer to my question.

"You know what I like to hear," he gave it back to me, this time with that voice that could make me come.

"You know what to say," I breathed down to him and then closed my eyes and bit my lip to keep from moaning when his mouth began to move further up my legs.

"Do I now, Annie?" Moving my legs apart with just a gentle stroke between my thighs. Tiny gasp coming from me as his fingers touched me so delicately, and as wet as I was, there was no friction.  His moving touch was so light, it was like nothing. Like a whisper of a feather. Like the breath of satin.

It fascinated me. This new touch, so in control, so almost not there, so able to rivet my attention.

"What are you doing?" I whispered, not wanting to break the spell.

But he didn't say a word. Instead, he put his mouth just over where his fingers had been. And he just breathed against me for a few seconds before I felt the warmth of his tongue touch me. Like a blanket at first. Not moving. Just covering. Then he began this slow, licking examination that felt like a kitten lapping tentatively at his first bowl of warm milk.

I could hold still no longer, though I sensed he was trying to get me to be totally calm. A groan escaped me just as my hips moved up toward him. I felt him slide a finger inside me and his tongue pressed harder and quicker around my clit in response to my movements.

"Yes. Please." It was me talking and I didn't even realize my lips were translating my eager thoughts.

"Please what?"

Heavy sigh. Oh my.

"Please continue."

Chuckle from him. "You have a way of saying things sometimes, Annie."

He was quickly making words unnecessary. His mouth, tongue and fingers working in concert, making me writhe under him. 

Another chuckle from him that seemed to echo across my body as he came over me and thrust up inside, smoothly and yet taking no prisoners. God, but I loved the feel of him in me, Diary. And it didn't take long to drop into the free-fall.

Seductive whisper in my ear: "That's right, Annie girl, give it up to me. I'll take care of you." 

Diary, you know that sensation? The one where your stomach seems to flip over and you can't exactly tell where you're coming because it seems to be happening in so many places at once and your brain's definitely one of them? That's the one. I like that way of coming. He has that ability to do that for me.

And part of the reason, I know, is how he can tune into me and that he's got skills in making love with women that start with his mind, continue with his voice and end with his body. But part of it is that he's made me trust him enough already to be able to release that way.

I told him that. How it felt, how he could make me feel. He could see it but I wanted him to know. Because I've come to suspect, since the episode with Hando, that each Brother will hold a secret world for me. And that means I need to cherish the gifts they bring me. This is the gift he brought me.

"So we're okay then?" he asked me later, his hand gentle on my breast and his face nestled into the crook of my shoulder.

I stroked his jaw and kissed his forehead. "We're great, amant."

"You won't be doing anything stupid in the Game? No more breaking the rules?"

"I'll follow the rules. But I'm me, so I'm sure I'll do something stupid here and there. But I'll be more careful because ... well, because I generally do learn from my mistakes." Big price to pay. And we didn't know the half of it yet.

I held him for so long. Until it dawned on me that he'd fallen asleep. What was it about me that seemed to induce sleep in the man when he first gets together with me? I inched my body from under his arm and leg; slipped onto the floor next to the bed and looked back at him. Peaceful. Relaxed.

Not me. I was something else. Pent up energy. Heated thoughts flowing. Some regret. Some anticipation. The Game was already changing but I didn't yet know. It was happening just then, while Terry was with me. I knew I was at least partly to blame for what was happening but how was I to know the changes taking place would rob me of what I'd thought I had?

It was a price I would pay, I suppose, for letting my emotions out through my writing and taking rash chances with a dare that might have felt good at the time, but had left me with a load of guilt and bad feelings. Ah, but my sweet Diary, we know all about suffering for art, don't we? The saddened rebel in me was out in the open. It itched with the need for new creative release.

And the next time I looked up, it was hours later and he was kneeling in front of where I was sitting curled up in a big overstuffed chair. Writing into the notebook I always carried with me. Lost inside words on the page. His hand jiggled the pad and I looked into smiling eyes. I put paper and pen down so I could grab onto him.

"Feeling inspired?" he whispered.

"Mmm. Voices," I muttered against his neck as I tasted him there.

"It's true, then, about this hotel."

I shoved him away from me and stared into his eyes again. "Is that why you chose this place? You know about it?"

"You'd be surprised what I know. And what I take the time to find out about for people I cherish."

I sat back in the chair and felt a warm shock wave rush over me. He had chosen this hotel for me, and with great care and meaning. Oh, Diary, I was in too deep. "Damn. You're amazing."

Now grinning that cocky smile of his. "So I've been told, my love."

Making me laugh. Hard. Full out. And I almost fell into his arms in my rush to kiss him. He pulled me down to his lap and I could feel his cock was pretty rigid between us. "Oh, goodie," I whispered, trying to sound as husky as possible. "You're ready for me."

Got that growl in return. The one that turned me to liquid. 

Naked against each other. Beyond warm. A sense of heat that lit us both. His hands lifted and then pulled me down. My knees braced on the carpet and I slowed the descent. Absorbed the feel of him inside me, spreading me. My wetness coating him. I wonder if men are ever jealous of how good we women have it in sex, Diary?

"I was born ready for you, Annie," he murmured against my neck, pausing in mid-kiss.

Oh, Diary. It would never do, would it?

What he said had such a big impact and I felt sure he had no idea. It was an answering call to something I'd felt the first time he'd ever really touched me. That I'd been born wanting him. Remember me telling you that, Diary? Think how this felt, then.

Mouth on mouth. Tongues grinding at each other even while our bodies fought for what was coming. Fucking for all we were worth. And loving like it was our birthright.

Maybe it was. We both felt it. He said we'd felt it all along and who am I to argue with him, Diary? Remember how little I actually share with you, and yet I've been achingly honest to tell you upfront that I was born wanting him and I've told you now another secret you least expected me to share with you.

"I felt it the first time we were together," he whispered to me as my climax abated and I could take back a sense of reality. Sitting secure against him, his arms around me, his cock still thrusting in me, its pace so slow as he spoke to me. "You're my soul mate. No matter what else happens in the Game, there will always be that bond between us now, Annie."

Damn him, Diary. He has no idea what he's done to me with that, as it turns out.

But in that moment, I didn't feel that way. I felt good and warm and connected. I felt romantic and loving. I was kissing him, deep passionate kisses. Then he came in this gush of pure man, the way they do sometimes that makes you almost feel pity for them because you know they must feel like their entire body's being emptied into you through a tiny hole at the end of their pecker.

He let me lean into his big chest while he rested back on his arms. My own arms were wrapped snug around his back and my head was resting on his shoulder. I would have stayed there forever but eventually we did have to move if for no other reason than his arms would have given out at some point.

In this case though, it was the food thing. We were both starving and he wanted me to take him to someplace quintessentially Nawlins but where we could hold hands under the table. We took the streetcar down a short way to Emeril's new place in the old Delmonico's.

Afterwards, we walked along the nearby stretch of lower St. Charles that had always had a touch of commercialization. I was lost in thought, finally having absorbed the reality of a rash of electronic messages from the other women in this group ... messages that I'd looked at before we left the hotel. In so many ways, I wished we hadn't both decided we should stop at the hotel's business center on our way out to check our email. I knew he'd also had a few emails on the subject of the Game and we'd both been so quiet since then, trying to figure out what it all meant.

"What will you write this time? In your diary," he asked me, yanking on my hand to get my attention.

"A version of the truth. My version. The one I'm prepared to share."

He looked at me with that tough-guy hard examination of his that makes me wet. "What will you leave out this time?"

"Some of this."

Nodding at me, his thumb worrying over that tiny bone that controls my forefinger. "What did you leave out of the one with Hando?"

"Some."

"Will you tell me about what you left out?"

"Some. More than I would write. But some I owe to him to not tell and some I owe to me to not tell. Even to you."

"Want to talk about what's really bothering you?" he asked me as I stopped before a hum-drum building on St. Charles that was destined to be written about by me ever since I'd first read Anne Rice and her vampires. A building full of plate glass windows that hid nothing of the building's now-empty insides but revealed so much of the outside world in the reflections in the non-polarized glass.

I watched his reflection and thought about the vampire Lestat not being able to see his own reflection in this same sheet of glass. But how he looked anyway and found himself staring at a changed world in the reflections he did see in these windows, and how that, ultimately, was his deepest wound and greatest triumph.

"The Game's been moved and it's changed a bit. Did BeBe email you about it?" He nodded at me and I stared at his feet for a moment. "I see that Uma's been made your Number One now."

"I would have expected it to be you. You're the only one who's written a Diary about me in so long and it seemed obvious where we were heading," His voice held this soft caress for my disappointment, but it wasn't enough. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe I was too busy worrying over the Hando episode and never had a chance to claim you in the shift. And I know this will change us."

"It won't. The basic rules remain the same. We'll be fine."

I smiled up into his eyes and knew he couldn't see the future, Diary. But I knew more about what would come. "You'll be mad for Uma. She's fantastic for you. I think the world of her."

"I don't want to talk about her any more than you wanted to talk about Hando."

Nodding at him because I understood. But I also could feel it, in that way that is unwritten by a writer, Diary. You won't know what that means, I expect, but Terry will when he reads this. Between he and I are things that will never be written because they would simplify me. And with me, nothing is ever simple. Things are not always as they seem.

In my softest voice, so it would be the caress it was meant to be, I told him, "I'm not sure I'll be able to see you again."

"She won't keep me from you," he said, gently.

"Of course not. She's my friend and besides, that's not Uma's style. But, mon amour, she won't have to."

"I don't understand."

Reaching to plant a chaste kiss along his jaw so I could finish with a whisper in his ear. "I will never forget what you gave me, Terry. And I absolutely meant what I told you - that you'll be the one I'll never get out of my system."

And that's when he knew. Just then, Diary. It dawned on him that I'd never ask for another visit with him. 

I hate the ending to this so I'm not going to tell you much about it, dearest Diary. Just that he had to leave the next day to go to Uma. He's angry with me but he won't be for long. He's confused but, again, it won't last. He'll see I'm right once he's with Uma for a little while.

Because the secrets I've shared with him will allow him to understand why I can't imagine a time I'll be strong enough to see him after what's between us is changed by what he'll find with Uma. But, Diary, I'll forgive him when it happens.

And, I'll read Uma's account and know exactly when this happens. We're both writers, after all, as well as being friends. We can read between the lines.

She's waiting for him on the other side of the world. I knew she was, I just didn't expect to give him up to her this quickly. This abruptly. This totally. In the other place where we'd played this Game, I'd been well on track to be the one woman who made him first among equals. But things changed in the shift to our new place and I didn't see this coming. Maybe I should have. Even in the old place, she would have challenged me for his heart. But the difference is that now she has the official status and I know that with that, she'll take the risk to love him openly.

I'd so like to say she didn't deserve him. But the truth is, she does. More than I, in so many ways. And, you do already know enough about me, Diary, to know the loss I feel.