Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(9)

“I have had lovers over the centuries who preferred their lovers scarred, but you are right, you are your scars to them, not yourself.”

“Exactly,” Peter said.

“I knew that you had risked your life to save Anita from a shapeshifter, but I did not think what that would mean for someone who was not a shapeshifter or vampire. Again, my apologies for assuming that because you were young you did not have your own wounds.”

“It’s okay, most people see someone my age and assume the same thing.”

“I try not to be that ordinary,” Asher said.

“You could never be ordinary,” I said, smiling up at him.

He finally smiled down at me just a little. I could only truly see Asher through the lens of all the centuries he and Jean-Claude had been together first as rivals, then as lovers and best friends, then as bitter enemies, and now they/we were figuring out what the hell we all were again. They were like some star-crossed lovers who kept reincarnating lifetime after lifetime trying to get it right, except it was all one lifetime, just a really long one.

I missed Asher in the bedroom and in a few other places, and I knew that Jean-Claude missed him more, which made me say, “Now, do I finally get a hello kiss?”

Asher gave a real smile this time, the one that traveled all the way to the long curving scar that was closest to the kissable bow of his mouth. I loved that smile, because it was real, not calculated to hide his scars. It made me smile for just myself without Jean-Claude needing to interfere. I wanted to love Asher, he just made it so damn hard sometimes.

“Whatever my lady desires,” he said, and bent that six feet, one inch of height down as I went up on my tiptoes to meet him partway. His lips were as soft as ever, the kiss gentle; his arms started to wrap around me, but I put a hand between us, keeping our bodies from touching completely and from him holding me too tightly.

He drew back immediately. “Will you never forgive me for that one cruel kiss?”

“If I’d been human I’d have needed stitches and weeks, or months, to be able to kiss, or eat, or so many things without hurting. Hell, I could have ended up with scars and my mouth would never look like this again.”

He turned away from me then. “Did you mean to be cruel?”

“No, but brutally honest, yes.”

He turned back to me, his pale blue eyes swimming in unshed tears. It hurt my heart to see him like that, but I knew part of that was Jean-Claude’s emotion and we had to be firm with our beautiful man.

“Unless we have certain people in the room with us, I’m not comfortable letting you wrap me in your arms until I’m out of options against your superior strength, Asher.”

“I was ill, Anita. I am on meds and in therapy, what more do you want me to do to prove that I am sincere in my desire to be in your life again like I was before?”

“We’ll give you some privacy,” Peter said.

I moved back so I could see him and Asher at the same time; I even had a sense of Edward still standing in the doorway to the changing room. “I don’t want privacy, I want witnesses.”

“Anita, I would never harm you on purpose.”

“You came in here tonight sounding like your old self, your old insecure jealous self. That person is not safe to be around, so I’m going to be cautious.”

“Are you saying he hurt you?” Peter asked.

“I hurt everyone around me before the doctor found medication that balanced my brain chemistry.

It’s worse than being an addict, because at least that is something you can live without, something outside yourself, but what is wrong with me is inside me. I cannot go cold turkey as they say, because I am my own drug, my own weakness without a different drug to help me see sense.”

“That sounds terrible,” Peter said, and sounded like he meant it.

“It is, mon ami, it is.”

“I’m glad they found meds that worked for you,” Edward said.

Asher looked past Peter to the other man. “Thank you.”

“We can shelve this conversation for privacy with Jean-Claude and the other lovers in our life,” I offered.

“Do you truly feel unsafe with me holding you in my arms?”

Okay, I guess we weren’t going to wait for a more intimate audience for this conversation, so be it. I looked at him and distant like a bell was Jean-Claude’s love for the man in front of me, but my own heart was strangely unmoved. “We’re lovers again, Asher.”

“But you are not in love with me, as I am with you.”

“You hurt me, Jean-Claude exiled you for months, and then you came home with Kane, who makes it impossible. The time we have together without him just enrages him more, so that it’s harder and harder to be together.”

“We are lovers again, but it is as if we are not together, because everything must run through Kane’s jealousy and possessiveness,” Asher said.

“Exactly.”

“If I had married him I would divorce him, but I made him my moitié bête, my animal half; that is not a tie that can be broken short of death.”

“Yeah, it truly is until death do you part,” I said.

“I do not know what to do about Kane; if I had been healthier I would never have chosen him.”

Edward said, “Maybe without Kane you might not have given therapy a real shot.”