He let go of Jean-Claude's hands and knelt in front of us. We were left staring down into those perfectly pale eyes like winter skies are supposed to be and almost never are; his lashes were darker than his hair, as were his eyebrows, so that the eyes were framed dramatically as if he'd used makeup to emphasize them, but I knew it was just natural coloring. He and Jean-Claude were both just that gorgeous; it was what had made Belle Morte collect them in the first place.
He lifted those large, long-fingered hands, thicker than Jean-Claude's through the fingers, and I'd thought for a while that Asher would bulk up more in the gym if he was willing to put the work into weights, but since he wasn't it didn't really matter. He wasn't a weight-lifting kind of guy. He spread those pale hands upward, let all those golden waves fall back so that his whole face was visible, both the beauty of it and the scars that he thought marred it.
"I miss you bound and waiting for me to cause you pleasure and pain. I miss the sounds that Nathaniel makes when I am flogging him, the way his skin parts underneath a whip and how he heals magically from it and asks for more. I miss the sounds Anita makes when we make love to her together. I miss the feel of our bodies piercing her at the same time. I miss sharing Anita with Jean-Claude in that way that we have done for centuries. I miss the feel and smell of your skin, Nathaniel, Anita. I miss plunging my tongue between her legs, and taking you in my mouth. I love the way you want me to use my fangs at the end and bleed you so that I drink you down twice."
I felt Nathaniel give a little shudder beside me. I was pretty sure it wasn't a bad shudder. My own heart was beating faster. Damn it.
"If you miss me at all, then I beg you to give me one more chance. I know I do not deserve it."
"How are we ever going to trust you again?" Nathaniel asked, and his voice was a lot more even than the pulse in the side of his throat. I gave him points for that. I was pretty sure that my own voice would shake if I tried right now.
"I do not know."
"How will we ever trust you to tie us up and hurt us, if we can't trust you to value us at all?" His voice was part anger and part loss, which pretty much summed up being in a relationship with Asher.
"I do not know, but I want more than anything else in the world to win back your trust. What can I do to prove my sincerity to you both?"
Nathaniel and I exchanged glances. He said, "I'm not sure."
I looked down at Asher. Those eyes, those lips, that face, that hair, the hands reaching out to me that knew so many secrets about what I enjoyed. "I don't know, Asher. Every time I think we've found a way for all of us to be together, you manage to find a new way to screw things up."
"I know it is me. My need to have Jean-Claude put me above all others continues to destroy my own happiness. I also know that is never going to happen, not only because he needs a woman in his life, but because neither of us is content with only each other. I am no more happy being with only one person than Jean-Claude is. I thought that if I could have one person put me above all others, then this continuous need inside me would be filled and I would be happy, content at last, but I have had that for months and I am miserable."
"Maybe that's who you're with," I said.
"I thought that at first, but I understand now that no one person meets all the needs and demands I put upon them. I am too much for one person to bear, like a weight that needs more hands to carry."
I wasn't sure what to say to that, because it sounded damned accurate.
"You really are working your therapy," Nathaniel said, and his face showed how surprised he was; me, too.
"I resented you forcing me to go away at first, but as I became less happy with Kane I finally realized that I was with a man who was as needy and jealous as I was; it was a taste of my own medicine, as they say. It was a very bitter pill. Kane was as obsessed with me as I had thought I wanted first Belle Morte, and then Jean-Claude, and finally Julianna to be with me, but obsession is not love. It is insecurity, possession, and it leads to misery."
It was the dream apology that you always sort of want, but you never get. It was like a Hallmark moment, or maybe a Dr. Phil moment. The kind that never really happens, but here he was, our problem child, offering up everything we could have wanted in an apology. It was great and unsettling as hell, like there should be cameras rolling and someone to jump out and say Just kidding.
"I love you, Anita Blake. I love you, Nathaniel Graison. I miss making love to you both. I miss fucking you. I miss chaining you up and doing nefarious things to you until you beg me to stop, or until I make the decision that all dominants must make with such charming pain sluts, though Anita will safeword when needed, but you, my . . . Nathaniel, you do not know when to say when, and I love that about you."
Nathaniel held out his hand, and after a moment so did I. We let him wrap his hands around us and pulled him to his feet. I don't know what I would have said, but it was Nathaniel who spoke first. "Are you going to apologize to Dev, too?"
"God, yes. I have treated him the worst of the three of you, I think. Jean-Claude, having put up with me for centuries, is ahead in needing me to apologize for so many things, but I owe Mephistopheles something truly . . . I do not know how to apologize to him. I was so cruel, and I let Kane be cruel to him as well."
"Are you just apologizing to him, or are you wanting him back in your life, too?" I asked.
"I did not appreciate how easy Mephistopheles made the relationship. I thought love had to come with fights and drama, so what I had with him couldn't be love."
"And now?" Nathaniel asked it ahead of me.
"Now I see him in Jean-Claude's bed, all smiles and a very content cat, and it hurts me."
"Does it hurt you to see Jean-Claude with another man, or to see Dev happy with someone else?" Nathaniel asked.
Asher sighed, and it was for effect, but he was always going to be a bit of a drama queen. It was just part of who he was as a person. You can modify yourself and learn to do better, but your basic personality remains.
"I am not sorry to see Mephistopheles happy with someone else. He deserves that. I have seen him walking hand in hand with you as well, Nathaniel. I was jealous that all of you had picked up that which I threw away and found it gold where I had seen only dross, but that was at first. I began to see more and more how much Kane had poisoned me against our handsome devil, but it was I who had listened to the poison and let it take root."
"You're taking responsibility for everything. What the hell? Did they put you on antidepressants?" I asked.
"Antianxiety medication, yes."
All three of us stared at him. "Mon ami," Jean-Claude said, and the surprise showed in his voice.
Asher started to look embarrassed, but I squeezed his hand and said, "I'm proud of you."
It was Asher's turn to look surprised.
"Very proud of you," Nathaniel said.
"I honestly didn't expect you to get that much use out of the therapist we made you go see," I said.
"I, too, thought you were going because we said you must," Jean-Claude said, moving up beside us.
"I admit that at first it was just as you feared, but I was so unhappy without all of you. So many needs, not just wants, but needs that you had all filled for me and now I had nothing. Even Narcissus, in the dungeon and the bedroom he likes a level of humiliation that none of you would tolerate, let alone desire."
"If you're going to apologize to Narcissus, you might want to do it in a neutral setting with bodyguards to protect you," I said.
"Surely not bodyguards."
"Asher," Nathaniel said, "we've all been going to therapy, too; Narcissus hasn't."
"He is dangerous, mon ami."
"Very dangerous," I said. "You hurt his ego and you damaged his reputation. He's still fighting to regain the respect of his own hyenas."
"Kane says that the hyenas have gone back to their old ways and it is business as usual."
"If Kane truly believes that, then he's delusional in more th
an one way," I said.
"How is he delusional?" Asher asked.
"That someone as vindictive as Narcissus won't get his revenge on Kane and you.That obsession is the same thing as love. That if you're possessive enough and want it badly enough, the person you love will love you as much as you love them. That any one person could keep you content."
"Even I thought that the right person could do the last part."
I shook his hand where he still held mine. "You were delusional, too, remember?"
He smiled. "Yes, I do."
"We really do need to get going, Anita," Nathaniel said. I looked at him and there was a new, more serious person looking back at me. He'd probably been stronger and more sure of himself for a few months, but I hadn't quite realized it until this moment when he stood there holding someone he'd been in love with enough to want to offer a ring, and he was ready to leave him and the apology of epicness behind.
"My words have not moved you," Asher said.
"The apology is great, almost perfect, and if you can do the same for Dev, then we can all sit down when we come home and talk about being together again, but I'm still going to Ireland."
"Do you think I am lying?"
"No, but we will be with the police and one of the good things about vampires being known under the law is that they have to obey the law, too, so if she tries to harm Damian, or me, or Anita, the human authorities can come down on her."
"What can they possibly do to her?"
I said, "I keep hearing about her castle by the sea. I wonder what would happen with a few well-placed bombs, or even missiles. We are going to be playing with military friends."
"Blowing her lair up would not rescue Damian, or Nathaniel, or you, but only make you die with her."
"I'm just explaining that once we can bring the full weight of human intervention into vampire hunting, the options get really fun."
"Mon ami, the Harlequin and other bodyguards are also going with them. It is not merely human police and soldiers who will be protecting them."
"Then I must be content with that."
"Yeah, you must," Nathaniel said.
Asher looked at him. "You are very angry with me."
"Yes, I am. Did you expect that I would accept your apology and everything would just go back to the way it was?"
Asher did that long blink that meant he was thinking. "Perhaps."
"I've had months of you not with me. I didn't just curl up into a corner and wait for you. I never dreamed you'd work through your issues and be willing to get on medication." Nathaniel let go of Asher's hand. "None of us expected that from you."
"It is a sign of how much I want to be well enough to be with you again."
"It's a sign of how unhappy you are with just Kane," Nathaniel said.
As if his name had conjured him, Kane swept the drapes aside and strode into the room. If I could see him objectively, he was tall, dark, and sort of handsome. Okay, maybe he was handsome, but the scowl on his face and the sourness of his energy just sort of ruined the packaging for me. His hair was almost black, but cut short and styled close to his head so that the hairdo looked like a hundred you see every day. He was attractive but in a totally mundane sort of way. He looked like someone that my college roommate might have wanted to date, but not someone that should have been Asher's main squeeze. Maybe it was having so many memories of him with Jean-Claude; after that, everyone else looked sort of ordinary. Okay, not everyone. Nathaniel wasn't, or Micah, or . . . maybe it was love that made people more than ordinary, and I so did not love Kane.
"I knew it. You are poisoning him against me!" was Kane's opening remark.
"You do your own poisoning," I said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked as he came farther into the room.
One of the guards moved in front of him. Kane snarled at him, the echo of his beast trickling through it so the hairs on the back of my neck rose. "Are you so afraid of me that you have to use bodyguards?"
"Last time you took a swing at me, I bloodied you and put a gun to your head, Kane. I think the guards are to protect you, not me."
The snarl turned into a growl that reverberated through the room. The guard said, "You start to shift and I'll hurt you."
"Asher, are you going to let them talk to me this way?"
"We have a plane to catch, Anita," Nathaniel said, and this time he meant it because he went for the far drapes that led to the door up and out.
I started to follow him and then looked back at Jean-Claude. "Let's say good-bye some more on the way up the stairs."
"I think that is an excellent idea, ma petite." Acknowledging it was his way of admitting that he didn't trust himself alone with this new contrite Asher either.
I held my hand out to him and he came to take it.
Asher said, "Am I forgiven anything?"
Nathaniel swept the drapes to one side to hold them for us. "You still have to apologize to Dev, remember?"
"But you are taking Mephistopheles with you to Ireland, and you are leaving now."
"I guess you'll have to apologize to him when we get back," Nathaniel said.
"Jean-Claude," he said, and reached for the other man.
I grabbed Jean-Claude's hand and kept him moving with us. "We're not saying no, Asher, but you need to talk to everyone in our lives who stayed and worked through their issues."
"The people who helped us mourn you when you left deserve to know that you want back in, before we decide anything," Nathaniel said, and his voice was cold with anger. I wasn't angry, just had this weird desire to kiss him good-bye. I looked at Jean-Claude as I practically dragged him through the drapes toward the door. It wasn't my thought; it was his. Damn it, Asher had such a hold on him. What would happen if we left him alone with none of us here to balance it?
Kane yelled, "Asher, what have you done?"
"I told you that I would ask their forgiveness."
"I told you that you don't need them, any of them. We only need each other."
"I wanted that to be true," Asher said.
Kane was trying to get past the guard who was blocking him. "What are you saying, Asher?"
"I need more."
"More than me?"
I'd heard this argument before and recently, except it had been Cardinale talking to Damian. What was with all the obsessive jealousy? It was like a theme.
"We really do have to go. The plane's waiting," I said.
Jean-Claude held back against my hand. It made me turn and look at him. I don't know if I'd have had the courage to say what needed to be said, but Nathaniel did.
"If you take Asher back without him apologizing to Dev first it would crush Dev, and he deserves better than that."
Jean-Claude looked at him, then stopped tugging against my hand. "I am sorry, ma petite, mon minou. I do not mean to be weak."
The three of us stepped closer together to hear each other over Kane's yelling. "If we leave you alone like this, are you going to do something stupid with Asher?" I asked. The moment I said it, I knew it was harsh, but we really did need to leave. There wasn't time to ease into it.
He raised one graceful eyebrow at me.
"We really do need to catch the ride to the airport and head for Ireland, Jean-Claude. I don't have time to figure out how to talk to you about this. I'm sorry if that was blunt."
He shook himself, like a bird settling its feathers. I felt the energy change down his hand, which I was still holding as if I were afraid he'd run to Asher like in some old romantic movie. He was calmer, and it was real, not just him hiding his feelings.
"I am not planning to be stupid, ma petite. I've tried to avoid that for centuries."
"We all try to avoid it," Nathaniel said, "but we all have people and issues that make us stupid. We need to know that you won't let Asher upset our poly group."
I put my arm around Jean-Claude's waist and gazed up at him. "I didn't think until just minutes ago that I'm taking all of your lovers with me
. Even your regular blood donors are coming with us. I'd realized it was sort of a shitty thing to do even without Asher coming up like this. I'm sorry I didn't think about what it might mean for you sooner."
"I called Jason. He's coming in to visit for a couple of days," Nathaniel said.
We both looked at him. Jason was my wolf to call, though we'd both been so worried that we'd be tied too closely together that a certain distance had gone into our bonding. He'd been another emergency tie for me. He was Nathaniel's best friend and one of my best friends. Until he'd gone to New York with his girlfriend J.J., who was a ballet dancer there, he'd been the manager at Guilty Pleasures and one of the headline dancers. Technically he hadn't moved permanently, but he was about to do a dance tryout for the dance troupe she was a part of, if they could get around him being a werewolf and not just human. If he got the job he'd be the first paranormal American to dance with an all-human troupe. We all missed Jason, but J.J. was the love of his life and we wanted him to have a chance at that, and her job couldn't move here. "You'd already realized we were leaving Jean-Claude on his own, hadn't you?"
"Yes, but when I realized that Micah was going to be gone longer than he'd thought, that's when I realized it might be a problem."
"Do you think I am incapable of being on my own for a few days?" Jean-Claude asked.
Nathaniel smiled at him. "Your power is based on lust and love, Jean-Claude."
"I have been alone before, Nathaniel. I am not a child." He almost never called him by his real name anymore; not a good sign.
"I've been addicted to sex. I will always be a recovering sex addict, Jean-Claude. I'm not saying you're addicted to sex, or romance, or relationships, but if sex were actually what I ate and the only other food I could have was something as intimate as taking blood, I know I couldn't be anything but addicted to all of it. If I projected that onto you and it's not true, then I'm sorry. Jason will be here tomorrow so you'll at least have a blood donor and someone to sleep in the bed with you."
Crimson Death Page 37