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."