Kiss the Dead (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #21)

WHAT I WANTED was a shower, a good cuddle, food, good sex, and sleep. What I got was two of my lovers arguing so loudly that I could hear it through the curtains that made up the living room walls in the underground of the Circus of the Damned. Nicky was behind me carrying one of my equipment bags; Claudia had the other bag. She was taller than Nicky by inches, one of the tallest people I'd ever met, and definitely the tallest woman. Her long black hair was back in its usual high, tight ponytail. It left her face dark and bare, and strikingly beautiful. It wasn't the beauty of dainty female things, but one of strength and high, sculpted cheekbones. She was a knockout with not a touch of makeup, dressed in the black pants and black tank top of the guards' unofficial uniform. The shoulders and arms that showed were muscled and ripped, so that doing the smallest motion made her arms flex and ripple with muscle. Nicky was broader through the shoulders, but Claudia didn't look small beside him. She looked tall, strong, and dangerous. The shoulder holster and guns were almost not necessary, like an extra rose on top of your birthday cake when the icing was already thick and deep. The fact that she was a wererat, which made her faster and stronger than I was, meant looks were totally accurate. Claudia was dangerous, but she was on our side, so it was all good. Besides, she had a conscience, unlike Nicky, who had to borrow mine. A conscience will get in the way of you being as deadly as you could be.

We stood just inside the heavy, dungeon-looking door that led into the underground. The gauzy curtains started just feet inside the doorway. The gold, crimson, and silver of the cloth was a bright surprise after the bare stone of the entryway and the long stairs that led to the door. I stood there looking at the pretty curtains and didn't want to go any farther. If Nathaniel and Micah hadn't already been staying here for the night, I might have turned around and gone back up the stairs and home.

We could all hear Mephistopheles and Asher arguing. Asher was upset that Devil, Dev, Mephistopheles' nickname, wanted to sleep with someone else. Then I heard the voice of Kelly, one of the other female guards: "Stop it, both of you, it's over, okay? I won't sleep with him, Asher; he's yours, all yours."

"I have a right to sleep with women," Dev said. "That was our agreement."

"Asher may have agreed you could sleep with women, but he's going to cause you so much grief about it that you won't be able to do it."

"Kelly..."

"No, Dev, sorry. You're cute, but no one's cute enough for this kind of grief; besides, I don't poach other people's men, and you definitely belong to Asher, or you wouldn't put up with this."

Mephistopheles' voice: "I'm bisexual, not homosexual; that means I like women, too. I'm not giving them up, not even for you."

"It's all been a lie, then." Asher's voice, and his voice held despair and anger like hot ashes against the skin. His voice held negative emotions the way Jean-Claude's could hold sex and love.

My heart dropped into my stomach, so that it hurt from chest to gut. They call it a broken heart, but it's not your heart that breaks, it's more like your insides are carved out from chest to gut, so you feel hollow. I loved Asher, but I was also beginning to hate him just a little. This insecure, almost insane jealousy of his was driving us all crazy.

The curtains were jerked apart and Kelly strode through. She was only a few inches taller than me, long yellow hair back in a high, tight braid; the black T-shirt and black jeans were a little too harsh for her coloring, making her look as if the fight had paled her out with anger, but I knew that wasn't it. Kelly didn't pale out; she flushed when she was angry enough.

She snarled her words, a trickle of her inner lioness growling through them. "They are so yours, Anita. I don't know how the hell you put up with all of them."

"The sex is really good," I said, and shrugged.

She shook her head, making her long, tight braid bounce. "There isn't a sex trick in the book that could make me put up with this level of shit from anybody."

I said the only truth I had. "Love makes you do stupid things."

She looked at me. "You love them all? How can you love them all?"

I thought about it. I thought about trying to explain that I loved them, but not all the same kind of love, but I sure as hell knew it was more than just lust, or friendship. "Yeah, apparently, I do."

She waved a hand sort of vaguely in the air, as if erasing something I couldn't see. "Well, I'm not touching another one of your men. They are way too complex for me. None of them know how to just fuck and leave it alone."

"I think Dev does," I said.

"Yeah, but he's in love with Asher, and that is one screwed-up dude."

"I can hear you," Asher called.

"Good," she yelled back at the curtain. "I hope you fucking can. Dev and I would have just fucked, just fucked, you insecure bastard, but no, it has to be about emotion, because you are more of a freaking girl than I will ever be!"

Jean-Claude said, "Mephistopheles does care for you, Asher, you know that he does."

"As you do, but the first bit of pussy that comes along and you chase it like a dog after a bitch, and I know you are there, Anita."

I sighed and just pushed the drapes aside. Apparently, Asher was going to pick a fight with all of us. "As one of the bitches in question, I think I resent that," I said, as I stepped through with Nicky and Claudia at my back. I didn't want to fight, but that didn't mean I wouldn't fight.

I got a glimpse of Dev as he strode through the curtains on the other side, going toward the bedrooms, the kitchen, everything else. Apparently, he was leaving the fight to us, or maybe he was simply too angry to trust himself, or maybe too puzzled. I knew that Asher confused me more than any other lover in my bed, and that included Cynric. At least with him I knew what my issues and his were, but with Asher... I knew some of his issues, and Jean-Claude knew others, but honestly, he was like an emotional minefield; you never knew when you'd step in it again, or how much of your relationships it would blow up. I realized as the first real anger stirred in my gut that I was tired of it.

He turned around, his hair flaring around his shoulders and face in a foam of golden waves. It spilled over one half of his face, leaving one perfectly beautiful half bare to the light, so that only one of his ice-blue eyes showed. He was angry, but not so angry he had forgotten to use his hair to hide the scars on one half of his face. When he was happy, sometimes he forgot to hide the scars, but most of the time I saw his face through a veil of his hair, like a golden cobweb between him and the world. His jacket was a pale blue that brought out the color of his eyes, and was cut at the waist so that it emphasized the broad shoulders narrowing down to slender waist, and the curve of his hips in a pair of painted-on satin pants that matched the jacket. The shirt that showed in a line at his waist was white, and probably silk. He was still dressed in the clothes he'd worn as ringmaster in the Circus above us. There would be a matching top hat around here somewhere, all blue satin and white ribbon band. He didn't always wear the same outfit, but I'd seen him perform in this one, so I knew it was for work, not just because he looked yummy in it, but he still looked yummy in it.

Was it shallow to say that some of my anger vanished because he came through the curtains looking heart-stoppingly beautiful, or just true? Even as I thought it, I felt Jean-Claude in my head, and knew it wasn't just my seeing him as lovely that made me patient, that unmanned me in front of his beauty. It was Jean-Claude who loved him more than I did, and had for centuries. They didn't always get along, and they'd been estranged for more than a hundred years at one point, but Jean-Claude was almost helpless before the beauty of the man in front of me.

Asher's eyes bled to pale blue fire, the hidden one gleaming like iced flame through the waves of his hair. His power rode down my skin like a cold chill.

Nicky and Claudia were at my back, the curtains closing behind them. I heard my bags hit the floor as they dropped them to have their hands free. Asher and I never came to blows, but I wasn't the only one tired of his shit, and neither of the guards was getting sex out of him, or had Jean-Claude's happy memories. It made them crankier than I was, made them sort of ache to smack some of the shit out of him.

I felt rather than saw other movement farther into the room, blocked by Asher's tall figure, and Nicky looming up at my side. But I knew the movement was Jean-Claude's bodyguards. We both had at least two of them with us most of the time. I had no memory of Asher ever hitting anyone he loved, and thanks to Jean-Claude that memory went back a few hundred years, but there might have been more than one reason that no one got physical with us.

Asher turned those glowing eyes to me then, and I felt the push of his power like an invisible wall was trying to move through me. Once his power would have just rolled over and through me, but that was then; this was... different. I hadn't had him try his luck against me since the Mother of All Darkness had died. Asher had nearly killed me once, by accident, because I was so vulnerable to his particular flavor of vampire wiles. Now I stood there, and his power did not move me. His beauty moved me. The memory of great sex and bondage moved me. But looking into that amazing face from feet away, with all that potential that I knew was hiding under the fancy clothes, I felt cold, as cold as the power that rolled off him and tried to cloud my mind. He was trying to calm me down, or make me not care about his bad behavior by using vampire wiles. It was so cheating.

"How many times have you used vampire wiles on me to win a fight?"

He blinked, his eyelids coming down over the fire of his eyes, so that his golden lashes were framed against the bright blue, and for a second it was like looking into the hot heart of some demonic oven with the door half closed.

"If your holy object does not glow, then I'm not harming you, isn't that what you said?"

I nodded. "I did, but maybe I was wrong, or maybe if I want to be fooled hard enough romantically, my cross just lets me do it; free will and all that."

"Are you saying your cross is intelligent enough to make judgment calls?"

"No, I'm saying the power that my cross is hooked up to, that I believe in, is intelligent enough to make judgment calls."

"Or perhaps your God sees no harm in me."

I shrugged. "Maybe."

Asher moved closer to me, so that my vision was full of all that gold hair, that heartbreaking face, and the glow of his eyes. His mouth was still the same pouting perfection that it had been when Jean-Claude first fell in love with him. The Church fathers who had used holy water to try to burn the devil out of Asher so long ago had skipped that full mouth, as if even they couldn't bear to ruin the angelic beauty of his face. The scars on his face that he was so self-conscious of actually touched only a small part of his right cheek. Only one long, white line of scar reached out toward the perfect curl of his mouth. It was as if when they'd seen what the holy water had done to his face, they hadn't been able to bear what they'd done. Sometimes when you do evil, you have a realization so bright, so harsh, that you mend your ways. I'd always wondered if the priests who tortured Asher had been converted to a better brand of Christianity, or if their faith had died as they trailed the burns down the right side of his body?

Asher took me in his arms, and the moment he touched me that much, his vampire wiles got a boost of power. Most vampire powers got a boost through touch. He held me and it was as if he were my Prince Charming. I gazed up at him and I couldn't "see" that his eyes were still glowing, or feel the cold march of his power. He was just suddenly perfectly gorgeous. There was no stop in my head, no cautionary statement, no warning. He kissed me, pressing those full, soft lips to mine. I kissed him back, falling into that kiss with my lips, mouth, tongue, and teeth, until it was more a tasting than a kiss. My hands, arms, body, entwined, pressed, wrapped - I couldn't get close enough, and when his hands started to pull my shirt out of my pants I reached under the back of his satin jacket and pulled on his shirt, too. Pressing bare skin to bare skin sounded like such a good idea. Pain, and I tasted sweet, copper pennies. It took me a second to realize I was tasting blood, but once I knew what I was tasting I started swimming up through the mind games.

I pushed at Asher, trying to stop the kiss, but the blood that had made me want to stop had him pulling me tighter, his mouth locked on mine, as he kissed me deeply, thoroughly. If his fangs hadn't been bleeding me, it would have been a great kiss.

I pushed harder, trying to pull away from his painful, sensuous kiss, trying to unlock his arms from behind me. I was making protest noises as if his mouth were a gag, keeping me from telling him, Stop, don't. One of the reasons I didn't like gags during bondage sex was that it stole your safe word away. You couldn't tell whoever was topping you, No. A gag meant you trusted the person to behave themselves, or, you wanted your no taken away. You wanted to leap off the cliff and let the dominant do whatever they wanted to you. Nathaniel found that relaxing somehow; I didn't.

If he'd been human I could have struggled free without hurting him. I was more than human-strong, but if he'd been only human, there wouldn't have been dainty fangs to cut my mouth. If he'd been human I wouldn't have loved him, because he wouldn't have been Asher.

He was holding me too close, too tight, so the only options I had to get away were things that would injure him permanently, or injure parts of him that I might want to play with afterward. He tightened his arm against my back and moved one hand to the back of my head, grabbing my curls tight. In the right head space, the right moment, it was enough to switch me to a submissive mind-set, but this wasn't the right anything. Asher deepened his kiss and drove those dainty fangs into my lips again. I made a pain sound, yelling against the tender gag of his mouth on mine. I stopped trying to push farther away from him, and pushed my body closer to him. He seemed to think that meant I was enjoying myself, because his hands loosened on me, not so much trapping me as holding me. I put my leg behind his, hooked his knees, and drove him toward the floor, but he didn't let go, so we both fell, but if I was falling, and he was going to keep kissing, I should have made sure my knee went into parts of him he wouldn't enjoy, but I liked those parts of him. I didn't want to hurt Asher. It's hard to get away from someone who's stronger than you are, if you don't want to hurt them. Shit!

I felt a trickle of warm energy before a hand grabbed my shoulder, and Asher's. I had a moment to smell the hot, burned-grass smell that meant lion; a second to know it was Nicky, and then Asher's power swatted outward like a slap, but it wasn't aimed at Nicky, or me.

Other hands were on Nicky, and I saw a flash of blond hair and summer-tanned skin, enough to know that it was Ares, and then the fight rolled away from us. Asher's animal to call was hyena. He'd reached out to the nearest one, and Ares's loyalty of paycheck or preference hadn't been enough to overcome the magic of Asher's power over him.

I was still armed to the teeth, had more hand-to-hand training than Asher, but if I wasn't willing to hurt or kill him, it was all useless. The sounds of snarling, snapping, and grunts of effort let me know that Nicky was fighting to get back to my side.

Then different hands grabbed a handful of Asher's hair, and my shoulder. I felt the energy rise and knew it was Cynric before I smelled the scent of his skin.

Asher tightened his hands on my back and hair. I felt him laugh into the kiss. He didn't think Cynric would know what to do next. He was wrong.

Cynric let go of my shoulder, but jerked the vampire's hair tight and hit him in the side of the face hard enough that it jarred me. I tasted fresh blood, but it wasn't mine. Asher stopped kissing me, stopped biting me, and one moment he was underneath me on the floor, and the next I was rolled to one side. I had time to spit blood, and then Asher came up off the floor, swinging. Cynric was strong and athletic, and was training with us in hand-to-hand, but he'd never fought for real. Training doesn't prepare you for a real fight, not completely. Asher had fought for real, for centuries. It wasn't martial arts; it was just a good old-fashioned punch to the bottom of Cynric's jaw. The punch lifted Cynric off his feet and sent him careening backward. He fell flat on his back and didn't get up.

Asher was just suddenly standing above him, his hair like golden fire, eyes blazing, skin almost transparent like crystal as he let himself be consumed by his own power. His humanity was folding away as he stood above the fallen man.

I spat blood on the floor and got to my feet, but wasn't sure what to do. I could draw a gun, but I wouldn't shoot him, he knew that. Asher reached for Cynric, but Nathaniel was there, kneeling between them. I'd never seen him move like that, a blur of almost magical speed.

Nathaniel said, simply and clearly, "No."

He didn't yell, but somehow that one word was louder than any scream. That one solid No seemed to reverberate through the room.

Asher stood up, straight and proud, all shining power and fearsome beauty, and was stopped, not by violence, but by a different kind of strength. One that women have understood for centuries, that the strongest man is weak in the face of the determination of someone they love. Nathaniel was kneeling in front of Asher, but somehow he was the stronger of the two. Kneeling between the vampire and his prey, Nathaniel suddenly wasn't anyone's kitten anymore. He was on the floor, not raising so much as a finger toward Asher, but you just knew he wouldn't be moved. Nathaniel had drawn his line in the sand with Asher, and if the vampire crossed it, it would cost him things that wouldn't heal with a bandage. I couldn't explain how I absolutely knew, but Asher saw it, too, because he just stood there, and let Nathaniel stop him.

Nathaniel said, again, "No."

The sounds of fighting had stopped. I glanced and found Nicky on his feet; Ares was on the floor in a broken heap, bleeding and hurt worse than Cynric looked.

Jean-Claude knelt beside me, touching my face, coming away with blood on his fingertips. "Enough!" His voice did echo in the room, bouncing around the stone, and the curtains, so that the shadows seemed to repeat the word back and forth, "Enough, enough, enough!"

Asher turned to look at the love of his undead life. "The boy hit me first."

Jean-Claude raised my face to look at him. I was suddenly looking into those midnight-blue eyes, the black lace of his eyelashes, that painfully beautiful face, the black curls that trailed down his shoulders and halfway down his back. He didn't fight to keep the concern off his face, or maybe he fought to let me see how worried he was for me. "How hurt are you, ma petite?"

I shook my head. I wiped blood away from my lower lip and said, "I'm okay."

He wiped his thumb across my lip and came away with fresh scarlet on the white of his skin. "You are not all right."

"Better than Sin, or Ares," I said.

He nodded, and kissed me on the forehead. "I am sorry, ma petite."

"For what?" I asked, but he called to Claudia. "Help her to a chair."

Claudia was there, helping to my feet, and I seemed to need the help. Maybe Sin had jarred me a little more than I thought when he hit Asher, or maybe getting gnawed on had been more of a shock to the system than I thought.

Jean-Claude was standing, facing Asher. "You make me weak, Asher. I cannot be the master you need, because I love you too much to be as harsh as you need. Anita would not have taken such treatment from anyone else."

Claudia helped me into one of the new overstuffed chairs. I sat down, feeling shaky, and I wasn't sure it was just from being bled.

"She does not love me more than all the rest, Jean-Claude, that I know." His voice was so harsh; it was ugly as he said it.

"The modern term is polyamorous," Jean-Claude said. "We are polyamorous. It means to love more than just one person, Asher."

"Anita was here before I returned to you, but the weretiger, Envy, she was not. You and your wolf king, Richard, show me a glimpse of paradise, and then next I know you are both fucking a second woman. I was not enough in your bed, Anita was not enough, none of the other men are enough, it always has to be a woman with you."

"I love you, we are lovers, what more do you want from me?"

"I want you to have only Anita and me."

"That's closed poly," I said, "Nathaniel explained it to me. It's like monogamy with only one other person added." I had to cough to clear my throat, and the taste of blood was fresh and strong. Shit. If I'd been truly human I might have needed stitches inside my mouth.

"Jean-Claude and Richard fuck Envy. Why aren't you enraged by that?" He yelled it at me.

Envy was one of the new golden tigers who had moved into the underground. She was Dev's cousin, and as tall, statuesque, and gorgeous as he was handsome. The golden tigers were all pretty easy on the eyes.

"And I fuck about fifteen other guys. It wouldn't be fair for me to bitch about them having Envy in their beds," I said. My voice sounded harsh, so I coughed and tried to clear it, and tasted fresh blood. I had a choice of swallowing it, or finding a place to spit. I'd been where I could spit on the stone floor, but now I was surrounded by carpet. I just couldn't spit on the new carpet.

"Fair, love isn't fair, Anita. Love is one of the least fair things in the world. Don't you ever wonder if Envy is better in bed than you are?"

I frowned at him and shook my head. "No."

"Oh, that is arrogant to not even consider that she might be better in bed than you."

"There's only so much of me to go around, Asher. Richard is dating other women in his mundane life. It wouldn't be fair to make Jean-Claude sit around and twiddle his thumbs waiting for me, when I'm dating other people, too."

"If you truly love, you will wait."

"Who made that rule?" I asked.

"Dev wants to sleep with other women, when he has you; doesn't that bother you, at all?"

I thought about it and just shook my head. "He talked to me about it a couple of weeks ago. He's got a high sex drive, and I'm giving most of my attention to Jean-Claude, Micah, Nathaniel, and you."

"Oh, no, include the boy. He takes up more and more of your time."

I studied the beautiful arrogant face. "You hit him harder on purpose. You're jealous of Sin."

"It would be ridiculous of me to be jealous of a boy."

"Yes, it would," I said.

"Envy is jealous of you," he said. "She hates that Jean-Claude drops her the moment you appear."

"If she has a problem with the way Jean-Claude is dating her, she needs to talk to him about it."

Asher looked at him. "Well, Jean-Claude, has the fair Envy spoken to you?"

"She has not."

Asher turned back to me. "Cardinale, Damian's girlfriend, hates that he leaves her side if you so much as crook a finger at him."

I shrugged again. "Cardinale and Damian talked to me about that, and I haven't slept with him since then. If they want to try monogamy, more power to them."

"Why doesn't it bother you? Why aren't you jealous?"

"I don't know," I said, and that was the truth. I was so far outside the relationship parameters that I'd been taught to expect growing up that I just didn't worry about it. "It works for us, Asher."

"It doesn't work for me."

Jean-Claude moved into the room, not stepping between us, but drawing our attention to him. "I love you, Asher. Anita loves you. Mephistopheles loves you. Nathaniel loves you. Narcissus loves you."

Asher made a harsh sound low in his throat.

"Yes, you do not love Narcissus in turn; the leader of our local werehyenas would love you as obsessively as you seem to desire, but you do not want him, not like that."

"Narcissus loves the attention he gets from me, Jean-Claude."

"Of that, I have no doubt, but he cannot love you enough, I cannot love you enough, Mephistopheles cannot love you enough, Anita cannot love you enough, Nathaniel cannot love you enough. It is never enough for you, Asher. In the end, the fact that you do not love yourself defeats us all."

"Very philosophical," Asher said, and made sure the words were sneering.

"I have found a city in need of a master where werehyenas are the major animal group. I think you need to visit the city and see if it is a good match," Jean-Claude said.

Asher stood there, staring at him. "What does that mean, Jean-Claude?

"I thought I was very clear."

"Are you banishing me from St. Louis?"

"No, I am telling you to go and see if a new city will suit you and your powers better than here."

"You would cast me out because I hit the boy?"

"I let you bleed the woman I love, my human servant. It should have been my fist, not Sin's, that tore you away from Anita." He never called me by my real name unless he was furious. I was just glad he wasn't that angry with me.

Asher looked at him as if he didn't believe him. "I have hurt her worse than that when I top her and Nathaniel in the bedroom."

"That is with her permission; this was not."

"What if I do not like the new city?"

"Then call us; if we are done being angry with you, perhaps I will allow you to come back home."

"You mean to exile me?"

"I mean to send you away so you can think on what it is you value. Your jealousy always ruins your happiness in the end, Asher. I had forgotten that about you." He shook his head. "No, I had made myself forget it, but you have reminded me that this part of you, this terrible insecurity, destroyed almost every love you ever had."

"Tell me truly, Jean-Claude, were you and Julianna planning to leave me before she died?"

"I swear to you now, as I have a hundred times, no. We spoke of your jealousy, and your demands on us both, but we loved you. She loved you."

"She loved you more," Asher said.

"And there it is: your weakness."

"What weakness? That I want someone to love me more than they love you, just this once?"

"Belle Morte did not love me more, Asher."

"Liar."

"Pack for your trip."

"How long will I be gone?" Asher asked. His voice was angry, but there was something else underneath the anger; I think it was fear.

"At least a month."

"Don't send me away," Asher said.

Jean-Claude motioned at Sin, who was making small noises as he came to with Nathaniel still kneeling by him. Nicky was checking Ares's pulse, as if he thought for a moment he'd hit him too hard.

"Everyone is alive, but it is no thanks to you, Asher. You are my temoin, my second-in-command, and yet you have done this. It is beyond childish, beyond careless; it is spiteful. The kind of spite that got us run out of town after town centuries ago, because you grew jealous of the very men and women you sent Julianna and me to woo. You wanted to part them from their money, or their blood, but you didn't want us to enjoy our work too much."

"I wooed my share," Asher said.

"You did, but no matter how many men or women you seduced, you always worried more about the ones who were your beaus, your girlfriends or boyfriends."

"Jean-Claude..." Asher said, reaching out to the other man.

"Go, pack, and tomorrow night you will leave for your tour of the other city."

"Please..."

"Did you think I would take this behavior from you forever!" Jean-Claude yelled it at him. "Did you think that I would do nothing to stop you from hurting us?"

Asher let his hand drop slowly back to his side. "Who will run the Circus for you? Who will be your ringmaster?"

"I will be the ringmaster while you are gone."

"Who will run Guilty Pleasures for you? Who will take your place on stage there?"

"Jason is my assistant manager, he runs the club well."

"He is not you onstage."

"Non, but he is very good at being himself onstage, and that will be good enough."

"You will lose business at Guilty Pleasures if you are not onstage," Asher said.

"Perhaps," Jean-Claude said.

"No," I said, and got to my feet. Claudia had her hand out, but I glared at her until she stepped back.

"No, what, ma petite?"

"Nathaniel and Nikki will go onstage this week." Nikki was my stage name that Nathaniel had come up with for me, before our Nicky came to us. The few times that Nathaniel and Jean-Claude had persuaded me to go onstage, well, let's just say the club wouldn't lose money. I had inherited Jean-Claude's ardeur, and with Nathaniel's help we could use it to make the audience participation into something that left the Guilty Pleasures website inundated with messages asking for Nikki to make a return performance.

"You hate being onstage at the club," Asher said.

I shrugged. "I don't hate it, I just don't like it, but to give us all a cooling-off period, I'll do it."

"Implying that I do not do my duty for master and country, but you do?"

"I'm not implying anything; I'm stating that you are beautiful and amazing, and a big fucking baby." I wiped fresh blood on the back of my hand.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said.

"You've said that before. If you really meant it, Asher, you wouldn't have to keep saying it."

Nicky said, "And I gotta say, you've hurt Anita badly enough that no one will get oral sex from her until she heals. She's not just yours. You can't damage her so that it interferes with the rest of us having sex with her, and just expect that to be okay."

"You are just a guard, muscle, and Anita's Bride. I do not have to take chastisement from you."

"But you do from me," Jean-Claude said. "Nicky is right. You have spoiled fun for all of her lovers, and it is not your place to do so. I am her master."

"You aren't Anita's master; that implies control, and you have none over her."

"I do not need to own her to love her, Asher. You always treated lovers like a pet to be spoiled, abused, but above all - owned."

"Why is it wrong to want to be certain of love?" Asher asked.

"I am certain that Anita loves me, as she is certain that I love her."

"But she loves Nathaniel more, and Micah, and the boy adores her."

"I love Anita," Nicky said.

"But she doesn't love you," Asher said, and he spat it at Nicky. He meant it to hurt.

"I can feel Anita's emotions most of the time," Nicky said, "I know what she feels for me. I'm secure in my place in her life. How about you?"

Asher took a step toward Nicky where he stood over Ares's still-unconscious body.

"Asher, you will need the hours until dawn to pack," Jean-Claude said. "Go, and make use of your time."

Asher looked from Jean-Claude to me, and then finally back to Nathaniel, who was helping Sin sit up. "I am sorry."

Nathaniel said, "Jean-Claude is right. It doesn't matter how much the rest of us love you; if you hate yourself, the self-loathing destroys everything."

"Nathaniel..."

"Sin is my brother, Asher. I won't lose him because you don't feel loved enough."

"I didn't hit him that hard."

Nathaniel cradled Sin against him, and the younger man still looked out of focus, as if he wasn't quite sure what happened. "Your Master of the City told you to go do something; go do it," Nathaniel said. He sounded as coldly angry as I'd ever heard him.

"Go," I said.

"Now," Jean-Claude said.

Asher started to say something, and then stopped himself. He nodded, and then turned and walked back into the underground toward his room, his clothes, his suitcases, and to do what he'd been told to do - it was about damn time.