Page 10 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

“It’s not the scars, it’s the fact that you have one of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen. I think that every time I see you, but this is the first time you’ve ever let me see your whole face.”

“I’m sorry you found it revolting.”

“No, that’s not it,” Peter said, reaching out as if he were trying to pull the words from the air. “I knew you were scarred by holy water and I knew that it burns like acid on vampire skin, but theory is different from seeing it.”

“So much worse than you imagined,” Asher said, and tried to pull his hand away from me; when I didn’t let him go he let me keep holding him, but it was like his hand was only there for politeness’ sake. I had to breathe through the anger that started to boil up inside me. I really didn’t have the emotional spoons left for Asher today, but for Jean-Claude’s sake I kept trying.

“Damn it,” Peter said, “I’m not saying this right, but the scars aren’t that bad, it just surprised me, and it was shitty of me to react like that. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Asher said, but his voice said plainly that he didn’t mean it.

“Asher, what does he have to do to make this better?” I asked, shaking his hand, trying to get him to look at me.

“How did you word it, that I was unblemished youth?” Peterpulled the hem of his T-shirt up with one hand, exposing the scars on his upper stomach that traced over one side of his chest. I knew they went up onto one shoulder, but the shirt would have to come off to see them. The scars looked like what they were, claw marks. It had been a weretiger that meant to kill me; both Peter and I almost died, but I’d had enough magic to heal completely, and he hadn’t.

Asher turned with his hair swinging to hide the scarred side of his face, but he gave the full perfection of the other side of his profile so he could look at the scars that traced Peter’s body. “I am a fool, please forgive me for forgetting that I am not the only one who has suffered.”

Peter let his shirt fall back into place. “I don’t let people see me without a shirt much, even the girls who say they don’t mind, how can they not? The girls who like the scars seem to like them more than the rest of me, and that’s creepy for a different reason.”

Peter had never mentioned any of this to me, but he was sharing with Asher and the rest of us, because he was trying to make up for making Asher self-conscious. It was brave and smart. I was so proud of him I’d have hugged him if I hadn’t thought that would make things worse again.

“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 seeAsher 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 notcomfortable 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.”

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