He stayed on all fours, pushing his face against my stomach and then sniffing and rubbing just his lips ever so lightly against my skin. He kissed my breasts as he moved up my body, but it was a light kiss, until he was kneeling in front of me. Then he looked down at me and there was that heat that all men seem to have in their eyes somewhere. He leaned down and I raised my face to him. He kissed me and this time it wasn’t gentle. He kissed like Micah had kissed me, all lips and tongue and teeth. His big hands went behind my back not to hug, but to knead against my skin like a cat would. He broke from the kiss with a gasp as if he hadn’t gotten enough air. I was a little breathless myself.
“You’ve got a scar on your back. Can I see it?”
I just turned so he could. “What caused that?” he asked, and his fingertips were already touching it, tracing it delicately.
“A broken wooden stake,” I said.
“You fell on it?”
“No, a human under a vampire’s control tried to stake me.”
“I’ve got one, too, and mine’s bigger.”
“What?” I asked.
He turned around so I could see his back, and he did have a scar and it was longer, though mine was wider. Men, they’re always more impressed with length than width. Because he seemed to expect it, I traced it with my fingertips. It was a thin curve of white scar tissue from the right side to the spine.
“How’d you get cut?” I asked.
He turned around. “My cousin Thorn did it in a practice match.”
“You use real silver blades for practice matches?” I asked.
“If you don’t use silver, then you don’t know how you react to being hurt. Pain is all theory until you get hurt. You have to know how you’ll react.”
I studied his expression trying to read something behind that handsome, eager face.
Micah said, “Thorn is one of the weretigers we didn’t bring down for you to meet.”
I looked at him. “What was wrong with cousin Thorn?”
“He has a temper, and he tried treating me like I was small.”
“Oh, so not winning points with me.”
“I told Jake that Thorn could only stay if he didn’t cause problems. If he caused trouble then he’s not our problem, and he has to go,” Micah said.
Mephistopheles touched the mound of scar tissue on my left arm. “Did a wereanimal do this?”
“Vampire, same as the collarbone scar.”
He traced it with his fingertips. He touched my shoulder and the shiny flat scar there. “Gunshot,” I said.
“Silver?”
“It was before I was Jean-Claude’s human servant, so no.”
He traced the cross-shaped burn scar with the claw marks that made it slightly off-center now. “And this?”
“A vampire’s Renfield thought it would be funny to brand me.”
He traced the claw marks with his fingertips. “That’s a shapeshifter.”
“Shapeshifted witch, not a lycanthrope.”
“You mean like a magic belt made out of one of our skins?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What happened to the witch?”
“Dead,” I said.
“Are they all dead, everyone that hurt you?”
“Yes,” I said.
He looked at Asher. “Jake told us what the Church did to you. Can I see?”
Asher went very still, that still that they can do after a few hundred years, but he moved his hair to one side, showing the scars on his face to the light.
Mephistopheles knee-walked to him and, without asking, touched Asher’s face, traced the scars with his fingertips as he had mine. I knew how delicate the touch was, butterfly light. Asher showed nothing while the other man traced the scars.
“My cousin Martino is going to be so jealous.”
Asher looked at me. I said, “Jealous about what?”
“Martino thinks he’s the most beautiful man ever, but he isn’t even close to Asher. Or to Jean-Claude, for that matter, but you are the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”
Asher pulled away from him, letting his hair fall back beside his face. “You’ve just finished touching the scars; you know that’s not true.”
“The scars barely cover any of your face, just this little part.” He reached out to touch the scars again. Asher turned his head so Mephistopheles couldn’t touch them. But he was a persistent boy, and his thumb slid across Asher’s lower lip.
Asher jerked back. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to,” he said, as if that made perfect sense, and I guess it did.
“I am not beautiful,” Asher said, and he started unbuttoning his shirt. He unbuttoned the tight white fabric and pulled it wide to expose both the smooth muscles and the deep runnels of scars, like a before-and-after shot.
Mephistopheles said, “Wow, that must have hurt.”
“You have no idea,” he said.
He reached out to touch it. Asher started to move back and it was Nathaniel who said, “You want him to touch you, don’t you?”
Asher shot him a not entirely friendly look, but he let the weretiger run his delicate fingers over the scars and then move his hands to the untouched side. He ran a hand up and down both sides, exploring the difference in texture. “How far down do the scars go?”
“Are you trying to get me out of my clothes?” Asher asked.
Mephistopheles looked surprised and said, “Isn’t that the idea? Aren’t we all getting out of our clothes?”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said, and he was looking at Asher. The look said clearly, Don’t blow this for yourself because you are a pain in the ass.
“Then can I see?” he asked.
Asher looked at me. I don’t know why, because I was totally out of my depth. It was Micah who said, “Don’t you want to?”
Asher looked back at me and I understood the pleading now. I crawled to him, so that I was on one side and Mephistopheles on the other. “Want some help?” I asked.
Asher nodded. I realized that he was nervous. A man he was attracted to was trying to get him out of his clothes and had called him the most beautiful man he’d ever seen; I think Asher thought it was too good to be true, and it scared him. I couldn’t blame him. I’d spent a few years watching him chase after men who didn’t like men as much as he did, and the men who liked him best he was almost disdainful of. It had been a recipe for unhappiness.
“Lie back,” I said.
Asher hesitated, and then he did what I asked, lying back against the pillows. His hair spilled out around his face and he didn’t try to hide his face. He just lay back, and I agreed with Mephistopheles. He was one of the most beautiful men I’d ever seen.
Micah moved beside Asher’s long, slender legs. “Boots first,” he said.
Nathaniel climbed up on the bed so he was on my side but lower down so he mirrored Micah. “I thought you were going to watch,” I said.
“I changed my mind, unless you don’t want five of us?”
I smiled at him. “I’m fine with it if Mephistopheles is okay with it.”
He was already stroking his fingers over the very edge of Asher’s leather pants. He was feeling the texture of the leather, and very carefully not going lower on the other man, or maybe he was just feeling the more intricate texture of the leather at what would have been the belt area, where instead of a belt the pants had their own interwoven lacings.
Asher was watching him stroke the leather. The look of naked longing that he’d had earlier in this very room with Jean-Claude and Richard was missing. His face was very careful, but his eyes followed the other man’s movements.
“I think he’s okay with it,” Nathaniel said.
The three of us exchanged a look and then I nodded. “Boots first,” I said.
They each started to work one of the soft leather boots down his legs. I went to the top of his pants and undid the front lacings. Mephistopheles helped me ease the leather apart. “I like the pants.”