Laurell Hamilton - Skin Trade

His neck was untouched, but from chest to groin to part of the thigh, the right side of his body was covered in the holy water scars. It looked as if the flesh had melted and partially reformed, like wax. The skin was textured differently from the unscarred half of him, but it wasn’t ruined. He could still feel my touch, still be licked and caressed, and bitten. It was just different. It was Asher, and I loved him.

It wasn’t the same way I loved Jean-Claude, but I’d learned that love could mean many things, and no matter how similar it looked from the outside, inside it could feel very different. Good still, but different.

I was packed, though I was going to get some of the bodyguards to help carry the equipment bags of weapons up the stairs for me. I needed to get to the airport and the jet that was fueled and waiting for me. I wanted to be on the ground in Vegas while it was still daylight. If Vittorio had intended to get me out of St. Louis before Jean-Claude could wake and maybe insist on guards going with me, then fine, I’d get to Vegas while Vittorio was still dead to the world, too. It was the great leveler, that vampires were helpless during the day. I would take every advantage of it that I could. Of course, Vittorio knew that about me, if he’d been spying on me. The thought that he probably had daylight eyes and ears waiting for me in Vegas wasn’t comforting.

I stared down at the two vampires and wished that I could have said good-bye.

The bathroom door opened and Jason came out, wearing a robe that he hadn’t bothered to tie shut, but he’d been completely nude between the two vampires when I’d first entered the room. Besides, it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen it all before. He was Jean-Claude’s pomme de sang , his apple of blood, sort of part kept woman and part morning snack. Most people didn’t actually fuck their pommes de sang , and Jean-Claude didn’t either, but Jason’s reputation had fallen to the need to make our shared master look more powerful in the eyes of the larger vampire community. He was also going to have the fun job of telling Jean-Claude where I was and what I was doing when the vampire woke.

Jason was my height, maybe an inch more, short for a man and I guess short for a woman. His blond hair was to his shoulders now. He’d started letting it grow back out, though truthfully he was one of the few men I thought actually looked better with the short executive haircut. But I was just his good friend and lover, not his girlfriend, so his hair length was his own business.

He smiled at me, his spring-blue eyes shining with some joke that only he knew. Then the look changed, from joking to serious to… I was just suddenly aware that he was naked, and the robe was covering precious little, and…

“Stop it, Jason,” I said, softly. I don’t know why you always whisper around sleeping vampires, as if they were truly asleep, but you do; unless you stop yourself, you treat the ones you know like they can hear you and you don’t want to disturb them.

“Stop what?” he asked, in a voice that was a little lower than it needed to be. I couldn’t have told you what he was doing differently with his walk, but he suddenly made me aware that his day job was as a stripper.

“What’s with the serious flirting, Jason? You know I don’t have time for it.”

He came to the end of the bed, and I had to either back up or stand my ground while he flirted. Backing up seemed cowardly, and once I could have withstood Jason’s attentions, but since I’d accidentally made him my werewolf to call, he seemed to have more pull on my libido. He didn’t usually take advantage of it, so why was he upping the heat now?

I stood my ground, but was almost painfully aware of how close he was to me. “You know Jean-Claude is going to go apeshit when he wakes up,” he said.

“Jean-Claude never goes apeshit.”

“Vittorio has set a trap for you, Anita. You’re walking into it.” He was behind me now, so close that the edges of his robe brushed against the back of my body.

“Jason, please, I have to go,” and this time I didn’t whisper so as not to wake the vampires. I whispered because it was the best I could do. One of the real downsides to moving into the Circus and living with all the men who were tied to me metaphysically was that all of them seemed to be gaining power-power over me. Jean-Claude I could understand; he was the Master of the City. Asher even, because he was a master vampire. But Jason was a werewolf, a blood donor, and my wolf to call. I should have been master here, and I wasn’t.

He moved around me, so close, so very close, so that not having our bodies touch took more effort than just closing that small distance. I kept one hand on the bedpost like it was my anchor to reality. He stood in front of me, his eyes a little below mine because I was still in the heels.

“Then go,” he whispered.

I swallowed hard but didn’t move away. I had a moment to wonder if I could move away, and the thought was enough. I closed my eyes and stepped back. I could do this. It was Jason, not Jean-Claude; I could do this.

Jason caught my arms. “Don’t go.”

“I have to go.” But having to keep my eyes closed took a lot of the punch out of the statement.

He pulled my hands in toward his body, so that I touched the muscled smoothness of his stomach. He put one hand to his groin, and he was already happier to be near me than last I’d looked. He filled my hand, and he was thick and perfect again. Two months ago, some very bad men had captured the both of us. They’d tortured him with cigarettes, fire, the only thing a lycanthrope can’t heal. They’d marked up a very nice body and damn near killed him.

My hands slid over him, under the robe, so I held him close, feeling how very naked he was, in my arms. I held him, and he held me back. I held him and remembered holding him while he bled. Holding him while I thought he was dying.

His voice was normal, not seductive, when he said, “Anita, I’m sorry.”

I drew back enough to see his face. “Sorry you tried to use your new powers over me to get me to stay home?”

He grinned. “Yeah, but I do like you admiring the newly healed me.”

“I’m just glad that Doc Lillian figured out that if they cut away the burned bits you’d heal on your own.”

“I’m just glad they found anesthesia that worked on our faster metabolism. I would not have wanted that much of me cut away without being put under.”

“Agreed.”

“You know, they’re talking about trying to cut away some of Asher’s scars and see if he heals on his own.”

“He’s a vampire, not a shapeshifter, Jason. Vampire flesh doesn’t heal quite the same.”

“You can heal fresh wounds on all sorts of dead flesh, including vampires.”

“That’s fresh wounds, Jason, and never a burn.”

“Maybe if the doctor cuts away the scars, it’ll count as a fresh wound, then you could heal him.”

“And what if it doesn’t work? What if Doc Lillian cuts away part of Asher and I can’t heal it, and it doesn’t heal on its own? He just goes around with a big hole in his side, or wherever?”

“You know, we have to try.”

I shook my head. “All I know for sure is I’ve got a plane to catch, and I need to call some guards down to help me carry up the weapons.”

“You know, the guards are scared of you now.”

“Yeah, they think I’m a succubus and I’ll eat their souls.”

“You feed off sex, Anita, and if you don’t feed often enough, you die. That’s pretty much the definition of succubus , isn’t it?”

I frowned at him. “Thanks, Jason, that makes me feel so much better.”

He grinned and shrugged. “Who are you going to feed on in Vegas?”