by J. R. Ward
“Let’s get in there,” she said to the Shadows.
Dematerializing, she took form smack in the middle of the living room and Trez and iAm were right with her. Without needing to talk, they fanned out, traipsing through the mess, searching for things the humans wouldn’t have known to look for.
Twenty minutes of ooey-gooey on the first floor and nothing but dust on the second left them with a whole lot of nada.
Damn it to hell, she could sense the bodies and the emotional grids that were marked with suffering, but they were like reflections in water—and she just couldn’t get to the forms that were throwing the wavy images.
“You hear from Rehv yet?” she said, lifting one boot and measuring how far up the sole the blood came. Onto the leather. Great.
Trez shook his head. “Nope. But I can call again.”
“Don’t bother. He must be crashed.” Shit, she was hoping that he’d gotten her message and started hunting down that license plate already.
Standing in the front hall, she looked around the dining room, and then focused on the pitted table that had clearly been used as a cutting board.
The Omega’s little buddy with the Vin Diesel ride was going to have to come back for the new recruits. They weren’t useful hidden like this, because, assuming the lockdown worked as hers had with Lash, they couldn’t get out of the parallel plane they’d been relegated to until they were released.
Unless the spell could be called off from afar?
“We’ve got to stay longer,” she said. “And see who else shows.”
She and the Shadows took up res in the kitchen, pacing around and leaving fresh, bloody footprints on the cracked linoleum—ones that were no doubt going to fuck with the level, earnest heads of all those cops.
NHP.
Not. Her. Problem.
She checked the clock on the wall. Measured the empty kegs and the liquor bottles and the beer cans. Glanced over the tail ends of joints and the talc-y residue of coke lines.
Rechecked the clock.
Out in the back, the sun seemed to have stopped its descent, as if the golden disk was scared of getting skewered by the tree branches.
Stalled in her pursuit, she had nothing else to think about other than John. He must be climbing the damn walls right now, all up in a headspace that was hardly what you wanted somebody to meet the enemy with: He was going to be pissed off at her, distracted, revved up in the wrong way.
Wasn’t like she could call and talk to him. He couldn’t answer her.
And what she had to say wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to text.
“What’s the matter?” Trez asked, as she began to fidget.
“Nothing. Just ready to fight with no target.”
“Bullshit.”
“Annnnd we can stop the chatter right here, thank you very much.”
Ten minutes later, she was staring up at the clock on the wall again. Oh, for hell’s sake, she couldn’t stand this.
“I’m going back to the Brotherhood’s for a half hour,” she blurted. “Stay here, will you. Call my cell if anyone shows.”
As she gave them her number, the peanut gallery did themselves a favor and didn’t ask any whys—then again Shadows were like symphaths in that they tended to know where people were at.
“Roger that,” Trez said. “We’ll hitchu the second anything happens.”
Dematerializing, she took form in front of the Brotherhood mansion and crossed the pea gravel to the basilica-size steps. After she went into the vestibule, she put her face to the security camera.
Fritz opened the way after a moment and bowed low. “Welcome home, madam.”
The H-word sent a jolt through her. “Ah . . . thanks.” She looked around at the empty rooms off the foyer. “I’m just going to go upstairs.”
“I’ve prepared your previous room.”
“Thanks.” But she wasn’t heading there.
Drawn by the sense of John’s blood, she jogged up the grand staircase and went down to his crib.
Knocking, she waited, and when there was no answer, she cracked the door into the darkness and heard the hush of a running shower. Across the way, a lateral strip of light showed at carpet level, indicating he’d shut the way into the bathroom.
Crossing the Oriental, she shed her leather jacket and left it on the back of a chair. At the bath, she knocked again. Without hesitation. Loudly.
The door opened by itself, swinging free and revealing humid air and the dim glow of the inset lights above the Jacuzzi.
John was facing her behind the glass enclosure, the water rushing down his chest and his six-pack and his thighs. His cock sprang up into a massive erection the moment her eyes met his, but he didn’t move and he didn’t look glad to see her.
In fact, his upper lip curled in a snarl, and that wasn’t the worst of it. His emotional grid was completely closed off to her. He was blocking her and she wasn’t even sure he was aware of doing it: She couldn’t get a bead on anything that she had always sensed so clearly before.
Xhex lifted up her right hand and spelled out awkwardly: I came back.
His brow twitched. Then he signed much more smoothly and quickly: With intel for Wrath and the Brothers, right. Feel like a hero? Congratulations.
He shut off the water, stepped out, and leaned for a towel. He didn’t cover himself, but dried off, and it was hard not to notice that with each move and arch, his erection bobbed.
She never thought she’d curse her peripheral vision.
“I haven’t talked with anyone,” she said.
This left him pausing with the towel stretched across his back, one arm angled up, the other down. Naturally, the pose popped his pecs and pulled the muscles that ran over his hip bones out in stark relief.
He snapped the towel free and draped it over his shoulders. Leaving it to hang, he signed, Why did you come here?
“I wanted to see you.” The ache in her voice made her wish she’d used ASL.
Why.
“I was worried—”
You want to see how I’m hanging together? You want to know what it was like to spend the past seven hours wondering if you were dead or—
“John—”
He ripped the towel free and snapped the end in midair to shut her up. You want to know how I handled the idea that you were dead, fighting alone, or worse, back where you’d been? Your symphath side need a little diversion for kicks and giggles?
“God, no—”
You sure about that? You’re not wearing your cilices. Maybe you’re feeding that hunger, coming back here—
Xhex wheeled around for the door, her emotions too much for her to handle, the guilt and the sadness choking her.
John caught her arm and they ended up against the wall, his body holding hers in place while he signed up close to their faces.
Hell no, you do not get to run. After what you put me through, you do not get to run the fuck out of here just because you can’t deal with shit you created. I couldn’t run from today. I had to stay caged here and you can damn well return the favor. Her eyes wanted to focus elsewhere, but then she couldn’t track what he was saying with his hands. You want to know how I am? Fucking resolved, that’s how I am. You and I are turning a corner tonight. You say you have a right to go after Lash? I do, too.
That locker room, in the shower, she thought. The betrayal that she didn’t know the details of, but that she sensed had everything to do with what had happened to John when he’d been young, and alone, and defenseless.
Here’s the deal and it’s nonnegotiable. We work together to find him and get him and kill him. We work as a team, which means where one of us is, the other goes. And at the end, whoever takes him to ground gets the honors. That’s where we stand.
Xhex exhaled with relief, instantly knowing it was the right answer. She hadn’t liked how it felt being at that farmhouse without him. It had seemed wrong.
“Deal,” she said.
His face didn’t regist
er surprise or satisfaction—which told her whatever he’d planned if she said no must have been a doozy.
Except then she learned why he was so calm.
After it’s over, we go our separate ways. We’re done.
The blood drained out of her head and abruptly, her hands and feet went numb. Which was such bullshit. What he was proposing was the best arrangement and the best outcome: two fighters working together and once their goal was accomplished, there was no reason to retain any tie between them.
Matter of fact, this was precisely what she’d seen of the future when she’d first come out of that nightmare with Lash. Get him good and dead. Then end this fiasco of life.
Trouble was . . . her plans that had been so clear were foggy now, the path that she had set with her head the instant she got free obscured by things that had nothing to do with what was in her skull and everything to do with the male who was naked against her.
“Okay,” she said hoarsely. “All right.”
Now that caused a reaction in him. His body relaxed against hers and he planted his hands on the wall on either side of her head. As their eyes met, her body roared with a blast of heat.
Man, desperation was gasoline to a match for her when it came to John Matthew—and given the way he subtly rolled his hips against her, he felt the same way.
Xhex reached up and clamped a hold on the side of his neck. She wasn’t gentle and neither was he as she pulled him down to her mouth, their lips crushing together, their tongues not so much meeting as dueling. When she suddenly heard a tearing sound, she realized he’d grabbed both sides of her muscle shirt and ripped it in half down the front—
Her breasts came up against his bare chest, her nipples rubbing against his skin, her core weeping for him. To hell with desperation; the need to have him inside went farther than that, until her emptiness without him was an agony.
Her leathers were on the floor a split second later.
Then with a quick hop, she jumped up and locked her thighs around his waist. Reaching down, she positioned him against her sex and squeezed her heels into his ass, making the penetration so very real. As his arousal sank deep, she took all of him, the sliding push enough to make her orgasm wildly.
Riding her release, her fangs shot out into her mouth, and John broke the kiss to tilt his head and flash his vein.
The puncture was sweet. The strength that came from him meteoric.
With hard draws, she drank as his body hammered into her, pitching her off that cliff again, sending her into a crazy descent that somehow had no hard landing—and he followed her, making that glorious leap without a parachute, his orgasms shuddering into her.
There was only the briefest of pauses . . . and then John started pumping again—
No, he was carrying her to the bed in the darkened room, the motion of his striding thighs pushing him inside of her and pulling him free and pushing him back.
She remembered every single sensation, storing each one deep in her mind, making the moment infinite and ageless by virtue of the power of memory. And as he settled on top of her, she did what he had done for her: offering her vein to him, she ensured that they were the most powerful team they could be.
Partners.
Just not the permanent kind.
FIFTY-TWO
As John’s body got it on with Xhex’s, his mind briefly retreated to that moment in the bathroom when he’d waited for her to agree to their arrangement.
Sure, he’d sounded all lay-down-the-law, but the truth was he’d had no leverage: She was either going to go with it or not, and if she didn’t, he had nothing to hold over her. Bottom line? There was absolutely no threat of withdrawal, no proactive anything, no if-this-then-that he could bring to the situation.
And that was what had dawned on him while he’d sat on the sofa in the billiard room, pretending to watch TV with Tohr. All day long, he’d heard Rehvenge’s voice in his head, over and over again.
Her end game doesn’t include anyone but herself.
John was not a fool, and he was not prepared to let his bonding for her paralyze him anymore. They had a job to do and they had a better shot at getting it done if they worked together. After all, this wasn’t any ordinary lesser they were going after.
Besides, the story of the two of them was written in the language of collision; they were ever crashing into each other and ricocheting away—only to find themselves pulled back into another impact. She was his pyrocant and there was nothing he could do to change that. But he could sure as shit cut the bungee cord that was torturing him.
Man, he wished that tattoo of his weren’t permanent. Then again, at least it was on his back and he didn’t have to look at the goddamn thing.
But whatever. They were going to get Lash and then go their separate ways. And between now and then? Well . . .
John let his thoughts drift away as he reconnected with the surging sex and the roaring taste in his mouth as he fed. Dimly, he once again caught the bonding scent rising from his own skin, but he shut that reality out. He wasn’t going to allow his head to get scrambled just because of that dark spice. Not for a minute longer.
Bonded males were crippled without their females, true enough—and a huge part of him would always be hers. But he was going to keep living, goddamn it. He was a survivor.
As he moved inside Xhex’s tight hold, his cock was a solid shaft of power and another release soon slammed through him and into her. Breaking the seal on her vein, he lapped the punctures with his tongue and then latched onto one of her breasts. With a shift of his leg, he split her thighs farther apart and rolled onto his back so she was on top.
Xhex took it from there, bracing her hands on his shoulders, swinging her hips on the base of her spine, her tight stomach curling and releasing as she rode him. With a silent curse, he grabbed onto her thighs and squeezed, her muscles shifting under his hold, and he didn’t stop there. He drew his hands farther up, to the juncture where her legs met her torso, that electric crease drawing him to where they were joined.
His thumb slipped into the carnal heart of her and found the top of her sex, rubbing it in circles—
In the dim light from the bathroom, he watched her arch back, her fangs cranking down on her lower lip in an effort to keep herself from crying out. He wanted to tell her to let her roar free, but he didn’t have time to pity her discretion—he came hard, his lids squeezing shut as he shuddered beneath her.
Catching his breath, he felt her pause to breathe deep . . . and then she was changing position.
When he opened his eyes, he nearly orgasmed again. She’d shifted back so that she was leaning on his legs, balancing her weight on his shins. With her feet up by his sides, he got one hell of a show . . . and that was before she started moving. The sight of him emerging shiny and thick from her folds, his shaft revealed right to the ridge of his cock head, pitched him off into another release.
She didn’t stop.
He didn’t want her to.
John needed more of watching their sexes up close, more of seeing the tips of her breasts and the thrust of her chin and the smooth strength of her body as she had him deep and hard. He wanted to stay captured in her . . . forever.
But that was his problem with her, and one that was ending here and now.
They climaxed together, with his hands locking onto her slender ankles and her mouth opening to let his name out of her throat.
Afterward, there was nothing but a lot of heavy breathing and air that seemed cold.
With a lithe shift, she disengaged them by swinging a leg over his head and landing on the floor beside the bed without a sound.
As she looked over her shoulder, her spine twisted in an elegant curve. “Can I use your shower?”
When he nodded, she walked with confident, long strides into his bathroom—and in spite of all the sex they’d just had, he felt a driving need to take her from behind.
A moment later, the rushing water sounded . . . and then her v
oice echoed. “The human police have found the scene.”
That got John out of bed and hungry for more intel. As he came into the bath, she turned around under the showerhead and arched back to rinse the shampoo he used out of her hair.
“The place was crawling with cops, but the new initiates were hidden in the same way I had been—all those humans saw was enough blood to paint a house red. No sign of Lash, but there was a drive-by of a street racer with something that smelled like fake strawberries behind the wheel. I called Rehv with the license plate number to pass on to Vishous and I’ll make the report to Wrath right now.”
When she looked over at him, he signed, We go back the second night falls.
“Yup. We do.”
Qhuinn woke up alone, having sent Layla back to the Far Side after they had done a little more business. He’d meant to tell her to go right away, but a goodbye embrace had led to other things . . .
She was still a virgin, though.
Not untouched, any longer, but defo still a virgin. . . . Seemed like there were two people in the world he couldn’t have sex with. The trend continued and he was going to end up celibate.
As he sat up, his head pounded, proof positive that Herradura was an opponent of worth.
Rubbing his face, he thought back to kissing the Chosen. He’d taught her how to do it properly, how to suck and stroke, how to open the way for someone’s tongue, how to penetrate a mouth when she wanted to. Female learned fast.
And yet it hadn’t been hard to keep things from getting out of hand.
What had killed the urge to seal the deal was the way she stared at him. When he’d started down the Lewis-and-Clark highway with this sex-ploration shit, he’d assumed she was just looking for the practical course after all her textbook training. But on her side, there had quickly been more to it than that. Her eyes had started to get stars in them, like he was the key to the door that kept her locked in herself, like he alone held the power to spring her dead bolt and set her free.
