by J. R. Ward
“You want to look at me, V?” When that profile didn’t turn, Butch cupped his glass and sat up. “Tell me something, if I leave, which one of you is supposed to kill me?”
V put his fingers on the bridge of his nose. Closed his eyes. “Damn it, Butch.”
“You, right? You’ll do it.” Butch drained his glass. Stared into the bottom of it. Refocused on his roommate. “You know, it would help if you’d look at me.”
V’s ice white eyes flashed across the way. And they glowed with regret.
“It would really kill you, wouldn’t it?” Butch murmured. “Putting me in the ground.”
“It would absolutely kill me.” Vishous cleared his throat. “You’re my friend.”
“So what’s it going to cost me?”
V frowned. “Cost you?”
“To go to my sister’s kid’s baptism.” Butch cracked a smile. “A foot? No, an arm. An arm and a leg?”
Vishous shook his head. “Shit, cop. That isn’t funny.”
“Ah, come on. It’s a little funny.”
V laughed in a burst. “You’re sick, you know that?”
“Yeah, I do.” Butch put his glass back down on the floor. “Look, V, I’m not going anywhere. Not in a disappearing way. Not right now. I’ve got nothing out there waiting for me, and I never fit in all that well anyhow. I am going to go up to Boston at the crack of dawn Sunday morning, however. I’ll be back Sunday night. You got a problem with that, well, tough.”
V blew out some more smoke. “I would miss you.”
“Don’t be a sap. I’ll be away twelve hours.” When V looked down, Butch grew serious. “Unless . . . we have a problem?”
After a long while V walked over to where all his computer shit was. Picked something off the desk.
Butch caught what was thrown at him.
Keys. To the Escalade.
“Drive safe, cop.” V smiled a little. “Don’t say hi to the family for me.”
Butch laughed. “That’s not going to be a problem.”
Now it was V’s turn to get good and grim. “If you’re not back by Sunday night, I’m coming after you. And not to bring you back, true?”
Butch realized in the silence that followed that this was a fish or cut bait moment. He was in the Brotherhood’s world for good. Or he was fertilizer.
He nodded once. “I’ll be back. Don’t you worry about that.”
This was taken out of Lover Enshrined. Originally it was where Phury and Cormia see each other when he comes back from his rescue efforts during the sack of Havers’s clinic. What it grew into, however, was their walk down the hall of statues and then his shower and her feeding from him . . . all of which went further than the below in terms of developing their relationship. This is the problem with what I see in my head: I saw the below play out . . . but I also saw all of the scenes that are in the book as well. Fitting everything that happens in together and deciding what’s more material to the story to protect pacing is always a judgment call.
Phury left Fritz to keep tidying up Wrath’s study. It was just as well the king wasn’t there. The head of the Brotherhood should get a report on what went down from a Brother.
As he came up to his room, Cormia was standing in the hallway, hand at her throat, looking as if she were waiting for him. Or maybe he just hoped that was the case.
“Your grace,” she said with a bow.
He was too tired to correct her on her formality. “Hey.”
As he went into his room he left the door open, because he never wanted her to feel as if she couldn’t talk to him, no matter how exhausted he was. He figured if she had something to say she’d follow him, and if she didn’t she’d go on to her room.
He went around and sat down on his bed, reaching for his gold lighter and a blunt before his weight had settled on his ass. He lit up, thinking that after a night like tonight there was no way in hell he was going to cut back on the red smoke. This was exactly why he needed the stuff.
As that first draw went down into his lungs, Cormia appeared in his doorway. “Your grace?”
He looked down at the blunt, focusing on the glowing orange tip. It was better, safer, to keep his eyes off her slim body in that long flowing robe. “Yes?”
“Bella is well. Jane says so. I thought you’d want to know.”
Now Phury glanced over his shoulder at her. “Thank you.”
“I prayed for her.”
He exhaled. “You did?”
“It was right and proper to do so. She is . . . lovely.”
“You’re a very kind person, Cormia.” He went back to staring at the hand-rolled, thinking that he was raw tonight. Absolutely wild on the inside, and the inhaling wasn’t helping much. “Very kind.”
When his stomach growled, she murmured, “May I make you something to eat, your grace?”
Even though his stomach rumbled again, as if it were thrilled with the prospect, he said, “I’m okay, but thank you.”
“As you wish. Sleep well.”
“You, too.” Just as the door was shutting, he called out, “Cormia?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you again. For praying for Bella.”
She made some kind of noncommittal noise, and the door clicked into place.
Even though he needed a shower, he slid his legs up onto the mattress and leaned back into the pillows. As he smoked, he was relieved as his shoulders gradually loosened and his thigh muscles relaxed and his hands released from the claws they’d turned into.
Closing his eyes, he let himself drift along, and images played on the backs of his lids, quickly at first, slowing as they continued. He saw the bodies in the clinic and the fight that happened and the rapid evac. Then he was back here looking for Wrath—
A picture of Cormia bending down over the roses barged into his brain.
With a curse he rolled up another chub, lit it, and settled back against the pillows.
Man, she had been so beautiful in that reflected light on the terrace.
And he thought of her standing in the hallway just now, her robing wrapped around her such that it formed a V between her breasts.
In a hot flash of insanity, he fantasized that instead of letting her walk out of his room, he’d taken her hand and drawn her farther inside. He pictured himself tugging her gently over to his bed and laying her down where he was now. Her hair would be all over the pillowcases in gold strands, and her mouth would be parted just as it had been in the movie theater when he’d approached her.
Of course, he’d have to take a shower first. Naturally. There was no way he’d expect her to put up with a male who’d not only been humping boxes of bandages for a couple of hours, but had also been in a fistfight with a lesser.
Yada, yada, yada . . . fast-forward through him scrubbing down under the hot water.
He’d come back in his own white robe and he’d sit on the bed next to her. In order to calm her—well, to calm them both—he’d start by stroking her face and her neck and her hair. And when she tilted her head back to give him access, he’d put his lips to hers. At this point his hands would work down the robe’s two halves until he got to the sash. He would loosen that slowly, so slowly she wouldn’t be shy about the fact that he was about to see her breasts and her stomach and her . . . everything.
He went everywhere with his mouth.
That was what happened in the fantasy. Everywhere. His lips, his tongue . . . every inch of her got attention.
The images were so off the chain that Phury’s hand had to find the ache between his own thighs. He meant to just rearrange himself in his pants, but once he made contact it wasn’t about relocation . . . it was the only thing that had felt even remotely good in so long.
Before he knew what he was doing, he put the blunt between his lips, unzipped, and let himself wrap a palm around his cock.
The rules of his self-imposed celibacy had held that doing this kind of pump action was a no-no. After all, it seemed pointless to deny himself se
x and yet open the door to masturbation. And the only time in his life he’d worked himself out had been during Bella’s needing and that was about biological necessity, not enjoyment—he’d had to either relieve himself or go insane, and those orgasms had been as hollow as the empty bathroom he’d had them in.
This didn’t feel hollow.
He pictured himself going where he wanted to be most . . . between Cormia’s legs with his head . . . and his body went crazy, his skin heating until you could have put a pot on his abs and boiled water. And shit got volcanic as he imagined his tongue finding its way through her core to the sweet, welling center of her.
Oh, God . . . he was stroking himself. There was no denying it. And he wasn’t going to stop.
Phury took the blunt from his lips, flicked it into an ashtray, and moaned, his head falling back as he parted his legs. He did not want to think of what he shouldn’t do. He just needed one slice of ease and happiness, one small piece of joy . . . just this moment when he was warm. He’d watched his brothers find love and settle down in strong matings, and he’d wished them well from the sidelines—while knowing all along that would not be his future. And that had been okay for a long time. Now, though, it didn’t feel okay anymore.
He . . . wanted things. For himself.
Anxiety started to bleed into his pleasure, like an ink stain on pale cloth.
He stopped the spoil by focusing on Cormia in his head. He saw himself treating her with both gentleness and power, handling her body. . . .
“Oh, yeah . . .” he groaned into the still air of his bedroom.
This moment he would steal for himself, and he told his guilty conscience he deserved it for all the hard work he’d done.
He was alone. No one would ever know.
Cormia carefully balanced the glass of milk and the plate of stacked bread and meats while she lifted a hand to knock on the Primale’s door. She wished she’d put the “sandwich” together better. Fritz had shown her what to do, and undoubtedly his would have looked less disheveled, but she’d wanted to move quickly, and she’d wanted to make it herself.
Just before her knuckles made contact with the wood, she heard a moan, as if someone were hurt. And then another.
Concerned for the Primale’s well-being, she went for the knob and pushed her way into his room—
Cormia dropped the sandwich plate. As the thing bounced on the floor, she stared across at the bed while the door shut by itself.
Phury was leaning back against the pillows, his spectacular, multicolored hair streaming out around his head. His black button-down shirt was pushed up to just below his rib cage, and his pants were undone and shoved down to the tops of his golden thighs. One hand was on his manhood, and his sex was thick and glossy at the broad tip. As he stroked the length hard and strong, his other hand was down below on the potent sac underneath.
Another moan broke through his open, rosy mouth; then he bit down on his lower lip, his fangs punching into the puffy flesh.
His hand started moving fast and his breath came even harder and he seemed to be on the verge of something tremendous. It was beyond wrong to watch, but she couldn’t have left to save herself. . . .
His nose flared, the nostrils opening wide as if he were catching a scent. With a growl he convulsed, his stomach muscles tightening up in a rush, thighs striating. As pearly white jets came out of him, his brilliant yellow eyes flipped open and focused on her. The sight of her seemed to hurt him even more as he barked out a curse and his hips thrust upward. More of the satin cream came out of him, and it seemed he would never stop, his neck straining, his cheeks red and flushed.
Except he wasn’t in true pain, was he, she thought. His eyes held on to her as if she were the fuel of it all and he didn’t want what was happening to him to end.
This was the culmination of the sexual act.
Her body told her so. Because every time the Primale surged, every time he groaned, every time his palm licked over the tip of his sex and shot down to the base, her breasts lit up and what was between her legs wept even more.
And then he was still. Spent. Satiated.
In the silence she felt the wetness on the insides of her thighs and looked at what was all over his stomach and hand and arousal.
What a glorious mess sex was, she thought, imagining what it would be like to have what was on him in her.
As her mind churned, she realized the Primale was staring at her in fuzzy confusion, as if he weren’t sure whether he’d dreamed her up or she was really in his room.
She walked forward, because with what had just happened, and the way the room was saturated with his dark scent, his outstretched body was the only destination she was interested in.
His eyes changed as she got closer, as if it were dawning on him that she was actually with him. Shock replaced his dreamy satisfaction.
She put the glass of milk down next to his ashtray, looked at his stomach, and her hand went forward without conscious thought.
He hissed, then sucked in a breath as she made contact. What was on him was warm.
“This is not blood,” she murmured.
His head shook back and forth on the pillow, his expression one of amazement, as if he were surprised by her boldness.
She lifted her finger up, recognizing that what had come out of him was the source of the dark spices in the air—and she wanted whatever it was. Glossing her lower lip, she then ran her tongue over what she’d put on herself.
“Cormia . . .” he groaned.
The sound of her name wrapped the room in a private, heated insulation that was tangible, and in the suspended, protected moment, it was just him and her together. There was nothing but their bodies, a stunning simplicity in the complex structure of the way they’d met and come to be mated.
“Let’s leave our roles behind,” she said. “And our entanglements.”
His face tightened. “We can’t.”
“Yes, we can.”
“Cormia . . .”
She dropped her robe, and that pretty much ended the conversation.
But as she got up on the bed, he shook his head and stopped her. “I’ve been to see the Directrix.”
As her name leaving his lips had created a special place, his words now sliced through the warmth and heady promise in the room.
“You set me aside, didn’t you.”
He nodded slowly. “I wanted to tell you, but then everything went down at the clinic.”
Cormia looked at his gleaming sex and had the strangest response. Instead of failure she felt . . . relief. Because he desired her even though he didn’t have to. Because it made what she wanted to happen so much more honest. Later she would dwell on the emotional ramifications, but now she just wanted to be with him. Female to male. Sex to sex. No traditions weighing on the act or giving it any larger implications.
She put one knee up on the mattress, and Phury grabbed hold of her wrists, stopping her. “Don’t you know what this means?”
“Yes.” She put her other knee up. “Let me go.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
