by J. R. Ward
It was nearly impossible to keep the distaste from her voice, but the camouflage must have worked, because the tension left him completely as he released his breath. “Oh, okay. Yeah, that word does not mean what you think it does.”
Indeed, humans as well had standards for behavior, did they not: His relief was as great as his tension had been. But then, it was not wrong to look for morality and decency in females—or males.
As he replayed the pictures for her, she shifted her focus to the miracle that had happened . . . and found herself shaking her head at what she saw. “Truly, I was unaware. How is . . . this possible?”
Her healer cleared his throat. “I’ve talked it over with Jane . . . and she—well, we—have a theory.” He stood up and went over to inspect a fixture on the ceiling. “It’s crazy, but . . . Marvin Gaye might just have known what he was talking about.”
“Marvin?”
With a quick shift, he picked up a chair and placed it under the camera. “He was a singer. Maybe I’ll play you a song of his someday.” Her healer planted his foot on the seat and rose to the ceiling where he disconnected something with a yank and got back down. “It’s good to dance to.”
“I do not know how to dance.”
He glanced over his shoulder, his lids dropping low. “Something else for me to teach you.” As her body warmed, he approached the bed. “And I’m going to like showing you how.”
When he leaned down, her eyes latched onto his lips and her breath got tight. He was going to kiss her—dearest fate, he was going to—
“You wanted to know what coming was,” he all but growled, their mouths merely inches apart. “Why don’t I show you what it is instead of tell you?”
On that note, he flipped a switch and put out the lights, plunging the room into a dimness that was broken only by the light in the bathroom and the line at the base of the door into the hall.
“Do you want me to show you?” he said in a low voice.
At that moment, there was one and only one word in her vocabulary : “Yes . . .”
Except then he backed off.
Just as a protest was about to jump out of her throat, she realized he’d stood in the line of illumination that streamed in from the bathroom.
“Payne . . .”
The sound of her name leaving his mouth had her struggling for air even more. “Yes . . .”
“I want you . . .” Reaching for the bottom of his loose shirt, he pulled it up slowly, exposing the carved muscles of his stomach. “. . . to want me.”
Oh, sweet destiny, she did.
And he meant what he said. The more she looked, the more those abdominals of his curled and released as if he were breathing hard as well.
His hand drifted down to his waist. “See what you do to me.” He smoothed the baggy fabric over his hips and . . .
“You are phearsom,” she breathed. “Oh . . . fates, you are.”
“Tell me that’s a good thing?”
“It is . . .”
She stared at the rigid length that was confined and straining against the front of his no longer billowy slacks. So thick and smooth. So big. The mechanics of sex were not unknown to her, but up until now, she hadn’t been able to fathom why they would appeal to a female. Looking at him now? Her heartbeat would cease and her blood would turn to stone if she didn’t have him within her.
“Do you want to touch me?” he growled.
“Please . . .” She swallowed through a nearly closed throat. “Oh, yes . . .”
“First, look at yourself, bambina. Lift your arm and look at yourself.”
She glanced down just to humor him so they could get on with things—
Her skin was aglow from the inside out, as if the heat and the sensations he called forth from her had manifested themselves in illumination. “I know not . . . what this is. . . .”
“I think it’s the solution, actually.” He sat down next to her feet. “Tell me if you feel this.” He gently touched her lower leg, laying his hand upon her calf—
“Warm,” she choked out. “Your touch is warm.”
“And here?”
“Yes . . . yes!”
When he went to move it upward, onto her thigh, she furiously yanked the coverings off of herself so she would have no impediments. Her heart was thundering and—
He laid his palm upon her other leg.
This time, she felt . . . nothing.
“No, no . . . touch me, touch me again!” The demand was harsh, her focus manic. “Touch me—”
“Hold on—”
“Where did it go—do it again! By all that is holy with your God, do it anew—”
“Payne.” He captured her frantic hands. “Payne, look at yourself.”
The glow was gone. Her skin, her flesh . . . was normal. “Damn it all—”
“Hey. Beautiful. Hey—look at me.” Somehow her eyes found his. “Take a deep breath and just relax. . . . Come on, breathe with me. That’s it. That’s good. . . . I’ll get it back for you. . . .”
When he bent toward her, she felt the gentle stroke of his fingertips on her neck. “You feel this?”
“Yes . . .” Impatience warred with the effect of his deep voice and his slow, meandering touch.
“Close your eyes—”
“But—”
“Close them for me.”
When she did as she was told, the pads of his fingers disappeared . . . and were replaced by his mouth. His lips brushed her throat and then sucked at her skin, the subtle pull unleashing a welling heat between her legs.
“Feel this?” he said in a gravelly voice.
“ Fates . . . yes . . .”
“Then let me keep going.” With subtle pressure, he urged her back against the pillows. “Your skin is so smooth. . . .”
As he nuzzled at her, the sound of his mouth made delicious clicking sounds below her ear, and those fingers of his traveled back and forth on her collarbone . . . then dipped down. In response, a curious, languid warmth boiled in her torso and tightened up her nipples, and she became aware of her whole body . . . every inch of herself. Even her legs.
“See, bambina, it’s back. . . . Look.”
Her lids were heavy as stones as she opened them, but when she glanced down, the glow was a huge relief—and made her hold on to the sensations he was calling out of her.
“Give me your mouth,” he said roughly. “Let me in.”
His voice was guttural, but his kiss was gentle and teasing, pulling at her lips and stroking, before he licked at her. And then she felt his hand on her outer leg.
“I feel you,” she said into his kiss, tears coming to her eyes. “I feel you.”
“I’m glad.” He eased back a little, his face serious. “I don’t know what this is—I’m not going to lie. Jane isn’t sure, either.”
“I do not care. I just want my legs back.”
He had a moment’s pause. But then he nodded, as if he were taking a vow to her. “And I’m going to do whatever I can to give them to you.”
His eyes drifted to her breasts, and the response was immediate— with every breath she took, the fabric that covered her nipples seemed to stroke across her and make her even tighter.
“Let me make you feel good, Payne. And we’ll see where this takes you.”
“Yes.” She lifted her hands to his face and pulled him to her mouth once more. “Please.”
Verily, as she would take nourishment from a vein, now she drew upon the warmth of his lips and the slick entrance of his tongue and the energy he called out of her.
Moaning into him, she was submersed in sensation, from the weight of her body on the bed, to the blood coursing throughout her, to the pulsing need between her legs and the delicious ache at her breasts.
“Healer.” She gasped as she felt her thigh get swept over by his palm.
He shifted back, and she was gratified that he was panting as well. “Payne, I want to do something.”
“Anything.”
He smiled. “May I unbraid your hair?”
For certain, her tresses were the last thing on her mind, but his expression was so rapt and intense, she could not deny him the request—or any part of herself. “But of course.”
His fingers trembled ever so slightly as he reached for the end of her braid. “I’ve wanted to do this since the moment I first saw you.”
Gradually, inch by inch, he freed the heavy weight of the black waves she kept long for no other reason than she was too disinterested to tend to them. Given his profound regard for what he revealed, however, she began to wonder if mayhap she’d far underestimated their significance.
When he was finished, he spread the lengths out o’er the bed and just sat back. “You are . . . indescribably beautiful.”
Having never viewed herself as even feminine, much less “beautiful,” it was an astonishment to hear the reverence in not just his words, but his voice.
“Indeed . . . you tie my tongue,” she said once again to him.
“Let me give you something else to do with it.”
As he joined her on the bed and lay beside her, she turned into the cushion of his pectorals and the hard expanse of his stomach. She was big compared to other members of her sex, her body retaining the power that had come from her sire’s side to the point where she often felt ungainly in comparison to other females: No willowy grace as the Chosen Layla had for her—in truth, she was built for fighting, not spiritual or sensual service.
Here with her healer, however, she felt rather perfectly proportioned. He had not the tremendous heft of her twin brother, but he was bigger and thicker than she was, in all the places a male should be: Lying with him in the dim room with their bodies so close together, and the temperature rising everywhere, she was not something that should not be, a malformation of girth and bulk, but an object of desire and passion.
“You’re smiling,” he whispered next to her mouth.
“Am I?”
“Yeah. And I love it.”
Over at her hip, his hands burrowed into her nightgown and she felt it all, from the light drift of his pinkie finger to the smooth skin of his palm to the hot trail his touch left behind as he slowly went upward. Closing her eyes, she arched into him, very aware that she was asking for something, yet unclear as to what exactly she was in search of—but she knew he would give it to her.
Yes, her healer knew exactly what she needed: That hand of his went up her rib cage and paused beneath her heavy, tender breasts.
“Is this okay?” she heard him ask from a great distance.
“Anything,” she gasped. “Anything to feel my legs.”
Except even as the words left her, she sensed that what drove her was less her paralysis and more a greed for him and his sex—
“Healer!”
The sensation of her breast being captured in a gentle caress was a wondrous shock, and she jerked up, her thighs spreading, her heels pressing into the mattress beneath them both. And then his thumb passed up and over her nipple, the stroke shooting a blast of fire to her core.
Her legs sawed on the bed, the tight coil in her sex driving them. “I’m moving,” she said roughly—and almost as an afterthought. What seemed important now was joining with him and having him . . . come . . . inside of her.
“I know, bambina,” he avowed. “And I’m going to make sure you keep it up.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Downtown, Butch parked the Escalade in the underground parking garage of the Commodore and took the internal elevator all the way up the spine of the building. He had no fucking clue what he was going to walk into when he got to V’s place, but that was where the GPS signal was coming from, so that was where he was going.
In the pocket of his leather coat, he had all the keys to Vishous’s private space: the plastic swipe card to get into the parking garage; the silver one you used in the elevator to punch the top button; the copper job that got you past the dead bolts on the doors.
His heart beat hard as a little ding sounded and the elevator opened silently. All-access was taking on a whole new meaning tonight, and as he stepped out into the hall, he wanted a drink. Badly.
At the door, he took out the copper key, but used his knuckles first. A couple of times.
It was a good minute later when it dawned on him that there was no answer.
Fuck the knuckles. He pounded with his fist.
“Vishous,” he barked. “Answer the goddamn door or I’m coming in.”
One, Mississippi. Two, Mississippi—
“Fuck this.” He shoved the key into the lock and cranked it before throwing his shoulder into the solid metal door and shoving it wide.
Bursting into the place, he heard the alarm beeping quietly. Which meant V couldn’t be here. “What the hell . . . ?”
He put the code in, shut the thing off, and locked the dead bolt behind himself. No remnants of lit candlewicks . . . no scent of blood . . . nothing but cool, clean air.
He flipped on the light switch and blinked in the glare.
Yeah, wow . . . Lot of memories in here . . . him coming and crashing after the Omega had gotten into him and he’d left quarantine . . . V losing his ever-loving mind and jumping off the damn terrace . . .
He went over to the wall of “equipment.” A fuckload of other things had happened here, too. Some of which he couldn’t imagine.
As he went down the display of metal and leather, his shitkickers echoed up to the ceiling, and his mind all but bounced around his skull. Especially as he got to the far end: In the corner, a set of iron cuffs hung from the ceiling by thick chains.
You got someone on them, you could lift them up and dangle ’em like a side of beef.
Reaching out, he fingered one of them. No cushioning on the inside.
Spikes. Dull spikes that would grip the flesh like teeth.
Getting himself back with the program, he marched through the place, checking in all the nooks and crannies . . . and found a little tiny computer chip on the kitchen counter. It was the kind of thing that no one but V would know how to remove from a cell.
“Son of a bitch.”
So there was no way of knowing where—
When his phone went off, he checked the screen. Thank God. “Where the hell are you?”
V’s voice was tight. “I need you down here. Ninth and Broadway. Stat.”
“Fuck that—why is your GPS in your kitchen.”
“Because that’s where I was when I took it out of my phone.”
“What the hell, V.” Butch tightened his grip on his cell and wished there were an app that let you reach through a phone and bitch slap someone. “You can’t—”
“Get your ass down here to Ninth and Broadway—we’ve got problems.”
“You’re kidding me, right? You go untraceable and—”
“Someone else is killing lessers, cop. And if it’s who I think it is, we’ve got problems.”
Pause. Big-time. “Excuse me?” he said slowly.
“Ninth and Broadway. Now. And I’m calling in the others.”
Butch hung up and rushed for the door.
Leaving the SUV in the parking garage, he took a mere five minutes to run over to the correct coordinates on Caldwell’s street grid. And Butch knew when he was getting close because of the sickening scent in the air and the tingling resonance of the enemy deep inside of him.
As he rounded the corner of a short-and-squat, he hit a wall of mhis and penetrated the shit, coming out on the other side to a whiff of Turkish tobacco and a tiny orange flare in the way-back of the alley.
He jogged over to V, slowing only when he got to the first of the bodies. Or . . . part of the first. “Hello, halvsies.”
As Vishous came up and offed his glove, Butch got a quick impression of dead-meat legs and leaking innards. “Yum.”
“Clean cut,” V muttered. “Real hot-knife-through-butter time.”
The brother was too right. It was practically surgical.
B
utch knelt down and shook his head. “Can’t be the result of Lessening Society politics. They’d never leave the bodies out in the open like this.”
God knew, the slayers regularly went through shifts in leadership, either because the Omega got bored, or because of internal power struggles. But the enemy was incented to keep their biz off the human radar screens as much as vampires were—so no way would they have abandoned this mess for the CPD to find.
As Butch sensed the arrival of the other brothers, he rose to his feet. Phury and Z came out of the ether first. Then it was Rhage and Tohr. And Blay. That was everyone for tonight: Rehvenge often fought with the Brotherhood, but this evening, he was up in the symphath colony playing King of the Damned, and it was Qhuinn’s, Xhex’s, and John Matthew’s rotation off.
“Tell me I’m not seeing this,” Rhage said grimly.
“Your eyes are working just fine, true.” V stabbed his hand-rolled out on the sole of his boot. “I couldn’t believe it, either.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“He?” Butch asked, glancing at the pair. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“Where to start on that one,” Hollywood muttered as he checked out another hunk of lesser. “You know, if I had a stake, we could make lesser-kebabs.”
“Only you could think of food at a time like this,” someone drawled.
“I’m just sayin’.”
If there was more conversation at that point, Butch didn’t hear it because his internal alarm suddenly started to ring-a-ding-ding. “Boys . . . we’re about to have company.”
Pivoting around, he faced the alley’s open end. The enemy was approaching. Fast.
“How many?” V asked as he came forward.
“At least four, maybe more,” Butch said, as he thought of the fact that there was no way out behind them. “This may be a trap.”
Back at the Brotherhood’s training center, Manny was paying special attention to his patient.
As he worked Payne’s breast with his hand, she writhed under him, her legs bicycling with impatience on the mattress, her head thrown back, her body glowing like the moon on a cloudless winter night.
