by J. R. Ward
“Is this okay?” he said hoarsely.
“Oh, yes,” she breathed.
“You are so much more than I ever expected.”
Reaching up, she stroked his face. “And I would say the same back to you.”
Boone moved slowly at first, but that did not last. Before long, he was pumping into her hard, the bed banging against the wall, his pelvis slapping into the cradle of her own. Grabbing onto his shoulders, she tried not to score his skin with her nails and failed.
Helania had to hold on for dear life, and wasn’t that incredible.
Raw. Powerful. Dominating.
He was everything a warrior was supposed to be, shattering her previous awkward, largely unsatisfying, sexual experiences, blowing everything, even her fantasies, out of the water. And as her body absorbed his penetrations, her head went back and forth on the pillow, her view of the ceiling vacillating as he advanced and retreated with all the strength in his rugged body.
Even though it was not over yet, she couldn’t wait to be with him again.
• • •
No clue how long it lasted.
When Boone’s hips finally locked into Helania’s, and his sex kicked out one last ejaculation, he was utterly and completely spent. And as his arms abruptly lost their strength, he barely managed to twist to the side to avoid crushing her.
They both were breathing hard, their sexes still joined thanks to the torque of his spine, their skin covered in a sheen of sweat.
He had made a mess all over her. And given that sensuous smile on her face? She didn’t mind one bit.
Opening his mouth, he wanted to say the perfect thing. Express the awe and joy that was in his heart. Put together a combination of words that made her know how much all of this had meant to him.
Nothing came out.
There was just too much to be said, and he was too satiated to do anything other than mumble.
So he let his fingers do the walking.
Stroking her hair back from her face, he caressed her throat, her collarbone . . . her sternum. With a gentle touch, he drew circles around one of her breasts and then a line down her belly. Her body was as finely built as her facial features were, her curves and her straightaways subtle and perfect, and he took his time with his lazy, loving, exploration.
In response, she did some exploring of her own, running her hand up and down his arm, lingering over the bulge of his biceps and the slice of his triceps.
As their bodies cooled, they communicated by contact, everything shared and accepted, all thoughts and feelings out on the table, the experience they’d had memorized by the quiet, peaceful aftermath—
The banging sound had him jacking upright and reaching for a gun he did not have holstered on him—because, hello, he was frickin’ naked. When the banging happened again, he looked to the ceiling.
Helania laughed. “It’s the humans overhead.”
Creeeeeak. Boom, boom, boom.
“They’re getting in the shower.”
Boone glared at the sounds. “The hell they are. They’re square-dancing with concrete shoes.”
“We’re going to get about eight minutes of quiet next.”
Boone glanced at the digital clock. “You’ve timed it?”
“With the amount of noise they make every weekday morning, I’ve had to adapt and it helps to know the different stages. You can get through almost anything as long as you know it won’t last forever.”
Resettling beside her, he folded her in against him and stroked the outside of her arm. “Eight minutes?”
“Soap, shampoo and conditioner.”
“Is it a man or a woman up there?”
“One of each.”
“Oh, God, they could breed. And then there would be more of them.”
“I can always move out.”
Boone opened his mouth, but then slapped it shut when he realized he was about to suggest that she could come stay with him. Talk about moving fast—it was way, way too early for that.
Next week he could bring it up. Or maybe tomorrow night.
J/k, he thought.
In all seriousness, he had often overheard Craeg, Peyton, and Axe talk about their females at the training center or after hours when they were all chilling on the bus. It was like a constant, low-level preoccupation for his buddies: when they were seeing their mates, where they were going to go with them, how they were going to enjoy the time they had. He’d never understood it before. Sure, he’d appreciated a fine-looking female on occasion; take Rochelle, for example—even though he’d had his reservations about committing to a lifetime with her, he had not been blind to her obvious beauty and poise.
But he’d never come anywhere close to what he’d seen from his friends.
Now? He so fucking got that drill. And like his buddies, it wasn’t just about sex for him. He wanted to tell Helania about the Fade Ceremony. Find out how she was feeling about the investigation. Ask her advice about things pertaining to Marquist and his father’s household and the goddamn will.
This connection he had with a relative stranger was just like what the other three males had likewise been shocked by: Instead of time and experiences revealing a compatibility that led to a relationship, with Helania, it had been less a gradual evolution of feeling for him and more like a bank vault being opened by the correct combination.
An unlocking that was an instantaneous—
Boom! Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.
Boone glanced at the clock. “Oh, my God, eight minutes. You’re right.”
“I’ve had some experience with them.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “Next is dressing. It’s going to get louder because they’re right above us.”
Man, she did not underestimate the floor show. The banging and crashing, creaking and bouncing, made him doubt that clothes were the only thing involved.
“Are you sure they’re not playing jai alai up there?” As she giggled, he looked over at her. “Listen, I can take care of this for you. I can make this go away.”
“By doing what?”
“Breaking both their legs.” He winked at her. “Or if there are more than two, all of the legs that are up there. It’ll cut down on the noise huge.”
Helania smiled. “You’re joking, right?”
“Yes.” He got serious. “I’m not into hurting things unnecessarily.”
The instant he said it, he knew that wasn’t exactly true. But lessers did not count. They weren’t even living, for godsakes.
“Can I ask you something?” she whispered.
“Please.” He tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “What do you want to know?”
“When you came here and I opened that door . . .” Her voice drifted. “You looked worn-out. Is everything okay?”
Boone twisted a lock of her red and blond hair around his finger. “I feel like I should choose my words carefully here.”
“Why?”
“My sire died, as you know. But I’m not . . . I’m not mourning him like you do your sister. He and I didn’t have a good relationship. I was an embarrassment to him, pretty much since birth, because I didn’t look like the proper aristocrat he was. I was always bigger, more muscled, not the whip-thin body type the glymera prefers.” He hesitated to share that he might have been the product of an affair. “Then, after my blood mahmen passed unto the Fade, he just moved another female in without talking about it. Like she was a sofa replacing a couch that had been stained. I couldn’t take all his superficial bullcrap anymore after that. I had tried to live up to his expectations, but you can only take so much of that kind of censure before you either separate yourself or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Kill yourself.” He shrugged as if it was no big deal. Even though it had been. “My final straw with him was the stepmahmen thing. His final straw with me was a broken arrangement that brought shame on the bloodline. And then me joining the Brotherhood’s training program, of course. So, anyway, when he died . . . it was
a relief for me on many levels.”
“I am so sorry you had such a difficult time with your sire.”
“It happens. Particularly in the glymera, I think.”
“I’m not sure what is worse. Missing someone who I loved as much as I loved Isobel . . . or suffering through the relationship you had with your father.”
“Sad toss-up.” And probably one of the roots of their connection. “Suffering has many vocabulary words, doesn’t it.”
There was a period of silence. “You were arranged?” she asked.
“I was. She ended it, and the truth was, I was more than fine with it. I was prepared to go through with things to save face for her and everyone else in my family. But the true love wasn’t there for me, and it wasn’t there for her, either.”
Helania took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I asked about the mating thing. And just so you know, I’ve never been even remotely close to something like that.”
Boone smiled slowly. “You can ask me anything. And if I’d known that you’d had a broken arrangement, that would have been something I’d focus on, too.”
“Your father must have hurt you very deeply over the years.”
“It’s okay. It’s just the way things were.”
Helania tucked her arm under her head and played with his hand. “Tell me more about what it was like for you growing up. And the training program. And . . . what happened with your father when he went unto the Fade.”
Instead of feeling burdened or obligated, it was a relief to open up to someone. To her, specifically. “Where do you want me to start?”
Helania’s smile was full of compassion, and so were her beautiful yellow eyes. “Wherever you want. We have all day long.”
Yes, he thought to himself. We do.
And wasn’t that a great thing.
NINETEEN
Butch silenced the recording that was playing out of his cell phone’s little speaker and turned his head on his pillow toward his shellan. Marissa was curled up under the covers beside him, her blond hair fanned over her naked shoulders, her pale blue eyes somber.
“He did a great job,” Butch murmured. “Boone’s a natural at interrogation. I was prepared to have to talk to her again, but he covered everything I would have asked.”
“That poor female.” Marissa shook her head. “I wonder if you should ask her if she’d like to talk to Mary? That’s a lot of trauma to go through right there. Her sister first and then finding that body.”
Butch put the phone down on the comforter between them. “I will suggest that.”
“But . . . what.”
Glancing at his female, he shrugged. “Nothing.” When Marissa just kept staring at him, he cursed and looked at the ceiling of their bedroom. “God, you know me so well.”
Which in moments like this was the good news and the bad news.
“You think she had something to do with the deaths?” Marissa said.
Butch shrugged and rubbed the heavy gold cross that hung around his neck. “I don’t trust anybody. Not at this stage of things. Although putting that into words after listening to a recording like that makes me feel like an asshole.”
“You have a job to do. You’re being professional.” She frowned. “So there were two deaths?”
“Three.” He turned to face Marissa again. “Vishous looked into the first one. It was a human. There were various reports in the Caldwell Courier Journal about it. She was found in a storage room at the club, just like the two females, and she was killed by a knife. There was no hanging her up, however. According to the latest update from the CPD, it’s still an open case. Homicide hasn’t found the killer, but that doesn’t mean it was a vampire, so it’s hard to know how that victim fits in. We either have a serial killer who is refining his technique, or there is a coincidence with that one.”
“The third female who was killed . . . her family has her remains now?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Havers is doing an autopsy on her. With their permission, thank God. When they came forward and confirmed her identity, I really didn’t want to put them through the hell of forcing that kind of thing. But they want to know who did this.”
As things got quiet, he reflected that it did not seem strange at all to refer to his shellan’s blooded brother as if the male were an unrelated third party. Havers was exceedingly competent at his job, taking such very good care of his patients and staff. But as a sibling? To Marissa?
Butch was never going to forgive that guy for turning her out when she had nowhere to go. Just before dawn.
The thing with true family, from everything he’d learned? Sometimes they shared DNA with you. Sometimes they didn’t. And given that the blood connection only went so far, the friends you chose were what made up the slack when your relatives sucked.
“Havers will do a very thorough job.” Marissa looked away. “That is one thing you can always depend on him for. He is a superior physician.”
After everything she had been through with her only sibling, she still had the class to shine some light on the positive traits the male had. But that was his shellan. She was way too good for Butch. And for that brother of hers.
Butch moved the phone out of the way and pulled her into him. “You are a female of worth, you know that?”
“You’re biased,” she whispered as she kissed his mouth.
“Are you kidding me?” He stroked her lower lip with his thumb. “I’m a facts-only kind of man. I speak the truth and only the truth, so help me God.”
“The truth, hmm. Well, tell me something, Mr. Veracity. How does this feel?”
As her hand wrapped around a very personal and private place on his body, he closed his eyes and moaned.
Gritting his molars, he said, “I don’t know. I can’t tell. Maybe you should squeeze it a little or move things around down—oh . . . yeah . . . more of that. I think something’s coming to me.”
Marissa laughed low in her throat and nipped his lower lip with her fang. “More like coming for me, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Definitely. Always—what was the question?”
• • •
The daylight hours came and went with depressing alacrity.
At least that was what Boone thought when he glanced at the digital clock on Helania’s bedside table and saw that it was a little past six p.m.
Shit, he thought. He felt like he’d just walked through her door.
“Where has the time gone,” he muttered.
Helania yawned. “We’ve talked all day.”
And yet there hadn’t been one moment that he had struggled to find something to tell her or been less than totally interested in everything she had to say. Well . . . and they had also done some things that hadn’t been exactly conversational.
“Eight minutes,” he murmured.
“Hmm?”
“I feel like all these hours lasted no longer than the eight minutes those humans spent in the shower—”
Boom! Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom . . .
“Speak of the devil,” she said with a laugh as they looked at the ceiling.
“They’re back already?” Boone groused. “Did I invoke them like an evil spell?”
“The human workday is over and their commute is short.”
The sound of a distant ringing brought his head up. It was his phone. Out on her kitchen table in his jacket. “And our work night is just beginning. That’s me. Will you excuse me?”
“Sure.”
As he got out of bed, he stretched and felt his spine crack back into place. Crossing over to the door, he opened things, strode out to his leather jacket and palmed his phone.
“Hello?” he said. “Yes. Okay, sure. Yup. Ah . . . give me twenty minutes? Okay, thanks. Bye.”
Ending the call, he stared at the Samsung for a moment. Then he pivoted around. Helania was in the doorway to her bedroom, her spectacularly naked body such a sight, he lost his train of thought.
“You don’t have to explai
n yourself,” she said gently. “You have a life to get back to, and I am not asking for an accounting—”
“It’s about my father.”
She frowned. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I just have to go deal with some unpleasantness, but I’ve known it was coming. One way or the other, it’s all going to be okay.”
Walking over to his female, he took her face in his hands and let his eyes roam around her features, his mind memorizing each one of them sure as if he were never going to be with her again.
“When can I see you?” he whispered.
Helania’s smile was so beautiful, he felt like his heart expanded to fill his entire body.
“Whenever you want.” She lifted up onto her tiptoes and kissed his mouth. “I’m just here.”
“Well, my friends Craeg and Paradise asked me to a late First Meal tonight. Would you like to join us?”
“Really?” The shy happiness that came over her made her glow. “I would love to.”
“It’s a date. I’ll text you the where and when ASAP.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you wherever.”
Boone pulled her into his chest and just held her against his naked body. The contact was instantly electric, but he couldn’t give in to temptaion. He was liable to not resurface until the dawn.
Days and days from now.
And given where he was headed, he had to be good right now so he wasn’t late. Besides, if the Scribe Virgin so provided, this would be far from the last time he had a chance to be with Helania.
“I can’t wait to see you again,” he said as he put his chin on the top of her head. “And I’ll be counting down the eight minutes until I do.”
As she laughed, he felt the reverberation in his own flesh.
“Good deal,” she said as she looked up at him. “I’ll be doing the same.”
TWENTY
As Boone rematerialized on the front stoop of his house, he was distracted by the slideshow of Helania that was playing on the backs of his eyelids. And what do you know, he especially liked the image of her as the bedroom light had come on when they’d first been making love, her body arched as she rode him, her hands capturing her hair and holding it up, her breasts spectacular as they swayed to the undulations of her hips—