by J. R. Ward
Oh. God. No.
When the girl glanced over at John, her hot stare made him feel like she’d grabbed him between the legs and sized up his cock with a squeeze.
He took cover behind a rack of brand-new, old-looking button-downs.
“I’m the manager,” she said, her drawl all about the bump and grind. “So you’re in good hands. All of you.”
“Niiiice.” Qhuinn’s mismatched eyes traced down the girl’s smooth legs. “Why don’t you get to work on him? I’ll watch.”
Blay stepped up beside John. “Whatever you pick out, I check first, and I’ll bring it to him in the dressing room.”
John sagged with relief and signed a quick thank-you to Blay for coming to the rescue yet again. The boy’s middle name was buffer. For real.
Unfortunately, the manager just smiled even more widely. “Two for one sounds good to me. Check it, I didn’t know we were having a sale on man candy tonight.”
Okay, this was going to be horrible.
An hour later, though, John was feeling better. Turned out Stephanie, the manager, had a good eye, and once she got into the clothes she chilled out on the come-ons. John got jacked into some sweet ragged jeans, a bunch of those deconstructed button-downs, and a couple of tight muscle shirts, which even he had to admit showed off his guns and his pecs like they were worth seeing. A couple of necklaces were pushed on him, and so was a black hoodie.
When it was done, John went up to the register with the shit draped over his arm. As he put the clothes down, he glanced at a bunch of bracelets in a basket. Within the tangle of leather and shells, there was a flash of lavender, and he weeded through the pile to get to it. Pulling out a woven bracelet with beads the color of Cormia’s rose on it, he smiled and surreptitiously put the thing underneath one of the muscle shirts.
Stephanie rang him up.
The total was over six hundred bucks. Six. Hundred. Dollars.
John wigged. He only had about four—
“I’ve got it,” Blay said, handing over a black card and glancing at him. “You can pay me the rest later.”
Stephanie’s eyes bugged at the sight of the plastic, then narrowed on Blay as if she were changing the price tag on him. “I’ve never seen a black AmEx before.”
“It’s no big.” Blay started poking through a bunch of necklaces.
John squeezed his friend’s arm then knocked on the counter to get Stephanie’s attention. He spread his money out, but Blay shook his head and started signing.
Pay me the rest later, okay? I know you’re good for it, and let’s face it, do you really want to come back here and pick up the shit you can’t cover? I don’t.
John frowned, finding it hard to argue with that logic. But I’m giving the rest to you, he signed after he handed his four over.
When you have it, Blay returned. Just whenever you have it.
Stephanie whipped the card through the machine, punched in the amount, and waited with her fingertips on the slip. Seconds later there was a chattering sound, and then she ripped the paper off and handed it over to Blay with a blue Bic pen.
“So . . . we’re closing now.”
“Are you.” Qhuinn leaned a hip against the counter. “And exactly what does that mean?”
“It’s just going to be me here. I’m a great boss. I’m letting the others go early.”
“But then you’d be all alone.”
“I would. It’s true. All by myself.”
Shit, John thought. If Blay was the buffer, Qhuinn was the king of complication.
The guy smiled. “You know, me and my boys wouldn’t feel right about leaving you here on your lonesome.”
Oh, yes—yes, they would, John thought. Your boys would feel just great about that.
Tragically, Stephanie’s slow smile sealed the deal. They were going nowhere until Qhuinn got into her cash register.
At least he worked fast. Ten minutes later, the store was empty and the chain-link security curtain had been pulled into place in the front. And he was getting pulled by the jeans chain into a lip-lock.
John held on to his two big bags while Blay got busy looking at shirts he’d already looked at.
“Let’s go into a dressing room,” the manager said against Qhuinn’s mouth.
“Perf.”
“We don’t have to go alone, by the way.” The girl looked over her shoulder, her stare landing on John. And staying. “There’s plenty of room.”
No way, John thought. NFW.
Qhuinn’s mismatched eyes sparkled with trouble, and behind the girl’s back he signed, Come with us, John. It’s time you did this.
Stephanie picked that moment to take Qhuinn’s full lower lip between her white teeth and his thigh between her legs. A guy could just imagine the things she was going to do to him. Before he did her.
John shook his head. I’m staying here.
Come on. You can watch me first. I’ll show you how it’s done.
The fact that Qhuinn was issuing the invite was not a surprise. He regularly had sex in pairs. He’d just never asked John to join in yet.
Come on, John, come back with us.
No, thanks.
A dark look came into Qhuinn’s eyes. You can’t always be on the sidelines, John.
John looked away. It would have been easier to get pissed at the guy if the same thing didn’t occur to him on a regular basis.
“Fine,” Qhuinn said. “We’ll be back in a while.”
With a lazy smile, he slid his hands onto the girl’s ass and picked her up. As he walked backward, her skirt rode up so she flashed pink panties and white cheeks.
When the pair was in a dressing room, John turned to Blay to sign something about what a man-slut Qhuinn was, only to stop his hands. Blay was staring off in the direction the two of them had gone with an odd expression on his face.
John whistled low to get his attention. You can go back, you know. If you want to be with them. I’m cool here.
Blay shook his head a little too quickly. “Nah. I’m hanging.”
Except his eyes went back to that dressing room and held steady as a moan drifted out. Going by the tenor of the sound, it was hard to know who had made it, and Blay’s expression got even tighter.
John whistled again. You okay?
“We might as well get comfortable.” Blay went behind the locked cash registers and sat on a stool. “We’re going to be here for a while.”
Right, John thought. Whatever was bumming the guy was off-limits.
John hopped up on the counter and let his legs dangle. As another moan sounded out, he started to think of Xhex and got hard.
Great. Just fab.
He was pulling his shirt out of his waistband to cover up his little problem when Blay asked, “So who’s the bracelet for?”
John signed quickly, It’s for me.
“Yeah, right. That thing wouldn’t fit your wrist.” There was a pause. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Honestly, it’s no big deal.
“Okay.” After a minute, Blay said, “So, you want to go to ZeroSum after this?”
John kept his head down while he nodded.
Blay laughed softly. “Thought you might. Just like I’ll bet if we go tomorrow night, too, you’ll be okay with it.”
I can’t tomorrow night, he signed without thinking.
“Why not?”
Shit. Just can’t. Have to stay home.
Yet another moan came out from the back, and then a muffled, rhythmic pounding started.
When the sounds stopped, Blay took a deep breath, like he’d been running intervals and had just finished the workout. John didn’t blame him. He’d just as soon leave the store, too. With the lights down low and no other people around, all the hanging clothes seemed sinister.
Plus, if they got to ZeroSum ASAP, he had a good couple of hours of Xhex sightings to look forward to, and that was . . .
Pathetic, really.
Minutes ticked by.
Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
“Shit,” Blay muttered. “What the hell are they doing?”
John shrugged. With their friend’s predilections, it was anyone’s guess.
“Yo, Qhuinn?” Blay called out. When there was no answer, not even a grunt, he slid off the stool. “I’m going to see what’s up.”
Blay went up to the dressing room and knocked. After a moment, he put his head in through the door. In a rush, his eyes flared and his mouth opened and he blushed from the roots of his red hair all the way to his palms.
Riiiiight. The session was evidently not finished. And whatever was doing was worth seeing, because Blay didn’t turn around right away. After a moment his head went back and forth slowly, as if he were answering a question Qhuinn had posed.
As Blay returned to the register, his head was down, his hands deep in his pockets. He stayed quiet as he eased back onto the stool, but his foot started going a mile a minute, tapping up and down.
It was obvious the guy didn’t want to hang around anymore, and John could totally get that.
Hell, they could be at ZeroSum.
Where Xhex worked.
As that happy little obsessive thought hit him, John wanted to bang his head into the counter. Man . . . clearly, the word pathetic had a new spelling.
And it was J-O-H-N M-A-T-T-H-E-W.
Chapter Eight
Among the problems with shame was that it in fact did not make you shorter or quieter or less visible. You just felt like you were.
Phury stood in the mansion’s courtyard and stared up at the looming facade of the Brotherhood’s home. All dour gray, with a lot of dark, glowering windows, the place was like a giant that had been buried up to its neck and was not happy with the dirt submersion.
He was no more ready to go into the mansion than it seemed ready to welcome him.
As a breeze came up, he looked to the north. The night was typical August in upstate New York. All around it was still summer, with the fat, leafy trees and the fountain going and the potted urns on either side of the house’s entrance. The air was different, though. Little drier. Little cooler.
The seasons, like time, were relentless, weren’t they?
No, that was wrong. The seasons were but a measure of time, just like clocks and calendars.
I’m getting older, he thought.
As his mind started to head off in directions that seemed worse than the ass-kicking he was likely to find in the mansion, he went through the vestibule and into the foyer.
The queen’s voice came out of the billiards room, accompanied by a quartet of pool balls clapping gently together and a couple of thunks. Both the curse and the laughter that followed had a Boston accent. Which meant that Butch, who could beat everyone else in the house, had just lost to Beth. Again, evidently.
Listening to them, Phury couldn’t remember the last time he’d played a game of pool or just hung out with his brothers—although even if he had, he wouldn’t have been completely at ease. He never was. For him, life was a coin that had disaster on one side and waiting for disaster on the other.
You need another blunt, mate, the wizard drawled. Better yet, have a bale of the stuff. Won’t change the fact that you’re a right bastard fool, but it’ll increase the chance of you lighting your bed on fire when you pass out in it.
On that note, Phury decided to face the music and go upstairs. If he was lucky, Wrath’s door would be shut—
It wasn’t, and the king was at his desk.
Wrath’s stare lifted from the magnifying glass he was holding over a document. Even through his wraparounds, it was straight obvi the guy was pissed. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
In Phury’s head, the wizard swooped up his black robes and parked it in a Barcalounger slipcovered in human skin. My kingdom for some popcorn and Junior Mints. This is going to be specTAAAcular.
Phury walked into the study, his eyes barely registering the French blue walls and the cream silk sofas and the white marble mantel. The lingering smell of lesser in the air told him that Zsadist had just been right where he was.
“Guess Z talked to you already,” he said, because there was no reason not to call a spade a spade.
Wrath put the magnifier down and leaned back behind his Louis XIV desk. “Shut the door.”
Phury closed them in together. “You want me to talk first?”
“No, you do enough of that.” The king lifted up his massive shitkickers and let them fall on the dainty desk. The pair landed like cannonballs. “You do plenty of that.”
Phury waited for the list of failures to get rolling out of courtesy, not curiosity. He was well aware of where he was at: trying to get killed out in the field; assuming the mantle of the Chosen’s Primale but not completing the ceremony; being overinvolved with Z and Bella’s life; not paying enough attention to Cormia; smoking all the time. . . .
Phury focused hard on his king and waited for a voice other than the wizard’s to run down his fuckups.
Except none of it came. Wrath said absolutely nothing.
Which seemed to suggest that the problems were so loud and obvious it was like pointing at a bomb exploding and saying, Boy, that’s really noisy—going to leave a crater in the pavement, too, huh?
“On second thought,” Wrath said, “tell me what I should do about you. Tell me what the fuck I should do.”
When Phury didn’t reply, Wrath murmured, ’’No comment? You mean you have no idea what to do, either?”
“I think we both know what the answer is.”
“I’m not so sure about that. What do you think I need to do?”
“Take me off rotation for a little while.”
“Ah.”
More silence.
“So is that where we’re at?” Phury asked. Man, he so needed a blunt.
Those shitkickers knocked together at the toes. “Dunno.”
“That mean you want me to fight?” Which would be a better outcome than he could hope for. “I’d give you my word—”
“Fuck. You.” Wrath stood up in a quick surge and came around the desk. “You told your twin you were coming back here, but dollars to shit piles you went to see Rehvenge. You promised Z you’d stop with the slayers and you didn’t. You said you’d be the Primale and you aren’t. Hell, you keep talking out your ass about how you’re going back to your room to get some sleep, but we all know what you do in there. And you honestly expect me to take your word about anything?”
“So tell me what you want me to do.”
From behind the sunglasses, the king’s pale, unfocusable eyes were searching. “I’m not sure time off and a fuckload of therapy is going to help, because I don’t think you’ll do either.”
Cold dread curled up like a wet, wounded dog in Phury’s gut. “Are you going to kick me out?”
It had happened before in the history of the Brotherhood. Not often. But it had. Murhder came to mind . . . shit, yeah, he was probably the last one to get the boot.
“Not as simple as that, is it,” Wrath said. “If you get curbed, where does that leave the Chosen? The Primale has always been a Brother, and not just because of blood-lines. Besides, Z wouldn’t take to that well, even as pissed off at you as he is now.”
Great. His safety nets were saving his twin from a head fuck and being the Chosen’s man-whore.
The king walked over to the windows. Outside, the summer trees swayed in a gathering wind.
“Here’s what I think.” Wrath popped his sunglasses up off his nose and rubbed his eyes like his head ached. “You should . . .”
“I’m sorry,” Phury said, because that was all he had to offer.
“So am I.” Wrath let the glasses fall back into place and shook his head. As he returned to his desk and sat down, his jaw was set along with his shoulders. Popping open a drawer, he took out a black dagger.
Phury’s. The one that had been left in the alley.
Z must have found the damn thing and carried it home.
The
king turned the weapon over in his hand and cleared his throat. “Give me your other blade. You’re off rotation permanently. Whether or not you see a shrink or how the shit shakes out with the Chosen is not my business. And I’m out of advice, because the truth is, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. Nothing I demand or ask of you is going to make a difference.”
Phury’s heart stopped for a moment. Of all the ways he’d thought this confrontation would play out, Wrath’s washing his hands of the mess had never been in the cards.
“Am I still a Brother?”
The king just stared at the dagger—which gave Phury the three-word answer: in name only.
Some things didn’t need to be said, did they.
“I’ll talk to Z,” the king murmured. “We’ll say you’re on administrative leave. No more fieldwork for you, and you don’t come to the meetings anymore.”
Phury felt a rush as if he were free-falling off a building and had just made eye contact with the pavement that had his name on it.
No nets anymore. No promises to break. As far as the king was concerned, he was on his own.
Nineteen thirty-two, he thought. He’d been in the Brotherhood for only seventy-six years.
Bringing his hand up to his chest, he palmed the grip of his remaining dagger, unsheathed the weapon in a single pull, and put it on the silly pale-blue desk.
He bowed to his king and left without another word. Bravo, the wizard called out. Such a shame your parents are already dead, mate. They’d be so delighted in this proud moment—wait, let’s bring them back, shall we?
He was slammed with two quick images: his father passed out in a room full of empty ale bottles, his mother lying in a bed with her face turned to the wall.
Phury went back to his room, took out his stash, rolled up a blunt, and lit it.
With everything that had happened tonight, and the wizard playing the role of the anti-Oprah, he either smoked or he screamed. So he smoked.
Across town, Xhex was not in her happy place as she escorted Rehvenge out of ZeroSum’s back door and into his bulletproof Bentley. Rehv didn’t look any better than she felt, her boss nothing but a grim dark shadow in a full-length sable coat as he slowly moved through the alley.