by J. R. Ward
Just to be honest.
Yeah, but if he dumped his life out on the table, where would that leave her? In a position of having to report him as a symphath and likely fearing for her very life. Great outcome. Perfect.
“I wish I were different,” he said, which was as close as he could get to speaking the truth that would separate them forever. “I wish I were a different male.”
“I don’t.”
That was because she didn’t know him. Not truly. And yet he couldn’t handle the idea of never seeing her after this night they’d had together.
Or that she would be terrified of him.
“If I asked you to come here again,” he said, “and let me be with you, would you?”
There was no hesitation. “Yes.”
“Even if things couldn’t be…normal…between us? Sexually speaking.”
“Yes.”
He frowned. “This is going to come out wrong….”
“Which is fine, because I’ve already put my foot in it with you back at the clinic. We’ll just be even.”
Rehv had to smile, but the expression didn’t stick. “I have to know…why. Why would you come back.”
Ehlena lay back down against the pillows and, in a slow sweep, moved her hand up over the satin sheet that covered her stomach. “I have only one answer to that, but I don’t think it’s going to be what you want to hear.”
The cold numbness, which was returning as the remnants of those orgasms he’d had dissipated, sped up its reclamation of his body.
Please let it not be pity, he thought. “Tell me.”
She was quiet for a long while, her stare shifting out toward the blinking, glowing view of Caldwell’s two halves.
“You ask me why I would come back?” she said softly. “And the only answer I have is…how could I not.” Her eyes flipped to his. “It doesn’t make sense to me on some level, but then, feelings don’t make sense, do they? And they don’t have to. Tonight…you gave me things I not only haven’t had for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt.” She shook her head. “I wrapped up a body yesterday…a body of someone my own age, a body of someone who likely as not had headed out of his house the evening he was killed with no clue that it was his last night. I don’t know where this”—she gestured back and forth between them—“thing with us is going. Maybe it’s just a night or two. Maybe it’s a month. Maybe it’s longer than can be measured by a decade. All I know is, life is too short not to come back here and be with you like this again. Life is just too short, and I like being with you too much for me to give a crap about anything other than having another moment like this.”
Rehvenge’s chest swelled as he stared at her. “Ehlena?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way.”
She drew in a deep breath and he saw her bare shoulders tighten. “Okay. I’ll try not to.”
“You keep showing up here? Being who you are?” There was a pause. “I’m going to fall in love with you.”
John found Xhex’s place easily enough because it was only ten blocks from ZeroSum. Even still, the neighborhood might as well have been in a different zip code entirely. The brownstones on the street were elegant and old-world, with the curlicue shit around all the bay windows making him think they were Victorian—although how he knew that with such surety he hadn’t a clue.
Hers wasn’t a whole building, but a basement apartment in one particularly attractive walk-up. Underneath the stone stairs that led up from the sidewalk there was an alcove, and he slipped in and used the key on a strange copper-colored lock. A light came on as he stepped through, and he saw nothing exciting: Red-washed floor made of stone slabs. Whitewashed walls made of concrete blocks. At the far end there was another door with another odd lock.
He’d expected Xhex to live someplace exotic and filled with weapons.
And plenty of French stockings and stillies.
But that was fantasy for you.
Down at the far end of the hallway, he opened the other door and more lights flared. The room beyond was windowless and empty except for a bed, and the nondecor was no surprise, considering what the basement hall was like. There was a bathroom across the way, but no kitchen, no phone, no TV. The only color in the room came from the floor of old-fashioned pine boards that were finished to a fresh honey glow. Walls were whitewashed, like the corridor, but made of brick.
The air was surprisingly fresh, but then he saw the vents. Three of them.
John took off his leather jacket and laid it out on the floor. Then he removed his boots, keeping his thick black socks on.
In the bathroom, he used the toilet and splashed his face with water.
No towels. He used the tail ends of his heavy black shirt.
Stretching out on the bed, he kept his weapons on, although not because he was afraid of Xhex.
God, maybe that made him stupid. The first thing he had been taught in the Brotherhood’s training program was that you never trusted symphaths, and here he was, risking his life by staying in the home of one—likely through the day, without having told anyone where he was.
Yet it was exactly what he needed.
When night fell again, he was going to decide what to do. He didn’t want out of the war—he liked fighting too much. It felt…right, and on more than just a defend-the-species kind of level. It felt like it was what he was supposed to be doing, what he had been born and bred to do.
But he wasn’t sure he could go back to the mansion and live there.
After a while, the lights went off when he didn’t move, and he just stared into the darkness. As he lay on the bed with his head on one of the two rather stiff pillows, he realized it was the first time he had been truly alone since he’d been picked up from his shitty apartment by Tohr in that big-ass black Range Rover.
With total clarity, he remembered what it had been like to live in that hellhole of a studio in not the wrong part of town, but the downright dangerous section of Caldie. He’d been terrified every night because he’d been scrawny and weak and defenseless, drinking only Ensure because of his bad gut, weighing less than a vacuum cleaner. The door that had separated him from the drug users and the prostitutes and the rats that were the size of donkeys had seemed thin as paper.
He had wanted to do good in the world. Still did.
He had wanted to fall in love and be with a woman. Still did.
He had wanted to find a family, have a mother and a father, be a part of a clan.
Didn’t anymore.
John was beginning to understand that emotions in the heart were like tendons in the body. You could pull them and pull them and pull them and feel the pain of the distortion and the stretching…and up to a point, the joint would still function and the limb would bend and support weight and remain useful after the stress was off. But it wasn’t an infinite kind of thing.
He’d snapped. And he was damn sure there was no emotional equivalent of arthroscopic surgery.
To help ease his mind into rest so he didn’t drive himself nuts, he concentrated on what was going on around him. The room was quiet, except for the heat blower, but that didn’t make much noise. And the building was empty above him, with no sounds of anyone moving around.
Closing his eyes, he felt safer than he probably should have.
Then again, he was used to being on his own. The time he’d spent with Tohr and Wellsie and then with the Brotherhood was an anomaly. He’d been born in that bus stop alone, and he’d been alone in the orphanage even as he’d been surrounded by an ever-shuffling deck of kids. And then he’d been out in the world by himself.
He’d been brutalized and gotten over it without help. Been sick and healed himself. Made his way as best he could and done an okay job of it.
Time to get back to basics.
And the core of himself.
That time with Wellsie and Tohr…and the Brothers…was like a failed experiment—something that had seemed to have potential, bu
t that, ultimately, was a failure.
THIRTY-TWO
Night or day, it didn’t bother Lash.
As he and Mr. D pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned mill and the Mercedes’ headlights swung around in a fat arc, it didn’t matter to him whether he met the king of the symphaths at noon or midnight, as he somehow wasn’t intimidated by the motherfucker anymore.
He locked up the 550 and walked with Mr. D across a decaying asphalt stretch to a door that was very sturdy, considering the shape the mill was in. Thanks to the light snow that was falling, the setting seemed like something out of an ad for quaint Vermont vacations, as long as you didn’t look too closely at the sagging roofline or the ragged siding.
The symphath was already inside. Lash knew it sure as he felt the flurries on his cheeks and heard loose stones crunch under his combat boots.
Mr. D opened the door and Lash stepped inside first to show he didn’t need a subordinate to clear the way. The interior of the mill was nothing but a lot of cold air, the rectangular building having long ago been stripped of anything useful.
The symphath was waiting down at the far end, near the massive wheel that still sat in the river like an old fat woman in a cooling bath.
“My friend, how nice to see you once more,” the king said, that snake voice rippling along the rafters.
Lash walked over to the guy nice and slow, taking his time, checking and double-checking the shadows thrown by the glass windows. Nothing but the king. This was good.
“Have you considered my proposal?” the king said.
Lash was not in a fucking-around mood. After the shit with the Domino’s delivery guy the night before and the fact that there was another drug dealer to pick off in about an hour, now wasn’t the time to play.
“Yeah. And you know what? I’m not sure I need to do you any favors. I’m thinking either you give me what I want, or…maybe I just send my men north to slaughter you and all the other freaks up there.”
That flat, pale face broke into a serene smile. “But how would that work for you? It would be destroying the very tools with which you wish to best your enemy. Not a logical step for any ruler to take.”
Lash’s cock tingled at the tip, respect turning him on, though he refused to acknowledge the fact. “You know, I wouldn’t think the king would need help. Why can’t you just do the killing yourself?”
“There are extenuating circumstances, and benefits to making it appear as if the demise occurred outside of my influence. You will learn, over time, that machinations in the background are at times far more effective than those you conduct in full view of your population.”
Point taken, though again, Lash wasn’t going to give props.
“I’m not as young as you think,” he said instead. Fuck it, he’d aged about a billion years in the last four months.
“And you are not as old as you believe. But that is another conversation for a different time.”
“I’m not looking for a therapist.”
“Which is a shame. I’m rather good at getting into the heads of others.”
Yeah, Lash could see that. “This target of yours. Is it a male or a female.”
“Would it matter?”
“Not in the slightest.”
The symphath positively beamed. “It is a male. And as I said, there are unusual circumstances.”
“How so?”
“He will be difficult to get to. His private guard is rather fierce.” The king floated over to a window and looked out. After a moment, his head turned as an owl’s would, rotating on the spine until it was nearly facing backward, and then his white eyes flared red for a moment. “Do you think you can handle such a penetration?”
“Are you a homo?” Lash blurted.
The king laughed. “You mean, do I prefer lovers of my same sex?”
“Yeah.”
“Would that make you uncomfortable?”
“No.” Yes, because it would mean that he kinda sorta had the hots for a guy who swung that way.
“You don’t lie very well,” the king murmured. “But it will come with age.”
Fuck that. “And I don’t think you’re as powerful as you think you are.”
When the sexual speculation disappeared Lash knew he’d hit a sore spot. “Beware the waters of confrontation—”
“Spare me the two-bit, fortune-cookie bullshit, Your Highness. If you were filling out that robe with a good set of balls, you’d get rid of this guy yourself.”
Serenity returned to the king’s face, as if Lash had just proven his inferiority with the outburst. “Yet instead I’m having someone else take care of it for me. Far more sophisticated, although I don’t expect you to understand that.”
Lash dematerialized right in front of the guy and locked his palms around that slender throat. With a single, brutal thrust, he forced the king up against the wall.
Their eyes locked, and as Lash felt a probe into his mind, he instinctively shut the entryway through his frontal lobe.
“You’re not unlocking my trunk there, asshole. Sorry.”
The king’s stare grew red as blood. “No.”
“No what?”
“I do not prefer lovers of my own sex.”
It was the perfect shoe to drop, of course: the implication being that Lash was staying close because he was the one who liked cock out of the pair of them. He let go and stalked around.
The king’s voice was now less snakelike and more factual. “You and I are rather well matched. I believe we shall both get what we want from this alliance.”
Lash turned and faced the guy. “This male, the one you want dead, where do I find him.”
“The timing must be correct. Timing…is everything.”
Rehvenge watched Ehlena put her clothes back on, and though getting her back into that uniform wasn’t exactly what he wanted, the show of her bending over and slowly smoothing her stockings up her leg wasn’t half-bad.
Not. At. All.
She laughed as she picked her bra up and twirled it around her finger. “Can I put this on now?”
“Absolutely.”
“You going to make me take my time again?”
“I just figured there was no rush on the hose.” He smiled like the wolf he was feeling like. “I mean, those things run, don’t they—Oh, fuck me…”
Ehlena didn’t wait for him to finish talking, but arched her back and pulled the bra around her torso. The little shimmy she worked as she reclasped it in the front made him pant…and that was before she drew the straps over her shoulders, leaving the cups wedged under her breasts.
She came over to him. “I’ve forgotten how to work it. Can you help?”
Rehv growled and pulled her in close, sucking one nipple into his mouth and working the other with his thumb. Just as she gasped, he flipped the cups into place.
“I’m glad to be your lingerie engineer, but, you know, it looked better off you.” As he jogged his eyebrows at her, her laugh was so free and easy his heart stopped. “I like that sound.”
“And I like making it.”
She stepped into her uniform and pulled it up and then fastened its buttons.
“Pity,” he said.
“You want to know something silly? I wore this even though I don’t have to go to work tonight.”
“Did you? Why?”
“I wanted to keep things professional, and yet here I am, thrilled that it didn’t work out that way.”
He stood up and took her into his arms, not worried at all about being totally naked now. “Count me in on the thrilled part.”
He kissed her softly, and as they parted, she said, “Thank you for a lovely evening.”
Rehv tucked her hair behind her ears. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Working.”
“When do you get off?”
“Four.”
“Be here?”
She didn’t pause. “Yes.”
As they walked out of the bedroom and throu
gh the library, he said, “I’m going to see my mother now.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, she called me and asked to see me. She never does that.” It felt so right to be sharing details of his life. Well, some of them, at any rate. “She’s been trying to make me more spiritual, and I’m hoping this isn’t a bid to get me on some kind of retreat.”
“What do you do, by the way? For work?” Ehlena laughed. “I know so little about you.”
Rehv fixated on the view of the city over her shoulder. “Oh, a lot of different things. Mostly in the human world. I have only my mother to take care of, now that my sister is mated.”
“Where’s your father?”
In the cold grave, where the fucker belonged. “He’s passed.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ehlena’s warm eyes made a shot of what sure as shit felt like guilt go through his chest. He didn’t regret killing his old man; he was sorry that he was obscuring so much from her.
“Thanks,” he said stiffly.
“I don’t mean to pry. About your life or your family. I’m just curious, but if you’d prefer—”
“No, it’s just…I don’t talk about myself much.” Wasn’t that the truth. “Is that…is that a cell phone ringing?”
Ehlena frowned and broke away. “Mine. In my coat.”
She loped off into the dining room, and the tension in her voice as she answered was apparent. “Yes? Oh, hi! Yeah, no, I—Now? Of course. And the funny thing is I won’t need to go change into my uniform because—Oh. Yes. Uh-huh. Okay.”
He heard the phone clip shut as he got to the dining room’s archway. “Everything all right?”
“Ah, yeah. Just work.” Ehlena came over while pulling her coat on. “It’s nothing. Probably just staffing stuff.”
“You want me to drive you over?” God, he would love to take her to work, and not just because they could be together a little longer. A male wanted to do things for his female. Protect her. See to her—