Blood Kiss

by J. R. Ward

Sure enough, there was a knock on the loo's door just as he ditched the johnny and stepped under the spray.

  "Craeg?" she said. "Everything all right?"

  "Yup. Showering and ready to eat."

  "That's good. Be careful, though--do you need help?"

  He glanced down at the enormous erection sticking straight out in front of his hips. "No. I think I can handle things all on my own."

  "Okay, but you know where the call button is, don't you? Just let us know if you feel woozy."

  "Yup. Thanks."

  He waited a moment longer to see if there was anything further coming at him. When there was only blissful, no-more-questions, he picked up the bar of soap--but he didn't go for his cock and balls. Running the thing over his chest and shoulders, his neck and face, his legs and feet, he gave his body a chance to get over the bright idea.

  Nope. If anything, the smooth feel of the suds over his flesh made him think about sitting on the floor in front of Paradise and stroking her fine skin.

  The shampooing didn't help, either. And as the air in the bathroom became dense with humidity, and he ran out of places to wash, he conceded defeat, ended the negotiation, resigned himself to the inevitable.

  "Oh, fuck," he groaned as he gripped himself.

  Putting one arm up on the tile wall, he leaned in until his forehead was on his forearm. The stroking was too damn good--he couldn't remember, actually, the whole jerking-off thing feeling this incredible before. It was . . . paradise.

  Or, Paradise, as the case was.

  Harder, faster, until he dropped his other arm and squeezed his balls with a twist--

  In a series of lightning bolts, his cock kicked against his hold and he ejaculated onto the wall of the shower over and over again.

  And when he finally sagged, he cursed over and over again.

  After everything he'd been through, why now. Why did he have female-on-the-brain now?

  It was just stress, he told himself. This attraction thing was just a reaction to the stress he was under, a wormhole for him to focus on so that he didn't implode.

  Out. Towel off. There was a razor so he shaved, and deodorant for his pits, and a comb for his hair, short though it was.

  Shit, he needed clothes.

  Stepping out . . .

  He found another loose shirt and pants uni on the bed as well as a pair of running shoes that, yup, were in his size. Absently, he wondered how many sets they had on hand for the candidates. The whole height/weight/shoe-size thing had been part of the check-in process, but still.

  A couple of minutes later, he was out the door, down the corridor, and walking into the cafeteria room.

  Talk about a spread. The first thing he saw as he entered was a table with enough food on it to feed an army. Plates were lined up, ready to be filled, damask napkin rolls held sterling silver forks and knives, and the "bar" had about every kind of non-alcoholic anything you'd like--including a milkshake machine.

  Clearly, the Brothers were refining things as they went along.

  "None of it is tampered with," a male voice said behind him.

  Craeg wheeled around and put his fists up like he was going to be attacked. The Brother Butch was sitting at the corner round table, legs propped up on an empty chair, a plate of food by his side. With careful, precise movements, he shifted scrambled eggs to his mouth without dropping anything off his fork.

  "G'on," he said around chewing. "Get food. Sit with me. I'm not gonna fuck with you."

  Craeg nodded once and hit the lineup. He wasn't shy about portions--he had no idea what was in store for all of them, but he could guess an energy reserve was the best way to prepare for the evening.

  Picking a seat two over from the Brother, he had a good view of the door, something he regularly found himself requiring: Always know your escape. That was how he had lived through the slayers coming to his home.

  "Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush," the Brother said before Craeg had gotten a fork load even close to his lips.

  Great. So the guy had planned this, knowing that Craeg was in house and likely going to eat early.

  Lowering the hash browns, Craeg forgot about the food and focused on the door. "What."

  "I think you need to stay here in the training center."

  "Excuse me?" He shifted his eyes back to the Brother. "I got a place."

  The guy put his boots down on the floor and moved around so they were face-to-face. "I know where you live."

  There was something about that direct stare that freaked him out, so he made a show of eating. "Yeah. I didn't lie about my address."

  "It's not safe."

  "Been there since the raids."

  "That tenement barely has plumbing. And there's no shelter from the sun."

  "I'm in the basement."

  "A fire would cure that quick, putting you in the position of having to choose incineration by flame or noonday light."

  Craeg cut a breakfast sausage in two and put half of it in his mouth. "I'm not moving."

  "You got food and water here--and a good bed to crash on. No rent, either."

  "I don't need charity." Okay, now he was beginning to get pissed off. "I came here to learn how to fight, not make you guys feel good about yourselves."

  Butch leaned in. "You think we want to wipe your ass every time you take a shit? Really, you think that's where we're coming from?"

  "Look, I don't need this--"

  "Asshole," Butch snapped. "We are about to invest over the next year a couple hundred thousand dollars into you free of charge--you think we want that up in smoke 'cause your pride has a hard-on? This is not charity and it is not negotiable. I will take you home tonight after class, watch you pack up your shit, and then I will drive your miserable carcass back here or you can fuck off. What's it going to be, tough guy."

  Craeg cursed long and hard, but it was under his breath.

  Talk about by the short hairs.

  "Fine," he muttered.

  Butch clapped him on the shoulder. "And to show there's no hard feelings from you being a douche just now, I'll set you up with a good TV, Internet and a twelve-month calendar of Rhage so you have something pretty to look at."

  With that, the Brother got up from the table, taking his still-full plate with him.

  So that "meal" of his had just been to prove that it was safe to eat.

  "See you in class," Butch said by the door after he'd bused his dishes at the sink. "Classroom tonight. Bombs, detonation systems, defusing. Fun stuff."

  Left by his little lonesome, Craeg put his head in his hands.

  Plans, he'd had plans for all this, people.

  WTF.

  *

  "And then what transpired?"

  As her father asked the question and spread more marmalade on his crust-less toast, Paradise tried to formulate another lie. Which, considering she had gotten about two hours of sleep and was still in physical recovery from everything, was like trying to button up a shirt in the dark.

  "Ah . . ." She broke off a piece of her croissant and put some strawberry jam on it. "Well, after we checked in, there was a cocktail hour of sorts." Vomitorium. "We milled around the gym getting to know one another." Nearly were electrocuted in the dark. "Went for a swim." Had a drowning party. "At the end, we took a walk." Dickensian death march. "And then everybody had a physical exam." Cardiac resuscitation. "It was a long evening, so that was why they wanted us to stay." Half-dead and barely breathing. "And that's it."

  Great. She was channeling Mr. Subliminal.

  Her father nodded. "The Brotherhood was most kind in calling me--Peyton as well. They said you did a wonderful job--that you were at the top of your class."

  "I surprised myself."

  And was still lost in her own home. Sitting with her father in the same seats they always did, under the same crystal chandelier, with the same porcelain plates and cups and saucers, watched over by the same oil paintings of ancestors, she felt like she was in a nice hotel that
was furnished like a castle, and had a staff so well trained they were able to anticipate everything she wanted . . . and was in a foreign land.

  Then there was her father . . . God, her dad.

  As Abalone sat at the head of the long, glossy table, his handsome face was aglow with relief and pride--mostly relief--and didn't that make her feel even worse. The fact that her fabrications were having their desired, de-escalating effect distanced her even further from him . . . plus there was the added layer of her guilt.

  Which was not just about the training.

  It was impossible not to remember and obsess about what she'd done with Craeg, and what he'd done to himself. Part of her was constantly re-running every nuance of the experience, all the eye contact, all the sounds, the scents . . . the expression on his face as he--

  Okay. She was not going there at the damned dining room table.

  Where she would go, though? God, much as she hated to admit it, she worried that that interlude, even if it proved to be a one-time only, made her unmateable in the eyes of the glymera. Sure she was still sexually pure, but her vein had been good and tapped and that had led to . . . that certain exhibition, as one might call it, on Craeg's part.

  Indeed, she hated the fact that she was wasting even a thought on that load of judgmental BS--but sitting here with her father, it was an unavoidable burden.

  You didn't ditch an entire upbringing's worth of context that quickly.

  Especially when you thought about what your next of kin wanted for you in life.

  "Paradise?"

  She shook herself and smiled. "I'm sorry, what?"

  "I think you have enough jam on there, darling."

  Paradise looked down and saw that she had put about half the jar on a piece of croissant the size of her thumb. The red sweetness was dripping down onto her plate, all over her knife, onto her hand.

  "Silly me." She started trying to clean things up. "So how was your night last evening?"

  Fortunately, he went into his work and a grand festival ball that was coming up and some other things, and she was able to listen well enough to nod in all the right places.

  What were the Brothers going to do to us tonight? she wondered. And how the hell was she going to act all normal around Craeg?

  Thirty minutes later, she was in her uniform, had her satchel sorted, and was out the front door, dematerializing to the meeting place. The bus was already parked in the wooded lot, and the folding door opened as soon as the driver saw her.

  Going up the three steps, she loosened her coat and met the eyes of the group. Novo was lounging back, earbuds plugged in, her iPhone front and center. Boone was the same. Axe was asleep in the back again, no doubt dreaming about things that hopefully would stay in his brain. Anslam was typing into his phone, probably updating his Facebook status to being in a relationship with the Porsche his father had just bought him as a reward for being in the training program. And Peyton was rubbing his face as if maybe that would wake him up.

  "Hey," he said as she came down to where he was.

  As she took a seat across the aisle from him, he shifted around, leaned against the blackened windows, and stretched his legs out.

  "You ready for this?" he asked.

  "I could answer that better if I knew what we were in for."

  He grunted. "Okay, I'll change the subject. So, guess what I heard?"

  Peyton was the source of all gossip--always had been. He'd been the one to tell her about the new toy parked in Anslam's family's garage, and the latest scandal involving his second cousin and the fact that she'd lied to her parents about where she was staying in town, and the one about some female who was married to an old goat and fucking rounds of males in her guest cottage on her estate.

  But that last one had to be hyperbole.

  "What?" At least the chatter would take her mind off of seeing Craeg. "And embellish if you can. This trip is going to take a half hour at least."

  "I got more stories. Don't you worry."

  "Thank God." And this was in spite of their having spent all those hours on the phone during the day. "Have I mentioned lately that I love you?"

  "Yes, but if you really wanted to prove it, you'd get that tattoo we were talking about."

  "I'm not having your picture put on my ass."

  "When you pass me by, though, it'll give me something pretty to look at."

  "Not if I'm wearing pants. And hey, shouldn't I be offended by that comment?"

  "Yeah, I'm sorry to break this to you, Parry, but blondes with perfect bodies and smart blue eyes don't go anywhere in this world. You might as well get used to this sad truth right now."

  She threw her head back and laughed. "Okay, what's your story."

  "My third cousin told me the Twelfth Month Festival Ball is being held in your daddy's ballroom. Why the fuck didn't you tell me?"

  "I heard that, too," Anslam said without looking up from his phone.

  Paradise glanced around. Boone and Novo couldn't have heard a thing, and Axe was out of it. Lowering her voice, she said, "Peyton. You need to chill about stuff like that, remember?"

  Her buddy cracked his knuckles. "Sorry. But we're basically alone--and that's some big shit. You want to go with me? Or can I come with you." He gave her a winning smile. "That sounds dirty, doesn't it."

  Paradise shot him a glare, but wasn't offended in the slightest. "You're a pig. And yes, please be my escort. I'm going to need you to help me get through the night."

  "I shall be a gentlemale and a scholar--well, at least for most of the evening. Maybe till two a.m. I'm going to get hammered, though. Just want to warn you up front. That's the only way I'm going to make it to dawn."

  Paradise leaned across the aisle and put her palm out. "High five."

  As their hands smacked together, she thought, Thank you, baby Jesus, at least I'm going with a friend.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Britney fucking Spears.

  As Craeg sat in the rear of the classroom, all he could think of was that dumb-ass "Baby One More Time" video from a million years ago. He'd seen the damn thing only once, when an older, post-trans cousin of his had been watching it with a fascination he hadn't understood. At the time, Craeg had wondered why the hell some idiot human school girl with a pair of braids, a pleated skirt, and half her belly hanging out would be on anyone's radar.

  Now? He so got it.

  ". . . this detonator's primer is lead azide, lead styphnate, and aluminum, and you want to place the compound here, about the base charge, which in this case is tetryl." When Boone put his hand up, the Brother Tohrment nodded. "Yeah?"

  "Are there other primary charges?"

  "Good question. There's dizodinitrophenol and also you can use mercury fulminate mixed with potassium chlorate. But we're ASA in the Brotherhood."

  The lesson continued, with Tohr, as he'd told them to call him, walking them through Bomb Making 101--and Boone, the class hand popper, interrupting from time to time with yet another "good question."

  If the guy hadn't been so tight at the hand-to-hand, and otherwise quiet and not a problem, you'd have pointed to him as the classhole.

  Meanwhile, Craeg was doing the right brain/left brain polka and he guessed the creative/analytic bucket labels held up: The analytical side of him was plugged into the front of the room, with its long countertop of chemicals in various forms and containers, and its blackboard on which there were scribbles and diagrams.

  The "creative" side, or "nasty man-whore repository of all things heeeeeeeeey-now," kept pulling his eyes over to Paradise. She was sitting in front of him, at the table over on the right, and unlike him, she certainly didn't appear anything other than strictly focused: she was leaning in, intent to the point of obsession on the information being given, taking notes on a pad.

  Half of her hair was pulled back into a loose knot she'd tied with some kind of thick black elastic, and she was wearing the same loose white ji-like uniform they all were. But fucking A, she mig
ht as well have been in a string bikini with all those blond waves down around her shoulders and her breasts--

  Stop it.

  To fuck with that, his libido shot back.

  Fantastic. Now he was distracted and arguing with himself. Any more data processing under his helmet and he was liable to have a skull meltdown of Three Mile proportions.

  And what do you know, he went right back to staring at her.

  The root of his problem, apart from the orgasms he'd had in the shower, was the nape of her neck.

  That skin right there had to be as soft as the stuff on her foot.

  Had to be.

  Shifting in his seat, he surreptitiously dropped his hand under the table and rearranged himself. Damn it. He really had to reel this shit in.

  And yet even as his stare went back to Tohr and the bomb talk, he had a fantasy of getting out of his chair, going up behind her, and running his lips across the pale stretch between her hairline and the collar of that loose white shirt--

  "Craeg?"

  "What?" he squeaked to Tohr. Clearing his voice, he tried again in a more manly tone. "I mean, what."

  "Come up here and walk us through all this."

  Craeg glanced down. And wondered exactly what kind of a tent show he was going to give everybody if he got to his feet. Big top. Three ring. Barnum & Bailey. Yup.

  And then he felt Paradise look at him--and his cock kicked hard enough to make his hips jump.

  Right. He was pretty sure that was not the kind of detonation the professor had in mind.

  "Craeg?"

  *

  As an awkward pause ground things to a halt in the classroom, Paradise braced herself and glanced over her shoulder.

  She had been achingly aware of where Craeg had chosen to sit the entire class, to the point that it was almost like she had a compact open and had angled the mirror just so she could watch him watch the teacher. Which was nuts. She was pretty sure, given his Not You, Not Now speech from the night before, that he wasn't giving her a second thought--so it seemed particularly ridiculous to waste even a nanosecond on the guy that wasn't related to training.

  Besides, it wasn't like he'd done anything to bring notice to himself.

  Not so with the other trainees. Boone had asked a lot of questions--starting with, "Why can't I use my laptop to take notes?" To which the Brother Tohrment had replied, "Because the tap-tapping of a keyboard makes me want to get my shotgun. Do you feel like having a cranial leak tonight?" And culminating about two seconds ago with another inquiry that, frankly, helped the class.