by J. R. Ward
He got out and walked up to the front stoop. The ivy-themed welcome mat that he planted his boots on was just too frickin' creepy.
The door swung open before he hit the bell. Xavier was on the other side, all big and bleached-out looking. "You're late."
"And you said we'd be meeting alone."
"Worried you can't handle company?"
"Depends on what kind it is."
Xavier stepped to the right. "Why don't you get in here and find out?"
Van stayed on the mat. "Just so you know, I told my brother I was coming here. Address and everything."
"Which brother, the older or the younger?" Xavier smiled as Van narrowed his eyes. "Yes, we know about them. As you say, their addresses and everything."
Van put his hand into the pocket of his parka. The nine-millimeter he was packing slid into his palm like the thing was finding home.
Money, think about the money.
After a moment, he said, "We going to get down to it or keep yakking it up in this draft?"
"I'm not the one on the wrong side of the door, son."
Van came in, keeping an eye on Xavier. Inside, the place was cold, like the heat was down low or maybe the house was abandoned. The lack of furniture suggested the latter.
When Xavier reached into his back pocket, Van tensed up. And what came forward was a weapon of sorts: ten perfectly crisp hundred-dollar bills.
"So do we have a deal?" Xavier asked.
Van looked around. Then took the money and stashed it. "Yeah."
"Good. You start tonight." Xavier turned and walked to the back of the house.
Van followed, staying on high alert. Especially as they went down into the basement and he saw six more of Xavier standing around at the bottom of the stairs. The men were all tall, pale-haired, and smelling like old lady.
"Looks like you've got a few brothers of your own," Van said casually.
"They're not brothers. And don't use that word around here." Xavier glanced over at the hardasses. "These will be your trainees."
Moving under his own steam, but watched by a nurse in full hazmat dress, Butch got back into bed after having had his first shower and shave. The catheter and the IV were out and he'd managed to suck back a good meal. He'd also slept soundly for eleven out of the past twelve hours.
Man… he was beginning to feel human again, and the speed with which he was rebounding was a gift from God as far as he could tell.
"You did well, sire," the nurse said.
"Next stop, the Olympics." He pulled the sheets up himself.
After the nurse left, he glanced at Marissa. She was sitting on the cot that he'd insisted be brought in for her and her head was bent over the needlepoint she was doing. Ever since he'd woken up about an hour ago she'd been acting a little strange, as if she was on the verge of saying something that she couldn't quite manage to let out.
His eyes went from the bright crown of her head, to her delicate hands, to the peach gown that overflowed her makeshift bed… and then he eased his stare back up to the bodice of the dress. There were dainty buttons going all the way down the front. Like a hundred of them.
Butch shifted his legs around, feeling restless. And found himself wondering how long it would take him to slip each of those pearls loose.
His body stirred, the blood pooling between his legs, making him swell up hard.
Well, what do you know. He really was better.
And man, he was a sonofabitch.
He rolled away from her and closed his eyes.
Trouble was, with his lids down, all he saw was him kissing her on Darius's second-story porch last summer. Oh, shit, he remembered it clear as a photograph. He'd been sitting down and she'd been between his legs and his tongue had been in her mouth. They'd ended up on the floor when he broke the chair—
"Butch?"
He opened his eyes and jerked back. Marissa was right in front of him, her face on his level. In a panic, he glanced down to make sure the sheets hid what was doing between his thighs.
"Yeah?" he said with so much gravel he had to repeat himself. Christ, his voice box always had rough edges, his words perpetually a little hoarse, but if there was one sure thing that made that worse it was thinking about getting naked. Especially with her.
As her eyes scanned his face, he feared that she saw everything, right down to the core of him. Where his obsession with her was the strongest.
"Marissa, I think I should go to sleep now. You know, rest and all that."
"Vishous said you came to see me. After Wrath was shot."
Butch squeezed his lids shut again. His first thought was that he was going to drag his sorry ass out of bed, find his roommate, and beat the guy. Goddamn, V—
"I wasn't told," she said. As he looked at her and frowned, she shook her head. "I didn't know you'd been by until Vishous told me last night. Who did you see when you came? What happened?"
She hadn't known? "I, ah, a doggen answered the door. After she went upstairs, she said you weren't receiving and you'd call. When you never did… I wasn't going to stalk you or something."
Well, okay… he'd stalked her a little. She'd just never known about it, thank God. Unless of course, V, that loose-lipped fool, had filled her in on that, too. Bastard.
"Butch, I got sick and I needed some time to regroup. But I wanted to see you. That's why I asked you to come calling when I ran into you back in December. When you said no, I thought… well, you'd lost interest."
She'd wanted to see him? Had she said that?
"Butch, I wanted to see you."
Yeah, she had. Twice.
Well, now… didn't that perk a guy up.
"Shit," he breathed, meeting her eyes. "Do you have any idea how many times I drove past your house?"
"You did?"
"Practically every night. I was pathetic." Hell, he still was.
"But you wanted me to leave this room. You were angry to see me here."
"I was pissed—er, angry because you weren't wearing a suit. And I assumed you'd gotten roped into being here." With a shaky hand, he reached out for a lock of her hair. God, it was so soft. "Vishous can be very persuasive. And I didn't want your compassion or your pity to put you someplace you didn't want to be."
"I wanted to be here. I want to be here." She grabbed his hand and squeezed.
In the oh-my-God-this-has-to-be-Christmas silence that followed, he struggled to reorder the last six months, to catch up with this reality they'd somehow missed. He wanted her. She wanted him. Was it true?
Felt true. Felt good. Felt…
He let incautious, desperate words fly. "I am pathetic over you, Marissa. Yeah, totally fuc—er… really pathetic. Over you."
Her pale blue eyes teared up. "Me… too. For you."
Butch wasn't even aware of making the big move. But one moment they were separated by air. The next, he was putting his mouth on hers. When she gasped, he pulled back.
"Sorry—"
"No—I–I was just surprised," she said, eyes on his lips. "I want you to…"
"Okay." He tilted his head to the side and brushed her mouth. "Come closer to me."
With a tug on her arm, he eased her onto the bed, then pulled her over so she was lying on top of him. The weight of her was little more than warm air and he loved it, especially as he was surrounded by her blond hair. Putting both hands to her face, he stared up at her.
As her lips parted in a gentle smile just for him, he saw the tips of her fangs. Oh, God, he had to get into her, had to penetrate her in some way, so he leaned up and led with his tongue. She moaned while he licked into her mouth and then they were kissing deep, his hands threading into her hair and cradling the back of her head. He spread his legs and her body eased between them, increasing the pressure where he was hard and thick and hot.
From out of nowhere, a question shot into his mind, one he had no right to ask, one that tripped him up and had him losing his rhythm. He pulled back from her.
"B
utch, what is it?"
He stroked her mouth with his thumb, wondering if she'd had a man. In the nine months since he'd kissed her before, had she taken a lover? Maybe had more than one?
"Butch?"
"Nothing," he said, even as a fierce possessive streak clawed into his chest.
He took her mouth again, and now he kissed her with an ownership he had no right to, one hand shooting down to the small of her back, pressing her into his arousal. He felt this urgent need to stake a claim on her so that anything male would know whose woman she was. Which was nuts.
Abruptly she jerked back. As she sniffed the air, she seemed confused. "Do human males bond?"
"Ah… we get emotional, sure."
"No… bond." She buried her face in his neck, inhaled, then started to rub her nose against his skin.
He gripped her hips, wondering just how far things were going to go. He wasn't sure he had the strength for sex, even though he was totally erect. And he didn't want to presume anything. But Jesus God in heaven he wanted it from her.
"I love the way you smell, Butch."
"It's probably the soap I just used." As her fangs dragged up his neck, he groaned, "Oh, shit… don't… stop…"
Chapter Eleven
Vishous came into the clinic and headed straight back to the quarantine room. No one at the nursing station questioned his right to barge on through, and as he went down the hall, the medical staff tripped over their own feet to get out of his way.
Smart. He was heavily armed and edgy as hell.
The day had been a wasteland. He hadn't found anything in the Chronicles that approached what had been done to Butch. Nothing in the Oral Histories either. And worse, he was sensing things in the future, parts of people's destinies realigning, but he could see nothing of what his instincts told him was happening. It was like watching theater with the curtain down: Every once in a while he would see the velvet move as a body brushed the far side or he would hear indistinct voices or the lighting would shift under the tasseled hem. But he knew no particulars, his gray cells shooting blanks.
He strode past Havers's lab and went into the housekeeping closet. As he stepped through the concealed door, he found the anteroom empty, the computers and the monitors carrying on their sentry duties alone.
V stopped dead.
On the glowing screen closest to him, he saw Marissa lying on the bed on top of Butch. The cop's arms were around her, his bare knees split wide to accommodate her body as the two of them moved against each other in waves. V couldn't see their faces, but it was obvious their mouths were fused and their tongues wrapped.
V rubbed his jaw, dimly aware that under his weapons and his leathers, his skin had grown hot. God… damn… Butch's palm was slowly sliding up Marissa's spine now, going under her profusion of blond hair, finding, caressing the back of her neck.
The guy was totally sexed up, but he was so gentle with her. So tender.
V thought of the sex he'd had the night Butch had been taken. Nothing gentle about that. Which had been the point for both parties involved.
Butch shifted and rolled Marissa over, making a move to mount her. As he did, the hospital johnny broke open, the ties ripping free and revealing his strong back and powerful lower body. The tattoo at the base of his spine flexed as he pushed his hips through her skirts, trying to find home. And as he worked what was no doubt a rock-hard erection against her, her long, elegant hands snaked around and bit into his bare ass.
As she scored him with her nails, Butch's head lifted, no doubt to let out a moan.
Jesus, V could just hear the sound… Yeah… he could hear it. And from out of nowhere an odd yearning feeling flickered through him. Shit. What exactly in this scenario did he want?
Butch's head dropped back down into Marissa's neck, and his hips started to surge and retract, then surge again. His spine undulated and his heavy shoulders shrugged and released as he found a rhythm that made V blink really quick. And then not at all.
Marissa arched up, her chining lifting, her mouth opening. Christ, what a picture she was under her male, her hair strewn all over the pillows, some of it tangled around Butch's thick bicep. In her passion, in her vibrant peach gown, she was a sunrise, a dawn, a promise of warmth, and Butch was basking in what he was lucky enough to touch.
The anteroom's door opened and V wheeled around, blocking the monitor with his body.
Havers put Butch's medical chart down on a shelf and reached for a hazmat suit. "Good evening, sire. You've come to heal him again, have you?"
"Yeah…" V's voice cracked and he cleared his throat. "But now's not a good time."
Havers paused, suit in hand. "Is he resting?"
Not in the slightest. "Yeah. So you and I are going to leave him alone right now."
The doctor's brows shot up behind his horn-rimmed glasses. "I beg your pardon?"
V picked up the chart, shoved it at the doctor, then grabbed the suit and hung it back up. "Later, doc."
"I–I need to do an examination. I think he may be ready to go home—"
"Great. But we're leaving."
Havers opened his mouth to argue and V got bored with the conversation. Clamping a hand on the doctor's shoulders, he looked into the male's eyes and willed him into agreement.
"Yes…" Havers murmured. "Later. T-tomorrow?"
"Yeah, tomorrow works."
As V frog-marched Marissa's brother back out into the hall, all he could think about was the images on that screen. So wrong of him to watch.
So wrong of him to… want.
Marissa was on fire.
Butch… good Lord, Butch. He was heavy on top of her and big, so big her legs were stretched wide beneath her gown to accommodate him. And the way he moved… the rhythm of his hips was making her crazy.
When he finally broke the kiss, he was breathing hard and his hazel eyes were full of sexual hunger, a rank male starvation. Maybe she should have been overwhelmed because she had no idea what she was doing. Instead, she felt powerful.
As silence stretched, she said, "Butch?" Though she wasn't exactly sure what she was asking for.
"Oh… God, baby." With a light brush, his hand went down her neck to her collarbone. He paused as he got to the top of her dress, clearly asking for permission to take off her gown.
Which cooled her down fast. Her breasts seemed average enough, but it wasn't as if she'd seen any other female's to compare. And she couldn't bear to catch the sort of disgust males of her kind had looked at her with. Not on Butch's face, and especially not if she were naked. That distaste had been hard enough to bear fully clothed and coming from males she didn't care about.
"It's okay," Butch said, removing his hand. "I don't want to push you."
He kissed her lightly and rolled off her, dragging a sheet over his hips as he eased onto his back. He covered his eyes with his forearm, his chest going up and down like he'd been running.
Marissa looked down at her bodice and realized she was clutching the fabric so hard her knuckles were white. "Butch?"
His arm dropped and his head turned on the pillow. His face was still swollen in places, one of his eyes still black and blue. And she noticed that his nose had been broken, but not recently. Yet to her he was beautiful.
"What, baby?"
"Have you… have you had many lovers?"
He frowned. Inhaled. Looked like he didn't want to reply. "Yeah. Yeah, I have."
Marissa's lungs turned to concrete as she imagined him kissing other females, unclothing them, mating. She was willing to bet the vast majority of his lovers hadn't been clueless virgins.
God, she was going to throw up.
"Which is another reason it's good that we stop," he said.
"How so?"
"I'm not saying it would have gone this far, but I would need a condom."
Well, at least she knew what one of those was. "But why? I'm not fertile."
The long pause didn't inspire confidence. And neither did the way he curs
ed under his breath. "I haven't always been careful."
"With what?"
"Sex. I've had… a lot of sex with people who might not have been clean. And I did it without protection." He flushed as if ashamed of himself, the color riding up his neck and slamming into his face. "So yeah, I'd need a condom with you. I don't have any idea what I'm carrying."
"Why weren't you more careful with yourself?"
"Just didn't give a sh—er, yeah…" He reached out and took a piece of her hair. As he carried it to his lips and kissed it, he said under his breath, "Now I wish I were a goddamned virgin."
"I can't catch human viruses."
"I wasn't just with humans, Marissa."
Now she went completely cold. For some reason, if it was with females of his own species, with women, that struck her as different. But another vampire?
"Who?" she asked tightly.
"Somehow I don't think you'd know her." He dropped the strand of hair and put his arm back over his eyes. "God, I wish I could undo that. Undo a lot of things."
Oh… Jesus. "It happened recently, didn't it."
"Yeah."
"Do you… love her?"
He frowned and looked over at her. "God, no. I didn't even know her—oh, shit, that sounds worse, doesn't it."
"Did you take her into your bed? Did you sleep beside her afterward?" Why in the hell was she asking these questions? It was like poking at a cut with a steak knife.
"No, it was in a club." Shock must have shown on her face, because he cursed again. "Marissa, my life isn't pretty. The way you've known me, being with the Brotherhood, dressed in fancy clothes… that's not the way I lived before. And that's really not who I am now."
"Who are you, then?"
"No one you'd ever know. Even if I were a vampire, our paths would never cross. I'm a blue-collar kind of guy." At her look of confusion, he said, "Lower-class."
His tone was factual, as if he were reciting his height or weight.
"I don't think of you as lower-class, Butch."
"Like I said, you don't really know me."
"When I lie this close to you, when I smell your scent, when I hear your voice, I know everything that matters." She looked down the length of him. "You are the male I want to mate with. That's who you are."