by J. R. Ward
His hips jerked. His cock spasmed. His hands tightened so much they dug into her pelvic bones.
But no.
Syn remained on the verge, and the pleasure soon soured into pain, until the smallest move she made was like a dagger into his cock, the icy hot agony stabbing his sac.
His female lifted her head. And there was a smile on her face that, under different circumstances, he would have taken great satisfaction in.
The smile didn’t last. As she moved, he winced and hissed.
“Are you okay?” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jo might have been enjoying an amazing post-best-sex-of-her-life glow, but she wasn’t completely out to lunch. Then again, it was so obvious that something was seriously wrong with Syn that she’d have to be knocked out cold not to notice. Underneath her body, he was sitting stone still on the couch, sweat beading his forehead and his upper lip, his chest pumping in short bursts, the veins running down his biceps and into his forearms standing out in sharp relief.
Oh, God, were they going to end up on an episode of Sex Sent Me to the ER?
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Get… off… me…” he gritted.
Pushing up from her knees, she felt his rock-hard erection slip out of her, and as the length bounced on his lower belly, he hissed again and flared his fingers out straight from his hands like they were channeling the pain he was in. And then he just sat there.
“Do you want me to help you–”
“Don’t touch it.” Syn’s eyes were squeezed shut so hard, his whole face wrinkled, his lips pulling off his—
Jo gasped. And it was at that moment that his lids rose up.
As he stared at her, she told herself to get a grip. Those weren’t real fangs, for godsakes.
Cursing under his breath, he seemed to force his features into a semblance of composure. “I just need a minute.”
“Okay, sure.” Moving off the sofa slowly, she grabbed for her clothes. “Take your time.”
Concerned for him and embarrassed by… oh, so much, really… Jo made quick work of pulling on her underwear and her pants—and as she got herself back together, she was very aware of how much he was not moving. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. His fingers were now curled into fists, that flex traded in for a tight-knuckled crank. And then there was the breathing.
She looked at his lips, which were now firmly locked in place over his teeth. Maybe she’d imagined those canines?
“Do we need to get you to the ER?”
“What?” he grunted.
“For the Cialis.” Clearly, that was the problem here. “Or the Viagra you took.”
He lifted his head and looked at her myopically. “What?”
“For an erection lasting longer than four hours, you’re supposed to get medical help. It’s on the ads for those pills.” When he still seemed confused, she covered her hand discreetly and pointed downward to what was still very much going on at his hips. “You know…”
Syn re-shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the cushions once more. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Listen, you can be honest. I’m not going to judge. Men take these things, I guess, to make sure they can… be at their best.”
The image of that ad with a man and a woman sitting in porcelain tubs and holding hands in front of a sunset made her wonder what in the hell her life was turning into. But then she already knew the answer to that.
And it rhymed with “trapper.”
“I know it hasn’t been hours,” she said, “but you’re so uncomfortable, maybe we should just go get this taken care of?”
As he swallowed with obvious difficulty, his Adam’s apple went up and down like it was having trouble doing its job. “This is just what happens to me.”
Wait, so staying hard wasn’t a problem for him? “Then stop with the pills.”
“What pills?”
As her cell phone started to ring, she went over and took it out of her purse. When she saw who it was, she looked through into the kitchen, to the digital clock on the microwave. You know, just in case her iPhone was wrong about the time.
But nine o’clock wasn’t that late. And how was it only nine? It felt like four in the morning.
With that thought in mind, she answered in a low tone. “McCordle, I can’t talk right now.” There’s an erection on my sofa. “Let me call you back.”
“Just want you to know the FBI is going to subpoena security tapes from both the Hudson Hunt and Fish Club and Gigante’s back office gambling den at his cement business. They’ve got probable cause on an unrelated RICO charge. They’re going to let us see what’s on ’em. I’ll let you know when I can.”
“That’s great. Thank you.”
Bracing herself, she turned around as she ended the call. Syn was up on his feet and had pulled his leathers into place, somehow stuffing his anatomy in behind the fly. When she considered the logistics on that one, she wondered why he wasn’t passed out on her carpet.
Or why the buttons weren’t going airborne.
“Let me take you to the ER,” she said. “You should be sensible about this.”
Yeah, it’s not like she waited four months to go see a doc.
“It’s not what you think,” he muttered.
“It’s not what you think.” Putting her phone back in her purse, she knew he had to have lied about the Cialis thing. “But you’re a grown man, and you can do what you want—”
“I can’t…” He motioned over his hips. “You know, I can’t…”
“Enjoy your baritone singing voice right now? I don’t mean to make light of this, but—”
“Finish.”
Jo frowned as she felt herself go still. “I don’t understand.”
Syn lowered his eyes to the floor. “I can’t ejaculate.”
“Ever?” She shook her head. “I mean, you orgasm, but you don’t—”
“No, I don’t find a release.”
“At all?” As he shook his head, Jo cradled her purse against her chest. “Have you gone to see someone about this?”
“No reason to.”
“There is every reason to. You’re suffering, and maybe… what happened? Were you hurt?”
“It’s just the way it is for me.”
He went over to the bathroom doorway. Without her noticing, he’d set his leather coat down just outside of the door, and given the bulges under it, she had a feeling he had hidden things of a holster variety under there. Without further comment, he picked the load up and went into the loo, closing the door behind himself. A moment later, he reemerged, jacket on.
“You don’t have to go,” she said.
“It’s best that I do—”
“May I take you back to wherever you live?”
“No, I can do it—”
“The nearest bus stop is a quarter of a mile away. I’ll take you there.”
“That’s okay. I’ll walk.”
Jo found herself speaking quickly because he was clearly in a hurry to leave, and she didn’t want him to go for a whole lot of reasons: “Let me walk you out, then—”
“It’s just cosmetic stuff, by the way.”
“What is?”
Syn pointed to his mouth. “The teeth. They’re caps. Don’t worry about it.”
Jo blinked. “Okay.”
When he nodded, she expected him to come over and hug her. Give her a kiss. Hold her for a minute. Instead, he walked right out her apartment door.
Jo stayed where she was as she imagined him exiting the building. Going down the sidewalk. Heading toward—
She hadn’t told him which way the bus stop was. Did he know? Or—
Rushing out of her apartment, she jumped through the vestibule, and punched her way out into the chilly spring night. Under the bright moonlight, she looked left. Looked right.
There was no one walking down the sidewalk, no huge-shouldered man with a long stride heading a
way, no solid boots making heavy sounds on the cement.
Syn had up and disappeared.
Again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Syn rematerialized downtown, taking shape across the street from the Hudson Hunt & Fish Club. The place was dark, no slivers of illumination showing around the seams of the front door or the painted panels of the windows. There was someone in there, however. A blacked-out Chevy Suburban was parked face out in a narrow alley alongside the building, steam rising from its tailpipes. Behind the wheel, the figure of a man with broad shoulders was a dense, solid shadow, and from time to time, when the chauffeur took a draw on his cigarette, his face was illuminated on a flare.
A car passed between Syn and the SUV. Then another.
Reaching behind to his belt, Syn took one of his two suppressors from its holstered position at the small of his back. Then he drew one of his forties. As he screwed the cylinder onto the end of the barrel, the metal on metal made a soft, pliant sound.
Dematerializing, he re-formed behind the Suburban.
In silence, he proceeded down the length of the SUV, keeping his back flat to the steel panels and the panes of glass. When he got to the driver’s side door, he knocked on the window.
The man put the thing down. “What the fuck do—”
The gun made a huffing sound as Syn pulled the trigger. The bullet went directly into the frontal lobe and came out the far side, thunking into the back seat.
As the driver started to slump, Syn caught him before his forehead hit the horn. Forcing the deadweight onto the center console, Syn reached in, popped open the door, and unlocked everything else. With hard hands, he dragged the dead body out, and carried it around to the rear where he stored it into the cargo space in the back.
Returning to the driver’s seat, he got behind the wheel, put up the window most of the way, and sat with his gun on his thigh.
His phone went off in his leather jacket, the subtle vibration transmitting through the pocket and onto his chest wall. Getting the thing out, he cut the power to the unit and put it back. When another rattling sounded, he looked down. A cell phone was slotted into a drink cup holder, and he picked it up. The text notification on the screen read: ETA 2 mins. Home next.
Precisely 120 seconds later, the side door of the squat, concrete building opened, and a piece of meat with a set of jowls like a St. Bernard’s came out. Syn recognized the guy from when he’d entered the place the night before last. He’d been sitting at the bar with the younger version of the old man.
And what do you know, behind the bodyguard, Gigante lumbered out of his establishment, his cigar shoved into the corner of his trout mouth, his jacket open, his big belly exhausting the structural integrity of the buttons down the front of his shirt.
The bodyguard walked ahead and opened the door to the back seat, letting Gigante get in first.
“Sal, you can’t keep this car warm, huh?” Gigante said as he hefted himself up. “I hate the fucking cold. What’s the matter with you.”
The bodyguard shut the door. And Syn turned around to the back seat and discharged two bullets into Gigante’s huge chest. The old man gasped and clutched his sternum, his ham hands fisting up his shirt, the cigar falling out from between his lips and throwing up sparks as it bounced off his leg.
The bodyguard opened the front passenger door. Syn pointed the gun at his face and discharged another pair of slugs.
The man fell to the ground in a slop of limbs.
Syn refocused on Gigante. The mobster’s eyes were wide, the whites flaring around the dark irises as he gasped for air.
“I don’t have a problem killing females,” Syn said. “Or anybody. But I’ll be damned if you hurt Jo Early. Say good night, motherfucker.”
The final bullet went into the front of Gigante’s throat, the torso jerking in response, a splash of red arcing forward and speckling the side of the bucket seat in front. Struck by a bored hunger, Syn reached out and ran his forefinger through the stain on the leather; then he brought the blood to his mouth. As he sucked it down, he loved the taste of his kill and stared into the man’s eyes for a little longer, listening to the gurgling, the gasping.
The sound of screeching tires brought Syn’s head around. Another car was turning into the alley, summoned by someone, something.
Syn dematerialized out of the driver’s seat, ghosting away, leaving the carnage behind. Death had been coming fast for Gigante. He would not last long.
And even if the man did, Syn didn’t give a shit.
His female was safe. That was all that mattered.
* * *
Jo took her time throwing away the paper plates they’d used, the napkins that had been wadded up, the empty box that was stained in a circle in the center and had cold cheese clinging to one edge. As she topped off the Hefty trash bag in her bin, she felt as though she were dismantling something she’d imagined. Packing up a fantasy. Putting a puzzle that had been completed away.
And it was for what could have been that she moved slowly and sadly. In her kitchen, standing over her trash which now had to be taken out, she had the thought that she wished she’d used two of the four mismatched plates she’d taken with her when she’d left Dougie and the boys’ apartment. If she’d used washable plates, she could have at least kept what he’d eaten on.
Which was pretty pathetic, really. And God, this was too much of a profound loss for what was really going on. That man was nothing but a stranger coming and going out of her life, a storm passing after an intense sexual experience that had ended on an unsettling note.
Yeah, so where was the post-hurricane renewal?
Her phone ringing held little interest, but she went back over to her purse because she could use a distraction.
When she saw who it was, she answered fast. “Bill? Bill?”
“Hey,” her friend said. There was a pause. “I’m sorry I’ve been kind of out of touch.”
“Oh, no. Listen… how is Lydia?” Jo went over to the sofa and sat down. “How are you? Is there anything I can do for you guys?”
“No, I think…” Bill cleared his throat. “We are where we are, you know? The doctor says we can try again after waiting a month. And you know, at this early stage of things, it was probably a chromosomal problem that… well, was incompatible with life. That’s what they called it.”
Okay, compared to losing a child, the fact that Jo was in a funk over some guy seemed downright offensive.
“I am so sorry,” she said, her voice cracking. “Children are a blessing.”
“They are.” Bill took a deep breath. “They sure are, Jo.”
There was a long period of silence, and Jo closed her eyes as she thought about her birth parents, the mother who had brought her into this world and the father who had been in on the miracle at the ground floor, so to speak. When Jo had been growing up, she had given into the temptation to think the pair of those parental hypotheticals were totally different from the Earlys who had adopted her. She convinced herself that living in her real parents’ home would have been one long birthday party with balloons and cake and presents every day and all night. No more cold, drafty house with too many rooms. No more stiff, formal dinners in the dining room. No more sense that she was a nuisance, unwelcome in spite of the fact that her entering Mr. and Mrs. Early’s lives had been a willful, deliberate act on their part.
But yes, the stolen-princess narrative had been one she’d spun as a youngster, her true, virtuous parents out there somewhere in the world, swindled out of their rightful place in her life, mourning her loss as they fruitlessly searched for her.
She had waited for a rescue for so many years. So many. But now that she was an adult? She knew that there was no castle waiting for her on top of a mountain. No “real” parents still searching for her. No one that truly cared, one way or the other, about her future.
Which was why she had to be the hero in her own life.
“Jo? You still there?”
> Shaking herself back into focus, she cleared her throat. “Sorry. I’m just… yes, I’m here.”
“I know this is awkward.”
“No, it’s not. What happened to you and Lydia is painful and very sad, and even though we haven’t known each other for very long, you’ve both been great friends to me.” Actually, they were her only friends at the moment, so there was that. “I just wish there was something, anything, I could do for you and her. But I can’t, and I hate this feeling that I’m failing you. And then there’s the suckage that you’re good people and this shouldn’t happen to good people.”
Bill’s voice got hoarse. “Thanks, Jo.”
“I won’t say you’re welcome because I wish I didn’t have to say it at all.”
“Amen.”
They talked for a little bit longer, and then they ended the call. Bill was going to take the rest of the week off as personal time, and that was the right thing to do. And when he came back? Jo told him she was ready to co-author everything she was working on.
Putting her phone down, she stared at the door. And thought about how she had made love to a stranger right where she was currently sitting just a half hour before.
Funny how losses were as much of a currency as happiness in life. Somehow, they were noticed more, though.
Jo got to her feet and went back into the kitchen. In a drawer by the refrigerator, one that might have held cutlery if she had any, she kept a manila folder she hadn’t gone into since she’d moved in.
There had been so much going on. And she hadn’t been feeling well. And—
Well, she just hadn’t had the energy to deal with one more thing.
But she took the folder out now, and unsheathed the glossy photograph of a man with dark hair and dark eyes. Turning the image over, she read the block printing that had been done in Sharpie.
DR. MANUEL MANELLO, CHIEF OF SURGERY. ST. FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER.
Bill had given her the picture. And had typed up a report on what he’d found when he’d looked into her birth mother, who had died during birth.
It was a mystery solved. Kind of. And the dark-haired man? He was her brother… who had strangely disappeared off the radar over eighteen months before.