Chapter THIRTY-ONE

Inside his pitch-dark bathroom, Rehvenge banged into one of the marble walls, tripped across the marble floor, and ricocheted off the marble counter. His body was alive, sensation tingling through him, the pain of nailing his hip registering, the sawing breath in his lungs causing a burn, his heart thumping against his sternum.

He dropped the satin duvet, willed the lights on, and looked down.

His cock was stiff and thick, the tip glossy and ready to penetrate.

Holy...shit.

He glanced around. His vision was normal, the bathroom's colors black and steel and white, with the edge of the Jacuzzi rising up from the floor, its depth obvious. And yet even though nothing was flat or ruby red, his senses were utterly alive, his blood heated and thundering in his veins, his skin ready to be touched, the orgasm in the shaft of his erection screaming to get free.

He'd totally bonded with Ehlena.

And that meant-at least in this moment, when he was so desperate to have sex with her-his vampire side was winning out over the symphath part of him.

His need for her triumphed over the darkness in him.

It had to be the bonding hormones, he thought. Bonding hormones that had shifted his internal chemistry.

In recognizing his new reality, there was no soaring joy, no sense of triumph, no impulse to throw himself on top of her and pump away hard. All he could do was stare down at his cock and think of where it had been last. What he'd done with it...and with the rest of his body.

Rehvenge wanted to snap the fucking thing off.

No way in hell was he sharing that with Ehlena. Except...he couldn't go back out there like this.

Rehv grabbed his arousal in his broad hand and stroked himself. Oh...fuck...that was good...

He thought of going down on Ehlena, of having her warmth in his mouth and down the back of his throat. He saw her spread thighs and her glistening softness and his fingers slipping in and out as she moaned and rocked her-

His balls tightened up hard as fists, and the small of his back rippled in a wave, and that disgusting barb of his triggered even though it had nothing to grab onto. A roar threatened to come up out of his throat, but he held it in by biting his lip until he tasted blood.

Rehv came all over his hand and kept working his sex anyway, propping himself on the counter. He orgasmed again and again, messing up the mirror and the sinks, and still needing more-as if his body hadn't released in, like, five hundred years.

When the storm finally passed, he realized...shit, he was draped against the wall, face shoved in hard to the marble, shoulders sagging, thighs twitching like there were jumper cables hooked up to his toes.

With shaky hands, he cleaned things up using one of the towels that was folded neatly on a rack, wiping off the counter and the glass and the sink. Then he flipped free another one and washed his hands and his cock and his stomach and his legs, because he'd gotten himself as dirty as the fucking bathroom.

When he finally reached for the doorknob, after what must have been nearly an hour, he half expected Ehlena to be gone, and he wouldn't blame her: A female whom he had essentially made love to offers him her vein and he runs like a pussy into the bathroom and locks himself in.

Because he gets a hard-on.

Jesus Christ. This evening, which hadn't even started out so well, had turned into a sixteen-car pileup on the road to relationshipville.

Rehv braced himself and opened the door.

As light spilled into the bedroom, Ehlena sat up in the sheets, her face worried...and completely nonjudgmental. There was no condemnation, no calculation as if she were looking for what would make him feel even worse. Just honest-to-God concern.

"Are you okay?"

Well, wasn't that the question.

Rehvenge dropped his head and for the first time wanted to unburden everything to another person. Even with Xhex, who had been through more than he had, he had no interest in doing the sharing shit. But with Ehlena's toffee-colored eyes so wide and warm in her lovely, perfect face, he wanted to confess every single dirty, shitty, scheming, mean, nasty thing he'd ever done.

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, but that, ultimately, was a failure.

Chapter 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 through 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-

Okay, what the fuck? It wasn't that he didn't like the thoughts he was having about her, but it was as if someone had switched his CD. And no, it wasn't to Barry fucking Manilow.

Although there was definitely some Maroon 5 on the bitch now.

Bleh.

"Oh, I'll just go, but thank you." Ehlena paused in front of one of the sliding doors. "Tonight has been such...a revelation."

Rehv stalked up to her, took her face in his hands, and kissed her hard. When he pulled back, he said darkly, "Only because of you."

She beamed then, glowing from within, and abruptly he wanted her naked again just so he could come inside of her: The marking instinct was screaming in him, and the only way he could placate it was by telling himself he'd left enough of his scent on her skin.

"Text me when you get to the clinic so I know you're safe," he said.

"I will."

One last kiss and she was through the door and off into the night.

As she left Rehvenge's, Ehlena was flying, and not just because she was dematerializing across the river to the clinic. To her, the night wasn't cold; it was fresh. Her uniform wasn't wrinkled from having been tossed on a bed and rolled around upon; it was artfully disheveled. Her hair wasn't a mess; it was casual.

The call to come into the clinic wasn't an intrusion; it was an opportunity.

Nothing could take her down from this incandescent elevation. She was one of the stars in the velvety night sky, unreachable, untouchable, above the strife of the earthbound.

Taking form in front of the clinic's garages, though, she lost some of her rose-colored glow. It seemed unfair that she could feel as she did, considering what had happened the night before: She'd bet her life on the fact that Stephan's family wasn't rebounding back to any semblance of joy right now. They would have just barely finished the death ritual, for God's sake... It would be years before they could feel anything even remotely like what sang in her chest as she thought of Rehv.

Or if ever. She had the sense his parents might never be the same.

With a curse, she walked swiftly across the parking lot, her shoes leaving little black prints across the dusting of snow that had fallen earlier. As a staff member, getting through the checkpoints down to the waiting room didn't take long, and when she came into the registration area, she shucked her coat and headed right for the front desk.

The nurse behind the computer looked up and smiled. Rhodes was one of the few males on the staff, and definitely a favorite at the clinic, the kind of guy who got along with everyone and was quick with the smiles and the hugs and the high fives.

"Hey, girlie, how you..." He frowned as she got closer to him, then pushed his chair back, putting space between them. "Er...hi."

Frowning, she looked behind her, expecting to see a monster, given the way he shrank from her. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Totally." His eyes were sharp. "How are you?"

"I'm fine. Glad to come in and help. Where's Catya?"

"Waiting for you in Havers's office, I think she said."

"I'll head on back then."

"Yeah. Cool."

She noticed his mug was empty. "You want me to bring you a coffee when I'm done?"

"No, no," he said quickly, holding both hands up. "I'm fine. Thanks. Really."

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yup. Totally fine. Thanks."

Ehlena walked off, feeling like an absolute leper. Usually she and Rhodes were pally-pally, but not tonight-

Oh, my God, she thought. Rehvenge had left his scent on her. That had to be it.

She turned around...but what could she say, really?

Hoping Rhodes was the only one who'd pick up on it, she hit the locker room to ditch her coat and headed off, waving to staff and patients along the way. When she got to Havers's office, the door was open, the doctor sitting behind his desk, Catya in the chair with her back to the hall.

Ehlena knocked softly on the jamb. "Hi."

Havers looked up, and Catya glanced over her shoulder. They both seemed positively ill.

"Come in," the doctor said gruffly. "And shut the door."

Ehlena's heart started to beat fast as she did what he asked. There was an empty chair next to Catya, and she sat down because her knees were suddenly loose.

She'd been in this office a number of times, usually to remind the doctor to eat, because once he started in with patient charts he lost track of time. But this was not about him, was it.

There was a long silence, during which Havers's pale eyes would not meet hers as he fiddled with the earpieces of his tortoiseshell glasses.

Catya was the one who spoke, and her voice was tight. "Last night, before I left, one of the security guards who had been monitoring all the camera feeds brought it to my attention that you were in the pharmacy. Alone. He said he saw you take some pills and leave with them. I looked at the tape and checked the relevant shelves and it was penicillin."

"Why didn't you just bring him in?" Havers said. "I would have seen Rehvenge again immediately."

The moment that followed was like something in a TV soap, where the camera zoomed in on the face of a character: Ehlena felt as though everything pulled away from her, the office retreating into the far distance as she was abruptly spotlit and under microscopic scrutiny.

Questions rolled into her brain. Did she really think she was going to get away with what she'd done? She'd even known about the security cameras...and yet she hadn't thought about that when she'd gone behind the pharmacist's counter the night before.

Everything was going to change as the result of this. Her life, once a struggle, was going to become insupportable.

Destiny? No...stupidity.

How the hell could she have done this?

"I'll resign," she said roughly. "Effective tonight. I should never have done it... I was worried about him, overwrought about Stephan, and I made a horrible judgment call. I'm deeply sorry."

Neither Havers nor Catya said a thing, but they didn't have to. It was all about trust, and she had violated theirs. As well as a shitload of patient safety regulations.

"I'll clean out my locker. And leave immediately."