FORTY

Mere moments after Butch called her, Jane became solid on the terrace of V's penthouse. As her form took weight within its shape, the night air cold-fingered her hair and made her eyes water.

Or ... maybe that was just her tears.

Looking in through the glass, she saw everything much too clearly: the table, the lashes, the whips, the ... other things.

When she'd come here with Vishous before, those trappings of his hard-core predilections had seemed nothing more than a tantalizing and slightly frightening backdrop to the incredible sex they themselves had. But her version of "play" was poodle to his werewolf.

And how clearly did she know that now.

What had Butch used? What kind of shape was her mate in? Was there going to be a lot of blood -

Wait a minute. Where was V?

Passing through the sliding glass door, she ...

No blood on the floor. Or dripping from instruments. No suspension hooks hanging from the ceiling. Everything was exactly as it had been the last time she'd been here, as if nothing had happened -

A groan came from outside the circle of candlelight, and the sound ripped her head around. Of course. The bed.

As she pierced the veil of darkness, her eyes adjusted and there he was: under a wrap of satin sheets, stretched out flat, writhing in pain ... or was it sleep?

"Vishous?" she said softly.

With a shout, he came instantly awake, his torso shooting upright, his lids popping wide. Immediately, she noticed that his face was marked by fading scars ... and there were others across his pecs and abdomen as well. But the expression he wore was what really got to her: He was terrified.

Abruptly, there was a furious flapping as he shoved the covers off his body. As he looked down at himself, sweat broke out across his chest and shoulders, his skin taking on a sudden gleam even in the shadows as he cupped his sex ... like he was protecting what was left.

Hanging his head, he drew great breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale -

The pattern transformed into sobs.

Curling into himself, his hands sheltering the butcher job that had been done long, long ago, he wept in great heaves of emotion, his reserve gone, his control gone, his intelligence no longer ruler of his realm, but a subject.

He didn't even realize she was standing next to him.

And she should leave, Jane thought. He wouldn't want her to see him this way - not even before everything had fallen apart between them. The male she knew and loved and had mated wouldn't want any witness to this -

It was hard to say what got his attention ... and later she would wonder how he had picked that moment just as she was going to dematerialize to look up at her.

She was instantly incapacitated: If he had been pissed off about what had happened with Payne, he was going to hate her now - there was absolutely no going back from this invasion of privacy.

"Butch called me," she blurted. "He thought you'd - "

"He hurt me.... My father hurt me."

The words were so thin and soft that they nearly didn't register. But when they did, her heart just stopped.

"Why," Vishous asked. "Why did he do it to me. Why did my mother? I never asked to be born to the pair of them ... and I wouldn't have chosen to be if either had asked me.... Why?"

His cheeks were slick with tears that spilled over his diamond eyes, a ceaseless flow he neither noticed nor appeared to care about. And she had a feeling it was going to be a while before the leaking stopped - an inner artery had been nicked and this was the blood of his heart, spilling out of him, covering him.

"I'm so sorry," she croaked. "I don't know any of the whys ... but I know that you didn't deserve it. And ... and it's not your fault."

His hands uncupped himself and he stared downward. It was a long while before he spoke, and when he did, his words were slow and considered ... and as ceaseless as his quiet tears. "I wish I were whole. I wish I could have given you young if you'd wanted them and could conceive them. I wish I could have told you that it killed me when you thought I had been with anyone else. I wish I had spent the last year waking up every night and telling you I loved you. I wish I had mated you properly the evening you came back to me from the dead. I wish ..." Now his shimmering stare flipped up to hers. "I wish I were half as strong as you are and I wish I deserved you. And ... that's about it."

Right. Okay. Now they were both tearing up.

"I'm so sorry about Payne," she said hoarsely. "I wanted to talk to you, but she'd made up her mind. I tried to work with her, I really did, but in the end, I just ... I didn't ... I didn't want you to be the one to do it. I would have rather lived with the horrible truth on my conscience for an eternity than have you kill your sister. Or have her hurt herself even more than she was."

"I know ... I know that now."

"And to be honest, the fact that she is healed? It gives me the cold sweats because of the near miss we had."

"It's all right, though. She's okay."

Jane wiped her eyes. "And I think when it comes to ..." She glanced over at the wall that was draped in a buttery yellow candlelight that did nothing at all to soften the sharp spikes and even sharper implications of what hung there. "When it comes to ... things ... about you and sex, I've always worried that I might not be quite enough for you."

"Fuck ... no ... you're everything to me."

Jane put her hand over her mouth so she didn't lose it completely. Because it was exactly what she needed to hear.

"I never even got your name in my back," V said. "I thought it was stupid and a waste of time ... but how can you feel like we're mated without it - especially when every single male at the compound has been marked for his shellan?"

God, she hadn't thought of that.

V shook his head. "You've given me space ... to hang with Butch and fight with my brothers and do my shit on the Internet. What have I given you?"

"My clinic, for one thing. I couldn't have built it without you."

"Not exactly a bouquet of roses."

"Don't underestimate your carpentry skills."

He smiled a little at that. And then grew serious once again. "Can I tell you something that I've thought every time I've woken up next to you."

"Please."

Vishous, the one who always had an answer for everything, seemed to get tongue-tied. But then he said, "You're the reason I get out of bed every night. And you're the reason I can't wait to come home every dawn. Not the war. Not the Brothers. Not even Butch. It's ... you."

Oh, such simple words ... but the meaning. Good lord, the meaning.

"Will you let me hug you now?" she said roughly.

Her mate stretched out his massive arms. "How about I hold you instead?"

As Jane leaped forward and dived into him, she countered, "It doesn't have to be one or the other."

Instantly, she became fully corporeal without any effort at all, that magical internal chemistry between them calling her into being and holding her there. And as Vishous buried his face in her hair and shuddered like he had run a vast distance and was finally home ... she knew exactly how he felt.

With his shellan flush against him, V felt like he'd been blown wideopen ... and then stitched back together.

God, what Butch had done for him. For them all.

The route the cop had gone had been the right one. Horrific and terrible ... but the absolute right one. And as V held his female now, his eyes searched the space where it had all gone down. Everything had been cleaned up ... except for a pair of things that were out of place on the floor: a spoon and a glass that was mostly empty of what had to be water.

It had all been an illusion: Nothing had in fact cut him open. And how'd you like to bet Butch had left those two things front and center so that when V woke up and looked over, he'd know the means that had taken him to his end.

In retrospect, it seemed so fucking dumb ... not the session with the cop, but the fact that V never really thought about the Bloodletter and those years in the war camp. The last time that piece of the past had come up at all had been when Jane had first been with him - and then it had only been because she'd seen him naked and he'd had to explain.

My father didn't want me to reproduce.

That was pretty much all he'd had to say. And afterward, like a dead body that had rolled over faceup in still water, that shit had sunk down again, resettling on the sandy riverbed of the very core of him.

BJ, or Before Jane, he'd only ever had sex with his pants on. Not from shame - or at least that was what he'd told himself - but because he simply hadn't been interested in going there with the anonymous males and females he'd fucked.

AJ? It had been different. Naked was more than cool, likely because Jane had kept a tight head at his revelation. And yet as he thought about it now, he'd always held her at arm's length, even if she'd been in his arms. If anything, he'd been closer to Butch - but that was male-to-male, which was somehow less threatening than male-to-female.

Shades of Mommy issues, no doubt: After everything his mahmen had pulled, he simply couldn't trust females like he could his brothers or his best friend.

Except Jane had never betrayed him. In fact, she'd been willing to battle her own conscience just to save him from the unspeakable act his twin had been demanding.

"You are not my mother," he said into his shellan's hair.

"Damn right." Jane pulled back and looked him right in the eye - as was her way. "I never would have abandoned my son. Or treated my daughter that way."

V took a long inhale, and when he let the oxygen out of his lungs, he felt like he was expelling the myths by which he'd defined himself ... and Jane ... and their mating.

He needed to change the paradigm.

For them. For himself. For Butch.

Christ, the expression on the cop's face when things had been going down here had been beyond tragic.

So, yeah, it was time to stop using outside shit to self-medicate his emotions. The extreme sex and the pain had seemed like excellent solutions for a long time, but in reality, they had been concealer over a pimple: The ugliness had stayed within him.

What he had to do was deal with the inside crap so he didn't need Butch or anyone else to break him down just so he could let things out. That way, the kink could truly be only for pleasure with Jane.

Check his shit out - looked like he was finally prepared to try a psychiatric version of Proactiv.

Next thing he knew he was going to be on TV, staring into a camera and saying, "All it takes is a little dab of Self-awareness ... and then I rinse with the patented Defining Yourself Wash, and my mind and emotions are clean and glowing - "

Okay, now he was really losing his damn marbles, true.

Stroking Jane's soft hair, he murmured, "About ... the things I have here. If you're game, I'm still going to want to play ... if you know what I mean. But from now on, it's just for fun, and only for you and me."

Hell, they'd had a shitload of good, leathered-up, freaky sex in this place, and he was always going to want that with her. Hopefully, she'd feel the same -

"I like what we do here." She smiled. "It turns me on."

Well ... didn't that get his cock pumping. "Me, too."

As he smiled back at her, he recognized the one spanner in the mix: This turn-a-new-leaf resolution was all well and good - but how did he keep it going? Tomorrow evening he simply couldn't afford to wake up and be that guy who went off the rails anymore.

Shit, he guessed he was going to find out how. Wasn't he.

With a gentle hand, he brushed his shellan's cheek. "I've never been in a relationship before you. I should have known that we'd hit a wall at some point."

"That's the way it works."

He thought of his brothers and the number of times there had been fallouts and fights and arguments among that bunch of meatheaded fighters. Somehow, they'd always worked it out - usually by popping each other from time to time. Which was a guy thing.

Clearly, he and Jane were going to be the same. Not with the popping, of course, but with the bumpy roads and the eventual resolutions. After all, this was life ... not a fairy tale.

"But you know what the best thing is?" his Jane asked, as she put her arms around his neck.

"I don't feel like I died anymore because you're not in my life?"

"Well, yeah, that, too." She craned up and kissed him. "Two words: makeup sex."

Ohhhhhh, yeaaaaaaaaah. Except - "Wait, is that three words? Or did you hyphenate it?"

"I had a hyphen in my head. But I think it goes both ways?"

"Or is it 'makeup,' one word."

"That's also a possibility." Pause. "Have I mentioned you are the hottest geek I've ever known?"

"I resemble that remark." He dipped his head and brushed his mouth against hers. "Just keep it to yourself. I have a reputation as a hard-ass to protect."

"Your secret is safe with me."

V grew serious. "I'm safe with you."

Jane touched his face. "I can't promise you we're not going to hit rough patches again, and I know we're not always going to agree. But on this I'm very sure - you will always be safe with me. Always."

Vishous drew her close and tucked his head into her throat. He'd assumed there were no more levels to go after she'd died and then come back to him in her lovely, ghostly form. But he was wrong. Love, he realized, was like the daggers he made in his forge: When you first got one, it was shiny and new and the blade glinted bright in the light. Holding it against your palm, you were full of optimism for what it would be like in the field, and you couldn't wait to try it out. Except those first couple of nights out were usually awkward as you got used to it and it got used to you.

Over time, the steel lost its brand-new gleam, and the hilt became stained, and maybe you nicked the shit out of the thing a couple of times. What you got in return, however, saved your life: Once the pair of you were well acquainted, it became such a part of you that it was an extension of your own arm. It protected you and gave you a means to protect your brothers; it provided you with the confidence and the power to face whatever came out of the night; and wherever you went, it stayed with you, right over your heart, always there when you needed it.

You had to keep the blade up, however. And rewrap the hilt from time to time. And double-check the weight.

Funny ... all of that was well, duh when it came to weapons. Why hadn't it dawned on him that matings were the same?

Rolling his eyes at himself, he thought, Christ, maybe Hallmark would be open to establishing a line of medieval-inspired Valentine's Day cards, some kind of a Holly-Goth-Lightly kind of thing. He'd be frickin' perfect for supplying content.

Closing his eyes, and holding his Jane, he was almost glad he'd lost his shit, just so they could get to this place.

Well, he would have picked an easier route if there had been one. Except he wasn't sure it worked that way. You had to earn where they were now.

"I have a question to ask you," he said softly.

"Anything."

Pulling back a little, he stroked her hair with his gloved hand, and it was a while before he asked what was on the tip of his tongue.

"Will you ... let me make love to you?"

As Jane stared at Vishous and felt his body against hers, she knew she was never letting him go. Ever. And she also knew that if they could make it through the past week, they had the staying power that good marriages - or matings - required.

"Yes," she said. "Please ..."

Her hellren had come to her so many times since they'd been together: in the night and in the day; in the shower and in the bed; clothed, unclothed, half-clothed; fast and hard ... hard and fast. The edge in him had always been part of the excitement - that and the unpredictability. She never knew what to expect - whether he was going to demand things of her, or take control of her body, or restrain himself so that she could do whatever she wanted to him.

The constant, though, was that he was never one for going slow.

Now, he just stroked her hair, running his fingers through the waves and tucking them behind her ears. And then he kept his eyes locked with hers as he brought their mouths together softly. Stroking and caressing, he licked at her lips - but when she opened, he didn't dive in as he always did. It was only more with the kissing ... until she felt drugged by the sucks and drags of flesh on flesh.

Her body usually roared for his. Now, though, a delicious unfurling washed through her, relaxing and easing her, bringing a peaceful arousal that was somehow just as profound and shattering as the desperate passion she typically felt.

As he shifted position, she followed his lead, going fully onto her back as he reared up and covered her upper body with his. The kissing just kept going, and she was so into it that she didn't notice that he had slipped a hand under the bottom of her shirt. His warm palm lazied upward, honing in on her breasts ... finding and capturing. No teasing, no pinching, no tweaks. Just a passing of his thumb back and forth across her nipple, until she arched up and moaned into his mouth.

Her hands went to his sides and - oh, God, there was that pattern of marks she'd seen. And they went all the way around his torso -

Vishous took her wrists and moved her arms back down to the bed. "Don't think about it."

"What did he do to you - "

"Shh."

The kissing resumed, and she was tempted to fight it, but the pulling strokes gently submerged her brain in sensation.

It was over and done with, she told herself. And whatever had happened had helped them get here.

That was all she needed to know.

Vishous's voice drifted into her ear, deep, low. "I want to take your clothes off. May I?"

"Please - yes ... God, yes."

Him undressing her was a part of the pleasure, the means as glorious as the end that brought them together skin-to-skin. And somehow, the gradual reveal of what he had seen so many times made it feel like it was new and special.

Her breasts tightened even more as the cooler air hit them, and she watched his face as he looked at her. The need was there, except there was so much more ... reverence, gratitude ... a vulnerability that she had sensed but never seen clearly before.

"You are everything I need," he said as he dipped his head.

His hands were everywhere, on her stomach, her hips, between her thighs.

On her slick sex.

The orgasm he gave her was a warm wave coursing through her body, radiating outward, taking her over in a blissful cloud of pleasure. And in the midst of it, he mounted her and slipped inside. No pounding, just more of the wave, inside her and outside, as his body moved and his erection pulled up and back.

Nothing fast, only more of the slow love.

No urgency, only all the time in the world.

When he finally came, it was on a last curl of his spine and a pulsing in her core, and she went along with him, the two of them wrapped up tight, fusing, body ... and soul.

With a roll, he brought her on top of him, and she lay draped across his hard, muscled chest, languid as a summer breeze and just about as weighty. She was floating and warm and ...

"Are you okay," Vishous said as he looked up at her.

"More than okay." She searched his face. "I feel like I've made love to you for the very first time."

"Good." He kissed her. "That was the plan."

Laying her head down on his beating heart, she looked across at the wall behind his table. She'd never thought she'd be grateful for such a terrifying bunch of "toys," but she was. Through the storm ... they'd found the calm.

Once apart ... now they were one again.