by J. R. Ward
Not after she’d lied to him. Not after what her bloodline had done to him. Not after what he had done after that.
Rehvenge, now king of the symphaths, had been the one who arranged for Murhder’s release from the colony. She’d still been in captivity at BioMed at that point, but she escaped not long after he’d been freed. Sometime later, she’d heard about him going to another BioMed facility and doing brutal things. At first, she’d wondered how he’d found them. And why he’d gone after them at all.
But then she remembered. When she’d returned to burn down where she’d been tortured, she had sensed she was being watched.
It had been Murhder. Somehow, he’d found her, yet he hadn’t interfered.
The idea he had kept going after that company, even after she had stopped, seemed a noble, although ultimately fruitless, pursuit—but then he had been permanently changed by her kin. He was not the same male, and when it came to the Brotherhood, all they knew was that he had lost his mind. He’d apparently never told them that he’d been held against his will and tortured in the symphath colony.
She’d never understood why he hadn’t revealed the truth to them, even if it had meant exposing her half-breed status—something that back then hadn’t been common knowledge. But maybe the Brothers would have understood. No one could get under a person’s skin like a symphath. No wonder Murhder had ended up insane.
And it was all her fault.
“Enough,” she muttered to herself. “Stop it.”
Coming back to the present, she opened the door to Trez’s office, and got hit with a whole lot of no-one-home. The desk was empty, the computers shut down, the black leather couches without occupants. No lights on, either. The only illumination came from sporadic bursts of filtered purple lasers, the dance floor’s beams blunted by the tint of Trez’s wall of glass.
No, there was another source of light.
Turning away from the observatory, she tracked the glow over to the corner. “John?”
The bathroom door was shut, and as she came up to it, she hesitated—and didn’t like the reticence. She never knocked to announce herself to him.
“John?”
No running water. No toilet flushing.
She knocked. “John?”
He opened the door while pulling a long-sleeved shirt into place on his shoulders. Sorry, I need a quick shower. Do you think Trez will care if I borrow this button-down?
“No, of course not,” she said. “So how did it go outside. Did you take care of the civilian? I sent his cousin to Havers after the male fainted on me.”
As his hands moved through sign language positions that she knew well, she didn’t track the words he was making.
The button-down wasn’t buttoned down yet, and the muscle shirt below it was so tight that the real estate of his torso was on display even though his upper body was covered: In the light that flooded down from the ceiling fixtures, his pecs and his abdominals looked like they had been deep-carved by a master hand, and the prominent wings of his hip bones rose up out of the waistband of his leathers.
Smooth skin. Powerful strength. And she knew every inch of him by touch and taste.
John seemed new to her tonight, however, and that was another thing—like the way she’d hesitated in front of the closed door—that made her uneasy. She could not ignore the fact that she was assessing the torso of her mate as if seeing it for the first time.
Something about Murhder had reset her.
What’s wrong? John signed.
That got through to her. Or maybe it was the worry in his face, his eyes narrowing.
She wanted to tell him nothing. That it was nothing, nope, she was fine, all good, hunky-fucking-dory. But she didn’t think he’d be fooled by that cascade of denial.
Instead, Xhex stepped into him. Placed her palms inside the two of halves of that shirt. Stroked her way around his torso to the small of his back.
Instantly, his bonding scent flared, and she was aware of a pang in the center of her chest. If she’d asked him what was wrong? His “nothing” would have been honest, and the dark spices surging into the bathroom proved it.
Her lips found the column of his throat. And as she brushed the skin over his jugular, he clapped his hands on her hips and squeezed. Hard. Like he wanted her badly—and she loved that about him. Her mate was always ready-to-go-now, and in this, they were compatible.
One of many ways they worked, she reminded herself.
Her tongue licked across his collarbone and then she dragged one fang over the swell of his pec beneath the muscle shirt. In response, his body shuddered, and she knew what that felt like, the prickling of sexual tension, the hypersensitivity to touch, the heat that kindled just under the skin. The anticipation. They had shared all of it so many times, and yet as she got down on her knees in front of him, she recorded his arousal on fresh mental pages and tracked the flush on his face and the thickening behind his fly with new eyes.
Oh, God, he mouthed as he threw out a pair of brace-myself hands, the tight confines of the bathroom giving him good anchors with the wall behind the sink and the door to the toilet’s cubicle.
Xhex ran her tongue on a meander across his lower belly, about an inch above his waistband. He was so leaned out from his workouts and what he did for a living in the field that there was just thin skin stretched over taut sinew and vein, everything so tight, it was like licking marble that happened to move.
Her fingertips skipped up his bulging thighs, the heat he was throwing off making the leather warm to the touch. The contours of his muscles were a road map of his heavy running while carrying weight, the ropes of strength offering ridges and valleys to explore.
Talk about ridges. There was one particular ridge she was interested in, and it didn’t have shit to do with his legs.
Behind his button fly, his cock was ready for airtime and then some, the erection so big and so demanding, she knew he had to be in pain from the tight squeeze.
Guess she’d have to help her male out.
One by one, the buttons of that fly came free. Top. Next. Next. Next . . . and final.
His arousal barged out and she looked up from the floor at him as she took the shaft in her palm.
John’s eyes glowed and his chest was pumping from ragged inhales. As he breathed heavily, the sight of those abdominals flexing and relaxing under the falling light was so erotic, she almost forgot what came next.
Nah, she remembered. She just liked the view.
Parting her lips, she extended her tongue and licked her way from his heavy sac all the way up the underside of his erection. And she liked his clenched jaw and flaring eyes so much, she did that again, taking her time.
Annnnnnnnnnnd how about one more for good measure.
Holy. Fuck.
As John braced his arms and prayed like hell that his legs continued to hold him up, he stared down at Xhex as she crouched at his shitkickers, her gunmetal-gray eyes low-lidded and sexy, her hand wrapped around his arousal, her mouth—
Oh, God, she was going to lick up his cock again.
He wanted to watch. He really did. But more than the incredible visual of her pink tongue taking its sweet time as she tilted her head to the side and looked around his erection—
Wait. What was the question?
Coming. That was the problem. If he added what things looked like down there to the sensations of wet and warm on his sac and on his underside and the would-she-or-would-she-not take his head into her mouth? He was going to orgasm—which, okay, fine was the point to all this, but he didn’t want it to stop.
He needed this powerful distraction. After what had gone down with that civilian, he needed this so-intense-he-didn’t-have-another-thought-option, this total, primordial priority, this incredibly hot nothing-else-matters.
All there was in the world was he and Xhex. Sure, there was a crowd of five hundred humans downstairs, and there was music thumping, and please Lord don’t have Trez come into his own bath
room right now—but none of that really registered. Just like he didn’t think about the reanimation and the fight . . . and the way Manny had come over in the mobile surgical unit, and John and Blay had loaded the civilian’s corpse into the back still handcuffed—
John popped opened his lids. The instant he saw his mate’s mouth hovering a thin inch away from his head, all the stuff that had come back to him was evac’d out a side door.
Xhex was all that he knew.
She led with her tongue, and treated him to a swirl that made his toes curl, the tip of his erection getting the kind of attention that made his sac tight. Then she sucked him down, her whole throat somehow opening, his entire length disappearing into her lips.
Warmer. Wetter.
And she started to suck.
With her hair so short, there was nothing in the way, nothing tangling around her face or his sex, nothing blocking him from watching everything: The way when she retracted, his shaft glistened in the light from overhead. The way when she came forward, her mouth stretched thin to accommodate his girth. The way she teased him with her tongue when she popped him free of her pressured hold.
It was frustrating not having a voice. He wanted to tell her that he loved this. He loved her. He loved them being together like this, clandestine, semi-public, on the verge of discovery if the Shadow happened to enter his office.
But he wasn’t going to move his planted palms so he could sign. Nope. He’d be liable to fall on her.
The rhythm started slow, and did not stay that way—and he knew she was getting ready to finish him because she slid her hand back onto his shaft. Deep in her mouth. Almost out with a twist of her hold. Down again, her lips touching the skin of the front of his hips. Almost out again, twist of her hand, and a lick this time. Back down, all the way down, the whole shaft inside of her.
It made him think of the other places on her he could get into. Leave something of himself behind.
Faster now. And he had to close his eyes again because goddamn, as much as he wanted to come, he didn’t want to come. The suspension between the hyper-charged almost-there and the sweet sting of release was an addiction that was deadly.
Because the top of his skull was surely going to blow the fuck off if she kept this up.
He started to pant with sawing breaths that went in and out of his mouth as his cock went in and out of her mouth.
Faster again. And then she gripped his sac and squeezed—at the very instant she popped his cock out of her mouth and opened wide.
As jets shot out of him, he watched himself come into her. At least until his eyes squeezed shut of their own volition—because it was either that or they popped out of their sockets, ping-ponged off the closed door behind her, and ended up on the floor.
Making moaning noises in the back of her throat, she finished him off nice and slow, sucking him in once more, helping him ride out the tides of pleasure that ebbed and flowed for what was about ten minutes.
Vampires males made big messes.
Fortunately, she liked cleaning up after him.
When things eventually wound down, she licked her lips, her pink tongue making a lazy round of her mouth like she had enjoyed the taste of him—and holy hell that was nearly enough to get him going again. But he was dry. At least for the next ten minutes.
His cock was known to rally quick.
As she sat back and stared at him from under those low lids, he wanted to thank her. Instead, he bent down and drew her up to her full height. Putting his lips to hers, he kissed her in the hopes he could communicate in that way how much it had meant to him.
In fact, he was glad his hands were shaking too much to sign. If they had been in good working order? Well . . . then he might have started to explain himself with words, and he would have been unable to keep from her the true reason for his gratitude at her erotic distraction.
He would have had to tell her that he’d been bitten by that reanimated corpse.
The cursory examination he’d given himself in the field had not been thorough enough—and on some level he must have known that because he had raced up here after the surgical unit had removed the civilian’s corpse from the scene. He had intended to check properly in this private bathroom only to relieve his mind.
But paranoia had proven to be prescient.
And he had the twin rings of teeth marks to prove it.
Keeping the injury from Xhex was wrong, but it made him feel like it hadn’t really happened. That he hadn’t seen the marks in his shoulder. That he hadn’t pulled a borrowed shirt closed so she didn’t see the wound.
Keeping it from her . . . meant he didn’t have to admit to himself that he was terrified he’d been infected with something evil.
CHAPTER NINE
The following morning, Sarah Watkins looked out her bedroom window without disturbing the venetian blinds. Given that the slats were closed, all she had to go on was the inch and a quarter vertical gap next to the molding. It was enough if she contorted her neck.
Across the street and down three houses, there was a car parked facing her property. American make. Pale, nondescript color. No parking or gate pass stickers on the windshield. Nothing hanging from the rearview mirror.
There was a person in it. She couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman, and that didn’t matter.
Looked like her hunch was correct. The question was whether the FBI was watching her from the back, too, but she wasn’t going to waste time answering that hypothetical.
Finally, it was light enough. She had never been a let’s-savor-the-sunrise kind of person. Daybreak had always been late, in her opinion, its inevitably lazy arrival meaning that she could finally go back to work, her brain always chomping at the bit to return to whatever she’d had to quit the night before.
Prior to coming to Ithaca, she had liked that Gerry had been the same. Romance in their relationship had been rooted in mutual intellectual support; as a couple, they were a think tank that each could come to and vet ideas and solve problems in. To her, progress on research had always been so much better than bunches of flowers or lingering gazes in the moonlight.
So much more practical and important.
But BioMed had changed that, although not the part about her wanting someone to think work through with. No, Gerry had stopped talking to her about what he was doing, and had not given her any opportunity to share her own trials and triumphs. Once that previously two-way street had been closed off? Everything had fallen apart.
And she did judge him for that. She also still to this day had no idea what changed for him.
Straightening, Sarah pulled her sweatshirt back in place and padded across the carpet to her bedside table. Back when Gerry had been alive, they had each had their side of the bed. Hers was the one closest to the door because she had an irrational fear of burning to death in a house fire and couldn’t settle unless she was close to the exit. He hadn’t been picky.
Now that he was gone? She slept all over the place.
Too bad it felt rootless rather than an expression of mattress freedom.
As she picked up her cell phone and double-checked the time, she glanced over at where he would have lain. There were no pillows where he’d put his head. She’d had to stash his two away in a closet. She’d also bought all new bedding, down to the mattress pad, the bed skirt, the headboard. When she’d still not been able to get a good night’s sleep, she’d gone out and gotten a new mattress.
Nothing had worked. Even now, she tossed and turned.
Refocusing on her phone, she realized she’d looked at the time and not seen the numbers at all. Eight thirty. And given that it was a Saturday, she had nowhere she needed to be.
Out in the hall, she flipped the switch that turned on the overhead light.
The closed door to Gerry’s study was wood paneled, and not in a fancy way. It was just your bog standard, fairly cheap but serviceable, Home Depot special.
Facing off at it, she felt like the damn
thing was a locked vault without a combination.
Her hand trembled as she turned the knob and the hinges creaked softly in a way that made her spine shiver. Musty air escaped like the oxygen molecules were getting off a crowded subway car.
It was darker than she remembered, and that was a problem. She didn’t want to turn on the crane-armed desk lamp given that nondescript car down on the street. But like the Feds knew the layout of her house? As if they’d see the light come on and suss out that she hadn’t been in this room for how long because it was where Gerry did his work for BioMed?
Besides, it was her damn house. She could go wherever she wanted to in it.
Stepping over the threshold, she nonetheless kept the lights off, leaving the door wide to let in as much illumination as possible from the hall.
As her shadow fell across the dusty desk, her head and shoulders created a blackened cutout in the middle of the fake wood surface. When the two security guards from BioMed had come to take Gerry’s computers, they’d left the monitors, the keyboards, the printer, the modem, all the wires. The discord and vacancies left behind in the workstation made her think of a corpse that had had its organs removed, the vital parts that had engineered life gone, the connective tissue and ancillaries all that was left behind.
Now useless.
Flipping on her phone’s flashlight, she made a fat circle with the shallow beam. Amazing how much dust there was. Probably meant she needed to change her furnace filters. Or clean, of course.
The chair Gerry had spent so many hours in was turned away from the desk, the seat and arms facing left. She could picture him pivoting with his feet, standing up . . . going to the bathroom. Had he felt odd? Had the need for insulin intruded on his concentration because he was hungry and about to eat?
But she couldn’t lose herself in all that.
Time was wasting. Although she wasn’t sure how she knew that.