Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (139 page)

up to the window, staying in the shadows thrown by the chimney.

Him standing across the open room, the woman in front of him, her graceful body covered with

black satin, her long, dark hair reaching down to the small of her back. He had put his hands to her face and kissed her hard, his shoulders curling as he’d bent down to make the contact with an utterly erotic expression…

And then he’d eased the woman over to the couch.

Even though it killed her to admit it, Sola had felt a stab of irrational jealousy. But that hadn’t been the worst of it: her own body had responded, her sex blooming between her legs sure as if it had been her mouth he was working, her waist his hands were on, her breasts that were up against his

chest. And that reaction had only intensified as he’d positioned the woman on that couch, his face

marked with dark hunger, his eyes glittering as if what was beneath him was a meal to be eaten.

Watching was wrong. Watching was bad.

But even the threat to her personal safety—and, arguably, her mental heath—hadn’t been enough

to get her away from the glass. Especially as he’d reared up and dragged that heavy black overcoat

off his shoulders. It had been impossible for her not to picture him naked, seeing his broad chest

exposed to the firelight, imaging what his abs would look like curling up tight beneath his skin….And then it had appeared that he’d bitten—
bitten
, for godsakes—through the spaghetti straps of the negligee’s bodice.

Just as the woman’s goddamn frickin’ perfect breasts were exposed…he had looked at her.

With no warning whatsoever, those glittering, predatory eyes had risen and drilled right into her

own, a sly smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

Like the show was just for her.

“Shit.
Shit
.”

One thing was clear: If he’d wanted to teach her a lesson about spying? Hard to think of a better

way—short of making her eat the barrel of a forty.

Sola eased off the shoulder and got onto the road. As the Ford Taurus took ten miles to accelerate

to the speed limit of forty-five, she wished she were in her Audi: With her blood still pumping

through her veins, she needed some outward expression of the roar trapped in her body.

Some kind of outlet.

Like…sex, for example.

And not with herself.

FORTY-NINE

As Adirondack Great Camps went, Rehv’s had everything: huge rustic main house sided in

cedar shingles and covered with porches. A number of outer buildings, including guest

cottages. Lake view. Lotta bedrooms.

After Trez and iAm took form in the side yard, they walked around through the snow to

the back entrance into the kitchen. Even in winter, the place gave off a cozy vibe, with all that buttery glow coming through the diamond-paned glass. But not everything was Sugar Plum Fairy time: The

wealthy Victorians who had built these compounds as a way to escape the heat and industrialization

of the cities during the summers had most certainly not equipped them with laser-sighted motion

detectors, state-of-the-art contacts on all windows and doors, and not one, but several, different

motherboards controlling a fully integrated, multi-interface alarm system.

Boo-yah.

Trez’s thumbprint on the discreetly mounted pad to the left of the door opened the way into the

house’s hub—an industrial-size kitchen that was kitted out with stainless-steel appliances on a level with Sal’s.

Something was baking in the Viking oven. Bread, it smelled like.

“I’m hungry,” Trez remarked as he shut the door. The locking mechanism bolted itself, but he

checked anyway out of habit.

Off in the distance, someone was vacuuming—probably a Chosen. Ever since Phury had taken

over as Primale, and essentially freed that cloistered group of females from the Far Side, Rehv had been letting them stay at the camp. Made sense. Lot of privacy, especially off-season, plus the

remoteness from the city provided a soft transition from, if Trez understood things correctly, the

placid sameness of the Sanctuary to the frenetic, sometimes traumatic nature of life on Earth.

It had been a long time since he’d been in the house—not since the Chosen had taken up res, as a

matter of fact. Then again, when Rehv had blown up ZeroSum, and ended his role as a drug kingpin,

that debt between them had lost some of its repayment traction.

Besides, now that the guy didn’t have to make deliveries of rubies and sex to the princess

anymore, there hadn’t been much reason to come north.

Apparently that had changed, however.

“Yo, Rehv, where you at?” Trez hollered, his voice booming.

As much as his stomach protested, he and his brother walked out into the main hall. Victorian

ephemera was everywhere, from the garnet-colored Orientals on the floor, to the tapestry-covered

benches, to the taxidermied bison, deer, moose, and bobcat heads mounted around the rough stone

fireplace.

“Rehv!” he called out again.

Man, that racoon lamp had always given him the creeps. So did the stuffed owl with the

sunglasses.

“He’ll be right down.”

Trez turned around at the female voice.

And in that one moment, had the course of his life change forever.

The staircase down from the second floor was a straight shot, the shallow steps and their simple

railing emerging from above without architectural artifice.

The female in the white robe standing at their base turned them into a stairway from heaven. She

was tall and slender, but her curves were in all the right places, her loose dress unable to conceal her high, large breasts or the graceful swell of her hips. Her skin was smooth and the color of café au lait, her hair dark and coiled up high on her head. Eyes were pale and heavily fringed.

Lips were full and rosy.

He wanted to kiss them.

Especially as they moved, enunciating whatever she was saying with intoxicating precision—

iAm’s sharp elbow in his rib cage made him jump. “Ow! What the fuck—frick, I mean. Shit—I

mean, crap.”

Way to be calm, cool, and collected, asshole.

“She asked if we wanted any food,” iAm muttered. “I said, no, not for me. Now it’s your turn.”

Oh, he wanted to eat something, all right. He wanted to fall to his knees at her feet and get under that—

Trez closed his eyes and felt like a total flipping bastard. “Nah, I’m good.”

“I thought you said you were hungry.”

Trez popped his lids and glared at his brother. Was the guy trying to make him look like an idiot?

The knowing light in those black eyes suggested, yes, iAm was.

“No. I’m fine,” he ground out. Subtext: Don’t push it, douche.

“I was just going to check on my bread.”

Trez’s eyes shut again, the Chosen’s voice lilting in his ears, the sound of it both raising his blood pressure and calming him down at the same time.

“You know,” he heard himself say, “maybe I will see if I can scrounge up a meal.”

She smiled at him. “Follow me. I’m sure we can find something to your liking.”

As she headed around for the entryway they’d just come through, Trez blinked like the dumb-ass

he was.

It had been a very, very long time since a female had spoken anything to him without a double

entrendre…but as far as he could tell, those words, which could arguably be considered a come-on—

at least given his lust filter—had held no promise of a blow job or some full-on sex. Or even

attraction of any kind.

Naturally, this made him want her more.

His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no

thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him—

iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t even fucking
think
about it.”

Trez’s first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother’s

grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point,” iAm hissed.

Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. “I’m not going to…”

Fuck her
came to mind, but God, he couldn’t use the f-word around that female, even in the

hypothetical. “You know, do anything.”

“You actually expect me to believe that.”

Trez’s eyes flipped over to the doorway she’d disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no

credibility on the subject of abstinence.

“She is not available to you, do you understand me,” iAm gritted out. “That’s not fair to someone

like her—more to the point, if you tap that, Phury is going to come after you with a black dagger. That is
his
, not
yours
.”

For a split second, Trez bristled at that—except not because his inner feminist was roaring about

females being treated as property, although of course that was wrong. No, it was because…

Mine.

From somewhere deep inside of him, that word emanated outward, as if every cell in his body

had suddenly found its voice and was speaking the only truth that mattered.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

At the sound of Rehv’s voice, Trez dragged his consciousness back from the cliff it had

unexpectedly found itself flying off of.

The
symphath
king was coming down the same stairs the Chosen had used, the male’s cane

steadying him, his black mink coat keeping his medicated body warm.

As iAm said something and Rehv replied, Trez refocused on the doorway to the kitchen. What

was she doing in there—oh, man. Probably bending down to look at that bread…

A subtle growl percolated up his throat.

“Excuse me?” Rehv demanded, purple eyes narrowing.

Another shot in the ribs brought Trez back to reality. “Sorry. Indigestion. How you been?”

Rehv cocked a brow, but then shrugged. “I need your help.”

“Anything,” Trez said, meaning it.

“There’s a Council meeting tomorrow night. Wrath’s going to be there. The Brotherhood will

provide protection, but I want you both to come on the QT.”

Trez recoiled. The Council had met regularly prior to the raids of a couple of years ago, and Rehv

had never needed backup. “What’s doing?”

“Wrath got shot back in the fall.”

What. The. Fuck.

Trez ground his molars. “Who?” After all, he liked the king.

“Band of Bastards. You don’t know them, but you may meet them tomorrow night—if you agree to

come.”

“Of course we’ll be there.” As iAm nodded, Trez crossed his arms over his chest. “Where?”

“I’m having it at this estate in Caldwell at midnight. It’s one of the few that wasn’t infiltrated by the Lessening Society—the family was mostly wiped out nonetheless, however, because they were

visiting another bloodline in town at the time the attack went down.” Rehv went over and sat down on the tapestry-covered sofa, twirling his cane on the floor between his legs. “Let me tell you how we’re going to roll. Wrath is now totally blind, but the
glymera
don’t know this. I want him seated in the morning parlor when those aristocrats arrive so they don’t see him relying on anyone to find his

place. Then…”

As Rehv continued to lay out the plan, Trez took a seat in front of the fire and nodded in the right places.

In his mind, however, he was in that kitchen, with that female….

What was her name? he wondered.

Just as important…

When could he see her again?

FIFTY

Downstairs in the clinic’s examination room, Qhuinn felt like he was up in the air, flying high.

And not in a soon-to-crash POS Cessna with a wounded Brother in the back.

“I’m sorry, could you say that again?”

Doc Jane smiled as she brought a rolling table over to the bedside. Dimly, the stuff on it

registered, but he was more focused on what might or might not come out of the physician’s mouth.

“You guys are still pregnant. Her hormone levels are doubling exactly as they should, blood

pressure’s perfect, heart rate’s great. And still no bleeding, right?”

As the physician looked over at Layla, the Chosen shook her head, her expression as poleaxed as

he sure as shit felt like. “None at all.”

Qhuinn took a little walk, his hand dragging through his hair, his brain cramping. “I don’t

understand this….I’m mean, this is what I want—what we want—but I don’t get why she had the…”

After having ridden the roller coaster down into hell, it was completely disarming to hit an

unexpected rise back in the direction of earth.

Doc Jane shook her head. “This is probably not helpful, but Ehlena’s never seen this before,

either. So I get your confusion, and more to the point, I understand better than you know how

treacherous hope can be. It’s hard to give yourself over to any optimism after where you both have

been.”

Man, V’s
shellan
was so not an idiot.

Qhuinn focused on Layla. The Chosen was in a loose white robe, but not the kind she’d worn as a

member of the Scribe Virgin’s sacred sect of females. It was an everyday bathrobe, and underneath

was a hospital johnny that had pink and red hearts on a white background. And on that rolling table?

Turned out it was a box of saltine crackers and a six-pack of little Canada Dry ginger ales.

Talk about your over-the-counter medications.

Doc Jane opened the crackers. “I know that the last thing you’re thinking of is food.” She handed

one of the flaky, salty squares over. “But if you eat this, and have a little of the soda? Might settle things down in there.”

And what do you know, it did. Layla ended up working her way through half a sleeve, and two of