Lover Reborn (28 page)

And yet she had not been cursed… maybe because of her circumstances—God knew, she had suffered enough on her way to the exit.

On that note, he shook his head again. “About the feeding. I appreciate your offer, I really do. But somehow, I can’t imagine a repeat of that scene downstairs is going to do either of us any good.”

“Admit that you feel stronger.”

“You said you haven’t dreamed of that shit since it happened.”

“One dream is not—”

“It’s enough for me.”

That chin of hers went up again, and damned if that habit wasn’t… well, not appealing, no. No, it was not appealing.

Really.

“If I can live through the events,” she said, “I can get through the memories.”

In that moment, staring across the room at her show of will, he felt a tie to her, sure as if a rope had linked the pair of them chest-to-chest.

“Come to me again,” she announced. “When you are in need.”

“We’ll see about that,” he dismissed. “Now, are you… okay? Here in this room, I mean? You can lock the door—”

“I shall be all right, if you come to me again.”

“No’One—”

“It is the only way I have to make things right with you.”

“You don’t have to make anything right. Honest.”

Turning away, he went to the door, and before he stepped out, he glanced over his shoulder. She was staring at her entwined hands, that hooded head of hers bowed.

Leaving her with what little peace she had, he took his grumbling stomach to his room and disarmed. He was righteously starved, his appetite for food carving a bottomless pit out of his lower torso—and though he would have preferred to ignore the demand, he didn’t have a choice. Ordering up a tray from Fritz, he thought of No’One, and told the
doggen
to make sure she got some eats as well.

Then it was shower time. After he turned on the water, he undressed and left the clothes on the marble floor where they landed. He was in the process of stepping over the mess when he saw himself in the long mirror over the sinks.

Even to his uncaring eye, it was obvious his body had rebounded, the muscles tightening under his skin, his shoulders back where they should be instead of down around his diaphragm.

Too bad he didn’t feel better about the recovery.

Getting into the glass-enclosed space, he stood under the jets, braced his arms out, and let the water run off his flesh.

When he closed his eyes, he found himself back in the pantry, at No’One’s throat, working her vein. He should have taken her wrist, not her throat—matter of fact, why hadn’t he—

Abruptly, the memory went full-bore on him, the tastes and scents and feel of that female against him shutting his mind down and cranking up his senses.

God, she had been… a sunrise.

Opening his eyes, he stared down at the erection that had made itself known at the first image. His cock was in proportion to the rest of him—which meant it was long, thick, and heavy. And capable of going for hours.

As it strained in a demand for attention, he feared the arousal was like the hunger in his gut: going nowhere until he did something about it.

Yeah, whatever on that. He was not some posttrans with a perma-boner and a hairy palm. He could choose whether or not he jerked off, for fuck’s sake—and that would be a big NO.

Snagging the bar of soap, he sudsed up his legs, and wished he was V—no, not with the black candles and shit. But at least if he had that vampire’s mind, he could think of, like, the molecular makeup of plastic, or the chemical composition of fluoride toothpaste, or… how gasoline powered cars.

Or he supposed he could think of dudes—which, given that he wasn’t attracted to them, might well lead to a merciful deflation.

The problem was, he was just Tohrment, son of Hharm… so he was stuck trying to remember how to make Toll House cookies: He didn’t know shit from Shinola about science, he didn’t give a crap about sports, and he hadn’t read a newspaper or watched the TV news in years.

Plus those were the only goddamn anything he knew how to make… what did you put in them? Butter? Crisco? Spackle?

As nothing came to him, he began to worry that his Food Network
channel was not only incompetent, but wasn’t going to do shit for his dumb handle.

He gave it another shot. And could only remember how to open the goddamn bag of chips.

Stalled, stiff at the hips, and despaired, he closed his eyes… and thought of his Wellsie, naked and in their bed. Of how she tasted and felt, of all the ways they’d been together, of all the days spent interlocked and panting.

Gripping himself, he pinned the pictures of his mate to the forefront of his mind, plastering them over anything that had to do with No’One. He didn’t want that other female in this space; he might have to take care of business, which he didn’t want to do, but he could damn well set boundaries.

He sure as hell couldn’t pick his fate, but his fantasies were totally up for grabs.

Stroking his shaft, he tried to remember everything about his red-haired beauty: the way her hair had looked across his chest, the gleam of her bare sex, how her breasts had peaked when she was on her back.

It was just part of a history book, though, and the illustrations had faded—as if his mind had lifted the ink from the pages.

His concentration lost, he popped open his lids and got a hi-how’re-ya of his hand wrapped around that stupid-ass arousal, trying to pump off something, anything.

It was like milking a Coke machine—getting him nowhere. Well, except for a vague sting where the skin got pinched at the head.

“God
damn
it.”

Dropping the whole bad idea, he got busy with the soap, running the bar over his chest and under his armpits.

“Sire?” Fritz called out from the other room. “Would you require aught else?”

He was
not
asking the
doggen
for porn. That was
blech
on so many levels. “Ah, no, thanks, my man.”

“Very good. Have a blessed sleep.”

Yeah. Right. “You, too.”

After the outside door was shut again, Tohr shampooed his head like he supposed all males did: Squeeze out a crapload, rub it into your hair like you were trying to get a stain out of a carpet, and then stand under the spray forever because you’d used too much of whatever Fritz had bought you.

Later, he would decide it would have been best to keep his eyes open.

As soon as he shut his lids to keep the suds out, the warm rush down his torso turned into hands, and the urge to orgasm came back even stronger than before, his cock throbbing, his balls getting tight—

Instantly, he was downstairs in the pantry again, his mouth locked on No’One’s smooth throat, his suction and swallowing filling his belly, his arms squeezing her hard against his body.…

Your
shellan
is welcome here.

He shook his head at the sound of her voice in his inner ear. But then he realized that was the answer.

Regripping himself, he told his brain that the images were of his Wellsie. That the feeling, the sensation, the scent, the taste… it was his Wellsie, not another female.

It was not a memory.

It was his mate back to him—

The release was so sudden, he actually recoiled, his eyes going wide, his body jerking not from the orgasm but the surprise that, yes, in fact, he was actually having one in RL, not in some dreamscape.

As he stroked himself and rode the crest, he watched himself come, his sex doing what it was supposed to, kicking out jets that hit the wet marble wall and the glass pane of the door.

The sight was less erotic than biological.

It was just a function, he realized. Like breathing and eating. Yeah, it felt good, but so did a deep breath: in this vacuum of emotion, in this lonely shower, it was really just a series of ejaculations that coughed through his prostate.

Feelings gave sex meaning, whether it was in a fantasy or with your mate… or if you were with someone you didn’t like all that much, for that matter.

Or didn’t want to want, an inner voice pointed out.

When his body was done, he feared it was just a round-one situation, because he was still every bit as erect as he had been when this had started. But at least he didn’t feel like he had cheated on his mate. In fact, he didn’t feel anything at all, and that was good.

Rinsing off, he got out, dried himself with a towel… and took the stretch of terry cloth with him into the bedroom.

He was pretty certain that after he ate, things were going to get messy when he lay down, and not from any kind of indigestion.

But it was… okay. As okay as he could ever get, he supposed.

The sex he’d had with his mate had been monumental, shattering, fireworks-making—transformative.

This shit was about as sexy as a head cold.

As long as he didn’t think of…

He stopped himself and cleared his throat, even though he wasn’t speaking out loud.

As long as he didn’t think of anyone else of the female persuasion, he was good.

T
he following evening, Xcor stood in the recessed doorway of a brick building in the heart of downtown. Set back by nearly three feet, the space formed a coffin of sorts, providing him shadows to conceal himself with, as well as cover from stray bullets.

On his own, he was utterly and completely pissed off as he surveyed the area and kept an eye on the sleek black car he had followed.

Lifting his forearm, he checked his watch. Again. Where were his soldiers?

Splitting off from the group to follow Assail had brought him here, but before he had departed, he’d told the others to find him after they had finished their first round of fighting—a locating task that shouldn’t have been difficult. All they had to do was rooftop-to-rooftop surveillance in the part of the city where drug dealing was at its most prevalent.

Not hard a’tall.

And yet here he was, alone.

Assail was still inside the building opposite, likely consorting with more of the ilk that he had killed the night before. The place of business he’d entered was ostensibly an art gallery, but Xcor was old-fashioned, not
naive. All manner of goods and services could be contracted out of any sort of “legitimate” establishment.

It was nearly an hour later when the other vampire finally reemerged, and the light over the back exit caught his densely black hair and his predatorlike features. That low-slung car he ambulated in was parked off to the side, and as he walked around it, a pinkie ring of some sort flashed.

Moving as he did, dressed in black as he was, he looked… exactly like a vampire, actually. Dark, sensuous, dangerous.

Pausing at the car’s door, he put his hand inside his jacket to get his keys—

And turned around to face Xcor with a gun. “Do you honestly think I don’t know you’re watching me?”

That pronunciation was so old-world and so very thick, the accent turning the words into practically a foreign language—or what would have been one if Xcor wasn’t so intimately familiar with the original dialect.

Where were his
fucking
soldiers?

As Xcor stepped out, he had an autoloader of his own, and it was not without satisfaction that he watched the other male recoil slightly as recognition dawned.

“Did you expect a Brother, mayhap?” Xcor drawled.

Assail did not lower his muzzle. “My business is my own. You have no right to shadow me.”

“My business is whatever I determine it to be.”

“Your ways will not work here.”

“And what ‘ways’ are those?”

“There are laws here.”

“So I have heard. And I am fairly confident you are breaking several in your endeavors.”

“I refer not to human ones.” As if those were entirely irrelevant—and at least on that they could agree. “The Old Law provides—”

“We’re in the New World, Assail. New rules.”

“According to whom?”

“Me.”

The male narrowed his eyes. “O’erstepping already?”

“Your conclusion is your own.”

“Then I shall let it stand. And I shall take my leave of you now—unless you have plans to shoot me. In which case, I shall take you with
me.” He lifted up his other hand. In it was a small black handset. “Just so we’re clear, the bomb that is wired to the undercarriage of my car will go off if my thumb contracts—which is precisely the kind of autonomic jerk that will occur if you put a bullet in my chest or my back. Oh, and mayhap I should mention that the explosion has a radius that more than includes where you are, and the detonation is so efficient, you will not be able to dematerialize out of the zone fast enough.”

Xcor laughed with genuine respect. “You know what they say about suicides, don’t you. No Fade for them.”

“It’s not suicide if you shoot me first. Self-defense.”

“And you’re willing to test that out?”

“If you are.”

The male appeared utterly unconcerned with the choice, at peace with living or dying, uncaring of the violence and pain—and yet not unplugged, either.

He would have made an exceptional soldier, Xcor thought. If he hadn’t been castrated by his mommy.

“So your solution,” Xcor murmured, “is mutual self-destruction.”

“What is it going to be?”

If Xcor had had his backup in place, there would have been a better way to handle this. But no, the bastards were nowhere around. And it was a fundamental tenet of conflict that if you were facing a well-matched enemy, who was well-provisioned and well-couraged, then you did not engage—you retreated, remarshaled, and lived to fight under circumstances more favorable to your own victory.

Besides, Assail had to be kept alive long enough so that the king could come to see him.

None of this sat well, however. And Xcor’s mood, already dark to begin with, went utterly black.

He didn’t say anything further. He simply dematerialized to another alley about half a mile away, letting his departure speak for itself.

As he re-formed by a shut-up newsstand, he was furious with his soldiers, his ire from the confrontation with Assail transferred and magnified as he thought of his males.