Mine, page 12
Lydia was going to be a great mother someday. And her broken heart was going to need something to live for.
Deep down, though, she’d known the pregnancy couldn’t last. She wasn’t a genetics expert, but the chromosomes she’d put into the mix had to be deficient. They just had to be. And… they had been. The miscarriage was all very logical from a medical point of view. The human side of things? That was proving difficult. For someone who had never wanted to be pregnant, who wouldn’t know what to do with an infant if she were handed one for just a hi-hello, she was shocked by the sadness.
She glanced back at Gus’s bruised face. “The baby’s gone. If I lose you, too, I’m done… I’m not going out fighting, there’s going to be no great show of courage. I’m just going to head up to that bed and lie down and let my cancer take me.”
Beep-beep-beep…
The heart monitor kept a steady metronome that, instead of reassuring her, just made her anxious for the moment it missed a beat. Like her losing her baby, surely that was going to be the outcome.
“Just so you know,” she murmured, “my lawyer insisted I put a reversion clause in that contract giving you Vita. So if you die, she comes back to me. And when I die… she’s going to disappear with me.”
Like the baby. A spark of life, and then gone.
It was a crazy idea anyway. Curing cancer.
What the hell had they been thinking.
“Anyway, I just wanted to say it all out loud once.” She laughed in a short burst. “Deathbed confession, really. I love you, Gus. You’re the best man I ever met. And in another life, in another time… I really think we would have been great together.”
* * *
Up in the first-floor guest suite, Lydia stood in the shower, her head back, the hot jets of water spearing through her hair, the suds of her shampoo running down her spine and puddling on the tile under her feet. On a lot of levels, it seemed inconceivable that she was doing something as normal as having a wash.
She also felt like it was an impermissible self-indulgence.
There was this need to be clean, however… as if soaping herself up and having a good rinse could somehow wipe away the images she saw on the backs of her eyelids every time she blinked. Or at least maybe the cleansing would dim the memory of what Gus had looked like, bloodied, bleeding, going into cardiac arrest, on the black-and-white marble floor of the foyer.
The amnesia strategy wasn’t working, unfortunately. But her aching body was loosening up so she lingered in the neither-here-nor-there of the warmth and the steam and the scents of sweet-smelling products that were familiar to her.
Which were nice things to focus on. As opposed to whether Gus would live, and how Daniel was doing… and the light she had seen around Blade—
Cranking the faucet off with a jerk, she stepped out.
“Towel?” Daniel said as he held one out.
“Thank you.”
Instead of giving the terrycloth to her, he stepped forward and wrapped her up, not just in the softness, but in his arms. And what do you know. As she leaned into him, she didn’t care about drying off.
This time, as she closed her eyes and breathed in deep, she saw nothing. She was too busy feeling him.
“I need to stop thinking,” she whispered. “I really… want to be with you. Make love to me?”
“Always.”
Tucking the towel around her, he took her hand and led her into the bedroom. They hadn’t turned the lamps or the overhead fixture on, and with the glow from the bath, things were almost candlelit. When they got to the bed, he unwrapped her body and patted the duvet.
“My hair is all wet.”
“And I’m going to take care of that.”
As she sat down, she looked up at him. His expression was rapt as he brought the towel to her head and began to massage her still-dripping waves. The motion was hypnotic and she swayed as his big hands went back and forth, back and forth, her breasts following the movement, the tightening tips brushing against the waistband of his jeans.
Thinking of what was behind his fly, she ached for what he once had, but she couldn’t let that sadness take over.
Here and now, she reminded herself. This was what they had.
And it was good.
Daniel dropped the towel to the floor and stared down at her. He had a slight smile to his mouth, one that was anticipation wrapped up in a tilt to the lips, and as he bent to kiss her on the forehead, she put her hands on his hips.
“It’s okay to stop thinking.” He brushed his fingers through her damp hair, capturing it and twisting the weight into a rope that he laid down on her spine. “The crisis will be there in the morning. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about what happens to him.”
“You always know what to say to me, don’t you.”
Holding on to the bedside table for balance, he lowered himself to his knees. “Close your eyes.”
She followed the command, and took a deep breath.
“When was the last time I told you how beautiful you are?”
Lydia laughed a little and looked at him again. “It’s pretty often. You spoil me.”
“Just speaking my truth. Now shut those eyes… and feel me.”
The first thing she was rewarded with was a brush on her cheek. His fingertip. And then it traveled slowly to her jaw and followed around to her lower lip. Back and forth the caress went, as a kiss would, until her mouth parted when she gasped—and as if she’d given him the response he’d been waiting for, the touch continued on. Now… it was on the side of her throat, moving to her collarbone. Oh, God, she knew where he was heading and her nipples peaked even further—
Except he went between her breasts, that hovering touch tracing her sternum.
“I’m such a lucky man,” he said hoarsely.
Her lids flipped open; she couldn’t help herself. It was the hunger in his voice, and sure enough, he was staring at her body with his eyes at half-mast, a very masculine expression of need on his face.
“Look at you.” His fingertip continued on to her belly button. “You make me feel like a man.”
Reaching out, she put her hands on his face and tilted it back so their eyes met. “That’s because you are one.”
She pressed her lips to his, and he kissed her back, licking his way into her mouth. The sensations were achingly familiar, and yet new every time, the warmth and the slick plying a kind of drug that relaxed the tension in her shoulders—and relocated it in a coil in her gut.
“Close your eyes some more,” he murmured. “Feel me…”
Giving herself over to him, she trembled as he followed the path of where his finger had gone with his lips, kissing her jaw, her throat… that collarbone. Her breath got unbearably tight as the whispering nuzzles went between her breasts.
There was a pause. That seemed to last a hundred years.
“Please,” she begged.
“Well, when you put it like that, so politely…”
Her gasp was loud as he dropped the slow-and-sweet and went right to licking her nipple. He did that again, his tongue laving up the taut tip, and then he sucked her into his mouth. While he worked her, his hands moved to the undersides of both breasts and he pressed them together. Then it was a case of back and forth, from one to the other, the pulls and releases teasing her and satiating her by turns.
All she knew was Daniel. The sensations were so good, grounding her in the present between them, shutting out the world for a short period of time. And he knew that she needed this respite. Sleep was going to be impossible, but this erotic reset? It was going to give her the break she needed.
So she could face whatever was waiting for them on the other side of their bedroom door, on the other side of this intense slice of privacy.
He took his time with her breasts.
When he finally retracted his mouth, she moaned in protest, and he laughed softly. “Lie back.”
She obeyed without hesitation—and was gifted with his broad, warm palms on the tops of her thighs. Going slowly, he stroked his way up to her hip bones and rubbed his thumbs over the wings of her pelvis—and then he was parting her knees.
His lips were a soft, searching caress on the inside of one and then the other. Nipping her with his teeth, he licked away the tingle—and this was the way he moved higher and higher to the core of her. In response, she was all liquid for him, the heat redoubling in her sex as he closed in with aching deliberation—
Out of rank frustration, she lifted one leg and let it fall out to the side on the mattress, exposing all of herself to his eyes. His touch.
His mouth.
The air was cool against her, and the anticipation made her lungs burn.
“I’m going to taste you,” he drawled.
Except he didn’t. He just nuzzled into the thigh she’d angled so wide.
“Daniel…”
“Hmm?” He lifted his head, lips trailing up and off her skin. “Oh, sorry. You’re right. I’m losing focus.”
But instead of sealing his mouth on her, his hands went to her breasts, cupping them, thumbing her nipples. And meanwhile, he was still on her thigh—
Rolling her hips, she begged him again. Or at least that was her intention. Some sounds were certainly coming out of her, rising up her throat and hitting the sexually charged airwaves between them—but she couldn’t recognize the words. Maybe her hearing was going?
“Now I want you to look at me.”
As his voice registered, her lids popped open and she lifted her head.
Daniel was staring up at her from between her thighs, and when their eyes met, he extended his tongue, dropped his head… and lapped right up the center of her. Then he went back and did it again. And a third time with the stroke—
Now, he licked all the way free, the sight of his slick tongue leaving her sex sending her right over the edge.
The orgasm swept through her and she let herself feel all of it: The delicious snapping release, the rhythmic pulses deep inside of her, the fulfillment—
He entered her with his fingers, the penetration stretching her. “Keep coming for me—”
“Again…?” she said hoarsely.
“Yes, again. Always—”
Part of that last word was absorbed by her flesh, the vibration teasing the top of her slit.
After that, there wasn’t any more talking.
His mouth was busy doing other things.
And she was busy gasping his name.
FIFTEEN
SO YOU WANT to tell me why you need to know about this?”
As Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, tossed that query over the proverbial transom, he sat down behind his Four Toys and swiveled his office chair away from the bank of computers. Sitting across the Pit’s shallow living area, like the pair of them were waiting to be called into a doctor’s office—or hell, the school principal’s—Xhex and John Matthew were staring at him like they had no intention of opening their mouths to answer the question anytime soon.
Okay, fine, so maybe it was more a dentist’s.
V shook his head and reached for a hand-rolled. “Yeah, not how this is going to go. I want to know why you’re asking about these murders in Caldwell. You want to stay quiet? Fine. But I’m not finna do shit for you.”
John Matthew looked down at his hands as if he wanted to use them to sign something, but was determined to let his mate do the talking. Which meant whatever this was had to do with Xhex. And if she was asking about corpses without their eyes?
Then Rehv was right. She was out in Caldwell killing civilians.
But you’d think that would be the kind of thing the female would remember…
In the dense quiet, Xhex sat back into the black leather sofa, the cushions creaking in a biker’s-jacket kind of way. As she glanced around, her body was tense, and he wondered if she wasn’t going to spring off the couch and start doing laps around the Foosball table—or head into the galley kitchen and help herself to some of his Grey Goose. The latter wasn’t going to be a tough target. He’d left a fresh bottle on the counter from having poured himself a little wake-up juice.
Which was what you did when you got a chopped-up text in the middle of the day from an otherwise tight-headed female: Cn u talk rt now?
The bing! had woken both him and Doc Jane, and courtesy of his shellan’s medical career in level-one trauma, and him having been in the Black Dagger Brotherhood for over three centuries, it was insta-wake time, both of them up and fully functioning. He’d texted back a Yup and kissed his mate—who was so used to interrupted sleep that she’d been back on the pillow and in dreamland before he’d even pulled on some PJ bottoms.
“Well?” He put the hand-rolled between his front teeth and lit it with a red Bic. “What we got?”
As he spoke through the exhale, the familiar scent of fine Turkish tobacco wafted up around his head, and he brought his ashtray closer. To move things along, he tapped his keyboard, just to remind them of all the data he could be getting for them.
Xhex rubbed her face like she had a vise screwed onto her temples. “I think I might have done… some things at work.”
V cocked an eyebrow because he felt like pretending he was surprised might get her to loosen up. You know, all You? Getting violent in a club where humans and vampires hell-bent on making bad choices did drugs and drank alcohol until they went off the chain and needed some consequential learning they maybe didn’t wake up from? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Yeah, he needed his Larry David face for this news flash.
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“It was in the last, say, six months.” She glanced at John. “And that’s all I know for sure.”
“We talking our kind? Or rats without tails.”
“Our kind. Them. Maybe both.”
“You don’t remember?”
John was the one to answer that with a curt shake of the head.
And then Xhex said, “No eyes. They won’t… have any eyes.”
And the female was known for using the lys.
“Okaaaaaaay, I think we’ll start there,” V murmured, as he swiveled back and fired up his Four Toys. “Let me see what I got on our side first.”
Until recently, like within the last couple of years, the vampire population had been on its own. No objective justice meted out for crimes. No place to vet disputes within bloodlines or with neighbors. No mating or birth certifications. But ever since Wrath had finally taken the throne, a system of public records had been established. V and Saxton had created the census table of names, aliases, birth dates—if known—and dates of deaths along with the cause. There was also a Notes section, and he searched under the word “eyes.” Because he couldn’t remember whether he had used “removed,” “lost,” or “taken out.”
“Lost,” like they’d rolled out of the skull?
“What are you seeing?” Xhex demanded as he started reading through the search results.
V took a drag and glanced over to the sofa. “Two a week or so ago. And one—”
“Last night?” When he nodded, she cursed. “What was… what happened? With that.”
“He was found in an alley off Market.” V tapped his hand-rolled as he scrolled down. “Tohr happened to be patrolling that quadrant and he was able to intercede as the police arrived on scene. Ligature marks around the neck, eyes had been removed. Body was taken to our morgue down in the garage and we’re still looking for next of kin. There was a human world ID on the guy, but the fake name isn’t registered with us.”
“So some family is out there waiting for him to come home.”
As V moved up to the first of the entries, there was a series of shifting hand positions as John Matthew communicated with his mate.
“The two last week,” V said, “were found downtown. Both males. No eyes, ligature marks.” He frowned. “Oh, shit…”
Xhex jerked forward. “What.”
“So this first guy has a reference link to my criminal database.” He clicked on the link. “Let’s see—okay. Yeah…”
“Yeah, what?”
Just as she was getting to her feet, V whistled under his breath. “Looks like you did us a favor.”
* * *
Going to stand behind Vishous, Xhex looked over his heavy shoulder, intending to read whatever was on the screen. That was a no-go. Her eyes bounced all around the different screens, refusing to light on the one in the center that had columns of information on it.
“This was no male of worth.” V scrolled down. “Breaking and entering on his grandmahmen. He just robbed her, but the next month, he pulled the same stunt and battered his cousins during the home invasion—and here’s some domestic violence against his live-in GF. Twice—no, three times on the DV. Oh… fuck.”
“What?” She blinked and tried to focus on the words.
As John Matthew likewise whistled in an ascension, V shook his head. “The female didn’t survive the most recent attack. The guy was on the run—although what the hell was he doing in that club if he wanted to stay gone.”
“What was his name?” she demanded.
“Ero.”
“And where was he found?”
“Again, it was Market Street in an alley. Rehv was the one who called him in to us. Apparently some civilians came to him about it.”
She thought back to the spring and the confrontation she’d had with Rehv at the club. He’d been right about her grid. She’d been arrogant. And people had died.
Then again, why wouldn’t a lack of self-awareness come with your entire consciousness collapsing?
“Do you have a picture of…” Her voice drifted off.
Vishous rode his mouse and clicked on something. “Here.”
The image that came up was in full color, the flash cutting through the darkness of the night scene. The body was on its back and dressed in clothes that were off-kilter following a skirmish, the arms out to the sides, the boots lax at the ends of the legs. She couldn’t see the neck clearly given the collar of the jacket, but the damage to the eyes was nothing you could miss: Empty sockets with not a lot of blood, the removal a clean job.
