Getting her off-kilter was easy, but man, she was a strong motherfucker. With only one leg supporting her weight, she managed to jump and spin, clipping him in the shoulder with her knee.
He heard her land and start to scramble, but he kept a hold on her hair, reining her in. She was like water, though, always fluid, always moving, hitting him time and time again until he was forced to manhandle her onto the ground and pin her down.
It was a case of brute strength winning out over grace.
Panting, he looked into a face he couldn’t see. “What the fuck is your problem?”
“I’m bored.” With that, she head-butted him right in the goddamn nose.
Pain made him feel like he was on a merry-go-round, his hold briefly lessening. Which was all she needed to get free again. Now he was the one on the bottom, her forearm cranked around his throat and pulling back so hard, she must have had a grip on her wrist for greater leverage.
Wrath strained to get air down into his lungs. Holy shit, she was going to kill him if she kept this up. She really was.
Deep within himself, deep down into his very marrow, deep into the double helixes of his DNA, the response came. He was not going to die here and now. No fucking way. He was a survivor. He was a fighter. And whoever this bitch was, she was not going to issue him his ticket to the Fade.
Wrath let out a war cry in spite of the iron bar across his neck, and moved so fast he had no idea what he did. All he knew was that a split second later, the female was facedown on the marble with both her arms twisted up behind her back.
For absolutely no reason, he thought of however many nights ago, when he’d popped the arms off that lesser in the alley before he’d killed the fucker.
He was going to do exactly the same to her-
The laughter rippling up from underneath him was what stopped him. The female…was laughing. And not like someone who’d lost her mind. She was honestly having a good time, even though she must have known she was about to pass out from the kind of pain he was going to inflict on her.
Wrath loosened his hold only slightly. “You are a sick bitch, you know that?”
Her hard body quaked under his as she kept on laughing. “I know.”
“If I let you go, are we going to just end up here again?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Strange, but he kind of liked those odds, and after a moment, he released her as he would have a stallion with a bad temper: quickly and with a fast out-of-the-way on his part. As he planted his feet, he was ready for her to come at him again, and sort of hoping she did.
The female stayed where she was, on the marble floor, and he heard that clicking again.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I have this habit of flicking my ring finger nail against the underside of the one on my thumb.”
“Oh. Cool.”
“Hey, are you going to come here again anytime soon?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because that was more fun than I’ve had since…a long time.”
“Who are you again? And why haven’t I seen you here before?”
“Let’s just say She has never known what to do with me.”
It was clear given the female’s tone who the She was. “Well, Payne, I can come back for more of this.”
“Good. Make it soon.” He heard her get to her feet. “By the way, your glasses are right by your left foot.”
There was a rustle and the quiet shutting of a door.
Wrath picked the wraparounds up and then let his legs have a time-out, taking a seat on the marble. Funny, he enjoyed the ache in his leg and the sting on his shoulder and the pounding pulse points of each and every one of his bruises. They were all familiar, part of his history and his present, and what he was going to need in the unfamiliar, frighteningly dark future.
His body was still his own. It still worked. He could still fight, and maybe with practice he could get back to where he had been.
He hadn’t died.
He was still alive. Yes, he couldn’t see, but he could still touch his shellan and make love to her. And he could still think and walk and talk and hear. His arms and legs worked just fine, and so did his lungs and heart.
The adjustment was not going to be easy. One really awesome fight was not going to clear away what was going to be months and months of awkward learning and frustration and anger and missteps.
But he had perspective. Unlike the bloody nose he’d gotten falling down the stairs, the one he had now didn’t seem like a symbol of all he’d lost. It was more like a representation of everything he still had.
As Wrath came back to his form in the library of the Brotherhood’s mansion, he was smiling, and when he got to his feet, he chuckled as one of his legs hollered in pain.
Concentrating, he took two limping steps to the left and…found the couch. Took ten forward and…found the door. Opened the door, took fifteen straight ahead, and…found the balustrade to the grand staircase.
He could hear the meal that was being eaten in the dining room, the soft chiming of silver on porcelain filling the void where chatter usually was. And he could smell the…oh, yeah, lamb. That’s what he was talking about.
As he took thirty-five measured crab steps to the left, he started to laugh, especially as he swiped his face and the blood dripped off his hand.
He knew exactly when they all saw him. Forks and knives dropped on plates and bounced, and chairs scraped backward and curses filled the air.
Wrath just laughed and laughed and laughed some more. “Where’s my Beth?”
“Oh, sweet Lord,” she said as she came to him. “Wrath…what happened-”
“Fritz,” he called out as he fit his queen against him. “Will you make me a plate? I’m hungry. And get me towel so I can mop up.” He squeezed Beth. “Take me to my seat, would you, my love?”
Lots of silence that positively rang with holy-shit-what-is-this.
Hollywood was the one who asked, “Who the hell used your face as a soccer ball?”
Wrath just shrugged and rubbed his shellan’s back. “I made a new friend.”
“Hell of friend.”
“She is.”
“She?”
Wrath’s stomach let out a grumble. “Look, can I join the meal here or what?”
Something about sustenance snapped everyone back in focus, and there was all kinds of talk and bustling, and then Beth was leading him down the room. As he sat, a damp washcloth was put into his hand, and the heavenly scent of rosemary and lamb appeared right in front of him.
“For God’s sake, will you sit down,” he told them as he mopped up his face and neck. When there were all kinds of chair noises, he found his knife and fork and prodded around his plate, identifying the lamb and the baby new potatoes and…the peas. Yup, the roly-polies were peas.
The lamb was delicious. Just as he liked it.
“You sure that was a friend,” Rhage said.
“Yup,” he said, squeezing Beth’s hand. “I’m sure.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Twenty-four hours in Manhattan was enough to turn even the son of evil into a new male.
Behind the wheel of the Mercedes, with a trunk and backseat full of bags from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani, and Hermes, Lash was a happy camper. He’d crashed at the Waldorf in a suite, fucked three women-two at the same time-and eaten like a king.
As he got off the Northway at the exit for the symphath colony, he checked the time on his brand-spanking-new gold Cartier Tank, the replacement for that fake Jacob amp; Co. bling shit, which was so beneath him.
