with the good-bye that was waiting for them. That was going to come soon enough.
Besides, they’d nearly reached their destination.
“She’s over here,” he said, hanging a left and pushing into the recovery-stall area.
The instant the door opened, Payne hesitated, a frown appearing as whinnies and the occasional hoof stamping broke through the hayscented air.
“Farther down.” Manny tugged at her hand. “Her name’s Glory.”
Glory was the last one on the left, but the instant he said her name, her long, elegant neck stretched out and her perfectly proportioned head emerged from the top of her stall.
“Hey, girl,” he said. In response, she let out a proper greeting, her pointed ears pricking, her muzzle pumping the air.
“Merciful fate,” Payne breathed, dropping his hand and going forward ahead of him.
As she approached the stall, Glory tossed her head, her black mane flaring, and he had a sudden vision of Payne getting bitten. “Be careful,” he said as he broke into a jog. “She doesn’t like—”
The instant Payne put her hand on that silken muzzle, Glory went right in for more, bumping against the palm, seeking a proper cuddle.
“—new people,” Manny finished lamely.
“Hello, darling one,” Payne murmured, her eyes going over the horse as she leaned into the stall. “You are so beautiful . . . so big and strong. . . .” Pale hands found a black neck and stroked in a slow rhythm. “Why are her forelegs bandaged?”
“She broke the right one. Badly. About a week ago.”
“May I go inside?”
“Ah . . .” God, he couldn’t believe it, but Glory appeared to be in love, her eyes all but rolling back into her head as she got a good scratching behind the ears. “Yeah, I think it’ll be okay.”
He sprang the latch on the door and they both slipped in. And when Glory went to move back, she hobbled . . . on what had been her good side.
She’d lost so much weight that her ribs were showing like picketfence rails under her coat.
And he was willing to bet when the newness of her visitors dimmed, her burst of energy would fade fast.
The voice mail message from the doctor had been all too apt: She was failing. That broken bone was healing, but not nearly fast enough, and the redistribution of mass had caused the layers of the opposite hoof to weaken and separate.
Glory extended her muzzle into his chest and gave him a quick shove. “Hey, girlie.”
“She is extraordinary.” Payne patted her way around the filly. “Just extraordinary.”
And now he had another thing on his conscience: Maybe bringing Payne here was not a gift, but a cruelty. Why introduce her to an animal who was likely going to be . . .
God, he couldn’t even think it.
“You are not the only one who is territorial,” Payne said softly.
Manny glanced around Glory’s head. “I’m sorry?”
“When you told me I was to meet a female, I . . . I had hoped she was one with a horse face.”
He laughed and smoothed Glory’s forehead. “Well, she has that, all right.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
As he tried to form the words, he gathered the mane that fell just above the filly’s nearly black eyes.
“Your lack of reply is answer enough,” Payne said sadly.
“I don’t know why I brought you here. I mean . . .” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I know why—and it’s pretty fucking pathetic. All I have is my job. . . . Glory is the only thing that is not my job. This is personal for me.”
“You must be brokenhearted.”
“I am.” Abruptly, Manny looked over the back of his failing horse to the dark-headed vampire who had laid her cheek against Glory’s flank. “I am . . . absolutely destroyed at the loss.”
FORTY
Mere moments after Butch called her, Jane became solid on the terrace of V’s penthouse. As her form took weight within its shape, the night air cold-fingered her hair and made her eyes water.
Or . . . maybe that was just her tears.
Looking in through the glass, she saw everything much too clearly: the table, the lashes, the whips, the . . . other things.
When she’d come here with Vishous before, those trappings of his hard-core predilections had seemed nothing more than a tantalizing and slightly frightening backdrop to the incredible sex they themselves had. But her version of “play” was poodle to his werewolf.
And how clearly did she know that now.
What had Butch used? What kind of shape was her mate in? Was there going to be a lot of blood—
Wait a minute. Where was V?
Passing through the sliding glass door, she . . .
No blood on the floor. Or dripping from instruments. No suspension hooks hanging from the ceiling. Everything was exactly as it had been the last time she’d been here, as if nothing had happened—
A groan came from outside the circle of candlelight, and the sound ripped her head around. Of course. The bed.
As she pierced the veil of darkness, her eyes adjusted and there he was: under a wrap of satin sheets, stretched out flat, writhing in pain . . . or was it sleep?
“Vishous?” she said softly.
With a shout, he came instantly awake, his torso shooting upright, his lids popping wide. Immediately, she noticed that his face was marked by fading scars . . . and there were others across his pecs and abdomen as well. But the expression he wore was what really got to her: He was terrified.
Abruptly, there was a furious flapping as he shoved the covers off his body. As he looked down at himself, sweat broke out across his chest and shoulders, his skin taking on a sudden gleam even in the shadows as he cupped his sex . . . like he was protecting what was left.
Hanging his head, he drew great breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale—
The pattern transformed into sobs.
Curling into himself, his hands sheltering the butcher job that had been done long, long ago, he wept in great heaves of emotion, his reserve gone, his control gone, his intelligence no longer ruler of his realm, but a subject.
He didn’t even realize she was standing next to him.
And she should leave, Jane thought. He wouldn’t want her to see him this way—not even before everything had fallen apart between them. The male she knew and loved and had mated wouldn’t want any witness to this—
It was hard to say what got his attention . . . and later she would wonder how he had picked that moment just as she was going to dematerialize to look up at her.
She was instantly incapacitated: If he had been pissed off about what had happened with Payne, he was going to hate her now—there was absolutely no going back from this invasion of privacy.
“Butch called me,” she blurted. “He thought you’d—”
“He hurt me. . . . My father hurt me.”
The words were so thin and soft that they nearly didn’t register. But when they did, her heart just stopped.
“Why,” Vishous asked. “Why did he do it to me. Why did my mother? I never asked to be born to the pair of them . . . and I wouldn’t have chosen to be if either had asked me. . . . Why?”
His cheeks were slick with tears that spilled over his diamond eyes, a ceaseless flow he neither noticed nor
