God, he’d never thought about it properly before, but from the first heartbeat struck within a vital body, a bell got tolled and the clock started to run. A bargain you weren’t even aware of having made was put into play, with destiny holding all the cards. As minutes and hours and days and months and years passed, history was written as you ran out of time until your last heartbeat marked the end of the ride and the time to tally wins and losses.
Strange how mortality made moments like this with her infinite.
And as he held Xhex against him, feeling her warmth amplify his own, he was rejuvenated down to his marrow, his scale rebalanced, his sum total squarely in life-was-all-worth-it territory.
His growling stomach was what parted them.
“Come on,” she said, “we need to feed your beast.”
He nodded, clasped her hand, and started walking.
“You have to teach me sign language,” Xhex said as they went into the office and opened the supply closet door. “Like, now.”
He nodded again as they filed into the tight space and Xhex shut them in together. Hmm... another shot at privacy. Closed door... loose clothes...
The rat bastard in him measured the maneuvering room they had, his cock twitching behind the scrubs. If she put her legs around his hips, they could fit just fine—
Xhex stepped in close, her hand going to the erection behind the thin cotton across his hips. Rising onto her tiptoes, she brushed her lips against his neck, one fang scratching over his jugular.
“We keep this up, we’re never going to find a bed.” Her voice dropped even lower as she rubbed him. “God, you’re big... Have I told you how deep you go in me? Very deep. Niiiice and very deep.”
John fell back against a stack of yellow legal pads, knocking them off the shelf. As he scrambled to catch them before they hit the floor, she stopped him by pushing him upright again.
“Stay where you are,” she said, going down on her knees. “I like the view too much.”
As she picked up what had gone flying, her eyes locked on his arousal—which naturally made a bid for freedom, pushing out against what kept it hidden from her stare, her mouth, her sex.
John’s hands cranked onto the lip of one of the shelves as he watched her watch him, his breath sawing in his lungs.
“I think I got all the pads,” she said after a while. “Better put them back.”
She leaned into his legs as she slowly rose up, her face caressing his knees, his thighs—
Xhex went right over his cock, her lips brushing the underside of the damn thing. As his head went loose and flopped onto the shelving, she continued the ascent so that her breasts were the next thing that hit him on that electric spot.
She ended the torture by sliding the legals back in place... while grinding her hips against his.
In his ear, she whispered, “Let’s eat fast.”
Fucking. Too. Right.
She backed off of him with a nip on his lobe, but he stayed riiiiiiight where he was. Because if the scrubs added even a hint of friction to this sexquation, he was going to come all over himself.
Which was ordinarily not a bad thing, at least not with her around, but on reconsideration, this was not really a private place. At any moment, one of the Brothers or the
After a curse and some serious repositioning below the waist, John punched a code in and opened the way to the tunnel.
“So what is the hand position for ‘A’?” she said as they stepped through and started walking.
By the time they got to “D,” they were out through the hidden door under the mansion’s grand staircase. “I” took them into the kitchen to the refrigerator. “M” got them to a pair of sandwiches—because their hands were busy with the roasted turkey and the mayo and the lettuce and bread, there wasn’t much forward progress through the alphabet. They didn’t do any better during the eating part of things, just “N” and “O” and “P,” but he could tell she was practicing in her mind, her eyes focused on the middle distance between them as she obviously mentally reviewed what he was teaching her.
She learned fast and that was not a surprise. Cleanup led to “Q” through “V,” and they were coming out of the kitchen as he showed her “X” and “Y” and “Z”—
“Good, I was going to go find you.” Z pulled up short in the archway of the dining room. “Wrath’s called a meeting now. Xhex, you’re going to want to be there.”
The Brother wheeled around, jogged across the mosaic apple tree on the foyer’s floor and headed up the grand staircase.
“Your king usually do this in the middle of the day?” Xhex asked.
John shook his head and both mouthed and signed,
The pair of them followed quickly, taking the steps two at a time.
Up on the second floor, the whole Brotherhood was crammed into Wrath’s study and the king was seated on his father’s throne behind the desk. George was curled into a sit by his master’s side and Wrath was stroking the golden retriever’s boxy head with one hand while flipping a dagger-shaped letter opener in the air with the other.
John stayed back, and not just because it was SRO, given the number of large male bodies in the room. He wanted to be near the door.
Xhex’s mood had completely shifted.
Sure as if she’d changed her emotional clothes, she’d gone from a flannel nightgown to chain mail: She was twitchy as she stood beside him, her weight shifting back and forth from one foot to the other.
He was feeling much the same.
John looked around. Across the way, Rhage unsheathed a grape Toostie Pop and V lit up a hand- rolled while he got Phury on speakerphone. Rehv, Tohr, and Z were pacing and Butch was on his sofa, pulling a Hugh Hefner in his silk pajamas. Qhuinn, meanwhile, was propped up near the pale blue drapes, and clearly fresh from some grind: His lips were red and his hair had had a lot of fingers through it and his shirt was partially tucked in—hanging loose in front.
Which made you wonder if he was sporting a hard-on.
Where was Blay? John wondered. And who the hell had Qhuinn just balled?
“So V got one fuck of a voice mail in the general mailbox.” As Wrath spoke out, his wraparounds scanned the crowd, even though he was totally blind behind them. “Instead of doing a lot of bullshit explaining, I’m going to have him play it for you.”
Vishous left the hand-rolled between his lips as he pulled trig on the phone and danced across the numbers on the console putting in mailbox numbers and passwords.
And then John heard that voice. That snarky-ass, cocksucking voice.
“Bet you never expected to hear from me again.” Lash’s tone was one of grim satisfaction. “Surprise, motherfuckers, and guess what? I’m about to do you a favor. You might want to know that there was a mass induction into the Lessening Society tonight. Farmhouse out RR 149. Happened around four a.m., so if you get off your asses and head there as soon as night falls, you might find them still throwing up all over the place. FYI, wear your waders—it’s a mess. Oh, and tell Xhex I can still taste her—”
V canned the speakerphone.
As John’s lips peeled off his fangs, and he let out a soundless snarl, the painting on the wall behind him trembled.
When George whimpered, Wrath soothed the dog and pointed the letter opener across the way. “You’ll get your chance at him, John. I swear it on my father’s grave. I need your head in this game now, though, dig?”
Easier said than done. Reeling in the urge to kill was like restraining a pit bull with one hand behind his back.
Next to him, Xhex frowned and crossed her arms over her chest.
“We cool?” Wrath demanded.
When John finally whistled an assent, Vishous exhaled a cloud of Turkish tobacco and cleared his throat. “He didn’t leave an exact address for this so-called massacre. And I tried to trace the number he called from and got nothing.”
“The question I’m wondering,” Wrath said, “is what the fuck’s doing. He’s head of the Lessening Society—so
