Lover Mine

“Don’t bother. He must be crashed.” Shit, she was hoping that he’d gotten her message and started hunting down that license plate already.

Standing in the front hall, she looked around the dining room, and then focused on the pitted table that had clearly been used as a cutting board.

The Omega’s little buddy with the Vin Diesel ride was going to have to come back for the new recruits. They weren’t useful hidden like this, because, assuming the lockdown worked as hers had with Lash, they couldn’t get out of the parallel plane they’d been relegated to until they were released.

Unless the spell could be called off from afar?

“We’ve got to stay longer,” she said. “And see who else shows.”

She and the Shadows took up res in the kitchen, pacing around and leaving fresh, bloody footprints on the cracked linoleum—ones that were no doubt going to fuck with the level, earnest heads of all those cops.

NHP.

Not. Her. Problem.

She checked the clock on the wall. Measured the empty kegs and the liquor bottles and the beer cans. Glanced over the tail ends of joints and the talc-y residue of coke lines.

Rechecked the clock.

Out in the back, the sun seemed to have stopped its descent, as if the golden disk was scared of getting skewered by the tree branches.

Stalled in her pursuit, she had nothing else to think about other than John. He must be climbing the damn walls right now, all up in a headspace that was hardly what you wanted somebody to meet the enemy with: He was going to be pissed off at her, distracted, revved up in the wrong way.

Wasn’t like she could call and talk to him. He couldn’t answer her.

And what she had to say wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to text.

“What’s the matter?” Trez asked, as she began to fidget.

“Nothing. Just ready to fight with no target.”

“Bullshit.”

“Annnnd we can stop the chatter right here, thank you very much.”

Ten minutes later, she was staring up at the clock on the wall again. Oh, for hell’s sake, she couldn’t stand this.

“I’m going back to the Brotherhood’s for a half hour,” she blurted. “Stay here, will you. Call my cell if anyone shows.”

As she gave them her number, the peanut gallery did themselves a favor and didn’t ask any whys—then again Shadows were like symphaths in that they tended to know where people were at.

“Roger that,” Trez said. “We’ll hitchu the second anything happens.”

Dematerializing, she took form in front of the Brotherhood mansion and crossed the pea gravel to the basilica-size steps. After she went into the vestibule, she put her face to the security camera.

Fritz opened the way after a moment and bowed low. “Welcome home, madam.”

The H-word sent a jolt through her. “Ah... thanks.” She looked around at the empty rooms off the foyer. “I’m just going to go upstairs.”

“I’ve prepared your previous room.”

“Thanks.” But she wasn’t heading there.

Drawn by the sense of John’s blood, she jogged up the grand staircase and went down to his crib.

Knocking, she waited, and when there was no answer, she cracked the door into the darkness and heard the hush of a running shower. Across the way, a lateral strip of light showed at carpet level, indicating he’d shut the way into the bathroom.

Crossing the Oriental, she shed her leather jacket and left it on the back of a chair. At the bath, she knocked again. Without hesitation. Loudly.

The door opened by itself, swinging free and revealing humid air and the dim glow of the inset lights above the Jacuzzi.

John was facing her behind the glass enclosure, the water rushing down his chest and his six-pack and his thighs. His cock sprang up into a massive erection the moment her eyes met his, but he didn’t move and he didn’t look glad to see her.

In fact, his upper lip curled in a snarl, and that wasn’t the worst of it. His emotional grid was completely closed off to her. He was blocking her and she wasn’t even sure he was aware of doing it: She couldn’t get a bead on anything that she had always sensed so clearly before.

Xhex lifted up her right hand and spelled out awkwardly: I came back.

His brow twitched. Then he signed much more smoothly and quickly: With intel for Wrath and the Brothers, right. Feel like a hero? Congratulations.

He shut off the water, stepped out, and leaned for a towel. He didn’t cover himself, but dried off, and it was hard not to notice that with each move and arch, his erection bobbed.

She never thought she’d curse her peripheral vision.

“I haven’t talked with anyone,” she said.

This left him pausing with the towel stretched across his back, one arm angled up, the other down. Naturally, the pose popped his pecs and pulled the muscles that ran over his hip bones out in stark relief.

He snapped the towel free and draped it over his shoulders. Leaving it to hang, he signed, Why did you come here?

“I wanted to see you.” The ache in her voice made her wish she’d used ASL.

Why.

“I was worried—”

You want to see how I’m hanging together? You want to know what it was like to spend the past seven hours wondering if you were dead or—

“John—”

He ripped the towel free and snapped the end in midair to shut her up. You want to know how I handled the idea that you were dead, fighting alone, or worse, back where you’d been? Your symphath side need a little diversion for kicks and giggles?

“God, no—”

You sure about that? You’re not wearing your cilices. Maybe you’re feeding that hunger, coming back here—

Xhex wheeled around for the door, her emotions too much for her to handle, the guilt and the sadness choking her.

John caught her arm and they ended up against the wall, his body holding hers in place while he signed up close to their faces.

Hell no, you do not get to run. After what you put me through, you do not get to run the fuck out of here just because you can’t deal with shit you created. I couldn’t run from today. I had to stay caged here and you can damn well return the favor. Her eyes wanted to focus elsewhere, but then she couldn’t track what he was saying with his hands. You want to know how I am? Fucking resolved, that’s how I am. You and I are turning a corner tonight. You say you have a right to go after Lash? I do, too.

That locker room, in the shower, she thought. The betrayal that she didn’t know the details of, but that she sensed had everything to do with what had happened to John when he’d been young, and alone, and defenseless.

Here’s the deal and it’s nonnegotiable. We work together to find him and get him and kill him. We work as a team, which means where one of us is, the other goes. And at the end, whoever takes him to ground gets the honors. That’s where we stand.

Xhex exhaled with relief, instantly knowing it was the right answer. She hadn’t liked how it felt being at that farmhouse without him. It had seemed wrong.

“Deal,” she said.

His face didn’t register surprise or satisfaction—which told her whatever he’d planned if she said no must have been a doozy.

Except then she learned why he was so calm.