Lover Enshrined (35 page)

He released a wild groan as their stares met, and his body went tense all over. His hips jerked once . . . twice . . . three times, each spasm punctuated by a moan.

As his body expressed its pleasure, the Primale’s rapt face and straining arms were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. When he finally settled, he swallowed hard and didn’t move away from her. Through the fine wool twill of his slacks, she felt a wetness on her hand.

“I like it when you do that,” she said.

He let out a brief laugh. “I like it when you do that to me.”

She was about to ask him if he wanted to try it again, when his hand brushed her hair back from her cheek. “Cormia?”

“Yes . . .” Funny, she drew out the word just as he had.

“Would you let me touch you a little?” He looked down at her body. “I can’t promise you anything. I’m not . . . well, I can’t promise you the same thing you gave me. But I would love to touch you. Just a little.”

Desperation stole the air out of her lungs and replaced it with fire. “Yes . . .”

The Primale closed his eyes and seemed to gather himself. Then he bent down and pressed his lips to the side of her throat. “I do think you’re beautiful, never doubt that. So beautiful . . .”

As his hands drifted to the front of her robe, the tips of her breasts grew so tight, she twisted under him.

“I can stop,” he said, hesitating. “Right now—”

“No.”
She grabbed onto his shoulders, holding him in place. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she needed it, whatever it was.

His lips moved up higher on her neck, then lingered on her jaw. Just as he pressed his mouth to hers, a featherlight brush ran over the robe . . . to one of her breasts.

As she surged up, her nipple pushed into his hand and they both groaned.

"Oh, Jesus . . .” The Primale eased back a little and carefully, reverently pulled the lapel of her robe away from her breast. “Cormia . . .” His deep, approving tone was like a caress, nearly tangible and all over her body.

“Can I kiss you here?” he groaned, his touch circling her nipple.
“Please.”

“Sweet Virgin,
yes
. . .”

His head went down and his mouth covered her, warm and moist, pulling gently, suckling.

Cormia threw her head back and thrust her hands deep into his hair, her legs parting for no reason and every reason. She wanted him at her sex, in any way he would come at her—

“Sire?”

Fritz’s respectful intrusion from the far end of the theater snapped them both to attention. The Primale quickly straightened and covered her up, even though the chair prevented the butler from seeing anything.

“What the hell is it?” the Primale said.

“Forgive me, but the Chosen Amalya is here with the Chosen Selena to see you.”

An ice wave went through Cormia, freezing out all the heat and the urgency in her blood. Her sister. Here to see him. How perfect.

The Primale got to his feet, uttering a horrid word Cormia couldn’t help but echo in her own head, and he excused Fritz with a quick movement of his hand. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Yes, sire.”

After the
doggen
left, the Primale shook his head. “I’m sorry—”

“Go do what you need to do.” As he hesitated, she said, “
Go.
I’d like to be alone.”

“We can talk later.”

No, not really,
she thought. Talk wasn’t going to solve any of this.

“Just go,” she said, tuning out whatever else he spoke.

When she was alone once more, she stared at the frozen picture on the screen until all of a sudden it was replaced by a black wash, and a little grouping of English letters reading
Sony
flashed here and there.

She felt wretched, inside and out. Apart from the ache in her chest, her body had hunger pangs as if from a meal denied or a vein left untapped.

Except it wasn’t food that she needed.

What she needed had just walked out the door.

Into the arms of her sister.

Chapter Twenty-five

Far upstate in the adirondacks, on the verge of dawn’s arrival over Saddleback Mountain, the male who had taken the deer down the night before the male who had taken the deer down the night before was tracking another. Slow and uncoordinated, he knew the hunter role he was playing was a joke. The strength he got from the animal blood just wasn’t enough anymore. Tonight as he’d left his cave, he was so weak he wasn’t sure whether he could dematerialize at all.

Which meant he probably wasn’t going to be able to get close enough to his prey. Which meant he wasn’t going to feed. Which meant . . . the time had finally come.

It was so odd. He’d wondered, as he imagined everyone did from time to time, how exactly he was going to die. What would the circumstances be? Would it hurt? How long would it take? He’d assumed, given what his line of work had been, that it would have been fighting.

Instead, it was going to be here in this quiet forest by the hand of dawn’s burning glory.

Surprise.

Up ahead, the buck lifted its heavy rack and prepared to bound away. Gathering what little energy he had, the male willed himself to cross the distance between their two bodies . . . and nothing happened. His corporeal form flickered in space, blinking on and off as if his light switch were being triggered, but he didn’t change positions, and the deer shot off, white tail flicking as it crashed through the underbrush.

The male let himself fall back on his ass. As he looked at the sky, his regrets were many and deep, and most involved the dead. Not all, though. Not all.

Although he was desperate for the reunion he expected to find in the Fade, though he hungered for the embrace of the ones he’d lost so recently, he knew he was leaving a part of himself behind here on earth.

It couldn’t be helped. The leaving behind, that was.

His only solace was that his son had been left in very good hands. The best. His brothers would look after his son, as was the proper way of things in families.

He should have said good-bye, though.

He should have done a lot of things.

But the shoulds were over now.

Ever mindful of the suicide legend, the male made a couple of attempts to stand, and when they failed, he even tried to drag his deadweight body in the direction of his cave. He got nowhere, and it was with a slice of joy through his dark heart that he finally allowed himself to collapse onto the pine needles and leaves.

The male lay there facedown, the cool, dewy forest bed filling his nose with smells that were clean even though they came from the dirt.

The first rays of the sun come from behind him, and then he felt the blast of the heat. The end had arrived, and he welcomed it with open arms and with eyes that were closed in relief.

His last sensation before he died was his liberation from the ground, his broken body being drawn up into the brilliant light, drawn unto the reunion it had taken eight horrible months for him to find.

Chapter Twenty-six

As night fell some sixteen hours later, Lash stood at the foot of a rolling lawn that led up to a sprawling Tudor house . . . and turned the ring the Omega had given him round and round.

He had grown up here, he thought. Been raised and fed and tucked into bed here as a young. When he was older, he’d stayed up to watch movies and read books with dirty shit in them, and surfed the Net and eaten junk food here.

He’d gone through his transition and had sex for the first time up in his room on the third floor.

"Y’all want some help?”

He turned and looked at the
lesser
who was behind the wheel of the Ford Focus. It was the little slayer, the one he’d drunk from. The guy had pale hair like Bo from
The Dukes of Hazzard
, all curling up around the cowboy hat he wore. His eyes were a faded cornflower blue, suggesting that before he’d been inducted he’d been a real middle-America white boy.

The guy had survived the feeding, thanks to some true depravity on the Omega’s part, and Lash had to admit he was glad. He needed help understanding where he was at, and he wasn’t threatened by Mr. D.

“Hello?” the
lesser
said. "Y’all okay there?”

“You stay in the car.” It felt good to say that and know there wasn’t going to be any discussion. “I won’t be long.”

“Yes, suh.”

Lash looked back up at the Tudor palace. Lights glowed yellow in windows made of diamond-paned glass, and the house was spotlit from the ground like a beauty queen on a stage. Inside, people moved around, and he knew who they were by the shapes of their bodies and where they were.

On the left, in the sitting room, were the two who had raised him as their own. The one with the broad shoulders was his father, and the male was pacing, hand going up and down to his face as if he were drinking something. His mother was on the couch, all bobble-head proportioned with her elaborate chignon and her slender neck. She kept touching her hair, as if trying to make sure everything was in place even though it was no doubt sprayed stiff as a boxwood shrub.

To the right, in the kitchen wing, several
doggen
scurried around, moving from stove to cabinet to refrigerator to counter to stove.

Lash could practically smell the dinner, and his eyes watered.

By now, his parents must know about what had happened in the locker room and then at the clinic. They must have been told. They’d been out at the
glymera
’s ball last evening, but they’d been home all day, and both appeared to be unsettled.

He glanced at the third floor and the seven windows that marked his room.

“You going in?” the slayer asked, making him feel like a pussy.

“Shut the fuck up before I cut your tongue out.”

Lash unsheathed the hunting knife that hung from his belt and walked forward over the cropped grass. The lawn was soft under the new combat boots he had on.

He’d had to have the little
lesser
get him some clothes, but he didn’t like what he was wearing. It was all from Target. Cheap.

As he came up to the mansion’s front door, he put his hand to the security pad . . . but paused before he entered the code.

His dog had died a year ago. Of old age.

The thing had been a pedigreed rottweiler, and his parents had gotten it for him when he was eleven. They hadn’t approved of the breed, but Lash had been adamant, so they’d adopted one that was about a year old. First night in the house, Lash had tried to pierce the thing’s ear with a safety pin. King had bitten him so hard, the dog’s fangs had punctured his arm and come out the other side.

They’d been inseparable after that. And when that mean old dog had kicked it, Lash had cried like a little bitch.

He reached out and entered the pass code, then put his left hand on the door latch. The light over the door flashed on his knife’s blade.

He wished the dog were still alive. He would have liked to have one thing from his old life to carry forward into his new one.

He stepped into his house and headed for the sitting room.

When John Matthew came up to the doors of Wrath’s study, he was about as relaxed as a golfer in a thunderstorm, and the sight of the king made the anxiety worse. The male was sitting behind his delicate desk, frown on his face, fingers drumming, stare locked on the phone like bad news had just come in. Again.

John tucked what was in his hand under his arm and knocked quietly on the jamb. Wrath didn’t look up. “What’s doing, son.”

John waited for the king to glance across the way, and when he did, John signed with care.
Qhuinn got kicked out of his family.

“Yeah, and I heard the beat-down was from an honor guard courtesy of them.” Wrath leaned back in his chair, the slender bones of the thing squeaking. “That father of his . . . typical
glymera
.”

The tone suggested that was a compliment along the lines of
asswipe
.

He can’t stay at Blay’s forever, and he has nowhere to go.

The king shook his head. “Okay, I know where you’re going with this, and it’s a no. Even if this were a normal household, and it’s not, Qhuinn killed a trainee, and I don’t give a shit what you think Lash might have done to deserve it. I know you talked to Rhage and told him what happened, but not only is your boy out of the program, he’s going to be up on charges.” Wrath leaned to the side and looked around John. “You get Phury out of bed yet?”

John looked over his shoulder. Vishous was standing in the doorway.

The Brother nodded. “He’s getting dressed. So is Z. You sure you don’t want me to handle this?”

“The two of them were Lash’s teachers, and Z was a witness to the aftermath of what went down at the clinic. Lash’s parents want to talk to them and only them, and I promised that they’d be over to that house ASAP.”

“Okay. Keep me posted.”

The Brother took off, and Wrath put his elbows on the desk. “Look, John, I know Qhuinn’s a buddy of yours, and I do feel bad about a lot of his circumstances. I wish I were in a position to help him, but I’m not.”

John pushed, hoping he wouldn’t have to go to his last resort.
What about Safe Place?

“The females there aren’t comfortable around males for good reason. Especially ones with violent histories.”

But he’s my friend. I can’t just sit back knowing he’s got no place to go, no job, no money—

“None of that is going to matter, John.” The words
jail time
hovered in the air.“You said it yourself. He took deadly force into what was your basic argument between two hotheaded guys. The right response was peeling you and Lash apart. It was not popping a knife and slicing his first cousin’s throat open. Did Lash come at you with a deadly weapon? No. Could you honestly say that the kid was going to kill you? No. It was an inappropriate use of force, and Lash’s parents are arguing assault with a deadly with intent to kill, and proximal murder under the old law.”