J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4 - J. R. Ward [527]
She glared at him for a moment. “I don’t leave until the job is done—”
“I’m telling you to go home, not being nice. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“No offense, but fuck you, Rehvenge.”
She stalked over to the door, moving like the killer she was. As he watched her go, he was reminded that this security stuff for him was nothing compared to what she was capable of.
“Xhex,” he said, “maybe we were wrong about the mating.”
She sent an are-you-stupid? frown over her shoulder. “You shoot yourself up twice a day. You think Marissa wouldn’t notice that eventually? How about the fact that you have to go to her brother the good doctor for the neuromodulator you rely on? Besides, what would an aristocrat like her say about all…this?” She swept her arm around his office. “We weren’t wrong. You’re just forgetting the whys of it all.”
The door eased shut behind her and Rehv looked down at his numb body. He pictured Marissa, so pure and beautiful, so different from the other females he was around, so different from Xhex…who he fed from.
He wanted Marissa, was half in love with her at this point. And the male in him wanted to claim what was his even though his drugs made him impotent. Except surely he wouldn’t hurt what he loved, even if his dark parts were out? Right?
He thought of her, wearing her lovely haute couture gowns, so properly dressed, so genteel, so…clean. The glymera was wrong about her. She wasn’t defective; she was perfect.
He smiled, his body flushing up with a burn that only hard-core orgasms could douse. It was getting to be that time of the month, so she would be calling him soon. Yeah, she would need him again…soon. As his blood was diluted, she had to feed with gratifying frequency, and the last time had been almost three weeks ago.
She would be calling him within days. And he couldn’t wait to be of service to her.
V got back to the Brotherhood’s compound with minutes to spare, materializing just outside the gatehouse’s front door. He’d hoped his kind of sex would have taken the edge off of him, but no, he was still bladed as shit.
He went through the Pit’s vestibule and disarmed along the way, all tensed up and so ready for a shower to get the smell of the female off him. He should have been hungry; instead, all he wanted was some Grey Goose.
“Butch, my man!” he called out.
Silence.
V walked down the hall to the cop’s bedroom. “You crashed?”
He pushed open the door. The king-sized bed was empty. So maybe the cop was up at the main house?
V jogged through the Pit and put his head out through the vestibule’s door. A quick glance around at the cars parked in the courtyard and his heart went snare drum on him. No Escalade. So Butch wasn’t at the compound.
With the sky beginning to lighten off to the east, the glow of day stung V’s eyes, so he ducked back into the house and sat down behind his bank of computers. Firing up the coordinates on the Escalade, he saw that the SUV was parked behind Screamer’s.
Which was good. At least Butch wasn’t wrapped around a tree—
V froze. Slowly, he pushed his hand into the back pocket of his leathers, a horrible feeling coming over him, hot and prickly like a rash. Flipping open the Razr, he accessed his voice mail. First message was a hang-up from Butch’s number.
As the second message clicked on, the Pit’s steel shutters started to come down for the day.
V frowned. There was only a hissing sound coming from the voice mail. But then a clatter had him yanking the phone away from his ear.
Now Butch’s voice, hard, loud: “Dematerialize. Dematerialize now.”
A scared male: “But—but—”
“Now! For fuck’s sake, get your ass out of here…” Sounds of muffled flapping.
“Why are you doing this? You’re just a human—”
“I am so sick of hearing that. Leave!”
There was a metallic shifting, a gun being reloaded.
Butch’s voice: “Oh, shit…”
Then all hell broke loose. Gunshots, grunts, thuds.
V leaped up from his desk so fast he knocked