J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [674]
Rehv didn’t respond. He was too busy poking at his uncle’s mental walls, seeking a way in.
The king smiled, as if he approved of the attempts, and headed on his way. “I always liked you. Even though you are but a half-breed.”
There was a click, as if a door had closed.
All the candles went out.
Disorientation squeezed Rehvenge’s throat shut. Left alone, floating in the darkness, with nothing to ground him, terror seized him hard. To be without sight was the worst—
The bolts through his upper body began to tremble slightly, as if a breeze were blowing through the chains and vibrating them.
Oh…God, no.
The tickling started on his shoulders and intensified in a rush, flowing down his stomach and over his thighs, streaming out to the tips of his fingers, covering his back, blooming up his neck to his face. He used his hands to the extent he was able, trying to brush off the horde, but as many as he cast down to the floor, more overcame him. They were on him, moving over him, coating him with a constantly shifting straitjacket of tiny touches.
The fluttering at his nostrils and around his ears was his undoing.
He would have screamed. But then he would have swallowed them.
Back in Caldwell, in the brownstone he was damn well going to move into, Lash showered with lazy precision, taking his time with the washcloth, going in between his toes and behind his ears, paying special attention to his shoulders and lower back. There was no need to rush.
The longer he waited the better.
Plus, what a bathroom to hang out in. Top-drawer everything, from the Carrera marble on the floors and walls to the gold fixtures to the awesome stretch of etched mirror over the sunken sinks.
The towels hanging from the ornate racks were from Wal-Mart.
Yeah, and they were going to be replaced ASAP. The fucking things were all Mr. D had had at the ranch house, and Lash wasn’t about to waste time driving around Caldwell just to find something better to wipe his ass dry with—not when he had his new piece of exercise equipment to put through its paces. After he got his workout in this morning, though, he was going to get on the Internet and order shit like furniture, bedding, rugs, kitchen supplies.
It would have to be delivered to that POS ranch where Mr. D and the others stayed now, though. UPS men were not welcome around here.
Lash left the bathroom light on and walked out into the master bedroom. The ceiling was prewar height, which meant the damn thing was so high cumulus clouds could form and float around the hand-carved moldings if the atmospheric conditions were right. The floor was gorgeous hardwood with inlaid cherry accents, and the walls were papered in an amazing dark green swirl, like the inside covers of an antique book.
The windows had just been sealed over with cheap blankets they’d had to hammer into the moldings—a crying shame. But like the towels, that would change. As would the bed. Which was nothing but a king-size mattress on the floor, its white, quilted skin laid out bare, like a Midwesterner trying to get a tan somewhere fancy.
Lash dropped the towel from his hips, his erection springing forward. “I love that you are a liar.”
The princess lifted her head, her shiny black hair shifting with flashes of blue. “Will you let me go? The fucking will be better, I promise you.”
“I’m not worried about how good it’s going to be.”
“Are you sure?” Her arms pulled against the steel chains that had been bolted into the floor. “Don’t you want me to touch you?”
Lash smiled down at her naked body—which he now owned, for all intents and purposes. She was his gift, given by the symphath king as a gesture of good faith, a sacrifice that was also a punishment for her treason.
“You are going nowhere,” he