Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [194]
“And you do some of your best work at sinks.”
V dragged one fang up her throat. “True that.”
As his erection started thumping, he took his female’s hand—
The grandfather clock in the corner started to chime, and then he heard four deep bongs. Which made him pull back a little and check his watch even though he didn’t need to—because that clock had kept time correctly for two hundred years.
Four a.m.? Where the hell was Payne?
As the urge to go to the Commodore and bring his sister home struck hard, he reminded himself that although dawn was coming fast, she still had maybe an hour left. And given what he and Jane were about to do behind a closed door, he couldn’t really blame her for eking out every moment she had with her male—even if he was absolutely, positively not going there.
“Everything okay?” Jane asked.
Getting back with the program, he dropped his head. “It will be as soon as I get you up on that counter.”
He and Jane were in the loo for forty-five minutes.
When they came out, everyone was still in the billiards room. The music had been cranked and Lil Wayne’s “I’m Not a Human Being” was echoing up to the foyer’s ceiling. The doggen were buzzing around with little fancy crap on silver trays, and Rhage had a circle of laughing people around him as he cracked jokes.
For a moment, it felt like the good old days.
But then he didn’t see his sister in the crowd. And no one came over to tell him she’d gone up to the guest room she’d been using.
“I’ll be right back,” he said to Jane. A quick kiss and he ducked out of the party, skated across the foyer, and went into the empty dining room. Rounding the fully set but very empty table, he got his cell from his pocket and dialed the phone he’d given her.
No answer.
He tried again. No answer. Third time? No . . . goddamn answer.
With a curse, he punched in Manello’s number, and shuddered at what he might be interrupting—but they’d probably pulled the drapes and lost track of time. And phones could defo get lost in sheets, he thought with a wince.
Ring . . . ring . . . ring . . .
“Fucking pick up—”
“Hello?”
Manello sounded bad. Gunshot bad. Mortal-injury bad.
“Where is my sister.” Because there was no way the surgeon was like that if she were in his bed.
The pause was not good news, either. “I don’t know. She left here hours ago.”
“Hours?”
“What’s going on?”
“Jesus Christ—” V hung up on the guy, and called her phone again. And again.
Cranking his head around, he looked out to the foyer and the door to the vestibule.
With a subtle whirring sound, the steel shutters that protected the house from the sun started to ease down into place.
Come on, Payne . . . come home. Right now.
Right . . .
Now . . .
Jane’s gentle touch snapped him back to reality. “Is everything okay?” she asked.
His first instinct was to cover it all up with a crack about Rhage’s impression of Steve-O in a projectile Porta-Potty. Instead, he forced himself to be real with his mate.
“Payne is . . . maybe MIA.” As she gasped and reached out with her other hand, he kind of wanted to bolt. But he held his feet to the Oriental rug. “She left Manello’s”—hours ago—“ah, hours ago. And now I’m just praying to a mother I despise that she comes through that door.”
Jane didn’t say anything further. Instead, she angled herself so she could also see the way in from the vestibule and waited with him.
Taking her hand, he realized that it was a relief not to be alone as the party raged on across the way . . . and his sister still did not come home.
That vision he’d had of her on the black horse, going at a screaming tilt, came back to him in the silence of the dining room. Her dark hair was flying out behind her as the stallion’s mane streaked as well, the pair on a tear . . . to God only knew where.
Allegorical? he wondered. Or just the yearnings of her brother that she finally be free . . . ?
Jane and