God, he couldn’t even think it.
“You are not the only one who is territorial,” Payne said softly.
Manny glanced around Glory’s head. “I’m sorry?”
“When you told me I was to meet a female, I . . . I had hoped she was one with a horse face.”
He laughed and smoothed Glory’s forehead. “Well, she has that, all right.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
As he tried to form the words, he gathered the mane that fell just above the filly’s nearly black eyes.
“Your lack of reply is answer enough,” Payne said sadly.
“I don’t know why I brought you here. I mean . . .” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I know why—and it’s pretty fucking pathetic. All I have is my job. . . . Glory is the only thing that is not my job. This is personal for me.”
“You must be brokenhearted.”
“I am.” Abruptly, Manny looked over the back of his failing horse to the dark-headed vampire who had laid her cheek against Glory’s flank. “I am . . . absolutely destroyed at the loss.”
FORTY
Mere moments after Butch called her, Jane became solid on the terrace of V’s penthouse. As her form took weight within its shape, the night air cold-fingered her hair and made her eyes water.
Or . . . maybe that was just her tears.
Looking in through the glass, she saw everything much too clearly: the table, the lashes, the whips, the . . . other things.
When she’d come here with Vishous before, those trappings of his hard-core predilections had seemed nothing more than a tantalizing and slightly frightening backdrop to the incredible sex they themselves had. But her version of “play” was poodle to his werewolf.
And how clearly did she know that now.
What had Butch used? What kind of shape was her mate in? Was there going to be a lot of blood—
Wait a minute. Where was V?
Passing through the sliding glass door, she . . .
No blood on the floor. Or dripping from instruments. No suspension hooks hanging from the ceiling. Everything was exactly as it had been the last time she’d been here, as if nothing had happened—
A groan came from outside the circle of candlelight, and the sound ripped her head around. Of course. The bed.
As she pierced the veil of darkness, her eyes adjusted and there he was: under a wrap of satin sheets, stretched out flat, writhing in pain . . . or was it sleep?
“Vishous?” she said softly.
With a shout, he came instantly awake, his torso shooting upright, his lids popping wide. Immediately, she noticed that his face was marked by fading scars . . . and there were others across his pecs and abdomen as well. But the expression he wore was what really got to her: He was terrified.
Abruptly, there was a furious flapping as he shoved the covers off his body. As he looked down at himself, sweat broke out across his chest and shoulders, his skin taking on a sudden gleam even in the shadows as he cupped his sex . . . like he was protecting what was left.
Hanging his head, he drew great breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale—
The pattern transformed into sobs.
Curling into himself, his hands sheltering the butcher job that had been done long, long ago, he wept in great heaves of emotion, his reserve gone, his control gone, his intelligence no longer ruler of his realm, but a subject.
He didn’t even realize she was standing next to him.