Her mate stretched out his massive arms. “How about I hold you instead?”
As Jane leaped forward and dived into him, she countered, “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”
Instantly, she became fully corporeal without any effort at all, that magical internal chemistry between them calling her into being and holding her there. And as Vishous buried his face in her hair and shuddered like he had run a vast distance and was finally home . . . she knew exactly how he felt.
With his shellan flush against him, V felt like he’d been blown wide-open . . . and then stitched back together.
God, what Butch had done for him. For them all.
The route the cop had gone had been the right one. Horrific and terrible . . . but the absolute right one. And as V held his female now, his eyes searched the space where it had all gone down. Everything had been cleaned up . . . except for a pair of things that were out of place on the floor: a spoon and a glass that was mostly empty of what had to be water.
It had all been an illusion: Nothing had in fact cut him open. And how’d you like to bet Butch had left those two things front and center so that when V woke up and looked over, he’d know the means that had taken him to his end.
In retrospect, it seemed so fucking dumb . . . not the session with the cop, but the fact that V never really thought about the Bloodletter and those years in the war camp. The last time that piece of the past had come up at all had been when Jane had first been with him—and then it had only been because she’d seen him naked and he’d had to explain.
My father didn’t want me to reproduce.
That was pretty much all he’d had to say. And afterward, like a dead body that had rolled over faceup in still water, that shit had sunk down again, resettling on the sandy riverbed of the very core of him.
BJ, or Before Jane, he’d only ever had sex with his pants on. Not from shame—or at least that was what he’d told himself—but because he simply hadn’t been interested in going there with the anonymous males and females he’d fucked.
AJ? It had been different. Naked was more than cool, likely because Jane had kept a tight head at his revelation. And yet as he thought about it now, he’d always held her at arm’s length, even if she’d been in his arms. If anything, he’d been closer to Butch—but that was male-to-male, which was somehow less threatening than male-to-female.
Shades of Mommy issues, no doubt: After everything his mahmen had pulled, he simply couldn’t trust females like he could his brothers or his best friend.
Except Jane had never betrayed him. In fact, she’d been willing to battle her own conscience just to save him from the unspeakable act his twin had been demanding.
“You are not my mother,” he said into his shellan’s hair.
“Damn right.” Jane pulled back and looked him right in the eye—as was her way. “I never would have abandoned my son. Or treated my daughter that way.”
V took a long inhale, and when he let the oxygen out of his lungs, he felt like he was expelling the myths by which he’d defined himself . . . and Jane . . . and their mating.
He needed to change the paradigm.
For them. For himself. For Butch.
Christ, the expression on the cop’s face when things had been going down here had been beyond tragic.
So, yeah, it was time to stop using outside shit to self-medicate his emotions. The extreme sex and the pain had seemed like excellent solutions for a long time, but in reality, they had been concealer over a pimple: The ugliness had stayed within him.
What he had to do was deal with the inside crap so he didn’t need Butch or anyone else to break him down just so he could let things out. That way, the kink could truly be only for pleasure with Jane.
Check his shit out—looked like he was finally prepared to try a psychiatric version of Proactiv.
Next thing he knew he was going to be on TV, staring into a camera and saying, “All it takes is a little dab of Self-awareness . . . and then I rinse with the patented Defining Yourself Wash, and my mind and emotions are clean and glowing—”
Okay, now he was really losing his damn marbles, true.
Stroking Jane’s soft hair, he murmured, “About . . . the things I have here. If you’re game, I’m still going to want to play . . . if you know what I mean. But from now on, it’s just for fun, and only for you and me.”
Hell, they’d had a shitload of good, leathered-up, freaky sex in this place, and he was always going to want that with her. Hopefully, she’d feel the same—
“I like what we do here.” She smiled. “It turns me on.”
Well . . . didn’t that get his cock pumping. “Me, too.”
As he smiled back at her, he recognized the one spanner in the mix: This turn-a-new-leaf resolution was all well and good—but how did he keep it going? Tomorrow evening he simply couldn’t afford to wake up and be that guy who went off the rails anymore.