"Why did you get so upset the night I went out?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why did you care that I'd been with someone else? Or did you just feel like a little rough sex and needed to hide behind a reason for it?" His eyes shifted to hers. The blue was neon sharp, nearly too bright to look into. "Listen, the next time you want some hard grind, all you've got to do is ask. I can play it like that."
Oh, God. This anger was not what she'd wanted. "Rhage - "
"You know, I really got into it. I liked that domination shit you threw out. Liked the sadistic part, too. Tasting my blood on your lips after you bit my mouth? Huge turn-on."
The cold tone of voice was awful. His flat, glowing eyes were worse.
"I'm sorry," she said. "But - "
"In fact, I'm getting hard right now, just thinking about it. Kind of surprising, considering how I spent the last twenty minutes."
"What exactly do you think the future holds for us?"
"We'll never know, will we. But you'll stick around until nightfall, right? If only because you need me to take you home. So let me see if I can get myself tuned up again. I'd hate to waste your time." He reached under the covers. "Damn, you're good. I'm hard as a baseball bat."
"Do you know what the next six months are going to be like for me?"
"No, and I'm not going to know, am I? So how about some sex. Since that's all you want from me, and because I'm enough of a pathetic loser to take you any way I can get you, I guess I'd better hop to it."
"Rhage!" she shouted, trying to get his attention.
"Mary!" he mocked. "I'm sorry, am I talking too much? You'd rather have my mouth doing something else, right? You want it on yours? No, your br**sts. Wait, lower. Yeah, you like it lower, don't you. And I know just how to do you right."
She put her head in her hands. "I don't want to leave you like this. Fighting."
"But that's not going to slow you down, is it? Not you, not superstrong Mary. No, you're just going to go out into the world - "
"To be sick, Rhage! I'm leaving you to go be sick, okay? I'm going to the doctor's tomorrow. There isn't some huge party waiting for me when I get home."
He stared at her. "Do you think I am so unworthy that I cannot attend to you?"
"What?"
"Will you not let me attend to you in your illness?"
She thought about how hard it had been for her to see him in pain and not be able to make the hurt go away.
"Why would you want do that?" she whispered.
Rhage's mouth went lax, as if she'd struck him.
He shot out of bed. "Yeah, f**k you, Mary."
He jabbed his legs into a pair of leather pants and snapped a shirt from the dresser.
"Get yourself packed, sweetheart. You won't have to put up with a stray dog anymore." He pushed his arms through the shirt's sleeves and pulled it over his head. "I'll get V to hardwire your house ASAP. It shouldn't take him long, and until he's done, you can sleep somewhere else. One of the doggen will show you to your new room."
She leaped off the mattress, but before she could reach him, he pegged her with a hard look, stopping her dead.
"You know, Mary, I deserve this. I really do. I've done the same thing to so many, just walked away without giving a shit." He opened the door. "Although the females I screwed were lucky. At least they never remembered me. And man, I'd kill to forget about you right now, I really would."
He didn't slam the door on the way out. Just shut it firmly.
Chapter Thirty-two
O leaned over the civilian male and tightened the vise. He'd abducted the vampire in the alley next to Screamer's downtown, and so far the newly erected persuasion center was working perfectly. He was also making headway with the captive. Turned out the guy had a tangential connection to the Brotherhood.
Under normal circumstances, O should have been as close to a hard-on as he could get. Instead, as he watched the vampire's cold shakes and glassy, lolling eyes, he saw himself with the Omega. Under that heavy body. Powerless. Out of control. In pain.
The memories clogged his lungs with siltlike dread until he had to look away. As the vampire moaned, O felt like a pu**y.
Christ, he had to get his shit together.
O cleared his throat. Sucked some air in. "And, ah... just how well does your sister know the Brotherhood?"
"She... has sex... with them."
"Where?"
"Don't know."
"You're going to have to do better than that." O hit the pressure some more.
The civilian yelled and his wild eyes bounced around the center's dim interior. He was getting close to passing out again, so O loosened the clamp.
"Where does she meet them?"
"Caith goes to all the bars." The male coughed weakly. "Zero Sum. Screamer's. She went to One Eye the other night."
"One Eye?" Odd. That was out in the sticks.
"Can I please go home now? My parents are going to be - "
"I'm sure they are worried. And they should be." O shook his head. "But I can't let you go. Not yet."
Not at all, but the vampire didn't need to know that.
O reapplied the vise grip. "Now tell me, what was your sister's name again?"
"Caith."
"And which of the brothers does she f**k?"
"Know for sure... the one with the goatee. Vishous. She likes the blond warrior... but he's not into her."
The blond brother with the beast? "When did she see the blond last?"
A tumble of sounds came out.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you."
The male struggled to speak, but suddenly his body seized up and his mouth gaped as if he were suffocating.
"Oh, come on," O muttered. "It doesn't hurt that badly."
Shit, this vise action was just kindergarten stuff; they weren't even close to anything lethal yet. Still, ten minutes later the vampire was dead, and O was standing over the body wondering what the hell had happened.
The door to the persuasion center opened and U strode in. "How we doing tonight?"
"This civilian kicked it, but damned if I know why. I was just getting started."
O disengaged the vise from the vampire's hand and tossed the thing where the other tools were. As he stared at the lifeless bag of skin on the table, he found himself suddenly, shockingly queasy.
"If you broke a bone, maybe he threw a clot."
"What... huh? Oh, yeah. But wait, from just his finger? A thigh bone, I could believe, but I was working his hand."
"Doesn't matter. One can get sprung from anywhere. If it works its way to the lungs and gets lodged? Game over."
"He was gasping for breath."
"Probably what happened."
"Bad timing, too. His sister is f**king the brothers, but I didn't get much out of him."
"Home address?"
"No. The idiot had his wallet stolen right before I found him. He was drunk and got mugged in an alley. He did name some places, though. The usual clubs downtown, but also that hick bar, One Eye."
U frowned as he took out his gun and checked the chamber. "You sure he wasn't just talking to get you to stop? One Eye's not far from here, and those bastard brothers are city dwellers, aren't they? I mean, that's where we find them."
"That's where they let us find them. God only knows where they live." O shook his head at the body. "Damn it, he said something right before he died. I didn't understand the words."
"That language of theirs is a bitch. Wish we had a translator."
"No kidding."
U looked around. "So how's the place working for you?"
Whatever, O thought.
"Perfect," he said. "I had him in one of the holes for a while, waiting for him to come around. The halter system works just fine." O flipped the vampire's arm up onto its chest and tapped the stainless-steel slab the body was on. "And this table is a godsend. The drain holes, the restraints."
"Yeah, I thought you'd like that. Stole it from a morgue."
"Nice."
U walked over to the fireproof closet they used to store ammunition. "Mind if I take a few rounds?"
"That's what they're there for."
U took out a palm-sized cardboard box marked Remington. As he refilled his clips, he said, "So I heard that Mr. X put you in charge of this place."