“I thought you had been.”
All he could do was shake his head. “Look, you know that I have had … extensive dealings with humans.”
“That wasn’t exactly as you chose to phrase it previously,” she remarked.
More with his head shaking. “My business is … it’s a club. Do you know what that is?”
“Rugby? Or baseball?”
“A dance club. A place where people drink and … listen to music.” Jesus Christ. “And do other things.”
“Yes…?”
He dropped his hands. She had sat up and her pink ni**les were right on the edge of the water, the warm surface licking at them once again—not that she seemed to notice.
“Would you mind getting out and putting a robe on?” he asked.
“I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Fucking abso on that one. “I know. It’s just hard to concentrate.”
“Maybe I want you to struggle.”
Okay, right, virgins were not supposed to be so tantalizing. Then again, she wasn’t one anymore—he’d taken care of that.
Fuck. “Mission accomplished,” he muttered.
“You were telling me about your work?”
He focused his eyes on the floor. It was simple white tile, old and well-scrubbed, the kind of thing that managed to look fresh even with its lateral cracks and occasional chips.
“Trez?” From the corner of his vision, he watched as she extended her foot and turned the hot water on for a refresh. “You were saying?”
Just do it.
Great, life had been reduced to a Nike ad.
“I traffic women. Do you understand what that means?”
She frowned. “You take them out into the street?”
“I sell them. Their bodies. To men, usually.”
Cue the silence.
He met her in the eye. “I get paid for that. I sell them. Do you understand?”
After a moment, her beautiful hands receded from the sides of the tub and crossed over her br**sts.
Exactly, he thought.
“And that’s not the worst of it.”
There was a very long pause. And then she said, “I do believe I should like to get dressed.”
He got to his feet and headed for the door. “Yeah, I thought so.”
Out in the snow-covered field, Layla wheeled around. She was about to scream when she recognized the male who had stepped out from behind the great tree. It was the soldier, the one who’d been injured and brought to the Brotherhood’s training center. The one who had failed to correct her when she’d assumed he was affiliated with the Brothers.
The one who had brought her here to help Xcor that night so long ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bowing low, his eyes still on her. “That is hardly a proper greeting.”
She was about to curtsy when she recalled that he did not deserve the respect. He, like Xcor, was on the other side of things.
“You are looking exceptionally well this cold evening,” he murmured.
His accent was not at all like Xcor’s, each word pronounced perfectly, the voice well modulated instead of gruff. But she was not fooled. He’d used her as a tool once.
There was no doubt he would again.
“So what conversation were you having with him?” he asked, that stare narrowing.
Layla pulled her heavy robes more closely around her body. “I should think if you wish to know, you may inquire of him yourself. If you will excuse me, I shall take my leave of you—”
The hand that locked on her arm bit into her flesh, and his handsome face darkened to the point of menace. “No, I do not think so. I want you to tell me what you were discussing with him.”
Angling her chin up, she met the soldier in the eye. “He wanted to know if it was real.”
Those brows came down, his grip loosening some. “I beg your pardon?”
“The divorce proclamation. He wanted to know if Wrath has indeed given up his queen—and I assured him it was true.”
The soldier dropped his hold. “Assuming you can be trusted.”
“Whether I can or cannot be doesn’t change the truth. You’ll find out elsewhere, I’m sure.”
Probably not, actually, given the lack of contact the household had with the rest of the race. But mayhap this male would not know that.
“So it was an arranged mating the King cared naught for.”
“On the contrary, their love was obvious to all. He was well and truly bonded.” Layla forced her shoulders to shrug casually. “Again, you will hear this from others, I’m sure.”
Throe shook his head. “Then he could not have let her go.”
“Maybe you should consider this against any further ambitions you have for the throne.” She took a surreptitious step back. “A male who will set aside his bonded mate will do anything to keep that which others seek to take from him. The foe you are seeking out by your actions will not be beaten—and he will come for you all. Mark my word.”
“Fierce little thing, aren’t you.”
“Again, it is merely fact for you to discover at your leisure. Or not. Either way, it bothers me not.”
As he let her take another step away from him, she thought there was a good chance she was going to be able to depart.
“There was something else,” he said. “Wasn’t there.”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t he dematerialize?”
She frowned, having not considered that. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“Not his way.” The soldier’s eyes went down her body. “And I think I can guess. Be of care, Chosen. He is not who you think he is. He is capable of betrayals that a female like you couldn’t begin to contemplate.”
“If you will excuse me, I shall be taking my leave the now.” She curtsied and then struggled to focus, focus, focus …
“Be of care.”
Those words haunted her as she disappeared from the meadow … and found her way back to the mansion’s front entrance.
As she contemplated the heavy door, a shudder went through her. That fighter struck her as more terrifying than Xcor himself: the latter would never hurt her. She didn’t know how she was so sure of that, but it was like the beat of her heart—something she could feel in the center of her chest.
That other male? Not the case. At all.
Closing her eyes, she hated this in between with Xcor. How was she going to pass the hours before tomorrow at midnight? And why was he making her wait?
She already knew what his answer was going to be.
SIXTY
Selena put her full robing back on. Everything, undergarments and all. In spite of the fact that her hands were shaking so badly, she could barely marshal them.
When she finally walked out into the bedroom, she found Trez sitting on a straight-backed chair in front of the desk that she sometimes used to compose diary entries. And indeed, she was glad she had closed her leather-bound volume after she’d finished with last tonight’s passage.
It was all about him, naturally.
And she had a feeling there was going to be an addendum.
He looked over at her, his dark eyes flashing for a moment. “You ready to do this now?”
Dearest Virgin Scribe, of all the things she thought he’d tell her … that was not it.
“How can you … sell them?” she said roughly.
He sighed. “They want the money. I make it happen. I make it safe.”
“And they … you get paid for this as well.”
“Yeah.”
She had to sit down before she fell over—and went toward the bed before thinking, No, not there. Instead, she chose the loveseat that was in front of the fireplace. Settling in, she tucked her feet underneath her bottom and made sure the skirting covered all of her skin.
“How long?” she heard herself ask.
“Years. Decades. First I was a supervisor. Now I’m the boss.”
“I can’t imagine … that.”
He rubbed his temples. “I know you can’t.”
Abruptly, Selena found herself struggling to stay still. Her internal compass was spinning around so fast, she could barely form a sentence. “You know what? Just tell me everything. At the moment, my head is making up all kinds of horrible things and I—”
“The worst part is that I’ve been with a couple thousand women. Easy.”
At first, she thought, No, she couldn’t have heard that right. But the wave of cold that went through her suggested that actually, she had gotten it correct.
“Thousand,” she said weakly.
“That’s a conservative estimate. Could be close to ten. Thousand, that is. Shit, maybe even more.”
Selena blinked. Okay, when he’d maintained previously that it was “many” human women? She’d thought a couple dozen, tops. But the numbers he was talking about? Even by ehros standards, they were … unfathomable.
As she tried to imagine all the different scenarios he could have … “Were any of them women you…”
“Yeah. For a long time, I wouldn’t sell a prostitute until I’d had her.”
With a wave of nausea shooting through her gut, all Selena could do was stare at him.
“You are correct,” she heard herself say. “I do not know you.”
“God, Selena, I’m so f**king sorry—I should never have been with you. Not because I didn’t want you, but because I … well, yeah, because I knew that this was the reaction I’d get if I told you the truth. And actually, last night, I came here to try to explain, but then I just…”
She put her face in her hands, images of him kissing her, caressing her, taking her, hitting her like blows. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said bleakly.
And yet there was no reason to recast reality as a way to reclaim virtue she had lost willingly. “I seduced you.” She dropped her hands. “I asked for what I got.”
“No, it is solidly on me—”
“Just stop.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
So was she. Because the sad truth was that she had enjoyed being with him. Indeed, while it was happening, it had been a kind of paradise. Unfortunately, that illusion was as transient as the act, and now that it was over? The pleasure was as if it had never been.
“Selena, whatever it is you’re thinking, you can say it—”
“I wish I had been born into another life,” she blurted. “I should have liked falling in love with a single male and finding a humble place in the world with him. I do not think I would have wanted for anything like that, no matter how little we had.”
“That can still be for you.” His voice became utterly flat. “That can happen—any male would want you.”
Ah, yes, but there was only one person she wanted. And even if Trez had been a saint, which he clearly was not, she was still out of time.
“It’s all right.” She struggled to hold back tears—and was successful. After all, soon she would be alone. “It is what it is. I have learned long ago, there is no negotiating with destiny.”
They fell silent for the longest time.
“I don’t love her,” he gritted out. “I don’t know why I feel like I have to say that, but I do.”
“The one you are mating? Yes, you said that before.” Abruptly, she stared across the way at him, noting his lowered head, his aura of sorrow. “Ironic, but we are not so different, you and I.”
As his eyes shifted to hers, she shrugged. “I have had no hand in my destiny, either. The tragedy is that some things follow us like shadows—they are with us wherever we go.”
“Yeah. I just never cared about that. Until I met you.”
She thought of the Sanctuary’s cemetery, of her sisters who had been relegated to a shortened life span, and had had to wait to die in a prison of their own bodies. Then she remembered the feel of him moving inside of her, the liquid warmth flowing throughout her muscles and bones.
“Did you love them?” she asked.
“Who? Oh, the women … no. Never. At all. Hell, half the time I didn’t really enjoy it.” He cracked his neck like those shoulder muscles of his were stiffening up again. “I really don’t know what the f**k I was thinking. I was out of control and just trying to get out of my own head. The problem is, all those women are inside of me now.”
“Inside…?”
“My people believe that you can poison yourself if you have … if you’re with people the way I was. And I have—poisoned myself. It’s eaten me up until there’s nothing in here.”
As he touched the center of his chest, she realized that he was, in fact, hollow, the light gone from his eyes, the animation lacking in his body, his aura dissipated as if it had never been.
Overcome with sadness, she shook her head. “You were wrong.”
“About what.”
So empty, he was … vacant down to his soul. “What I see now … is the worst part of it all.”
As Assail stood on the shores of the Hudson, he was once again dressed in black with a black mask over his face. Behind him, Ehric was silent and at attention, wearing the same articles of clothing.
Both of them had guns in their hands.
“They’re late,” his cousin said.
“Yes.” Assail listened hard. “We give them five minutes. Not one more.”
Off to the left, about four meters into the tree line, his bulletproof Range Rover sat ass to the river, Evale in the driver’s seat with the engine running. o;I thought you had been.”
All he could do was shake his head. “Look, you know that I have had … extensive dealings with humans.”
“That wasn’t exactly as you chose to phrase it previously,” she remarked.
More with his head shaking. “My business is … it’s a club. Do you know what that is?”
“Rugby? Or baseball?”
“A dance club. A place where people drink and … listen to music.” Jesus Christ. “And do other things.”
“Yes…?”
He dropped his hands. She had sat up and her pink ni**les were right on the edge of the water, the warm surface licking at them once again—not that she seemed to notice.
“Would you mind getting out and putting a robe on?” he asked.
“I have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Fucking abso on that one. “I know. It’s just hard to concentrate.”
“Maybe I want you to struggle.”
Okay, right, virgins were not supposed to be so tantalizing. Then again, she wasn’t one anymore—he’d taken care of that.
Fuck. “Mission accomplished,” he muttered.
“You were telling me about your work?”
He focused his eyes on the floor. It was simple white tile, old and well-scrubbed, the kind of thing that managed to look fresh even with its lateral cracks and occasional chips.
“Trez?” From the corner of his vision, he watched as she extended her foot and turned the hot water on for a refresh. “You were saying?”
Just do it.
Great, life had been reduced to a Nike ad.
“I traffic women. Do you understand what that means?”
She frowned. “You take them out into the street?”
“I sell them. Their bodies. To men, usually.”
Cue the silence.
He met her in the eye. “I get paid for that. I sell them. Do you understand?”
After a moment, her beautiful hands receded from the sides of the tub and crossed over her br**sts.
Exactly, he thought.
“And that’s not the worst of it.”
There was a very long pause. And then she said, “I do believe I should like to get dressed.”
He got to his feet and headed for the door. “Yeah, I thought so.”
Out in the snow-covered field, Layla wheeled around. She was about to scream when she recognized the male who had stepped out from behind the great tree. It was the soldier, the one who’d been injured and brought to the Brotherhood’s training center. The one who had failed to correct her when she’d assumed he was affiliated with the Brothers.
The one who had brought her here to help Xcor that night so long ago.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bowing low, his eyes still on her. “That is hardly a proper greeting.”
She was about to curtsy when she recalled that he did not deserve the respect. He, like Xcor, was on the other side of things.
“You are looking exceptionally well this cold evening,” he murmured.
His accent was not at all like Xcor’s, each word pronounced perfectly, the voice well modulated instead of gruff. But she was not fooled. He’d used her as a tool once.
There was no doubt he would again.
“So what conversation were you having with him?” he asked, that stare narrowing.
Layla pulled her heavy robes more closely around her body. “I should think if you wish to know, you may inquire of him yourself. If you will excuse me, I shall take my leave of you—”
The hand that locked on her arm bit into her flesh, and his handsome face darkened to the point of menace. “No, I do not think so. I want you to tell me what you were discussing with him.”
Angling her chin up, she met the soldier in the eye. “He wanted to know if it was real.”
Those brows came down, his grip loosening some. “I beg your pardon?”
“The divorce proclamation. He wanted to know if Wrath has indeed given up his queen—and I assured him it was true.”
The soldier dropped his hold. “Assuming you can be trusted.”
“Whether I can or cannot be doesn’t change the truth. You’ll find out elsewhere, I’m sure.”
Probably not, actually, given the lack of contact the household had with the rest of the race. But mayhap this male would not know that.
“So it was an arranged mating the King cared naught for.”
“On the contrary, their love was obvious to all. He was well and truly bonded.” Layla forced her shoulders to shrug casually. “Again, you will hear this from others, I’m sure.”
Throe shook his head. “Then he could not have let her go.”
“Maybe you should consider this against any further ambitions you have for the throne.” She took a surreptitious step back. “A male who will set aside his bonded mate will do anything to keep that which others seek to take from him. The foe you are seeking out by your actions will not be beaten—and he will come for you all. Mark my word.”
“Fierce little thing, aren’t you.”
“Again, it is merely fact for you to discover at your leisure. Or not. Either way, it bothers me not.”
As he let her take another step away from him, she thought there was a good chance she was going to be able to depart.
“There was something else,” he said. “Wasn’t there.”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t he dematerialize?”
She frowned, having not considered that. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“Not his way.” The soldier’s eyes went down her body. “And I think I can guess. Be of care, Chosen. He is not who you think he is. He is capable of betrayals that a female like you couldn’t begin to contemplate.”
“If you will excuse me, I shall be taking my leave the now.” She curtsied and then struggled to focus, focus, focus …
“Be of care.”
Those words haunted her as she disappeared from the meadow … and found her way back to the mansion’s front entrance.
As she contemplated the heavy door, a shudder went through her. That fighter struck her as more terrifying than Xcor himself: the latter would never hurt her. She didn’t know how she was so sure of that, but it was like the beat of her heart—something she could feel in the center of her chest.
That other male? Not the case. At all.
Closing her eyes, she hated this in between with Xcor. How was she going to pass the hours before tomorrow at midnight? And why was he making her wait?
She already knew what his answer was going to be.
SIXTY
Selena put her full robing back on. Everything, undergarments and all. In spite of the fact that her hands were shaking so badly, she could barely marshal them.
When she finally walked out into the bedroom, she found Trez sitting on a straight-backed chair in front of the desk that she sometimes used to compose diary entries. And indeed, she was glad she had closed her leather-bound volume after she’d finished with last tonight’s passage.
It was all about him, naturally.
And she had a feeling there was going to be an addendum.
He looked over at her, his dark eyes flashing for a moment. “You ready to do this now?”
Dearest Virgin Scribe, of all the things she thought he’d tell her … that was not it.
“How can you … sell them?” she said roughly.
He sighed. “They want the money. I make it happen. I make it safe.”
“And they … you get paid for this as well.”
“Yeah.”
She had to sit down before she fell over—and went toward the bed before thinking, No, not there. Instead, she chose the loveseat that was in front of the fireplace. Settling in, she tucked her feet underneath her bottom and made sure the skirting covered all of her skin.
“How long?” she heard herself ask.
“Years. Decades. First I was a supervisor. Now I’m the boss.”
“I can’t imagine … that.”
He rubbed his temples. “I know you can’t.”
Abruptly, Selena found herself struggling to stay still. Her internal compass was spinning around so fast, she could barely form a sentence. “You know what? Just tell me everything. At the moment, my head is making up all kinds of horrible things and I—”
“The worst part is that I’ve been with a couple thousand women. Easy.”
At first, she thought, No, she couldn’t have heard that right. But the wave of cold that went through her suggested that actually, she had gotten it correct.
“Thousand,” she said weakly.
“That’s a conservative estimate. Could be close to ten. Thousand, that is. Shit, maybe even more.”
Selena blinked. Okay, when he’d maintained previously that it was “many” human women? She’d thought a couple dozen, tops. But the numbers he was talking about? Even by ehros standards, they were … unfathomable.
As she tried to imagine all the different scenarios he could have … “Were any of them women you…”
“Yeah. For a long time, I wouldn’t sell a prostitute until I’d had her.”
With a wave of nausea shooting through her gut, all Selena could do was stare at him.
“You are correct,” she heard herself say. “I do not know you.”
“God, Selena, I’m so f**king sorry—I should never have been with you. Not because I didn’t want you, but because I … well, yeah, because I knew that this was the reaction I’d get if I told you the truth. And actually, last night, I came here to try to explain, but then I just…”
She put her face in her hands, images of him kissing her, caressing her, taking her, hitting her like blows. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said bleakly.
And yet there was no reason to recast reality as a way to reclaim virtue she had lost willingly. “I seduced you.” She dropped her hands. “I asked for what I got.”
“No, it is solidly on me—”
“Just stop.”
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
So was she. Because the sad truth was that she had enjoyed being with him. Indeed, while it was happening, it had been a kind of paradise. Unfortunately, that illusion was as transient as the act, and now that it was over? The pleasure was as if it had never been.
“Selena, whatever it is you’re thinking, you can say it—”
“I wish I had been born into another life,” she blurted. “I should have liked falling in love with a single male and finding a humble place in the world with him. I do not think I would have wanted for anything like that, no matter how little we had.”
“That can still be for you.” His voice became utterly flat. “That can happen—any male would want you.”
Ah, yes, but there was only one person she wanted. And even if Trez had been a saint, which he clearly was not, she was still out of time.
“It’s all right.” She struggled to hold back tears—and was successful. After all, soon she would be alone. “It is what it is. I have learned long ago, there is no negotiating with destiny.”
They fell silent for the longest time.
“I don’t love her,” he gritted out. “I don’t know why I feel like I have to say that, but I do.”
“The one you are mating? Yes, you said that before.” Abruptly, she stared across the way at him, noting his lowered head, his aura of sorrow. “Ironic, but we are not so different, you and I.”
As his eyes shifted to hers, she shrugged. “I have had no hand in my destiny, either. The tragedy is that some things follow us like shadows—they are with us wherever we go.”
“Yeah. I just never cared about that. Until I met you.”
She thought of the Sanctuary’s cemetery, of her sisters who had been relegated to a shortened life span, and had had to wait to die in a prison of their own bodies. Then she remembered the feel of him moving inside of her, the liquid warmth flowing throughout her muscles and bones.
“Did you love them?” she asked.
“Who? Oh, the women … no. Never. At all. Hell, half the time I didn’t really enjoy it.” He cracked his neck like those shoulder muscles of his were stiffening up again. “I really don’t know what the f**k I was thinking. I was out of control and just trying to get out of my own head. The problem is, all those women are inside of me now.”
“Inside…?”
“My people believe that you can poison yourself if you have … if you’re with people the way I was. And I have—poisoned myself. It’s eaten me up until there’s nothing in here.”
As he touched the center of his chest, she realized that he was, in fact, hollow, the light gone from his eyes, the animation lacking in his body, his aura dissipated as if it had never been.
Overcome with sadness, she shook her head. “You were wrong.”
“About what.”
So empty, he was … vacant down to his soul. “What I see now … is the worst part of it all.”
As Assail stood on the shores of the Hudson, he was once again dressed in black with a black mask over his face. Behind him, Ehric was silent and at attention, wearing the same articles of clothing.
Both of them had guns in their hands.
“They’re late,” his cousin said.
“Yes.” Assail listened hard. “We give them five minutes. Not one more.”
Off to the left, about four meters into the tree line, his bulletproof Range Rover sat ass to the river, Evale in the driver’s seat with the engine running.