Lover Unbound (Black Dagger Brotherhood 5)

"Yo, Qhuinn? Yeah, me and John are heading home. Wha - No, everything's cool. We just had a run-in with security... No, you don't have... No, everything's tight. No, really. Qhuinn, you don't have to stop - Hello?" Blay stared at his phone. "He's meeting us by the front door."

The two of them left the little room and weeded in and out of hot and sweaty humans until John felt rabid-claustrophobic - like he'd been buried alive and was breathing dirt.

When they finally made it to the front door, Qhuinn was standing to the left against the black wall. His hair was messed up, his shirttail was hanging out, his lips were red and a little swollen. Up close he smelled like perfume.

Two different kinds.

"You okay?" he asked John.

John didn't answer. He couldn't stand it that he'd ruined everyone's night and just kept walking to the door. Until he felt the weird calling again.

He paused with his hands on the push bar and looked over his shoulder. The head of security was there watching him with her smart eyes. She was, once again, in a bank of the shadows, a place he suspected she preferred.

A place he suspected she always used to her advantage.

As his body tingled from head to foot, he wanted to put his fist through the wall, through the door, through someone's upper lip. But he knew that wouldn't get him the satisfaction he craved. He doubted he had enough upper-body strength to punch through the sports section of a newspaper.

The realization naturally pissed him off even more.

He turned his back on her and walked out into the chilly night. As soon as Blay and Qhuinn joined him on the sidewalk, he signed, I'm going to wander around for a while. You can come with me if you like, but you're not going to talk me out of it. There is no way in hell I'm getting into a car and going home right now. Got it?

His friends nodded and let him lead the way, staying a couple feet behind him. Clearly, they knew he was a quarter of an inch away from losing it and needed the space.

As they went down Tenth Street, he heard them talking quietly, whispering about him, but he didn't give a shit. He was a bag of anger. Nothing more.

True to his weak nature, his march of independence didn't last long. Pretty damn quick, the March wind ate away the clothes Blay had let him borrow, and his headache got so bad he was gritting his teeth. He'd imagined he'd take his friends all the way to Caldwell's bridge and beyond, that his anger was so strong he would wear them out until they begged him to stop walking just before dawn.

Except, of course, his performance was grossly below expectation.

He stopped. Let's go back.

"Whatever you say, John." Qhuinn's mismatched eyes were impossibly kind. "Whatever you want to do."

They headed back for the car, which was parked in an open-air lot about two blocks from the club. As they came around the corner, he noticed that the building next to the lot was being worked on, its construction zone battened down for the night, tarps flapping in the wind, heavy equipment sleeping soundly. To John, it seemed desolate.

Then again, he could have been bathed in sunshine in a field of daisies and all he would have seen was shadows. There was no way the night could have been worse. No. Way.

They were a good fifty yards from the car when the sweet smell of baby powder floated over on the breeze. And a lesser stepped out from behind a bucket loader.

Chapter Twenty-one

Phury came to but didn't move. Which made sense, given the fact that one side of his face felt like it had been burned off. After a couple of deep breathers, he lifted a hand to the pounding ache. The bandages covered him from forehead to jaw. He probably looked like an extra on the set of ER.

He sat up slowly and his whole head throbbed, like a bicycle pump had been shoved up his nose and someone was working that bitch with a strong arm.

Felt good.

Shifting his feet off the gurney, he pondered the law of gravity and debated whether he had the strength to deal with it. He decided to give it a shot, and what do you know, he managed to weave his way to the door.

Two pairs of eyes flipped over to him, one diamond bright, the other forest green.

"Hi," he said.

V's woman came up to him, and her stare was all doctor-scan. "God, I can't believe how fast you heal. You shouldn't even be conscious, much less upright."

"Do you want to check your handiwork?" When she nodded, he sat down on a bench and she carefully peeled the tape back. As he winced, he looked around her at Vishous. "Did you tell Z about this yet?"

The brother shook his head. "Haven't seen him, and Rhage tried his phone but it was off."

"So, no news from Havers?"

"Not that I've heard. Although we're about an hour before dawn, so they'd better be back soon."

The doctor whistled under her breath. "It's like I can see the skin knitting back together in front of my eyes. Mind if I put another gauze pack on?"

"Whatever you like."

When she went back into the PT suite, V said, "Gotta talk to you, my man."

"About?"

"I'm thinking you know."

Shit. The lesser. And there was no playing dumb with a brother like V. Lying, however, remained an option. "Fight got tight."

"Bullshit. You can't be pulling moves like that."

Phury thought back to a couple months before, when he'd become his twin for a time. Literally. "I've been worked over on one of their tables, V. I can assure you they are not concerned with warfare etiquette."

"But you got cracked tonight because you were going Ginsu on that slayer's ass. Weren't you."

Jane came back in with supplies. Thank God.

When she'd finished packing him up, he got to his feet. "I'm going to head to my room now."

"You want help?" V asked in a hard tone. Like he was sucking back a whole lot of need-to-share.

"No. I know the way."

"Well, since we have to go back anyway, let's make this a field trip. And take it slow."

Which was a damn good idea. His head was killing him.

They were halfway through the tunnel when Phury realized that the doctor wasn't being watched or guarded. But, then, hell, she didn't look as if she wanted to bolt. Matter of fact, she and V were walking side by side.

He wondered if either one of them was aware of how much they seemed like a couple.

When Phury got to the door that led into the big house, he said good-bye without meeting V's eyes and went up the shallow steps that led out of the tunnel and into the mansion's foyer. His bedroom seemed like it was all the way across town instead of just up the grand staircase and the exhaustion he felt told him he needed to feed. Which was such a bore.

Up in his room he took a shower and stretched out on his majestic bed. He knew he should be calling one of the females he used for blood, but he so wasn't interested. Instead of picking up the phone, he closed his eyes and let his arms fall to his sides, his hand landing on the firearms book, the one he'd taught class from tonight. The one with his drawing in it.

His door opened without a knock. Which meant it was Zsadist. With news.

Phury sat up so fast, his brain went fish-tank in his skull, sloshing around, threatening to spill out his ears. He put his hand up to the bandage as pain speared into him. "What happened with Bella?"

Z's eyes were black holes in his scarred face, "What the f**k were you thinking!"

"Excuse me?"

"Getting jumped because - " As Phury winced, Z cut the volume down on his boom-box routine and shut the door. Relative silence didn't improve his mood. In a hushed voice, he bit out, "I can't f**king believe you played Jack the Ripper and got cracked - "

"Please tell me how Bella is."

Z pointed his finger right at Phury's chest. "You need to spend a little less time worrying about my shellan and a little more worrying about your own sorry ass, feel me?"

Swamped by pain, Phury squeezed his good eye shut. The brother was, of course, right on the money.

"Shit," Z spat into the quiet. "Just... shit."

"You're absolutely right." Phury noticed that his hand was clutching the firearms book, and he forced himself to let go of the thing.

As a clicking sound started to go off, Phury glanced up. Z was nicking the top of his RAZR phone over and over again with his thumb. "You could have been killed."

"I wasn't."

"Cold comfort. At least for one of us. What about your eye? V's doc save it?"

"Don't know."