Lover Enshrined (Black Dagger Brotherhood 6)

Rhage was the one who led Qhuinn out of the locker room, and Blay followed them.

John stayed right where he was. Please let Lash live, he thought. Please...

Man, he didn't like the way Doc Jane kept shaking her head as she worked on the guy, her doctor's bag cracked open, instruments flying as she tried to stitch up Lash's neck.

"Tell me."

John jumped and turned his head. It was Z.

"Tell me how it happened, John."

John looked back down at Lash and replayed the scene. Oh, Jesus... he didn't want to go into the whys. Even though Zsadist knew about his past, he couldn't bring himself to tell the Brother the reason Qhuinn had hard-cored it.

Maybe it was because he still couldn't believe his past had come out like that. Maybe it was because the old nightmare had just been renewed.

Maybe it was because he was a pu**y who couldn't man up for his friends.

Z's deformed lip tightened. "Listen, John, Qhuinn's in deep shit. Legally he's still a minor, but that's assault with a deadly against a first son. The family is going to come gunning for him even if Lash survives, and we're going to need to know what happened here."

Doc Jane stood up. "He's closed, but he's at risk for stroke. I want him to go to Havers's. Stat."

Z nodded and called forward two doggen, who had a gurney between them. "Fritz is ready with the car, and I'll be going with them."

As Lash was lifted up off the tile, the Brother pegged John with grim eyes. "You want to save your friend, you're going to need to tell us what went down."

John watched the group roll Lash out of the locker room.

As the door eased shut, his knees wobbled, and he looked at the pool of blood in the center of the shower.

Over in the corner of the locker room, there was a hose that was used for the daily cleaning of the facilities. John forced his feet to go across to where the thing was mounted on the wall. Uncoiling it, he turned the water on, pulled the head over into the shower, then twisted the nozzle open. He swept the spray back and forth, back and forth, moving inch by inch, chasing the blood away toward the drain, where it was swallowed with a gurgle.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

The tile went from red to pink to white. But it didn't clean up the mess. Not in the f**king slightest.

Chapter Thirteen

Phury felt hands on his skin, small, light- fingered hands, and they were traveling down his belly. They were headed for the juncture of his thighs, and thank God for that. His arousal was swollen and hot and hungry God for that. His arousal was swollen and hot and hungry for release, and the closer the hands got to it, the more his hips pushed up and retreated back, his ass clenching and releasing as it gave in to the thrusting he was dying to do.

His c**k wept - he could feel the wetness on his stomach. Or maybe he'd already come once?

Oh, those hands, just tickling across his skin. That special feathery touch made his arousal strain even harder, as if it could reach out and get in the way if it tried hard enough.

Small hands, heading for his -

Phury woke up on a body jerk that sent his pillow popping off the bed.

"Shit."

Underneath the roll of blankets, his c**k throbbed, and not with the usual ambient need that was a male's evening wake-up call. No... this was specific. His body wanted something very specific from one particular female.

Cormia.

She's right next door, he pointed out to himself.

And what a prize you are, the wizard shot back. Why don't you go to her, mate. I'm sure she'll be just thrilled to see you after the way you let her leave last night. Not a word to her. Not even an acknowledgment of her gratitude to you.

Not able to argue with that, Phury looked to the chaise.

It was the first time he had ever fed a female.

As he felt for her bite mark on his neck, he noted that it was gone, healed away.

One of life's great milestones had been met... and it saddened him. Not that he regretted it was with her. Not at all. But he wished he had told her that she was his first at the time.

Pushing his hair out of his eyes, he looked at the clock. Midnight. Midnight? Man, he'd been asleep for about eight hours, clearly because of the feeding. He didn't feel refreshed, though. His stomach was rolling and his head was pounding.

As he reached for the wake-up blunt he'd prepared before he'd crashed, he stopped short. His hand was shaking so badly, he doubted he could pick the thing up, and he stared at his palm, willing it to still, making no impression whatsoever.

It took him three tries to get the hand-rolled off the bedside table, and he watched his fumbles from a distance, as if it were someone else's hand, someone else's blunt. Once the twist of leaves and paper was between his lips, he struggled to get his lighter in position and work the flint wheel.

Two tokes in and the shaking stopped. The headache evaporated. His stomach calmed.

Unfortunately, another rattling went off across the room and all three came back: The Primale medallion went into its dance routine on the bureau again.

He left the thing where it was and worked his way through the blunt, thinking about Cormia. He doubted she would have told him she needed to feed. What had happened during the daylight hours in this room had been a spur-of-the -moment combustion generated by her bloodlust, and he couldn't take it as evidence that she wanted him sexually. She hadn't turned away from the sex last night, true, but that was very different from her wanting him, wasn't it. Need was not the same as choice. She'd needed his blood. He'd needed her body.

The Chosen needed both of them to get with the program.

Stabbing out what little was left of the hand-rolled, he stared across his bedroom at the bureau. The medallion had finally stalled out.

It took him less than ten minutes to shower, dress in white silks, and put the Primale medallion's leather thong over his head. As the slab of gold settled between his pecs, its weight was warm, probably because of its workout.

He traveled directly to the Other Side, having special dispensation as Primale to skip being routed through the Scribe Virgin's courtyard. Taking form in front of the Sanctuary 's amphitheater, where the whole thing had started five months ago, he found it hard to believe he really had taken Vishous's place as Primale.

It was kind of like looking at his shaky hand: This just wasn't him.

Yeah, except it totally was.

Up ahead, the white stage with its heavy white curtain glowed in the odd, relentless light of the Other Side. Here there were no shadows, as there was no sun in the pale sky, and yet there was plenty of illumination, as if everything were its own light source. The temperature was seventy degrees, neither too hot nor too cold, and there was no breeze to brush over your skin or ruffle your clothes. Everything was a soft, eye-soothing white.

The place was the landscape equivalent of Muzak.

Walking over cropped white grass, he headed around the back of the Greco-Roman theater toward the various temples and living quarters. On the fringes, all around, there was a white forest bracketing the compound that cut off any long vistas. He wondered what was on the far side of it. Probably nothing. The Sanctuary had the feel of an architect's model or a train set, as if, were you to walk to the edge, all you would find was a steep drop-off to some giant's wall-to-wall-carpeted floor.

As he went along, he wasn't sure how to get the Directrix 's attention, but he wasn't in a big hurry to make that happen. To delay, he went to the Primale's temple and used his gold medallion to unlock the double doors. After stepping through the white marble foyer, he went into the temple 's single, lofty room and stared at the bedding platform with its white satin sheets.

He remembered what Cormia had looked like tied down naked, a white sheet falling from above and pooling at her throat to mask her face. He had torn the thing down and been horrified to meet her tear-filled, terrified eyes.

She'd been gagged.

He looked up to the ceiling, where the draping that had covered her face had been hung. There were two tiny gold hooks embedded in the marble. He wanted to take them out with a f**king jackhammer.

As he stared upward, he randomly thought back to a conversation he'd had with Vishous right before all the shit had gone down with this Primale business. The two of them had been in the dining room at the mansion, and V had said something about having had a vision of Phury.

Phury hadn't wanted deets, but they'd come out anyway, and the words the brother had spoken were oddly clear to him now, like a recording replayed: I saw you standing at a crossroads in a field of white. It was a stormy day... yeah, lots of storms. But when you took a cloud from the sky and wrapped it around the well, the rain stopped falling.