Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood 7)

"Yeah. It is." As the time for parting came, he was anxious about where they stood, and fear made his vision fairly clear. God, how he hated the lonely look on her face. "You can't know how sorry I am."

Beth reached up and touched his jaw. "I hear it in your voice."

He took her hand and placed it over his heart. "I'm nothing without you."

"Not true." She stepped out of his hold. "You are the king. No matter who your shellan is, you are everything."

Beth dematerialized into the thin air, her vital, warm presence replaced with nothing but frigid December wind.

Wrath waited for about two minutes; then he dematerialized to Safe Place. She had so much of his blood in her after all their time of feeding from each other that he sensed her presence inside the stout walls of the security-laden facility, and he knew she was protected.

With a heavy heart, Wrath dematerialized again and headed back to the mansion: He had stitches to get removed and a whole night to pass alone in his study.

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

An hour after Trez took the tray back down to the kitchen, Rehv's stomach was in full revolt. Man, if oatmeal was no longer a viable food afterward, what was he left with? Bananas? White rice?

Fucking Gerber baby gruel?

And it wasn't just his digestive tract that was screwed up. If he'd been able to feel anything, he was pretty sure he had a headache along with the tossing nausea. Anytime there was a light source, like when Trez came in to check on him, Rehv's eyes went on autoblink, flickering up and down in an uncoordinated, ocular version of the Safety Dance; then he'd start to salivate and swallow compulsively. So he had to be nauseated.

As his phone went off, he put his hand on it and brought it to his ear without turning his head. There was a lot going on at ZeroSum tonight, and he needed to keep tabs. "Yeah."

"Hi...you called me?"

Rehv's eyes shot to the bathroom door, which had a soft light glowing around the jambs.

Oh, God, he hadn't had a shower yet.

He was still covered with the sex he'd had.

Even though Ehlena was about a three-hour drive away and he wasn't on a Web cam, he felt absolutely nasty just talking to her.

"Hey," he said in a rough voice.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah." Which was a total f**king lie, and the gravel in his voice made that obvious.

"Well, I, ah...I saw that you'd called me-" As a strangled sound came out of his mouth, Ehlena stopped. "You're sick."

"No-"

"For God's sake, please come to the clinic-"

"I can't. I'm..." God, he couldn't bear to speak to her. "I'm not in town. I'm upstate."

There was a long pause. "I'll bring the antibiotics to you."

"No." She couldn't see him like this. Shit, she couldn't see him ever again. He was filthy. A filthy, dirty whore who let someone he hated touch him and suck on him and use him, and force him to do the same to her.

The princess was right. He was a f**king dildo.

"Rehv? Let me come to you-"

"No."

"Goddamn it, don't you do this to yourself!"

"You can't save me!" he shouted.

In the aftermath of his explosion, he thought, Jesus...where had that come from? "I'm sorry...it's been a bad night for me."

When Ehlena finally spoke, her voice was a thin whisper. "Don't do this to me. Don't make me see you in the morgue. Don't do that to me."

Rehv squeezed his eyes shut. "I'm not doing anything to you."

"The hell you aren't." Her voice cracked on a sob.

"Ehlena..."

Her moan of despair came through the phone all too clearly. "Oh...Christ. Whatever. Kill yourself, fine."

She hung up on him.

"Fuck." He rubbed his face. "Fuck!"

Rehv sat up and fired the cell phone at the bedroom door. And just as it ricocheted off the panels and went flying, he realized he'd busted the only thing he had with her number in it.

With a roar and a messy scramble, he launched his body off the bed, quilts landing everywhere. Not a great move on his part. As his numb feet hit the throw rug, he went Frisbee, finding air briefly before landing on his face. On impact, a sound like a bomb had gone off rumbled through the floorboards, and he crawled for the phone, tracking the light that still glowed from its screen.

Please, oh, f**king please, if there is a God...

He was almost in range when the door swung open, narrowly missing his head and clipping the phone-which shot like a hockey puck in the opposite direction. As Rehv wheeled around and lunged for thing, he shouted at Trez.

"Don't shoot me!"

Trez was in full fighting stance, gun up and pointed at the window, then the closet, then the bed. "What the f**k was that."

Rehv sprawled out flat to reach the phone, which was spinning under the bed. When he caught it, he closed his eyes and brought it close to his face.

"Rehv?"

"Please..."

"What? Please...what?"

He opened his eyes. The screen was flickering, and he pressed the buttons fast. Calls received...calls received...calls r-

"Rehv, what the hell is going on?"

There it was. The number. He stared at the seven digits after the area code as if they were the combination to his own safe, trying to get them all.

The screen went dark and he let his head fall down on his arm.

Trez crouched beside him. "You okay?"

Rehv pushed himself out from under the bed and sat up, the room spinning like a merry-go-round. "Oh...fuck me."

Trez holstered his gun. "What happened?"

"I dropped my phone."

"Right. Of course. Because it weighs enough to make that kind of-Hey, easy, there." Trez caught him as he tried to get up. "Now where are you going?"

"I need a shower. I need..."

More pictures of him with the princess hammered into his brain. He saw her back arched, that red mesh split free of her ass, him buried deep in her sex, pumping until that barb of his locked him inside of her so that his release would get way up into her.

Rehv pressed his fists into his eyes. "I need to..."

Oh, Jesus...He orgasmed when he was with his blackmailer. And not just once, usually three or four times. At least the whores in his club who hated what they did for the money could take solace in the fact that they didn't enjoy it. But a male's release said it all, didn't it.

Rehv's gag reflex tightened, and in a panic he Curly-shuffled into the bathroom. The oatmeal and the toast made a successful bid for liberation, and Trez was right there to hold him over the loo. Rehv couldn't feel the retching, but he was damn sure that his esophagus was getting torn, because after a couple of minutes of coughing and trying to breathe and seeing stars, blood started to come up.

"Lie back," Trez said.

"No, shower-"

"You're in no shape-"

"I have to get her off me!" Rehv's voice bellowed through not just his bedroom, but the whole house. "For f**k's sake...I can't stand her."

There was a moment that positively smacked of holy crap: Rehv wasn't the type to ask for a life jacket even if he were drowning, and he never bitched about the arrangement with the princess. He got through it and did what he had to and paid the consequences, because it was all worth it to him to keep his and Xhex's secret.

And part of you likes it, an inner voice pointed out. You get to be you without apology when you're in her.

Fuck off, he told himself.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," he said to his friend hoarsely.

"Nah, it's cool. Don't blame you." Trez gently lifted him up from the tile and tried to reposition him on the sinks. "It's about time."

Rehv lurched for the shower.

"Nope," Trez said, pushing him back. "Let me get the water warm."

"I won't feel it."

"Your core temperature has enough problems already. Just stay there."

As Trez leaned into the marble shower and turned on the water, Rehv stared down at his cock, which lay loose and long down his thigh. It seemed like the sex of someone else, and that was a good thing.

"You realize I could kill her for you," Trez said. "I could make it look like an accident. No one would know."

Rehv shook his head. "I don't want you sucked into this shithole. We got enough people down it already."

"The offer stands."

"Duly noted."