Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood 8)

With a frown, she sensed his father was still very much with him, and yet he didn't appear to have ever known the guy.

"You're taking me to one last place?" she murmured.

He seemed to take a final look about and then he poofed off and she followed him, thanks to all the blood of his that was in her system.

When they resumed form in front of a stunning modern house, his sadness overwhelmed him to such a degree that his emotional superstructure actually started to cave in on itself. With force of will, however, he managed to stop the disintegration in time, before it couldn't be righted.

Once your grid collapsed, you were cooked. Lost to your inner demons.

Which made her think of Murhder. On the day that he had learned her truth, she could remember exactly how his emotional construct had appeared to her: The steel girders that were the basis of mental health had been nothing but a crumbled mess.

She had been the only one who hadn't been surprised when he went insane and took off.

With a nod to her, John walked up to the formal front door, put in a key and opened the way in. As a draft ushered out to meet them, she could smell the dust and the damp, indicating that this was another structure that was empty. But there was nothing rotten inside, unlike John's former apartment building.

As he turned on the light in the foyer, she nearly gasped. On the wall, to the left of the door, was a scroll proclaiming in the Old Language that this was the home of the Brother Tohrment and his mated shellan, Wellesandra.

Which explained why it pained John so much to be here.

Wellesandra's hellren wasn't the only one who had saved the pretrans from the projects.

The female had mattered to John. A helluva lot.

John walked down the hall and flicked on more lights as he went, his emotions a combination of bittersweet affection and roaring pain. When they came to a spectacular kitchen, Xhex went over to the table in the alcove.

He had sat here, she thought, putting her hands on the back of one of the chairs. . . on his first night in this house, he had sat here.

"Mexican food," she murmured. "You were so afraid of offending them. But then. . . Wellesandra. . . "

Like a bloodhound following a fresh trail, Xhex tracked what she sensed of his memories. "Wellesandra served you ginger rice. And. . . pudding. You felt full for the first time and your stomach didn't hurt and you. . . you were so gateful you didn't know how to handle it. "

When she looked across the way at John, his face was pale and his eyes a bit too shiny and she knew he was back in his little body, sitting at the table, all curled into himself. . . becoming overwhelmed at the first kindness anyone had shown him in a very long time.

A footstep out in the hall brought her head up and she realized Qhuinn was still with them, the guy loitering about, his bad mood a tangible shadow around him.

Well, he didn't have to tag along any longer. This was the end of the road, the final chapter in John's story that pretty much caught her up-to-date. And unfortunately, it meant by all which was right and proper, they should go back to the mansion. . . where no doubt John would make her eat some more and try to get her to feed again.

She didn't want to return there, though, not yet. In her mind, she'd decided to take one night off, so these were her last few hours before she got on the vengeance trail. . . and lost this soft connection between her and John, this profound understanding they now had of each other.

Because she wasn't going to fool herself: The sad reality was the powerful tie that linked them was nonetheless so fragile, she didn't doubt it was going to snap once the present came back into better focus than the past.

"Qhuinn, will you excuse us, please. "

The guy's mismatched eyes shot over to John, and a series of hand motions got traded between them.

"Fuckin' A," Qhuinn spat before turning on his heel and marching out the front door.

After the slam finished echoing through the house, she stared at John. "Where did you sleep?"

When he swept his hand to a corridor, she went with him past many rooms that had modern fixtures and antique art. The combination made the place feel like an art museum you could live in and she explored a little, ducking her head into the open doors of parlors and bedrooms.

John's crib was all the way at the other end of the house, and as she walked in to it, she could only imagine the culture shock. Squalor to splendor, all in the change of a zip code: Unlike the crappy studio apartment, this was a navy blue haven with sleek furniture, a marble bathroom, and a carpet that was as thick and full as a marine's brush cut.

Plus it had a sliding glass door that led out onto a private terrace.

John went over and opened the closet, and she looked over his strong, heavy arm to the small clothes that hung on wooden hangers.

As he stared at the shirts and fleeces and pants, his shoulders were tight and one of his hands was curled into a fist. He was sorry about something he'd done or the way he'd acted and it didn't have anything to do with her. . . .