Forever, page 7
Unlike certain other people. Who happened to have mohawks.
And maybe she was a bitch, but it felt good to turn her back on the grind of whatever bullshit destiny had tried, and failed, to line up for her. April had been the moment, and that was passed, she told herself.
“C’mere,” she murmured as she motioned for her mate. “I want to give you something.”
John Matthew’s lids lowered, as if he were reading her mind, and right on cue, her hellren came across the antique rug on a prowl, his body moving with sensual intent. When he stood in front of her, his broad dagger hand went to the erection that had thickened up at his hips. Gripping himself, he released the terry cloth wrap.
Then he let things fall to his feet.
“That’s what I want,” Xhex moaned.
Turning onto her side, she palmed her mate’s erection and pulled him forward. Opening her mouth, she had a moment of thanks for the fact that the grand antique bed they slept on, which was not ordinarily her style at all, was so built up with its carved head- and footboards that it placed her at just the right level.
Sucking John’s arousal in deep, she closed her eyes and snaked a hand around to lock onto his ass. In and out, slow and steady, with his fingers spearing into her short hair, and his breathing getting heavy, and his hips pumping to the rhythm she set.
This was what she needed. The crap about her past in the lab, and what had been done to her during those experiments… and V and his stupid visions… and that mountain, which was not her business and nothing she was interested in… and Rehv with his issues? Fuck it all. Here and now and with her hellren was the only thing that mattered.
As John started to come, her phone rang. The sound, like the dying man who was probably trying to reach her again, was easy to ignore.
Destiny was a goddamn shit salad, and no offense to the guy and his dread disease or whatever was killing him, and his GF with the four paws and the silver-bullet problem, Xhex was not going to add any croutons to what was already in her bowl.
For the first time in her life, everything was okay.
She was not fucking it up.
SEVEN
AT THE END of the day, as the last of the light was draining from what had been a cloudy sky, Lydia pulled up to the imposing gates of Phalen-ville. She didn’t have to wait long for the estate’s security department to clear her and unlock all that wrought iron. Hitting the gas on the borrowed SUV, she proceeded down an allée of trees that locked her into what she had started to think of as the Jolly Green Giant’s colon. The chute was the length of a football field, and there was no exiting once you’d started down the thing, no breaks in the lineup of all those matching conifers. At the end, things opened up and the stone house was revealed.
Funny, the sprawling mansion got bigger every time she saw it. Or maybe the size distortion was because she felt like she had to reacquaint herself with the grandeur every time she came back. Then again, when you’d spent your life living in two- or three-bedroom houses, you suffered from building dysmorphia if you got an upgrade like this.
Inside, she could forget the scale. Outside, she could see nothing else.
Pulling around to the side, she came up to the detached garage, hit the opener, and waited for the third door down the lineup of ten to open. After she parked, she turned off the engine and just stared at the varnished wainscoting in front of her. Like everything else in C.P.’s world, the interior of what was—or should have been—a utility building was finished as if it were a living room. Or maybe a stable for champion thoroughbreds.
She needed to go inside. Find Daniel. See how his day was.
See if he’d done what he’d promised her he would.
A look down the cars that were parked and she tried to do some math to give herself a delay. With all the matching blacked-out Suburbans, the three Mercedes sedans, and then something that looked like a spaceship with wheels, she couldn’t imagine what the value of the collection was.
“Lot of money in pharmaceuticals,” she muttered.
Getting out, she hit the button by the door and stepped over the laser eye so she didn’t impede the closing. Then she stopped. The garages were separated from the main house on the surface level, but connected by a subterranean tunnel. As she stared at the side entrance of the mansion, she pictured where it would take her: into the professional kitchen, where professional chefs would be making a professional-chef kind of meal for C.P. and herself… and whoever else was dining tonight, like lab staff or security.
Anxiety tightened her shoulders, and as she looked up to the sky, she searched the cloud cover that seemed to be thickening by inches with every lumen of light that was draining from the horizon. Darkness was encroaching upon the property, weaving out of the forest, crossing the meadow and making a bid for the house like an invader that meant to conquer. And yet the gloaming was beautiful, too, and she stayed where she was to watch the soft peach dim down until the very last of the sun’s glow was nothing but a hint of pale gray—
A figure came around the corner of the mansion, stepping off the edge of the terrace and following the little flagstone path that linked the back lawn to the velvet-black asphalt courtyard.
The cane and the uneven gait would have given Daniel’s identity away, but she knew him by his scent anyway. Her first instinct was to rush over, not because he was going to fall, but because she wanted to save him the effort of covering the distance—but he didn’t like when she coddled him.
Collecting herself, she put a determined smile on her face—
She never did get to speak the falsely cheerful hello. A blaze of light hit her retinas, blinding her so badly, she put her forearms up as a shield.
“Lydia?” Daniel called out as she stumbled back.
The light faded as quickly as it had come, and in the aftermath, there was no reorientation to the darkness, no reason for her retinas to readjust.
Because it hadn’t been light in the conventional sense.
“Lydia, what’s wrong?”
Daniel was right in front of her now, the cap to keep his balding head warm the first thing she noticed. It was on backwards, and the detail of the sewed-on tag was an absurd thing to notice.
“I’m okay,” she lied as she tried to focus. Tried not to think the flash was anything important. Tried to…
And yet is it really a surprise, she thought.
Her Finnish grandfather had always told her that if you wanted to see your future, you went out at the moment of first dawn, when the sun was just starting to warm the sky in the east. There, he had said, you would find what destiny was bringing you in a blaze of light.
And if you wanted to see your past…
Then you went out at gloaming. And waited for the same.
“Honest, I’m fine,” she mumbled as she reached out and wrapped her arms gently around Daniel’s narrow shoulders.
With a surge of emotion, she wanted to crush him to her. Hold him so hard neither of them could breathe. Bury her face into his neck and scent him until he was all she could smell.
Their goodbye was coming—and she had known that in the hypothetical. But the light she had just seen announced their parting as reality.
Daniel was more her past now, more than even her present. In spite of the fact that he was standing in front of her.
“Listen to me,” he said urgently as his arms came around her with a surprising strength. “I talked to Gus. I told him I’ll take Vita-12b. I’ll do it. I’ll do anything to not lose you, to stay here with you. I don’t want you to be left alone and I’ve still got some fight in me, I promise—”
Lydia pulled back. “No, no, Daniel, I’ve been thinking. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like, what you’ve been through. I can’t ask you to—”
“But I want to. I’ll do it—”
“You don’t have to—”
Abruptly, he laughed in a burst—and then started coughing. After things with his lungs calmed down, he shook his head ruefully. “How is it possible that we got to the same place, just at different times?”
Lydia closed her eyes. He was telling her what she wanted to hear, what she’d thought the only solution was, but she’d reconsidered her desperation all day long.
More than that, though… the light just now told her everything she needed to know about what was going to happen next. Especially if he had resolved to take Vita-12b. When he’d been against it? She hadn’t seen what she’d just witnessed, even though she got home every night at the same time.
There had been plenty of chances.
Jesus… that novel agent was going to kill him.
“No,” she said urgently. “No, don’t do it.”
“What?”
Lydia grabbed for his hands. “I was wrong. You’re wrong now. Let’s—no, we have to enjoy the time we have, okay? You’re right. Another treatment’s just going to make you sicker and we don’t even know if it’ll work—”
“I’ll do it, Lydia. I can do it.”
Reaching up, she stroked his hollow cheek… and wondered how she was going to live without him. The sobbing that came with that grim, sad thought was immediate and uncontrollable—and for the first time since he’d started the chemo, he was the one holding her up. Somehow, even with his diminished strength, he managed to keep them both on their feet.
Good thing, too.
She would have shattered like glass if she hit the pavement.
* * *
Up in the house, as C.P. looked down at the two people who were embraced in her motor court, her vantage point jerked back and forth.
Daniel and Lydia were easy enough to track, though, given that they were standing flush against each other, their heads close, their arms wrapped tight around the center core created by their embrace. And the image of them together, bracing against the storm they were in, made her rethink a little of the romantic crap she’d always turned her nose up at. That whole two-who-became-one platitude had never resonated with her, but tonight, the living, breathing display of unity struck a painful note—
“I’m coming, I’m fucking coming…”
C.P. switched her grip on the windowsill in her study’s private bathroom and widened her stance because things were about to get even more bumpy. With her skirt up around her waist and her silk panties and panty liner pushed to the side, the blond guard who was drilling her from behind might as well have been a dildo.
Actually, he was one, albeit one that had a heartbeat and respiration rather than batteries.
“Fuck—”
The tempo increased in a sudden surge, and she needed to use the muscles in her shoulders to keep from banging her face into the glass. And yet still she watched as the couple down below separated from their tight clutch and Daniel wiped his woman’s face with his shaky hands.
The grunt from behind her was punctuated with a locking penetration, and as she felt the guard’s cock spasm deep inside her, she was relieved pregnancy wasn’t a problem even though they weren’t using protection. She was infertile—and she wasn’t worried about STDs. The regular health screenings she required him to take made sure she was safe.
What he did after hours was his business. What they did during? Was hers. And as the two would never mix, he got tested weekly.
With his orgasm over, the guard’s breathing was harsh and heavy, and she remembered back a couple of months ago when she’d found the sound erotic as hell. Now, it was just like someone working out next to her in a gym, the two of them side by side on StairMasters.
No orgasm for her this time. A first.
As soon as he withdrew and collapsed back against the marble wall by the toilet, she straightened from the windowsill and rearranged her skirt. A quick check of her reflection was satisfactory. Not a hair out of place and her lipstick wasn’t smudged. No kissing, of course.
They really were so damned compatible. She needed someone who could be satisfied with nothing but doing her from behind on her schedule—also somebody who never argued with the boundaries, touched her in any other way, and didn’t share the details with anyone. On his side? He apparently just needed a heart and a hole. At least while he was working his shift.
“Was that good, baby?” he drawled.
With his eyes at half-mast, and that prodigious cock of his taking its own sweet time deflating, he was a male animal who was well satisfied with his performance—and very used to receiving compliments. But that wasn’t where she went. Goddamn, she hated when couples called each other “baby.” “Babe” was even worse. But they weren’t a couple, so his poor taste in sobriquets wasn’t her problem.
“Pull your pants up and collect yourself, would you.”
He stroked himself with a lazy hand. “You sure you don’t want another?”
She hadn’t wanted the first one. But she’d been feeling untethered. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the grounding she was looking for—and why the hell was she cold? It was seventy degrees in here, and technically, she’d just had some aerobic exercise.
C.P. stepped out of the bathroom—
“Shit! Again?” she barked.
Gus was over by the bar, pouring himself a Coke, not a tequila. And as she shut the door quickly, he turned around and toasted her with the Real Thing. “He’s going to do it!”
Shaking her head to try to focus, she tugged the sleeve of her tailored jacket down. And smoothed her skirt on a just-in-case. “I’m sorry, what—wait, Daniel? Is going to—”
“Yes!” Gus came forward. “And I didn’t talk him into Vita. He chose freely. He said he wasn’t going to leave Lydia, and that was why. So please, don’t sell right now. Give… me…”
As Gus’s words ran out of gas, his eyes shifted off to the side—and then he walked around her and ripped open the bathroom door.
“Okay,” she heard him say. “My bad.”
Cursing under her breath, she crossed her arms over her chest and prayed that the guard had gotten the bottom half of his black uniform back where it should have stayed—and yup, as the blond emerged, he had not only covered himself properly, he didn’t say a word. He just nodded at her, like they’d had a business meeting between her sink and toilet, and walked out of the study with his head level. There was even a click as he closed the door behind his departure. As if he knew she was going to appreciate a little privacy.
Gus lifted an eyebrow.
“It’s not what it looks like,” she said briskly.
“You’re going to tell me he’s changing a light bulb in there?”
C.P. went around her desk and sat down. “Something like that.”
“With his pants off?” Gus put the full glass down on the bar. “Never mind. It’s not my business. And hey, tonight your study door was closed and I did barge in. Now I know why and I know better.”
For some stupid reason, she noted that he was wearing a Talking Heads t-shirt. Which seemed a little too recent for his normal tastes. When had “Burning Down the House” come out? Certainly not during the decade of peace and love.
“Were you about to say something?” he murmured. “ ’Cuz by all means, I’m dying to hear it.”
Closing her eyes, she exhaled. “Gus—”
“Actually, better that you spare us both.” He headed for the exit. “Daniel doesn’t want to wait. We’re going to do a checkup on him tomorrow and start administering Vita as early as the afternoon. I’ll keep you posted—and ask you again to hold until we see what we’ve got in vivo—”
“I never said I was selling,” she cut in sharply.
“You’re going to want to wait.” He glanced back at her. “If the results are shit, you can bury them and still make a profit. But if our baby does what I think she will? You’re going to make a boatload more cash, and we know how happy that’ll get you. You can buy a hundred of those blond fuckboys—”
“He is a fully trained militia soldier.”
“Is that what they’re calling them now? I’m so behind the times.” Gus tipped his head as if he were wearing a formal hat. “My bad.”
And justlikethat, he was gone.
There was no click behind him, though.
She did learn that he had, in fact, closed the door, however, when she left about ten minutes later.
He’d just managed to shut her out in silence.
EIGHT
Tuttle, Pennsylvania
NO, I’M GOING to kill you.”
As Blade, half-bred symphath, full-blown psychopath, spoke the words to the human, he drawled them out because all parts of this experience were to be enjoyed. By him. Then he briefly closed his eyes and breathed in. Talk about an aftershave. The bouquet of terror-sweat was laced with Arrid Extra Dry, Bounce fabric softener, and—was it Paul Mitchell shampoo?
Fancy for a scientist.
“W-w-w-why are you—”
He put the forefinger of his free hand on the male’s lips as a rush of arousal thickened his cock. “Shhhhh.”
The other side of all his ambidextrous was locked on the hilt of a solid-gold knife that he had fashioned himself from a bar that was 10K—so the deadly length was good and hard. Pure gold, like an innocent soul, was far too soft to be of any use as a weapon.
And the tip of his proverbial spear was resting right on the belly button of the human. To the point where a little red spot had bloomed at the contact, the stain spreading through the fibers of the blue scrubs like an infection on skin.
Blade and his next kill were standing in a stark hallway that was located thirty-five feet below a cornfield, ten miles away from the nearest town, fifty miles away from the nearest city, and a hundred and fifty million light-years away from the likes of Philadelphia. Above them, a vent was blowing warm air, and stretching down the corridor, fluorescent ceiling lights glowed like little cloud banks that were tethered in place.
