iAm’s lips pursed the way they did when he was considering his response. Then he flopped the red cover of the iPad down, each of the four sections landing like footsteps across the screen. He then put the thing aside, uncrossed his leg, and leaned forward to balance his elbows on his knees. The guy’s biceps were so thick, the sleeves of his shirt looked like they were going to split wide.
“Your sex life is out of control.” As Trez rolled his eyes, his brother kept on talking. “You are fucking three or four women a night, sometimes more. It’s not about feeding, so don’t waste either of our time by excusing it in that fashion. You are compromising the professional standards of—”
“I run liquor and prostitutes. Don’t you think that’s a little highbrow—”
iAm picked up the iPad and waved it back and forth. “Should I go back to reading?”
“I’m just saying—”
“You asked me to speak. If this is a problem, the solution is not to get defensive because you don’t like what you hear. The answer is to not invite me to talk.”
Trez ground his teeth. See, this was the issue with his fucking brother. Too goddamn reasonable.
Bursting up, he stalked across the open living room. The kitchen was like everything else in the condo: modern, airy, and uncluttered. Which meant that as he poured himself some more caffeine, he could see his brother in his peripheral vision.
Man, sometimes he hated this place: Unless he was in his bedroom with the door shut, he couldn’t get a break from those damn eyeballs.
“Am I reading or talking?” iAm said calmly, like he didn’t care either way.
Man, Trez desperately wanted to tell the guy to shove his nose back into the Times, but that was like a defeat.
“G’head.” Trez went back to his chair and settled in for more ass kicking.
“You’re not behaving in a professional manner.”
“You eat your own food at Sal’s.”
“My linguine with clam sauce doesn’t require a restraining order when I decide the next night I want the Fra Diavolo.”
Good point. And somehow, that made him feel nearly violent.
“I know what you’re doing,” iAm said steadily. “And why.”
“You’re not a virgin, of course you do—”
“I know what they sent you.”
Trez froze. “How.”
“When you didn’t respond, I received a phone call.”
Trez pushed the rug with his foot and turned himself around to face the river. Shit. He figured he’d clear the air with this, you know, give his brother a little bitch session so that the two of them could go back to being normal—usually they were close as skin to bone, and the relationship was as fundamental as that to him.
He could handle just about anything except friction with his brother.
Unfortunately, the problems that had gotten alluded to over there were about the only thing in that “just about anything.”
“Ignoring it will not make it go away, Trez.”
This was said with a certain gentleness of tone—like the guy felt bad for him.
As Trez looked out over the river, he imagined that he was at his club, with humans all around and cash trading hands and the women who worked there doing their thing in the back. Nice. Normal. In control and comfortable.
“You have responsibilities.”
Trez tightened his grip on his mug. “I didn’t volunteer for them.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He spun around so fast, hot coffee went flying and landed on his thigh. He ignored the sting. “It should. It fucking should. I’m not some inanimate object that can be given to somebody. That whole thing is bullshit.”
“Some would find it an honor.”
“Well, I don’t. I’m not getting mated to that female. I don’t care who she is or who set it up or how ‘important’ it is to the s’Hisbe.”
Trez braced himself for a barrage of oh-yeah-you-do. Instead, his brother looked sad, as if he wouldn’t have wanted the curse, either.
“I’ll say it again, Trez. This is not just magically going to disappear. And trying to fuck your way out of it? That’s not only futile, it’s potentially dangerous.”
Trez rubbed his face. “The women are just humans. They don’t matter.” He turned back to the river again. “And frankly, if I don’t do something, I’m going to go insane. A couple of orgasms has to be better than that, right?”
As silence resumed, he knew his brother disagreed with him. But proof positive that his life was in the shitter was the fact that the conversation dried up at that point.
iAm apparently wasn’t into kicking a guy when he was down.
Whatever. He didn’t care what was expected of him—he was not going back and being condemned to a life of service.
He didn’t care if it was to the queen’s daughter.
TWELVE
It was late in the afternoon when Wrath hit the wall. He was at his desk, ass on his father’s throne, fingers running over a report written in Braille, when all of a sudden he couldn’t take one more damn word of text.
Shoving the papers aside, he cursed and ripped his wraparounds off his face. Just as he was about to throw them at a wall, a muzzle kicked his elbow.
Putting an arm around his golden retriever, he tightened his hand on the soft fur that grew along the dog’s flanks. “You always know, don’t you.”
George burrowed in deep, pressing his chest into Wrath’s leg—which was the cue that someone wanted to be up and over.
Wrath leaned down and gathered all ninety pounds up in his arms. As he settled the four paws, lion’s mane, and flowing tail so that everything fit, he supposed it was a good thing he was so fucking tall. Big thighs offered a bigger lap.
And the act of stroking all that fur calmed him, even though it didn’t ease his mind.
His father had been a great king, capable of withstanding countless hours of ceremony, endless nights filled with the drafting of proclamations and summonses, whole months and years of protocol and tradition. And that was before you layered on the perennial stream of bitching that came at you from every corner: letters, phone calls, e-mails—although of course the latters hadn’t been an issue in his pop’s era.
Wrath had been a fighter once. A damn good one.
Putting his hand up, he felt along the side of his neck, to the place where that bullet had entered him—
The knock on the door was sharp and to the point, a demand more than a respectful request for entrance.
“Come in, V,” he called out.
The astringent witch-hazel scent that preceded the Brother was a clear tip-off that somebody was feeling pissy. And sure enough, that deep voice had a nasty edge.
“I finally finished the ballistic testing. Damn fragments always take forever.”
“And?” Wrath prompted.
“It’s a one hundred percent match.” As Vishous sat down in the chair across the desk, the thing creaked under the weight. “We got ’em.”
Wrath exhaled, some of the impotent buzz draining from his brain.
“Good.” He ran his palm from the top of George’s boxy head down to his ribs. “This is our ammunition, then.”
“Yup. What was going to happen anyway is now nice and legal.”
The Brotherhood had known all along who had been on the trigger of the shot that had nearly killed him back in the fall—and the duty of picking off the Band of Bastards one by one was something they were looking at as so much more than a sacred duty to the race.
“Listen, I gotta be honest, true?”
“When are you not?” Wrath drawled.
“Why the hell are you tying our hands?”
“Didn’t know I was.”
“With Tohr.”
Wrath repositioned George so that the blood supply to his left leg wasn’t completely cut off by the dog’s weight. “He asked for the proclamation.”