"So lonely." Jane put her hand to her throat. "You must have been so lonely."
"Hardly. I didn't want to be with anyone. I worked for the merchant for a decade or so then one night, in Rome, I ran into a lesser who was in the process of killing a female vampire. I took the bastard out, but not because I particularly cared about the female. It was… See, it was her son. Her son was watching in the shadows of the dark street, crouched next to a cart. He was like… shit, definitely a pretrans, and a young one at that. I saw him first, actually, then caught the action across the way. I thought of my own mother, or at least the image I had made up about her, and was like… hell, no way was this little boy going to watch the female who'd birthed him die."
"Did the mother live?"
He winced. "She was gone by the time I could get to her. Bled out from a throat wound. But I promise you, that lesser got shredded. Afterward I didn't know what to do with the kid. I ended up going to the merchant I killed for, and he put me in touch with some folks who took the boy in." V laughed in a short burst. "Turned out the mother who died was a fallen Chosen, and that pretrans? Well, he ended up being the father of my brother Tohrment. We got a small world, true?
"So because I saved a kid of warrior blood, word got out, and my brother Darius ended up finding me and introducing me to Wrath. D… D and I had a certain connection, and he was probably the only one who could have gotten my attention at that point. When I met Wrath, he wasn't into being king, and he was no more interested in ties than I was. Which meant the two of us clicked. Eventually I was inducted into the Brotherhood. And there… shit, yeah, there you have it."
In the silence that followed he could only guess what was going through her mind, and the idea that she pitied him made him want to do something to prove he was strong.
Like bench-press a car.
Except instead of going all soft on him and making him feel even more rattled, Jane just looked around, even though he knew she could see nothing but the two candles that were lit. "And this place… this place means what to you?"
"Nothing. Means nothing more than any other."
"Then why are we here?"
V's heart rate spiked.
Shit… Standing here with her now, after spilling his guts, he wasn't sure he could go through with what he'd planned.
Chapter Twenty-nine
As Jane waited for V to speak, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to throw a whole lot of very sincere, ultimately lame words at him. She wanted to know whether his father had, in fact, died in flames, and she hoped the bastard had.
When the silence continued, she said, "I don't know if this will help… probably won't, but I have to say something here. I can't stomach oatmeal. To this day, it makes me sick." She prayed she wasn't going to say to wrong thing. "It is okay that you're still struggling with everything that was done to you. Anyone would. It doesn't make you weak. You were violently maimed by someone who should have protected and nurtured you. The fact that you're still standing is a miracle. I respect you for it."
V's cheeks went pink. "I, ah… don't really see it that way."
"Fine. But I do." To give him a break, she cleared her throat and said, "You going to tell me why we're here?"
He rubbed his face like he was trying to clear his brain. "Shit, I want to be with you. Here."
She exhaled in relief and sadness. She wanted a goodbye with him, also. A good-bye that was sexual and private and not in the bedroom they'd been locked in together. "I want to be with you, too."
Another candle came to life over by a bank of curtains. Then a fourth by a wet bar. A fifth next to a big bed with black satin sheets on it.
She started to smile… until the sixth one lit up. There was something hanging off the wall… something that looked like… chains?
More candles flared. Masks. Whips. Canes. Gags.
A black table with restraints that hung down to the floor.
She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled. "So this is where you do the tying-up."
"Yeah."
Oh, Jesus… She didn't want that kind of good-bye. Trying to stay calm, she said, "You know, it makes sense, given what happened to you. That you'd like that." Shit, she couldn't handle this. "So… is it men or women? Or, like, a combination?"
She heard the creaking of leather and turned back to him. He was taking off his jacket, and a set of guns she hadn't seen were next. Followed by two black knives that had been hidden as well. Christ, he'd been totally armed.
Jane tightened the hold on herself. She wanted to be with him, but not tied down and masked while he pulled a 9 1/2 Weeks on her head and whipped the shit out of her body. "Listen, V, I don't think-"
He took his shirt off, his back muscles flexing up his spine, his pecs pumping fully, then settling. He kicked off his boots.
Holy… shit, she thought, as it dawned on her what this was really about.
His socks and his leathers were next, and, as he'd gone commando, there were no boxers to get rid of. In total silence he padded across the glossy marble floor and got up on the table in a coordinated surge. Stretching out, he was utterly magnificent, his body heavy with muscle, his movements elegant and masculine. He took a deep breath, his rib cage rising and falling.
Fine tremors licked over his skin… or maybe it was the candlelight?
He swallowed hard.
No, it was fear that was making him twitch.
"Pick out a mask for me," he said in a low voice.
"V… no."
"A mask and a ball gag." He turned his head toward her. "Do it. Then put the cuffs on me." When she didn't move, he nodded at what hung on the wall. "Please."
"Why?" she asked, watching the sweat break out over his body.
He closed his eyes, and his lips barely moved. "You've given me so much-and not just a weekend of your life. I tried to think of what I could give you in return-you know, fair-trade shit, throwing up oatmeal for deets on my scars. The only thing I've got is me and this…" He tapped the rack's hard wood with his knuckles. "This is as exposed as I could ever be, and that's what I want to give you."
"I don't want to hurt you."
"I know." His lids flipped open. "But I want you to have me as no one else has or will. So pick out the mask."
As he swallowed, she watched his Adam's apple roll along the column of his thick throat. "This is not the kind of gift I want. Or the kind of good-bye."
There was a long silence. Then he said, "Remember I told you about the arranged-marriage thing?"
"Yes."
"It's going down in a matter of days."
Oh, now she really didn't want this. To think she was with someone else's fiancé-
"I haven't met the female. She hasn't met me." He looked over at Jane. "And she's the first of about forty."
"Forty?"
"I'm supposed to sire all their children."
"Oh, God."
"So here's the thing. Sex is all about biological function from here on out. And see, I haven't really ever put myself out there, true? I want to do this with you because… Well, anyway, I just do."
She looked at him. The cost of laying himself out like this was in his wide, bouncing eyes and his pale face and the sweat that beaded his chest. To say no was to degrade his courage.
"What…" Holy shit. "What exactly do you want me to do to you?"
When V finished telling her, he turned away and stared at the ceiling. The candlelight played across the broad, black expanse, making it look like a pool of oil. As he waited for Jane's response, he was hit by vertigo, feeling as if the room had flipped itself over and he was suspended above the ceiling, about to be dropped into it and swallowed by Quaker State's best.