Splaying his palms out, he braced his weight against the mantle, his body bowing as he faced away from her toward the fire. Blood ran down the back of his hand and wrist from the wounds on his knuckles, twin dark streams uniting and seeping under the cuff of his black shirt.
A moment later, his bleeding hand dropped down. At first, she thought he was shaking off the hurt. But then his pants moved, tugging left, tugging right.
His shoulders bunched up tight and his spine jerked.
He had gripped himself.
Layla bit down on her lower lip and leaned in closer, until her nose hit the cold glass. Spotlit against the fire’s orange glow, Xcor’s body cut a black silhouette as he widened his stance and let his head fall forward.
His elbow moved back and forth.
He was stroking himself.
Closing her eyes briefly, she sagged against the bay window. When she opened her lids again, he was working it faster. And faster.
Xcor turned his head to the side and bared his fangs. Sinking his sharp canines into his bulging shoulder muscle, he bit down through his shirt, his face wincing as if in erotic agony.
And then his hips punched forward toward the flames, over and over again as he climaxed.
Backing off, she—
—tripped over a root and fell into nothing but air. Between her big belly and her vital distraction, she tried to twist around and catch herself, throwing out her own hand to prevent herself from hitting the ground hard. Terrified for the safety of her young, she landed in a sprawl, her hip taking the brunt of the impact, her arm getting pinned.
The agony was instant and overwhelming, a sudden surge of nausea making her heave.
Groaning, she stayed perfectly still. “Okay, okay . . . you’re okay. . . .”
She really had to get out of here now.
Struggling to her feet, she weaved her way over to the car while holding her arm against her body. When it came time to open the driver’s side door, she had to brace the injury on the back window so she had a free hand, and she needed to catch her breath after she was behind the wheel.
Getting the Mercedes started and then turned around nearly made her faint, but she eventually made her way down the lane and out, out, out to the main road.
It was then that she realized that without Xcor’s direction, she had no idea how to get home.
Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes and she envied Xcor’s ability to punch something. If she could have, she would’ve.
But she’d already broken her arm.
Busted knuckles she did not need.
TWENTY
IAm followed s’Ex’s instructions to the letter, waiting a good hour and a half before dematerializing from the condo at the Commodore to the outskirts of the Territory of the s’Hisbe. When he resumed form in the forest, he tracked in about three hundred yards to the river that made a curl around a granite rock formation in the shape of that human president Lincoln’s head.
He found the garb where the executioner had told him to expect it, tucked under the cleft chin of the makeshift face. As he shed his clothes and donned the traditional farshi dress of an unmated servant male from the lower classes, he was surprised to find he felt utterly vulnerable under the loose gray garment.
Of course he kept his dagger and his gun on his body: Relying on s’Ex was a had-to in this situation, but he didn’t trust the motherfucker farther than he could throw the guy.
The Territory was north of Caldwell, on the transitional lands between the peaks of the Adirondack Park and the flat area around Plattsburg. Masquerading as an artists’ colony, the two-thousand-square-acre property was bordered by a substantial concrete wall that was as tall and stout as an oak all the way around. The few humans in the communities around the parcel were long used to the presence of the “artists” and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in protecting the sanctity of the property and the “art” that was being done in their midst.
Which worked for the s’Hisbe.
The irony, of course, was that a mere twenty miles farther north, on the far side of a mountain? The symphaths had established their presence as well.
The proximity made sense. Neither subspecies was in a big hurry to fraternize with anyone else—the sin-eaters didn’t respect humans or other vampires any more than the Shadows did so the more isolated, the better. Accordingly, there had never been any envoys or diplomatic ties between the two nations. They were as separate as two strangers sitting side by side on a bus, asking nothing of each other except to be left alone.
He couldn’t believe he was going back in.
Leaving his own clothes where the ones provided had been stashed, he strode off. The leather thongs on his feet were more like gloves than shoes, and as he traveled over the rough ground cover, he felt the nuances of fallen sticks, random rocks, and uneven earth. The advantage was silence: Except for the occasional snap and pop, he was as quiet as the moonlight that fell from the heavens.
It was not long before he came up to the retaining wall. Rising high, the vast construction was streaked with dirt stains and random vines, and here and there, fallen limbs were cocked at odd angles against its flank.
He wasn’t fooled by the supposedly dilapidated appearance, however, and as he dematerialized up and over, he had forgotten how broad the thing was.
Re-forming, he took a moment to orient himself. It had been so long since he’d set foot on his people’s land, but he shouldn’t have worried that anything had changed: Unlike the face that was shown the outside world, the bulkhead on the Shadow side was pristine, the concrete pale and sun-bleached and perennially washed, not even grass blades growing out of place around its base.
And no unruly forest. Absolutely not. The trees that were permitted to grow were spaced like chess pieces on a black-and-white board, each with their own delineated spot, even the branches clipped to stay within their boundaries. The lawn was likewise kept clean as a carpet. In spite of autumn ushering in a change of color and the inevitable leaf-from-limb departures, there was not a single fragment of anything marring the rolling expanse.
iAm had often thought the Territory was like a snow globe, a constructed version of reality existing in an artificial encapsulation.
The impression still stood.
Picking up his pace, he jogged over the brown grass. Soon, the first of the settlements appeared, the housing units little more than pup tents made of wood that were painted black and roofed with tin panels that were left silver. Like the trees, the shelters were placed in orderly rows, no lights glowing inside, no smells of cooking, no talk percolating out of them. This was where the servants of the palace resided, and they used the flimsy constructions as places to sleep and fornicate only. Otherwise, they were fed, clothed, and bathed in the staff wing of the Queen’s grand enclave.
The walls to the palace appeared some distance thereafter, and they were even taller than the first barrier. Faced in white marble and polished to a high shine, they were maintained scrupulously on both sides, hand-scrubbed during the day by groundsmen on thirty-foot-high ladders.
Assuming things were still done like that. And come on, nothing changed here.
Falling in parallel to the wall, he continued along until he came to a sunken doorway marked with symbols.
Right one on the first try.
Checking his watch, he waited. Paced back and forth. Wondered where s’Ex was.
No one was around. This was the back of the palace, far from where the aristocrats and middle class lived out in the front of the Territory—then again, because of the mourning period, all citizens were expected to be indoors, on their knees, offering their respects to the night sky for the Queen’s loss.