She knew damn well she was never going to find this with any other male. Or any other person. He knew without words all she had been through and everything that those kind of experiences spawned when they were triggered. And she knew the same for him.
And maybe that shadow on his emotional grid was a kind of bifurcation of his psyche caused by the trauma he'd been through. Maybe his mind and his soul had gotten together and agreed to cut the past out and put it toward the back of his mental and emotional attic. Maybe that was why these two parts of him were so vividly animated.
Made sense. And so did the vengeance he was feeling. After all, Lash had been intimately involved in both sets of wrongs, his and hers.
Information like John's in the wrong hands? Almost as bad as the horror that had actually happened because you relived that shit every time someone else learned of the story. Which was why she never talked about her time up in the colony with her father, or that shit in the human medical clinic... or... yeah...
John raised his forefinger and tapped beside his eye.
"Mine are red?" she murmured. When he nodded, she rubbed her face. "Sorry. I'm probably going to need to get another pair of cilices."
As he shut the water off, she dropped her hands. "Who else knows. About you."
John frowned. Then mouthed, Blay, Qhuinn. Zsadist. Havers. A therapist. When he shook his head, she took that to mean it was the end of the list.
"I'm not going to say anything to anyone."
Her eyes went over his huge body from those shoulders to his powerful biceps and his tremendous thighs--and she found herself wishing he'd been this size back in that grungy stairwell. At least he wasn't as he'd been when he'd been hurt anymore--although that was true only on the outside. Inside, he was all the ages he'd ever lived through, the infant who'd been abandoned, the child who'd been unwanted, the pretrans who'd been out in the world on his own... and now the grown male.
Who was an ass-kicker in the field and a loyal friend and, going by what he'd done to that lesser in the brownstone and what he undoubtedly wanted to do to Lash, a very nasty enemy.
And didn't this add up to a problem: As far as she was concerned, the son of the Omega was hers to murder.
Not that they needed to cover that right now.
As the dampness from the tile sneaked into the seat of her scrubs, and water dripped off of John, she was surprised by what she wanted to do.
On a lot of levels, it didn't make sense and it certainly wasn't a hot idea. But logic wasn't a big player in this moment between them.
Xhex shifted forward and put her palms on the slick shower floor. Moving slowly, going hand, knee, hand, knee, she went toward him.
She knew when he caught her scent.
Because under the sopping wet running shorts his c**k twitched and hardened.
When she was face-to-face with him, she locked her eyes on his mouth. "Our minds are already together. I want the flesh to follow."
With that, she leaned in and tilted her head. Just before she kissed him, she paused, but not because she was worried he was going to turn away--she knew by the dark bonding spice he was throwing out that John was not interested in pulling back.
"No, you've got it all wrong, John." Reading his emotions, she shook her head. "You're not half the male you could be because of what was done to you. You're twice what anyone else is because you survived."
You know, life put you in places you never expected.
Under no circumstances, not even in the worst nightmares his subconscious had burped up, had John ever thought he would be able to handle Xhex knowing about how he'd been hurt when he was young.
The thing was, no matter how big or strong his body got, he'd never shed the reality of how weak he'd once been. And the threat of those he respected finding out brought that weakness back not just once, but perpetually.
Yet here they were with his skeleton not just out of the closet, but draped in strobe lights.
And as for his two-hour shower? He was still dying inside that she'd been hurt like that... It was too painful to think about, too horrible not to dwell on. Then add in his need as a bonded male to protect her and keep her safe? And the fact that he knew exactly how awful it was to be victimized in that way?
If he'd only found her sooner... if he'd just worked harder...
Yeah, but she'd freed herself. Hadn't she. He hadn't been the one to spring her--for f**k's sake, he'd stood in the goddamn room she'd been raped in with her and not even known she was there.
It was almost too much to live with, all the layers and the intersections making his head hum to the point where he felt like his brain had turned into a helicopter that was on the verge of levitating up, up, and away, never to return again.
The only thing keeping him grounded was the prospect of killing Lash.
As long as he knew the f**ker was out there breathing in the world, John had a focus that kept the roof on his house.
Killing Lash was his link to sanity and purpose, the galvanizing in his steel.
One more intrinsic weakness, though, like not avenging his female, and he was game-over.
"John," she said, clearly in an effort to pull him out of his tailspin.
Focusing on her, he stared into her red, glowing eyes and was reminded that she was a symphath. Which meant she could burrow into him and trigger all of his inner trapdoors, springing his demons just to watch them dance. Except she hadn't done that, had she--she'd gotten into him, yes, but only to understand where he was at. And upon seeing into his dark parts, she wasn't yukking it up and pointing fingers at him, or recoiling in disgust.
Instead, she'd prowled over to him like a she-cat, looking like she wanted to kiss him.
His eyes dropped down to her lips.
What do you know, he could stand some of that kind of connection. Words weren't enough to assuage the self- loathing he felt, but her hands on his skin, her mouth on his, her body up against his own... that, not talking, was what he needed.
"That's right," she said, her eyes burning, and not just from the symphath in her. "You and I need this."
John reached up and put his cold, wet hands on her face. Then he looked around. Now might be the time, but here was not the place.
He was not making love to her on the hard tile.
Come with me, he mouthed, standing up and pulling her to his side.
His hard-on tented the front of his running shorts as they left the locker room, the urge to mate a roar in his blood that was nonetheless held in check by the need to do right by her and give her something gentle in place of the violence she'd suffered.
Instead of heading for the tunnel back to the main house, he took them to the right. There was no way he was going up to his room with her under his arm and him sporting an erection the size of an I-beam. Besides, he was soaking wet.
Way too much to explain to the perma-peanut gallery the mansion offered.
Next to the locker room, but not connected to it, was a stretching facility with massage tables and a whirlpool bath in the corner. Place also had a shitload of blue mats that hadn't been used since they'd been laid down--the Brothers barely had time to spar, much less play ballerina with their precious hamstrings and glutes.
John buttressed the door closed with a plastic chair and turned to face Xhex. She was walking around, her lithe body and smooth strides better than an entire strip show, as far as he was concerned.
Reaching to the side, he killed the lights.
The red-and-white Exit sign over the door created a pool of dim light that his body split in half, his shadow a tall, dark divide that stretched all the way across the blue flooring to Xhex's feet.
"God, I want you," she said.
She wasn't going to have to say that twice. Kicking off his Nikes, he pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall to the mats in a flap. Then he linked his thumbs in the waistband of his running shorts and drew them down his thighs, his c**k popping free and standing straight out of him. The fact that it pointed to her like a divining rod was no big surprise--everything from his brain to his blood to his beating heart was focused on the female who stood no more than ten feet away.
But he wasn't going to just jump on her and pound away. Nope. Not even if it gave him balls the color of a Smurf--
His thoughts stopped being logical as her hands went to the bottom hem of her sweatshirt and, in an elegant shift, she pulled it up her torso and over her head. Underneath, she had on nothing except for her beautiful, smooth skin and her tight, high br**sts.
As her scent roared across the way and he began to pant, those nimble fingers of hers went to the tie on the scrubs and loosened it, the thin green cotton falling in a rush to her ankles.