Wouldn't be in this modest shelter, either.
Darius didn't have the heart to point this out to his guest, however. "More cheese?"
"Yes, thank you."
As they finished their repast, Darius's eyes went to his black daggers, which were hanging from the harnesses he wore o'er his chest. He had a strange conviction that it wouldn't be long before Tohrment got a set--the boy was smart, and resourceful, and his instincts were good.
Of course, Darius hadn't seen him fight yet. But that would come. In this war, that would always come.
Tohrment's brow furrowed in the firelight. "How old did they say she was?"
Darius wiped his mouth on a cloth and felt the nape of his neck get tight. "I don't know."
The pair of them fell silent and Darius guessed that what was suddenly in his mind was spinning in Tohrment's as well.
The last thing the situation needed was a further, dire complication.
Alas, ambush or not, they were going up north to the coastal area the symphath had directed them to. Once there, they would head a mile out of the small village and find upon the cliffs the retreat the sin-eater had described... and they would discover whether they had been sent forth into a lie.
Or used to further a purpose that aligned both them and that whip- thin reptile.
Darius was truly not worried, however. Sin-eaters were untrustworthy, but they were compulsively self-serving... and vindictive even against their own young.
It was a case of nature over character : The latter made them a bad bet; the former made them utterly predictable.
He and Tohrment were going to find what they were in search of up north by the sea. He just knew it.
The question was, in what condition the poor female would be...
Chapter Forty-seven
When John and Xhex finally reemerged from their little slice of privacy, the first stop was the shower in the locker room. And as food was mission-critical after all the exercise, they took turns with Xhex going first.
As John waited his turn out in the hall, it was funny--he should have been exhausted. Instead, he was energized, alive, coursing with power. He hadn't felt this strong... ever.
Xhex came out of the locker room. "You're up."
Man, she looked hot as hell, her short hair curling as it air-dried, her body clad in scrubs, her lips red. Flashes of what they'd done together got him jazzed and he ended up backing his way through the door just so he could keep his eyes on her.
And what do you know, when she smiled up at him, his heart snapped in half: The warmth and gentleness in her transformed her into something north of lovely.
She was his female. Evermore.
As the door eased shut between them, he felt a marauding panic when the latch clicked in place, like she wasn't just blocked from view, but gone entirely. Which was nuts. Crushing the paranoia, he showered quickly and pulled on scrubs, studiously ignoring how fast he went.
She was still there when he came out and though he meant to take her hand and head for the mansion, he ended up hugging her, hard.
The thing was, all mortals were going to lose the ones they loved. It was the way life worked. But for most of the time, that reality was so far off in the mind that it had no more weight than a mere hypothetical. There were reminders, however, and the almost's, the near-misses, the oh-God-please- no's, snapped your chain and got you to stop and feel what was in your heart. Like when a bad headache was just a migraine; or when a car accident totaled the station wagon, but the baby seats and the air bags saved all the lives inside; or when someone who had been taken came back to the fold... the aftermath shook you up and made you want to hold on to your person to steady yourself.
God, he'd never thought about it properly before, but from the first heartbeat struck within a vital body, a bell got tolled and the clock started to run. A bargain you weren't even aware of having made was put into play, with destiny holding all the cards. As minutes and hours and days and months and years passed, history was written as you ran out of time until your last heartbeat marked the end of the ride and the time to tally wins and losses.
Strange how mortality made moments like this with her infinite.
And as he held Xhex against him, feeling her warmth amplify his own, he was rejuvenated down to his marrow, his scale rebalanced, his sum total squarely in life-was-all-worth-it territory.
His growling stomach was what parted them.
"Come on," she said, "we need to feed your beast."
He nodded, clasped her hand, and started walking.
"You have to teach me sign language," Xhex said as they went into the office and opened the supply closet door. "Like, now."
He nodded again as they filed into the tight space and Xhex shut them in together. Hmm... another shot at privacy. Closed door... loose clothes . ..
The rat bastard in him measured the maneuvering room they had, his c**k twitching behind the scrubs. If she put her legs around his hips, they could fit just fine--
Xhex stepped in close, her hand going to the erection behind the thin cotton across his hips. Rising onto her tiptoes, she brushed her lips against his neck, one fang scratching over his jugular.
"We keep this up, we're never going to find a bed." Her voice dropped even lower as she rubbed him. "God, you're big.... Have I told you how deep you go in me? Very deep. Niiiice and very deep."
John fell back against a stack of yellow legal pads, knocking them off the shelf. As he scrambled to catch them before they hit the floor, she stopped him by pushing him upright again.
"Stay where you are," she said, going down on her knees. "I like the view too much."
As she picked up what had gone flying, her eyes locked on his arousal--which naturally made a bid for freedom, pushing out against what kept it hidden from her stare, her mouth, her sex.
John's hands cranked onto the lip of one of the shelves as he watched her watch him, his breath sawing in his lungs.
"I think I got all the pads," she said after a while. "Better put them back."
She leaned into his legs as she slowly rose up, her face caressing his knees, his thighs--
Xhex went right over his cock, her lips brushing the underside of the damn thing. As his head went loose and flopped onto the shelving, she continued the ascent so that her br**sts were the next thing that hit him on that electric spot.
She ended the torture by sliding the legals back in place... while grinding her hips against his.
In his ear, she whispered, "Let's eat fast."
Fucking. Too. Right.
She backed off of him with a nip on his lobe, but he stayed riiiiiiight where he was. Because if the scrubs added even a hint of friction to this sexquation, he was going to come all over himself.
Which was ordinarily not a bad thing, at least not with her around, but on reconsideration, this was not really a private place. At any moment, one of the Brothers or the shellans could pop in and get an eyeful nobody was going to be comfortable with.
After a curse and some serious repositioning below the waist, John punched a code in and opened the way to the tunnel.
"So what is the hand position for 'A'?" she said as they stepped through and started walking.
By the time they got to "D," they were out through the hidden door under the mansion's grand staircase. "I" took them into the kitchen to the refrigerator. "M" got them to a pair of sandwiches--because their hands were busy with the roasted turkey and the mayo and the lettuce and bread, there wasn't much forward progress through the alphabet. They didn't do any better during the eating part of things, just "N" and "O" and "P," but he could tell she was practicing in her mind, her eyes focused on the middle distance between them as she obviously mentally reviewed what he was teaching her.
She learned fast and that was not a surprise. Cleanup led to "Q" through "V," and they were coming out of the kitchen as he showed her "X" and "Y" and "Z"--
"Good, I was going to go find you." Z pulled up short in the archway of the dining room. "Wrath's called a meeting now. Xhex, you're going to want to be there."
The Brother wheeled around, jogged across the mosaic apple tree on the foyer's floor and headed up the grand staircase.
"Your king usually do this in the middle of the day?" Xhex asked.
John shook his head and both mouthed and signed, Something's up.
The pair of them followed quickly, taking the steps two at a time.
Up on the second floor, the whole Brotherhood was crammed into Wrath's study and the king was seated on his father's throne behind the desk. George was curled into a sit by his master's side and Wrath was stroking the golden retriever's boxy head with one hand while flipping a dagger-shaped letter opener in the air with the other.