"Can't say as I know any Merc owners."
There was a knock on the door, and Trez and iAm came in, the two Moors making the detective look like a Honda parked between a pair of Hummers.
"Well, I'll leave you all to talk," Xhex said with absolute faith in Rehv's besties. "See you at the funeral, Detective."
"If not before then. Hey, you ever think of getting a plant for in here? Could make a difference."
"No, I'm too good at killing things." She smiled tightly. "You know where to find me. Later."
As she shut the door behind her, she stopped fronting and frowned. Turf wars were not good for business, and if Martinez and Rush got done, it was a sure sign that in spite of the December weather, Caldwell's underbelly was developing another heat rash.
Shit, that was the last thing they needed.
Vibrations coming from her pocket told her someone was reaching out to touch her, and she answered the call the instant she saw who it was.
"You find Grady yet," she asked softly.
Big Rob's deep voice was full of frustration. "Fucker must be in hiding. Silent Tom and me, we been to all the clubs. Been to his place and also a couple of his buddies'."
"Keep looking, but be careful. His jacket was just found at another murder scene. The cops are on him hard."
"We aren't giving up till we have a bead on him for you."
"Good man. Now get off this phone and get back on the trail."
"No problem, boss."
Chapter THIRTY-ONE
Inside his pitch-dark bathroom, Rehvenge banged into one of the marble walls, tripped across the marble floor, and ricocheted off the marble counter. His body was alive, sensation tingling through him, the pain of nailing his hip registering, the sawing breath in his lungs causing a burn, his heart thumping against his sternum.
He dropped the satin duvet, willed the lights on, and looked down.
His c**k was stiff and thick, the tip glossy and ready to penetrate.
Holy...shit.
He glanced around. His vision was normal, the bathroom's colors black and steel and white, with the edge of the Jacuzzi rising up from the floor, its depth obvious. And yet even though nothing was flat or ruby red, his senses were utterly alive, his blood heated and thundering in his veins, his skin ready to be touched, the orgasm in the shaft of his erection screaming to get free.
He'd totally bonded with Ehlena.
And that meant-at least in this moment, when he was so desperate to have sex with her-his vampire side was winning out over the symphath part of him.
His need for her triumphed over the darkness in him.
It had to be the bonding hormones, he thought. Bonding hormones that had shifted his internal chemistry.
In recognizing his new reality, there was no soaring joy, no sense of triumph, no impulse to throw himself on top of her and pump away hard. All he could do was stare down at his c**k and think of where it had been last. What he'd done with it...and with the rest of his body.
Rehvenge wanted to snap the f**king thing off.
No way in hell was he sharing that with Ehlena. Except...he couldn't go back out there like this.
Rehv grabbed his arousal in his broad hand and stroked himself. Oh...fuck...that was good...
He thought of going down on Ehlena, of having her warmth in his mouth and down the back of his throat. He saw her spread thighs and her glistening softness and his fingers slipping in and out as she moaned and rocked her-
His balls tightened up hard as fists, and the small of his back rippled in a wave, and that disgusting barb of his triggered even though it had nothing to grab onto. A roar threatened to come up out of his throat, but he held it in by biting his lip until he tasted blood.
Rehv came all over his hand and kept working his sex anyway, propping himself on the counter. He orgasmed again and again, messing up the mirror and the sinks, and still needing more-as if his body hadn't released in, like, five hundred years.
When the storm finally passed, he realized...shit, he was draped against the wall, face shoved in hard to the marble, shoulders sagging, thighs twitching like there were jumper cables hooked up to his toes.
With shaky hands, he cleaned things up using one of the towels that was folded neatly on a rack, wiping off the counter and the glass and the sink. Then he flipped free another one and washed his hands and his c**k and his stomach and his legs, because he'd gotten himself as dirty as the f**king bathroom.
When he finally reached for the doorknob, after what must have been nearly an hour, he half expected Ehlena to be gone, and he wouldn't blame her: A female whom he had essentially made love to offers him her vein and he runs like a pu**y into the bathroom and locks himself in.
Because he gets a hard-on.
Jesus Christ. This evening, which hadn't even started out so well, had turned into a sixteen-car pileup on the road to relationshipville.
Rehv braced himself and opened the door.
As light spilled into the bedroom, Ehlena sat up in the sheets, her face worried...and completely nonjudgmental. There was no condemnation, no calculation as if she were looking for what would make him feel even worse. Just honest-to-God concern.
"Are you okay?"
Well, wasn't that the question.
Rehvenge dropped his head and for the first time wanted to unburden everything to another person. Even with Xhex, who had been through more than he had, he had no interest in doing the sharing shit. But with Ehlena's toffee-colored eyes so wide and warm in her lovely, perfect face, he wanted to confess every single dirty, shitty, scheming, mean, nasty thing he'd ever done.
Just to be honest.
Yeah, but if he dumped his life out on the table, where would that leave her? In a position of having to report him as a symphath and likely fearing for her very life. Great outcome. Perfect.
"I wish I were different," he said, which was as close as he could get to speaking the truth that would separate them forever. "I wish I were a different male."
"I don't."
That was because she didn't know him. Not truly. And yet he couldn't handle the idea of never seeing her after this night they'd had together.
Or that she would be terrified of him.
"If I asked you to come here again," he said, "and let me be with you, would you?"
There was no hesitation. "Yes."
"Even if things couldn't be...normal...between us? Sexually speaking."
"Yes."
He frowned. "This is going to come out wrong..."
"Which is fine, because I've already put my foot in it with you back at the clinic. We'll just be even."
Rehv had to smile, but the expression didn't stick. "I have to know...why. Why would you come back."
Ehlena lay back down against the pillows and, in a slow sweep, moved her hand up over the satin sheet that covered her stomach. "I have only one answer to that, but I don't think it's going to be what you want to hear."
The cold numbness, which was returning as the remnants of those orgasms he'd had dissipated, sped up its reclamation of his body.
Please let it not be pity, he thought. "Tell me."
She was quiet for a long while, her stare shifting out toward the blinking, glowing view of Caldwell's two halves.
"You ask me why I would come back?" she said softly. "And the only answer I have is...how could I not." Her eyes flipped to his. "It doesn't make sense to me on some level, but then, feelings don't make sense, do they? And they don't have to. Tonight...you gave me things I not only haven't had for a long time, but I don't think I've ever felt." She shook her head. "I wrapped up a body yesterday...a body of someone my own age, a body of someone who likely as not had headed out of his house the evening he was killed with no clue that it was his last night. I don't know where this"-she gestured back and forth between them-"thing with us is going. Maybe it's just a night or two. Maybe it's a month. Maybe it's longer than can be measured by a decade. All I know is, life is too short not to come back here and be with you like this again. Life is just too short, and I like being with you too much for me to give a crap about anything other than having another moment like this."
Rehvenge's chest swelled as he stared at her. "Ehlena?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't take this the wrong way."
She drew in a deep breath and he saw her bare shoulders tighten. "Okay. I'll try not to."
"You keep showing up here? Being who you are?" There was a pause. "I'm going to fall in love with you."