She'd done this against-her-will thing once before. Knew how the mind, like a starved body, could cannibalize itself after too long if you didn't feed it something to churn over.
Her favorite distraction? Mixed drinks. After having worked in clubs for years, she knew legions of cocktails and concoctions and she ran through them, picturing the bottles and the glasses and the pouring and the ice and the spice.
That Bartender-pedia routine had kept her sane.
Up until now, she had banked on a mistake, a slipup, an opportunity for escape. None had come and that hope was starting to fade, exposing a huge black hole that was ready to eat her. So she just kept making drinks in her head and searching for her opening.
And her past experience helped in a strange way. Whatever happened here, however bad it got, however much it hurt physically, it was nothing compared to what she'd been through before.
This was the minor leagues.
Or... at least she told herself that. Sometimes it felt worse.
More with the pacing, past the two bay windows in front, by the bureau, and then around the bed again. This time she went into the bathroom. There were no razors or brushes or combs, just some towels that were slightly damp and a bar of soap or two.
When Lash had abducted her, using the same kind of magic that was keeping her in this suite of rooms, he had brought her to this elegant crib of his and their first night and day together had been indicative of how it was going to be.
In the mirror over the double sinks, she saw herself and performed a dispassionate review of her body. There were bruises all over her... cuts and scrapes, too. He was brutal in what he did, and she fought back because she'd be damned if she let him kill her--so it was hard to tell what marks had been made by him and what had been incidental to what she'd done to the bastard.
Get his ass naked in front of some glass, and she'd bet her last breath he didn't look any better than she did.
Eye for an eye.
The unfortunate corollary was that he liked that she met fire with fire. The more they battled it out, the more he got turned on, and she sensed he was surprised at his own emotions. For the first couple of days, he'd been in punishment mode, trying to pay her back for what she'd done to his last girlfriend--evidently, those bullets she'd put in that bitch's chest had really ticked his shit off. But then things had changed. He'd started to talk less about his ex and more about body parts and fantasies involving a future that included her bearing his spawn.
Pillow talk for the sociopath.
Now his eyes glowed for another reason when he came to her, and if he knocked her out, she usually regained consciouness with him wrapped around her body.
Xhex turned away from her reflection, and froze before taking another step.
Someone was downstairs.
Leaving the bathroom, she went to the door that led out into the hall and inhaled slow and deep. As the scent of sweaty roadkill wafted into her sinuses, it was clear whatever was hoofing around down below was a lesser--but it wasn't Lash.
Nope, this was his minion, the one who came every night before her captor arrived to make him something to eat. Which meant Lash was on the way to the brownstone.
Man, wasn't it just her luck: She got snatched by the only member of the Lessening Society who ate and f**ked. The rest of them were impotent as a ninety-year-old and existed on an air diet, but Lash? Fucker was fully functional.
Going back over to the window, she put her hand out toward the glass. The boundary that marked her prison was an energy field that felt like a prickling heat as she came into contact with it. The damn thing was like an invisi-fence for things bigger than dogs--with the added bene of no collar being required.
There was a little give in it... as she pressed forward, there was a hint of flexibility, but only up to a point. Then the molecules that were agitated pulled together and the burning sensation got so acute she had to shake her hand out and walk off the pain.
As she waited for Lash to come back to her, her mind drifted to the male she tried never to think of.
Especially if Lash was around. It was unclear how much her captor could get into her head, but she didn't want to take chances. If the bastard got an itch that that mute soldier was her well-of-soul, as her people called it, he would use that against her... and John Matthew.
An image of the male came to her mind, his blue eyes resonating in her recollection so clearly, she could see the flecks of navy in them. God, those beautiful blue eyes.
She could remember when she first met him, back when he was a pretrans. He had looked at her with such awe and wonder, as if she were larger than life, a revelation. Of course, at that point, all she knew was that he was packing heat in ZeroSum, and as head of security for the club, she'd been hell-bent on disarming him and throwing him out into the street. But then she'd learned the Blind King was his whard and that had changed everything.
Following the happy little news flash about who was all up in his biz, John was not just welcome to be armed; he was a special guest, along with his two boys. After that, he'd come in regularly and had always watched her, those blue eyes on her wherever she was. And then he'd transitioned. Holy hell, had he turned into a big one, and abruptly that stare had something hot added to the gentle shyness.
It had taken a lot to kill that kindness. But true to her assassin's nature, she'd managed to strangle the warmth out of--the way he looked at her.
Focusing on the street below, she thought of that time they had been together at her basement place. After the sex, when he'd tried to kiss her, when his blue eyes had glowed with the trademark vulnerability and compassion she'd come to associate with him, she'd pulled away and shut him down.
It was a case of lost nerve. She just couldn't handle the pressure of all that hearts-and-flowers stuff... or the responsibility that came with being around someone who felt like that about her... or the reality that she had the capacity to love him back.
The payback had been the death of that special look.
The solace she took was that among the males who were likely to try to come after her--Rehvenge, iAm, and Trez... the Brotherhood--John was not on a crusade. If he was searching for her, it was because he had to as a soldier, not because he was compelled to as part of a personal suicide mission.
No, John Matthew wouldn't be on the warpath because of how he felt about her.
And having already watched a male of worth destroy himself trying to rescue her, at least she didn't have to do that again.
As the smell of fresh grilling steak permeated the brownstone, she shut off her thoughts and gathered her will around her like a suit of armor.
Her "lover" would be here any minute, so she needed to batten down her mental hatches and get ready for tonight's battle. Pervasive exhaustion dragged at her, but her will ushered that deadweight out on its ass. She needed to feed, even more than she needed proper sleep, but neither of those was happening anytime soon.
It was a question of putting one foot in front of the other until something broke.
That and taking out the male who dared to hold her against her will.
Chapter Two
Chronologically speaking, Blaylock son of Rocke had known John Matthew for just over a year.
But that was not a true reflection of the bromance. There were two timelines to people's lives: the absolute and the perceived. The absolute was the universal day-and-night cycle that for them added up to something like three hundred and sixty-five. Then there was the way that time period had gone, the events, the deaths, the destruction, the training, the fighting.
He figured all told... that pegged the two of them at about four hundred thousand years.
And counting, he thought, looking over at his buddy.
John Matthew was staring at the ink designs on the walls of the tat place, his eyes going over the skulls and daggers and American flags and Chinese symbols. With his size, he absolutely dwarfed the three- room shop--to the point where it was like he came from another planet. In contrast to his pretrans state, the guy now had the muscle mass of a pro wrestler, although because his skeleton was so big, the weight was stretched out on long bones, giving him a more elegant look than those swoll'd up humans in tights. He'd taken to buzz-cutting his dark hair and this made the lines of his face seem harsh rather than handsome--with the dark circles under his eyes giving the hard-ass look some serious backup.
Life had beaten the shit out of him, but instead of folding, each strike and blow had forged him harder and stronger and tougher. He was straight steel now, nothing lingering of the boy he'd once been.
But that was growing up for you. Not only your body changed; your head did, too.