Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(36)

Popping open a drawer, he took out one of his lovely new boxes of dopamine and grabbed the syringe he’d used the last couple of times he’d shot up in the office. Rolling up the sleeve of his left arm, he tourniqueted the middle of his biceps out of habit, not necessity. His veins were so swollen it was as if moles had burrowed under his skin, and he felt a stab of satisfaction at the mess they were in.

There was no cap on the needle’s head to take off, and he filled the syringe’s belly with the practice of a habitual user. It took him a while to find a vein that was viable, pushing the tiny steel shaft into himself again and again without feeling a thing. He knew he finally hit the right spot when he drew back on the plunger and saw blood mix with the clear solution of the drug.

As he freed the tourni and started to push his thumb home, he stared at the rot in his arm and thought of Ehlena. Even though she didn’t trust him and didn’t want to be attracted to him and would clearly move heaven and earth not to go out with him, she still wanted to be a savior. She still wanted what was best for him and his health.

That was what you called a female of worth.

He was halfway through the injection when his cell phone went off. A quick glance at the screen showed that the number wasn’t one he recognized, so he let the call go. The only people who had his digits were ones he wanted to talk with, and that was a damn short list: his sister, his mother, Xhex, Trez, and iAm. And the Brother Zsadist, his sister’s hellren.

That was it.

As he pulled the needle out of his vascular cesspool, he cursed as a beep indicated that voice mail had been left. He got those every once in a while, people leaving bits and pieces of their lives in his little corner of technospace, thinking it was someone else’s. He never called them back, never texted them with a, This is not who you think it is. They’d figure it out when whoever they thought they were calling didn’t return the favor.

Closing his eyes and easing back in his chair, he tossed the syringe onto the spreadsheets and couldn’t care less if the drug worked.

Sitting alone in his den of iniquity, in the quiet hour after everyone had left and before the cleaning staff came in, he just didn’t give a shit whether the flat plane of his vision returned to three dimensions. Didn’t care if the full-color spectrum reappeared. Didn’t wonder with each passing second whether or not he was going to get back to “normal.”

This was a change, he realized. Up until now he’d always been desperate for the drug to work.

What had turned the tide?

He let the question hang as he picked up his cell phone and palmed his cane. With a groan, he stood up carefully and walked into his private bedroom. The numbness was coming back fast in his feet and legs, quicker than during the ride in from Connecticut, but then, that was par for the course. The less his symphath urges were triggered, the better the drug worked. And gee, funny, getting tapped to cap the king had riled him up.

Whereas sitting by himself in a home, of sorts, didn’t.

The security system was already on in the office, and he triggered a second one for his private quarters, then shut himself in the windowless bedroom he crashed in from time to time. The bathroom was across the way and he dumped his sable duster on the bed before going in and turning the shower on. As he moved around, bone-deep cold settled into his body, emanating from the inside out, as if he’d injected himself with Freon.

This he did dread. He hated always being cold. Shit, maybe he should have just let himself go. It wasn’t like he was going to be interacting with anyone.

Yeah, but if he got too far behind in his doses, the catch-up was a bitch.

Steam billowed free from behind the glass shower door, and he stripped naked, leaving his suit and tie and shirt on the marble counter between the two sinks. Stepping under the spray, he shivered hard, his teeth rattling.

For a moment, he collapsed back against the smooth marble walls, keeping himself in the center of the four showerheads. As hot water he couldn’t feel cascaded down his chest and abs, he tried not to think about what the following night was bringing and failed.

Oh, God…did he have it in him to do it again? Go up there and whore himself out to that bitch?

Yeah, and the alternative was…her reporting him as a symphath to the council and getting his ass deported up to that colony.

The choice was clear.

Fuck that; there was no choice. Bella didn’t know what he was, and it would kill her to find out the family lie. And she wouldn’t be the only casualty. His mother would fall apart. Xhex would be livid and get herself murdered trying to save him. Trez and iAm would do the same.

The whole house of cards would fall.

Compulsively, he grabbed a bright gold bar of soap from the ceramic holder mounted on the wall and worked a froth up between his palms. The shit he used on himself wasn’t some kind of fancy milled stuff. It was rotgut Dial, a disinfectant that was like a pavement grader over the skin.

His whores used the same. It was what he stocked in their shower rooms, at their request.

His rule was three times. Three times he went up and down his arms and his legs, his pecs and his abs, his neck and his shoulders. Three times he dipped between his thighs, soaping up his cock and sac. The ritual was stupid, but such were compulsions. He could have used up three dozen Dial bars and still felt vile.

Funny, his whores were always surprised at the way they got treated. Each time a new one came on, they expected to have to sex him up as part of their employment, and they were always prepared to be beaten. Instead, they got their own private dressing room with a shower, reliable hours, security that never, ever touched them, and this thing called respect—which meant they chose their johns, and if the f*ckers who paid for the privilege of being with them messed up even a hair of theirs, all they had to do was say the word and a mountain of shit fell on the offender.