Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(98)

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.”





John found Xhex’s place easily enough because it was only ten blocks from ZeroSum. Even still, the neighborhood might as well have been in a different zip code entirely. The brownstones on the street were elegant and old-world, with the curlicue shit around all the bay windows making him think they were Victorian—although how he knew that with such surety he hadn’t a clue.

Hers wasn’t a whole building, but a basement apartment in one particularly attractive walk-up. Underneath the stone stairs that led up from the sidewalk there was an alcove, and he slipped in and used the key on a strange copper-colored lock. A light came on as he stepped through, and he saw nothing exciting: Red-washed floor made of stone slabs. Whitewashed walls made of concrete blocks. At the far end there was another door with another odd lock.

He’d expected Xhex to live someplace exotic and filled with weapons.

And plenty of French stockings and stillies.

But that was fantasy for you.

Down at the far end of the hallway, he opened the other door and more lights flared. The room beyond was windowless and empty except for a bed, and the nondecor was no surprise, considering what the basement hall was like. There was a bathroom across the way, but no kitchen, no phone, no TV. The only color in the room came from the floor of old-fashioned pine boards that were finished to a fresh honey glow. Walls were whitewashed, like the corridor, but made of brick.

The air was surprisingly fresh, but then he saw the vents. Three of them.