The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(47)

Then again, Phury had released the Chosen of their lockdown up in the Sanctuary quite a while ago. So there had been a lag between when the seeing bowls had been in regular use, and when tall, dark, and see-through had showed up in that alley.

“I guess we go back,” V said as he slowed to a stop.

Fuck. He didn’t want to leave, because Jane was going to pull out if they returned to Caldwell—

“What about Amalya?” she asked.

As he turned to her, he got caught up in the way the moonlight fell over her features and made her blond hair glow. Goddamn, he wanted to kiss her. Wanted to do even more to her.

“Sorry, what?” he murmured.

“She’s up in the Sanctuary, still, as the Directrix. Maybe she knows something?”

“Will you go with me?”

“Ah, yeah. Sure. I think I can get up there. I haven’t tried.”

“I can help you.” When she nodded, he stepped in close. “I’m going to have to put my arms around you.”

As she stiffened, he gave her time to change her mind. But then she nodded—so he moved in even tighter and extended his reach, his leather jacket creaking in the cold.

“Close your eyes,” he told her.

V didn’t wait to see if she followed instruction. It wasn’t necessary, anyway. He wasn’t even sure why he said it; hell, maybe he was hoping she’d forget it was him. Or more likely…he didn’t want her to see how vulnerable he was feeling.

In a slow series of movements, he wrapped his arms around her and stepped in against her.

She fit the same. She felt different. Holding her, it was as if it was the first time all over again, that moment when you had another body against your own and all your senses were in tune to the way their shoulders hit the insides of your biceps and how their head fit under your chin and what their shampoo smelled like.

Vishous had told her to shut her eyes, but he was the one closing his lids.

“Hold on to me,” he said hoarsely. “Here we go…”

The world went on a swirl that made them the center of the universe around which all things spun, and then there was a wave and a bump—and justlikethat, the cold and the night were gone.

The Sanctuary was a rainbow wash of green lawn and multi-colored tulips, its climate a perpetual spring afternoon under a milky sky that had no obvious light source but all the illumination you could ever want. The air was still and a perfect seventy-two degrees, the humidity giving everything a dewy resonance without making you sweaty. Greco-Roman–like marble structures with open loggias and arched, pane-less windows dotted the acres, like chess pieces placed with strategy on a board.

Vishous didn’t want to let her go.

He did, however.

And as he pulled back, he felt her hands smooth over his waist—which caused lust to spike into his body.

Even though sexual frustration was typically not a male’s BFF, it felt so good to want her again. To not just remember feeling this way, but actually be in the sensation, the experience.

“Where do we go?” Jane asked in a husky voice.

He shook himself back into focus. “To my mother’s private quarters. We’ll wait there for Amalya. She already knows we’re here. The Directrix always knows when someone breaches the barrier.”

As they started walking, he wanted to take her hand. He didn’t want to push her and make things awkward, though.

“God, this place is beautiful,” Jane murmured. “The colors—it makes me think of somewhere over the rainbow.”

“What?”

“That Judy Garland movie—the one that was half in black-and-white and half in color? My sister, Hannah, before she died…she and I used to watch it every year. Jeez, my brain is going—why can’t I remember the title? There was the dog, Toto. And Auntie Em, who she wanted to get home to. The yellow brick road and the Scarecrow. The Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. Okay, this is going to drive me nuts…there was that witch and those frickin’ monkeys. I hated those monkeys, always gave me nightmares—they made me not want to go to zoos.”

V knew what the movie was called, but he liked the sound of her talking, so he kept it to himself and let her continue to describe it as they walked over the carpet of perfectly level, golf course–worthy grass.

Up ahead, by the Scribing Temple, a high, white marble wall, so pristine it was as if a porcelain dinner plate had been stuck into the ground, delineated his mother’s private space. There was no conventional door to access the courtyard. Instead, a section parted for you if you were welcome.

As they approached, striding side by side with so much still unsaid, he wondered if they would be blocked for having a bad vibe, like they were carriers of an existential stomach flu that required quarantine. Or maybe with the Scribe Virgin gone, all would be locked out—

Nope. The opening appeared, the marble that was there now not.

Stepping inside, the sound of the fountain, which was now flowing again, was like a choir without any particular music or specific set of voices; it was more an ambiance that made him think, Ah, yes. That is good.

The songbirds he had brought up for his mother, twice, were silent for a moment. Then they resumed their lovely songs, until the warbling tunes from those avian throats became as the twinkling, falling water, a part of a landscape so perfectly engineered to both set a mood and be unobtrusive that your shoulders uncoiled and your gut eased up and your heart, still so broken moments before, began to beat a rhythm of peace.