Lover Unleashed (23 page)

“Fuck, I need you,”
he cursed.

On another quick burst of power, Vishous lifted her as if she didn’t weigh more than the sheet did, and the shift was not a surprise. He always preferred to come inside her, deep inside of her, and he spread her legs before settling her on top of his hips, his blunt head nudging into her . . .
and slamming home
.

The invasion was not just about sex, but him staking his claim, and she loved it. This was the way it should be.

Falling forward and bracing herself against his shoulders, she stared into his eyes as they moved together, the rhythm pounding until they came at the same time, both of them going rigid as he jerked inside of her and her sex milked him. And then V flipped her onto her back and shot down her body, going back to where he’d been, his mouth fusing on her, his palms locking on her thighs as he ate at her.

As she came hard, there was no break or pause. He surged forward, stretching up both her legs and swording in, entering her on a solid stroke and taking over. His body was a massive, pistoning machine on top of her, his bonding scent roaring in the room as he orgasmed hard, the week of abstinence getting dusted in one glorious session.

While his orgasm rocked through him, she watched him as he came, loving all parts of him, even the ones that she sometimes struggled to understand.

And then he kept going. More sex. And still more.

Nearly an hour later, they were finally sated, lying still and breathing deep in the candlelight.

Vishous rolled them over, keeping them joined, and his eyes roamed her face for a long moment. “I have no words. Sixteen languages, but no words.”

There was both love and despair in his voice. He was truly handicapped when it came to emotions, and falling in love hadn’t changed that . . . at least, not when things were as stressful as they were right now. But that was okay—after this time together it was okay.

“It’s all right.” She kissed his pec. “I understand you.”

“I just wish you didn’t have to.”

“You get me.”

“Yeah, but you’re easy.”

Jane propped herself up. “I’m a frickin’ ghost. In case you haven’t noticed. Not something a lot of men would be psyched about.”

V pulled her to his mouth for a quick, hard kiss. “But I get you for the rest of my life.”

“That you do.” Humans, after all, didn’t last a tenth of what vampires did.

When the alarm went off beside them, V glared at the thing. “Now I know why I sleep with a gun under my pillow.”

As he reached out to silence the clock, she had to agree. “You know, you could just shoot it.”

“Nah, Butch would get his ass in here, and I don’t want a weapon in my palm if he ever sees you naked.”

Jane smiled and then lay back as he got out of bed and walked over to the bathroom. At the door, he paused and looked over his shoulder. “I came to you, Jane. Every night this week, I came to you. I didn’t want you to be alone. And I didn’t want to sleep without you.”

On that note, he ducked into the bath, and a moment later she heard the shower come on.

He was better at words than he thought.

With a satisfied stretch, she knew she had to get up and moving, too—time to relieve Ehlena from her day shift in the clinic. But man, she would love to lie here all night. Maybe just a little longer . . .

Vishous left ten minutes later to go to meet with Wrath and the Brotherhood, and he kissed her on the way to the exit. Twice.

Getting out of bed, she hit the bathroom for a while, and then went to their closet and opened the double doors. Hanging from the rod there were leathers—his; plain white T-shirts—hers; white coats—hers; biker jackets—his. The weapons were all locked up in a fire safe; shoes were down on the floor.

Her life was in many ways incomprehensible. Ghost married to a vampire? Come on.

But looking at this closet, so nice and arranged with their crazy lives at rest among these carefully placed clothes and footwear, she felt good about where they were. “Normal” was not a bad thing in this lunatic world; it really wasn’t.

No matter how it happened to be defined.

EIGHTEEN

D
own in the training center’s clinic, Payne was doing her exercises, as she’d come to think of them.

Lying in the hospital bed with the pillows pushed to the side, she crossed her arms over her chest and tightened her stomach, pulling her torso upright on a slow rise. When she was perpendicular to the mattress, she extended her arms straight out and held them there while she eased back down. After even one round, her heart was pounding and her breath was short, but she gave herself only a brief recovery and repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

Each time the effort grew progressively more strenuous, until sweat beaded on her forehead and her stomach muscles strained into pain. Jane had shown her how to do this, and she supposed it was a benefit—although compared to what she had been capable of, it was a spark measured against a bonfire.

Indeed, Jane had tried to get her to do so much more . . . had even wheeled in a chair for her to sit in and ambulate, but Payne couldn’t bear the sight of the thing, or the idea of spending her life rolling from place to place.

In the past week, she had summarily closed off all avenues of accommodation in the hopes of a singular miracle . . . that had never materialized.

It felt like centuries since she’d fought with Wrath . . . since she had known the coordination and strength of her limbs. She had taken so much for granted, and now she missed who she had once been with a grief that she’d assumed one had only for the dead.

Then again, she supposed she had died. Her body just wasn’t smart enough to stop working.

With a curse in the Old Language, she collapsed back and left herself lying there. When she was able, she found the leather strap that she had cranked down over her thighs. The thing was so tight, she knew it was cutting off circulation, but she felt neither the constriction of the binding nor any sweet release as she sprang the clasp and the leather popped loose.

It had been thus since the night she had returned herein.

No change.

Closing her eyes, she reentered into an inner war whereupon her fears drew swords against her mind, and the results were e’er more tragic. After seven cycles of night and day, her army of rationality was suffering from a sorry lack of ammunition and deep fatigue amongst its troops. Thus, the tide was turning. First, she had been buoyed by optimism, but that had faded, and then there had been a period of resolved patience, which had not lasted long. Since then, she had tarried along this barren road of baseless hope.

Alone.

Verily, the loneliness was the worst part of the ordeal: For all the people who were free to come and go, in and out of her room, she was utterly separate even when they sat and talked to her or attended to her very basic needs. Confined to this bed, she was on another plane of reality from them, separated by a vast, invisible desert that she could see clearly o’er, but was unable to cross.

And it was strange. All that she had lost became most acute whenever she thought of her human healer—which was so often she could not count the times.

Oh, how she missed that man. Many were the hours she had spent remembering his voice and his face and that last moment between them . . . until her memories became a blanket with which to warm herself during the long, cold stretches of worry and concern.

Unfortunately, however, much like her rational side, that blanket was fraying from overuse, and there was no repairing it.

Her healer was not of her world and ne’er to return—nothing but a brief, vivid dream that had disintegrated into filaments and fragments now that she had awoken.

“Cease,” she said to herself out loud.

With the upper-body strength she was trying to maintain, she turned to the side for the two pillows, fighting against the deadweight of her lower body as she strained to—

Her balance failed in a flash, and sent her careening even in her prone position, her arm knocking the glass of water from the table next to her.

And alas, it was not an object well suited for impact.

As it shattered, Payne closed her mouth, which was the only way she knew to keep her screams in her lungs. Otherwise, they would breach the seal of her lips and ne’er stop.

When she thought she had enough self-control, she looked over the side of the bed at the mess on the floor. Ordinarily, it would be so simple—something spilled and one would clean it up.

Previously, all she would have done was bend over and mop it up.

Now? She had two choices: Lie here and call for help like an invalid. Or prethink and strategize and make an attempt to be independent.

It took her some time to figure out the bracing points for her hands and then judge the distance to the floor. Fortunately, she was unplugged from all the tubing that had been running into her arm, but a catheter remained . . . so mayhap trying to do this herself was a bad idea.

Yet she could not bear the indignity of just lying here. No soldier was she; now she was a child incapable of caring for herself.

It was no longer supportable.

Snapping out squares of “Kleenex,” as people called them, she lowered the railing on the bed, gripped the top of it, and curled herself over onto her side. The torsion caused her legs to flop around like those of a puppet, all motion without grace, but at least she could reach downward to the smooth floor with the white fluff on her palm.

As she stretched whilst trying to maintain a precarious balance on the ledge of the bed, she was tired of being done for, tended to, washed and wrapped like a young newly born unto the world—

Her body went the way of the glass.

Without warning, her grip slipped off the smooth rail, and with her hips so far off the mattress, she fell headfirst toward the floor, the grab of gravity too strong for her to overcome. Throwing out her hands, she caught herself on the wet flooring, but both palms shot from under her and she took the force of impact on the side of the face, breath exploding out of her lungs.

And then there was no movement.

She was trapped, the bed buttressing her useless limbs so that they remained directly over her head and torso, cramming her into the floor.

Dragging air down her throat, she called out, “Help . . .
hellllp
. . .”

With her face squeezed, her arms starting to go numb, and her lungs burning from suffocation, rage lit up within her until her body trembled—

It started as a squeak. Then the noise turned into movement as her cheek began to skid on the tile, the skin stretching so thin, she felt like it was being peeled off her skull. And then pressure grew on the nape of her neck, her thick braid pulling her head in one direction at the same time her strange position drove her forward.

Summoning all her strength, she focused her rage and maneuvered her arms so that her palms were back flat to the floor. After a tremendous inhale, she shoved hard, pushing herself up and flipping herself on her back—

Her rope of hair fell in and among the railing’s supports and locked in tight, the thick length keeping her in place, whilst wrenching her neck to her shoulder. Trapped and going nowhere, she could see only her legs from her vantage point, her long, slender legs that she had never before given any particular thought to.

As the blood gradually pooled into her torso, she watched the skin on her calves get paper white.

Fists curling, she willed her toes to move.

“Damn you . . .
move.
. . .” She would have closed her eyes to concentrate, but she didn’t want to miss the miracle if it happened.

It did not.

It had not.

And she was coming to realize . . . it would not.

As the pads of her toenails went from pink to gray, she knew she had to come to terms with where she was. And was not there a fine analogy to her current physical position.

Broken. Useless. Deadweight.

The breakdown that finally ensued carried with it no tears or sobs. Instead, the snap was demarcated by a grim resolve.

“Payne!”

At the sound of Jane’s voice, she closed her eyes. This was not the savior she wanted. Her twin . . . she needed her twin to do right by her.

“Please get Vishous,” she said hoarsely. “Please.”

Jane’s voice got very close. “Let’s get you up off the floor.”

“Vishous.”

There was a click and she knew that the alarm she had not been able to reach had been sounded.

“Please,” she groaned. “Get Vishous.”

“Let’s get you—”

“Vishous.”

Silence. Until the door was thrown open.

“Help me, Ehlena,” she heard Jane say.

Payne was aware that her own mouth was moving, but she went deaf as the two females hefted her back upon the bed and resettled her legs, lining them up parallel to each other before covering them with white sheeting.

Whilst various and sundry cleaning endeavors occurred both upon the bed and the floor, she focused across the room at the white wall she had stared at for the eternity since she had been moved into this space.

“Payne?”

When she didn’t reply, Jane repeated, “Payne. Look at me.”

She shifted her eyes over and felt nothing as she stared into the worried face of her twin’s
shellan
. “I need my brother.”

“Of course I’ll get him. He’s in a meeting right now, but I’ll have him come down before he leaves for the night.” Long pause. “Can I ask you why you want him?”

The even, level words told her clearly that the good healer was no imbecile.

“Payne?”

Payne shut her eyes and heard herself say, “He made me a promise when this all started. And I need him to keep it.”