Lover Unleashed (56 page)

All because of his mismatched eyes.

The honor guard was just supposed to have beaten him for his offense to the bloodline. They were not supposed to kill him. But shit had gotten out of hand, and in a surprising shift, his brother had tried to stop it.

Qhuinn really remembered that part. His brother’s voice telling the others to stop.

It had been too late, however, and Qhuinn had floated away not just from the pain but also from the earth itself . . . only to find himself in a sea of white fog that had parted to reveal a door. Without being told, he’d known it was the entrance to the Fade, and he’d also known that once he opened it he was donzo.

Which had seemed like a great idea at the time. Nothing to lose and all that . . .

And yet, he’d balked at the last moment. For a reason he couldn’t remember.

It was the strangest thing. . . . For all that night was etched in his brain, that was the one piece he couldn’t recall no matter how hard he tried.

But he remembered slamming back into his own body: As he’d regained consciousness, Blay had been doing CPR on him, and wasn’t that a lip lock worth living for—

The knock that sounded on his door woke him up fully and he jacked off the pillows, willing the lights on so he was sure he knew where he was.

Yup. His bedroom. Alone.

But not for much longer.

As his adjusting eyes slowly slid over to the door, he knew who was on the other side. He could catch the delicate scent drifting in, and he knew why Layla had come. Hell, maybe that was why he hadn’t been able to truly sleep—he’d expected to be woken up by her at any moment.

“Come in,” he said softly.

The Chosen slipped inside silently, and as she turned to him, she looked like hell. Worn-out. A wasteland.

“Sire . . .”

“You can call me Qhuinn, you know. Please do, I mean.”

“Thank you.” She bowed at the waist and seemed to struggle getting herself upright. “I was wondering if I may avail myself once again of your kind offer to . . . take your vein. Verily, I am . . . depleted and unable to render myself back to the Sanctuary.”

As he met her green stare, something percolated deep in his mind, some kind of . . . realization that took root and put out sprouts of I-almost-got-it, it’s-just-about-to-come.

Green eyes. Green as grapes and jade and spring buds.

“Why ever are you looking at me thus?” she said, drawing the lapels of her robe more closely together.

Green eyes . . . in a face that was . . .

The Chosen glanced back at the door. “Perhaps . . . I shall just go—”

“I’m sorry.” Shaking himself, he made sure the covers were at his waist and motioned her over. “Just woke up—don’t mind me.”

“Are you certain?”

“Abso, come here. Friends, remember?” He held out his hand, and when she got within range, he took her palm and urged her down into a sit.

“Sire? You’re still staring at me.”

Qhuinn searched her face and then trolled down her body. Green eyes . . .

So what about the damn eyes? It wasn’t like he’d never seen them before—

Green eyes . . .

He swallowed a curse. Christ, this was like having a song in your head that you could remember everything but the words to.

“Sire?”

“Qhuinn. Say it, please.”

“Qhuinn.”

He smiled a little. “Here, take what you need.”

As he lifted his wrist, he thought, Man, she was so damned thin, as she bent down and opened her mouth. Her fangs were long and very white, but delicate. Not like his. And her strike was as gentle and ladylike as the rest of her.

Which the traditionalist in him thought was only proper.

While she fed, he looked at her blond hair that was twisted into a complex weave, and her spare shoulders, and her pretty hands.

Green eyes.

“Christ.”
When she made as if to pull out, he put his hand on the back of her neck and kept her at his wrist. “It’s okay. Foot cramp.”

More like brain cramp.

In frustration, he lifted his head and, in lieu of hitting the wall with it, rubbed his eyes. When he refocused, he was staring at the door . . .

. . . Layla had just come through.

Instantly, he was sucked back into the dream. But not about the beating or his brother. He saw himself standing at the entrance unto the Fade . . . standing in front of the white panels . . . standing with his hand out, about to reach for the knob.

Reality warped and pulled and went taffy-twisted until he didn’t know whether he was awake or asleep . . . or dead.

The swirl started to form in the center of the door, as if whatever it had been made of had liquefied to the consistency of milk. And from out of the tornadic center an image coalesced and came forward, more as a sound would carry than as if something visual would take shape.

It was the face of a young female.

A young female with blond hair and refined features . . . and pale green eyes.

She was staring out at him, holding his eyes sure as if she had captured his face in her small, pretty hands.

Then she blinked. And her irises changed color.

One became green and the other blue. Just like his.

“Sire!”

At first he was utterly confused—wondering why in the hell the young female had called him that. How did she know who he was?

“Qhuinn! Let me seal you up!”

He blinked. And discovered that he had thrown himself against the headboard, and in the process, he’d torn Layla’s fangs from his flesh and he was hemorrhaging all over the sheets.

“Let me—”

He strong-armed the Chosen back and sealed his own mouth on the wound. As he took care of himself, he couldn’t take his eyes off Layla.

It was waaaaay too easy to overlay that young female’s features on Layla’s face and find something so much deeper than similarity.

As his heart started pounding, he took a little time out to remind himself that he’d never done the prescient thing. Unlike V, he couldn’t see into the future.

Layla moved slowly as she got off the bed, like she didn’t want to spook him. “Shall I go get Jane? Or perhaps it would be best if I just left.”

Qhuinn opened his mouth . . . and found that nothing came out.

Wow. He’d never been in a car accident, but he imagined the curling dread he felt now was probably the way things went when you saw someone blow a stop sign and come gunning for your side door: You triangulated their direction and their speed against your own and came to the conclusion that impact was imminent.

Although he couldn’t imagine a world in which he got Layla pregnant.

“I have seen the future,” he said from a distance.

Layla’s hands lifted to her throat as if she were choking. “Is it bad?”

“It’s . . . not possible. At all.”

As he put his head in his palms, all he could see in the darkness was that face . . . the one that was part Layla’s and part his.

Oh, God . . . save them both. Save . . . all of them.

“Sire? You’re scaring me.”

Well, that made two of them . . .

Except it couldn’t be. Could it?

“I’m going to go,” she said roughly. “I thank you for your gift.”

He nodded and couldn’t look at her. “You’re welcome.”

As the door shut shortly thereafter, he shuddered, a cold, bracing fear settling into his bones . . . and going right into his soul.

Ironic, really, he thought. His parents had never wanted him to reproduce, and go fig—the idea of shafting Layla with a defective daughter, or even worse, laying his fucked-up eyes upon an innocent young female, made him embrace his vow of celibacy like nothing else could.

And actually, he should be glad. Of all the destinies he could have seen, this was one hundred percent avoidable, wasn’t it.

He just was never going to have sex with Layla.

Ever.

So it was all an impossibility. End of.

FORTY-NINE

M
anny got back to his condo around six p.m. All told he had spent eight hours at the hospital getting poked and prodded by various people he knew better than members of his extended family.

The results were in his e-mail in-box—because he’d forwarded copies of everything from his hospital account to his personal one. Not that there was any reason to open all those attachments. He knew the notes by heart. The results by heart. The X-rays and CAT scans by heart.

Tossing his keys down on the counter in the kitchen, he cracked the Sub-Zero and wished there were fresh orange juice in there. Instead . . . soy sauce packets from the Chinese takeout down the street . . . a bottle of ketchup . . . and a round tin of some kind of leftovers from a business dinner he’d had two weeks ago.

Whatever. He wasn’t all that hungry.

Restless and twitchy, he measured the light in the sky: Still some lingering to the west.

He wasn’t going to have to wait long, though.

Payne was going to come back to him after the sun had set. He could feel it in his bones. He was still not sure why she’d spent the night with him or why his memories remained, but he had to wonder if she was finally going to fix that when she got here.

Heading down to the bedroom, his first move was to snag the pillows from the floor and put them back where they belonged. Then he smoothed out the duvet . . . and was ready to get packing. Over at his bureau, he started taking out clothes and stacking them on the neatened bed.

Nothing to go back to at St. Francis. He’d resigned in the midst of all the tests.

No reason to stay in Caldwell—if anything, it was probably better that he get out of town.

No clue where he was headed, but you didn’t need a destination to leave somewhere.

Socks. Boxers. Polo shirts. Jeans. Khakis.

One advantage to having a wardrobe that consisted mainly of scrubs provided by a hospital was that he didn’t have a lot to pack. And God knew he had enough gym bags.

In the bottommost drawer of the bureau, he took out the only two sweaters he owned—

The picture frame underneath them was facing down, the little cardboard kickstand lying nice and flat against the back.

Manny reached out and picked the thing up. He didn’t have to turn it over to see who it was. He’d memorized the man’s face years and years ago.

And yet it was still a shock to pivot the picture in his hands and look at his father’s image.

Handsome SOB. Very, very handsome. Dark hair—just like Manny’s. Deep-set eyes—just like Manny’s.

Annnd that was as far as he was going to go with the retrospective. As always, when it came to shit about his dad, he just pushed it all into a mental corner and got on with his life.

Which tonight meant that the frame went into the nearest duffel and that was that—

The knock on the glass came too soon to be her, he thought.

Except then he glanced at the clock and realized that this packing routine had lasted a good hour.

Looking over his shoulder, his heart went triple-time as he saw Payne standing on the far side of the glass. God . . . damn . . . she knocked him out. She’d braided her hair and she was in a long white robe that was tied at the waist and she was . . . breathtaking.

Going over to the slider, he opened the door, and the cold blast of the night hit him in the face, snapping him into focus.

Smiling broadly, Payne didn’t so much come in as leap into his arms, her body so very solid against his own, her arms so very strong around his neck.

He gave himself a split second of holding her . . . for the last time. And then, as much as it killed him, he set her down and used the excuse of closing the gusting wind out to move away even farther.

When he glanced back at her, the joy that had been in her face was gone and she was wrapping her arms around herself.

“I figured you would come back,” he said hoarsely.

“I . . . I had good news.” Payne glanced at the lineup of gym bags on the bed. “Whatever are you doing?”

“I have to leave here.”

As her eyes shut briefly, it nearly destroyed him not to go over and comfort her. But this was hard enough already. Touching her again was going to break him in half.

“I went to the doctor today,” he said. “I spent all afternoon at the hospital.”

She blanched. “Are you ill?”

“Not exactly.” He paced around and ended up at the bureau, where he pushed the empty bottom drawer back into place. “Far from it, actually . . . It appears that my body has regenerated parts of itself.” His hand went down to his lower body. “For years, I’ve had an arthritic hip from too much sports—I’ve always known that eventually it was going to need replacing. As of the X-rays taken today? It’s in perfect condition. No arthritis to be found, no inflammation. Good as it was when I was eighteen.”

As her mouth fell open, he figured he might as well hit her with all of it. Pulling up his shirtsleeve, he ran his hand over his forearm. “I’ve had freckles from sun damage for the last two decades—they’re gone now.” He bent over and lifted his pant leg. “The shin splints I have from time to time? Disappeared. And this is in spite of the fact that I ran eight miles this morning without even thinking about it—in under forty-five minutes. My blood work came back with no cholesterol problems, perfect liver values, spot-on iron and platelets.” He tapped his temples. “And I’ve been on the edge of reading glasses, doing the arm stretch with menus and magazines—except I don’t need to anymore. I can read fine print two inches from my nose. And believe it or not, all this is just the beginning.”

Don’t get him started on the lack of crow’s-feet around his eyes and the fact that the gray at his temples had been replaced with dark brown and that his knees weren’t sore.

“And you think . . .” Payne put her hand up to her throat. “And you think I am the cause?”

“I know you are. What else could it be?”

Payne started to shake her head. “I do not understand why this is not a blessing. Eternal youth has been sought after by all races—”

“It’s not
natural
.” At this, she winced, but he had to keep going. “I’m a doctor, Payne. I know all about the normal way human bodies age and deal with injury. This”—he motioned over his body with his hands—“is not right.”