Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood #11)(153)
Author: J.R. Ward

"It’s just that I – "

I’m in love with someone else. I’m taken. I’m not interested in you on any level.

"No." He cut her off, not wanting to hear the specifics. They were just vocabulary for the inevitable. "It’s all right. I understand – "

"Selena?" came a voice from over on the left.

It was Rhage’s. Shit.

As her head turned in that direction, the light hit her cheeks and lips from a different angle, and they looked every bit as good, of course. He could so stare at her forever….

Hollywood leaned out from the arches of the library. "We’re ready for you – oh, hey, man."

"Hey," Trez shot back. "How you been?"

"Good. Little business to take care of."

Fucker. Cocksucker. Bas –

Trez rubbed his face. Right. Okay. There was no room in this five-bajillion-square-foot house for that kind of aggression, particularly when it was about a female who he’d met twice. Who didn’t want to know him. While she was doing her job.

"I’m heading out," he said to the Brother. "I’ll catch you before dawn."

"Roger that, big guy."

Trez nodded at Selena and strode off, proceding through the vestibule and dematerializing off to downtown – where the hell he belonged.

He couldn’t believe he’d waited a week for that; and he should have guessed how it was going to go.

Feeling like a fool, he reassumed form behind the Iron Mask, in the shadows of the parking lot. Even out in the back, he could hear the bass beat of the music, and as he approached the rear door, with its scraped paint and well-worn handle, he knew his foul mood was a complication that was going to have to be managed carefully for the next six or eight hours.

Humans + alcohol x urge to kill = body count.

Not what he or his business interests needed.

Inside, he went directly to his office and ditched his dumb-ass Halloween costume of legitimacy, removing his fancy coat, as well as the silk shirt, so that all he had on was his black wifebeater and those fine slacks.

Xhex wasn’t in her office, so he waved a greeting at the working girls who were getting ready for their shifts in the locker room and went out into the land of the great unwashed.

The club already had a critical mass of people, all of whom were wearing dark, stringy clothes and cultivated expressions of boredom – both of which would be lost for many of them as time wore on and their livers broke down the chemical makeup of the booze they were drinking and the drugs they were taking.

"Hi, Daddy," someone said to him.

Looking over, he found a short, curvy something-or-other staring up at him. With eyes lined with so much black she might as well have had sunglasses on, and a bustier cinched up tight as a fist, she was like an anime character come to life.

Snooze.

"I’m blah-blah-blah. Do you come here often?" She took a sip from the red straw in her drink. "Blah-blah-blah college student blah-blah psychology. Blah-blah-blah?"

In the corner of his eye, he saw the crowd part, as if they were getting out of the way of a bouncer or maybe a wrecking ball.

It was Qhuinn.

Looking as grim as Trez felt.

Trez nodded to the guy, and the fighter nodded back as he kept going toward the bar.

"Wow, do you know him?" College Student asked. "Who is he? Blah-blah threesome maybe blah-blah?"

As she tee-hee-hee’d like she was a Very Naughty Girl, Trez swung his eyes back and downward.

On so many levels, the plate of hors d’oeuvres being offered was totally unappetizing.

"Blah-blah-blahblahblah." Giggle. Hip shake. "Blah?"

Dimly, Trez was aware of his head nodding, and then they were moving into a dark corner. With every step he took, another part of him shut down, turned off, went into hibernation. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was the junkie hoping that his next hit would be as good as the first had been – and finally bring that relief he was f**king desperate for.

Even though he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Not tonight. Not with her.

Not anywhere in his life.

Probably never, ever.

But sometimes you just had to do something…or go insane.

"Tell me that you love me?" the chick said to him, as she pressed herself against his body. "Pleeeeeeeeease."

"Yeah," he said numbly. "Sure. Whatever you want."

Whatever.

Chapter Seventy-eight

Xcor linked his hands and placed them on the glossy tabletop. Beside him, Throe was speaking in low tones; he himself had remained quiet since they had taken the weight off their feet in these matching oxblood armchairs.

"This certainly seems persuasive." His soldier flipped over another page in the set of documents that had been proffered. "Very persuasive, indeed."

Xcor looked across at their host. The glymera solicitor was built like a pamphlet, so thin that one wondered when he lay out flat whether he presented any verticality a’tall. He also spoke with an exhausting thoroughness, his verbal paragraphs of small font and crowded, complicated wording.

"Tell me, how comprehensive is this brief?" Throe asked.

Xcor’s eyes went to the bookshelves. They were crammed with leather volumes, and he quite believed that the gentlemale had read each and every one. Mayhap twice.

The solicitor launched another well thought-out, well-articulated cruise through the English language. "I would not have turned it over to you both without ensuring that all efforts were made to…"

In other words, yes, Xcor filled in in his head.

"What I do not see here" – Throe turned more pages – "is any notation of counter-opinion."

"That is because I was unable to find any. The term ‘full-blooded’ has been used in only two contexts – that of lineage, as in a full-blooded offspring of a given sire or a dam, and that of racial identity. Over time, there has been some minor dilution of the wider gene pool, some contamination from humans – and yet individuals with distant Homo sapiens blood ties have as yet been construed by law as being full-blooded provided they go through their transitions. Now, of course, that is not the case of the direct offspring of a human and a vampire. That is a true half-breed. And those individuals, even if they survive the change, have historically been held to a different standard by the law, with lesser rights and privileges than other civilians. The concern is thus – if the king’s shellan is a half-breed, there is a chance that any male offspring of theirs may not go through the transition."

Throe frowned as if considering the implications. "But within twenty-five years, we shall know one way or the other – and the royal couple could always attempt to have multiple young."