J. Ward - Lover Unbound

Staring at her arm in the tight clutch of his biceps, she thought about the last time she'd been entwined with a man. Long while. And it hadn't been that good, frankly.

Manello's dark eyes came to mind…

"Don't think of him."

Jane jerked. "How did you know who was on my mind?"

The patient released his hold on her and slowly shifted around so he faced away from her. "Sorry. Not my biz."

"How did you know?"

"I'm going to try to sleep now, okay?"

"Okay."

Jane got up and went back to her chair, thinking of his six-chambered heart. His untypeable blood. Those fangs of his in that blonde's wrist. Glancing over to the window, she wondered if what covered the glass panes was not just for security but also to keep out daylight.

Where did it all leave her? Locked in a room with a… vampire?

The rational side of her rejected the thought out of hand, but at her core she was logic driven. With a shake of the head, she recalled her favorite quote from Sherlock Holmes, paraphrasing it: If you eliminate all possible explanations, then the impossible is the answer. Logic and biology didn't lie, did they? It was one of the reasons why she'd chosen to become a physician in the first place.

She looked down at her patient, getting lost in the implications. The mind reeled at the evolutionary possibilities, but she also considered more practical matters. She thought about the drugs in that duffel bag and the fact that her patient had been out in a dangerous part of town when he'd been shot. And hello, they'd kidnapped her.

How could she possibly trust him or his word?

Jane put her hand in her pocket and felt for the razor. The answer to that one was easy. She couldn't.

Up in his bedroom at the big house, Phury sat with his back against his headboard and his blue velvet duvet over his legs. His prosthesis was off, and a blunt was smoldering in a heavy glass ashtray next to him. Mozart drifted out of a set of hidden Bose speakers.

The book of firearms in front of him was being used as a lap easel instead of reading material. A thick sheet of white paper was laid out on top of the thing, but he hadn't made any marks on it with his Ticonderoga No. 2 for a while. The portrait was complete. He'd finished it about an hour ago and was working up the courage to wad it up and throw it out.

Even though he was never satisfied with his drawings, he almost liked this one. From out of the blizzard-thick blankness of the page, a female's face and neck and hair had been revealed by strokes of lead. Bella was staring off to the left, a slight smile on her lips, a strand of her dark hair across her cheek. He'd caught sight of the pose at Last Meal this evening. She'd been looking at Zsadist, which explained the secret lift to her mouth.

In all the poses he'd drawn her in, Phury always sketched her with her eyes elsewhere. If she were staring out of the page, at him, that just seemed inappropriate. Hell, drawing her at all was inappropriate.

He flattened his hand over her face, prepared to crumple the paper.

At the last moment he went for the blunt instead, craving some artificial ease as his heart beat too hard. He was smoking a lot lately. More than ever. And though relying on the chemical calm made him feel dirty, the idea of stopping never crossed his mind. He couldn't imagine getting through the day without help.

As he took another hit and held on to the smoke with his lungs, he thought of his brush with heroin. Back in December the backflip off the H-cliff had been prevented not by his making a good choice, but because John Matthew happened to pick the right time to interrupt.

Phury exhaled and stared at the tip of the blunt. The temptation to try something more hard-core was back. He could feel the urge to go to Rehv and ask the male for another Baggie full of deep nod. Maybe then he'd get some peace.

A knock went off on his door and Z's voice said, "Can I come in?"

Phury stuffed the drawing into the belly of the firearms book. "Yeah."

Z walked in and didn't say another word. With his hands on his hips, he paced back and forth, back and forth, at the end of the bed. Phury waited, lighting up another blunt and tracking his identical twin as Z wore out the carpet.

You didn't push Z to talk any more than you'd try to coerce a fish onto the business end of a hook with a lot of chatter. Silence was the only lure that worked.

Finally the brother stopped. "She's bleeding."

Phury's heart jumped, and he splayed his hand out over the cover of the book. "How much and for how long?"

"She's been hiding it from me, so I don't know."

"How'd you find out?"

"I found a thing of Always stuffed in the back of the cabinet right next to the toilet."

"Maybe they're old."

"Last time when I got my buzz razor out, they weren't there."

Shit . "She has to go to Havers's, then."

"Her next appointment isn't for a week." Z started up with the pacing again. "I know she's not telling me because she's afraid I'll freak out."

"Maybe what you found is being used for another reason?"

Z stopped. "Oh, yeah. Right. Because those things are multifunctional. Like Q-tips or some shit. Look, would you talk to her?"

"What?" Phury quickly took a drag. "This is private. Between you and her."

Z scrubbed the top of his skull-trimmed head. "You're better with shit like this than I am. The last thing she needs is for me to break down in front of her, or worse, yell at her because I'm scared to death and not being reasonable."

Phury tried to take a deep breath, but he could barely get the air down his windpipe. He so wanted to get involved. He wanted to walk down the hall of statues to the pair's room and sit Bella down and get the story out of her. He wanted to be a hero. But it was not his place.

"You're her hellren . You need to do the talking." Phury stabbed out the last half inch of the blunt, rolled up a new one, and flipped open his lighter. The flint wheel made a rasping noise as the flame jumped up. "You can do it."

Zsadist cursed, paced some more, then eventually headed for the door. "Talking about this whole pregnancy thing reminds me that if I lose her, I'm fucked. I feel so goddamned powerless."

After his twin took off, Phury let his head fall back. As he smoked, he watched the blunt's lit tip flare and wondered idly if it was like an orgasm for the hand-rolled.

Jesus . If Bella was lost, both he and Z were going to go into a tailspin the likes of which males didn't come out of.

As the thought occurred to him, he felt guilty. He really shouldn't care that much about his twin's female.

As anxiety made him feel like he'd swallowed a swarm of locusts, he smoked his way through the emotion until he caught sight of the clock. Shit . He had to teach a class on firearms in an hour. He'd better hit the shower and try to get sober.

John woke up confused, vaguely aware that his face hurt and that there was some kind of bleating going off in his room.

He lifted his head out of his notebook and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The spiral binding had left behind a pattern of dents that made him think of Warf from Star Trek TNG . And the noise was the alarm clock.

Three fifty in the afternoon. Classes started at four P.M.

John got up from the desk, wobbled into the bathroom, and stood over the toilet. When that felt too much like work, he turned around and sat down.

God, he was exhausted. He'd spent the last couple of months sleeping in Tohr's chair in the training center's office, but after Wrath had put his foot down and moved John up to the big house, he'd been back in a real bed. You'd think he'd be feeling great with all that legroom. Instead, he was whipped.