J. Ward: Lover Unbound

Okay, this was the last thing he needed. Better to be buried alive than sit alone in the kitchen with her as she prepared food for him with her beautiful hands.

"Phury," she said without looking up. "Plate. Seat. Now."

He complied because in spite of the fact that he came from a warrior bloodline and he was a member of the Brotherhood and he outweighed her by a good hundred pounds, he was lame and weak when it came to her. His twin's shellan … his twin's pregnant shellan … was not someone Phury could deny.

After sliding a plate over next to hers, he sat down across the granite island and told himself not to look at her hands. He'd be okay as long as he didn't look at her long, elegant fingers and her short, buffed nails and the way-

Shit.

"I swear," she said as she sliced more breast meat off, "Zsadist wants me big as a house. Another thirteen months of him pestering me to eat and I won't fit into the swimming pool. I can barely get my pants on anymore."

"You look good." Hell, she looked perfect, with her long dark hair and her sapphire eyes and her tall, fit body. The young inside of her didn't show beneath her baggy shirt, but the pregnancy was obvious in her glowing skin and the way her hand frequently went to her lower belly.

Her condition was also evident in the anxiety behind Z's eyes whenever he was around her. As vampire pregnancies carried high maternal/fetal death rates, they were a blessing and a curse for the hellren who had bonded with his mate.

"Do you feel okay?" Phury asked. After all, Z wasn't the only one worried about her.

"Pretty much. I get tired, but it's not all that bad." She licked her fingertips, then grabbed the mayonnaise jar. As she fished around inside, the knife made a rattling noise, like a coin being shaken around. "Z's driving me nuts, though. He's refusing to feed."

Phury remembered what her blood tasted like and looked away as his fangs elongated. There was no nobility in what he felt for her, none at all, and as a male who had always prided himself on his honorable nature, he couldn't reconcile his emotions to his principles.

And what was doing on his end was definitely not reciprocated. She'd fed him that one time because he'd needed it desperately and because she was a female of worth. It had not been because she was driven to sustain him or because she craved him.

No, all of that was for his twin. From the first night she'd met Z, he'd captivated her, and fate had provided that she be the one who truly saved him from the hell he'd been locked in. Phury may have rescued Z's body from that century of being a blood slave, but Bella had resurrected his spirit.

Which was, of course, just one more reason to love her.

Damn, he wished he had some red smoke on him. He'd left his frickin' stash upstairs.

"So how are you doing?" she asked as she dealt out thin slices of turkey, then layered on lettuce leaves. "Is that new prosthesis still giving you problems?"

"It's a little better, thanks." Technology these days was light-years ahead of what he'd had a century ago, but considering all the fighting he did, his lost lower leg was a constant management issue.

Lost leg… yeah, he'd lost it, all right. Shot it off to get Z away from that sick bitch Mistress of his. The sacrifice had been worth it. Just like the sacrifice of his happiness was worth Z being with the female they both loved.

Bella topped the sandwiches with bread and slid his plate across the granite. "Here you go."

"This is just what I needed." He savored the moment as he sank his front teeth into the thing, the soft bread giving way like flesh. While swallowing, he was struck with a sad joy that she had prepared this food for his belly, and she had done it with a certain kind of love.

"Good. I'm glad." She bit into her own sandwich.

"So… I've wanted to ask you something for a day or so."

"Oh? What?"

"I've been working down at Safe Place with Marissa, as you know. It's such a great organization, full of great people…" There was a long pause-the kind that made him brace himself. "Anyway, a new social worker has come in to counsel the females and their young." She cleared her throat. Wiped her mouth with a paper towel. "She's really great. Warm, funny. I was kind of thinking that maybe-"

Oh, God . "Thanks, but no."

"She's really nice."

"No, thanks." With his skin shriveling up tight around his body, he started eating at a dead run.

"Phury… I know it's not my business, but why the celibacy?"

Shit . Faster with the sandwich. "May we change the subject?"

"It's because of Z, right? Why you've never been with a female. It's your sacrifice to him and his past."

"Bella… please-"

"You're over two hundred years old, and it's time you started to think about yourself. Z's never going to be completely normal, and no one knows that better than you and me. But he's more stable now. And he's going to get even healthier over time."

True, provided Bella survived this pregnancy of hers.

Until she came out of the delivery healthy, his twin wasn't out of the woods yet. And by extension, neither was Phury.

"Please let me introduce you-"

"No." Phury stood up and chewed like a cow. Table manners were very important, but this conversation had to end before his head exploded.

"Phury-"

"I don't want a female in my life."

"You would make a wonderful hellren , Phury."

He wiped his mouth on a dish towel and said in the Old Language, " Thank you for this meal made by thine hands. Blessed evening, Bella, beloved mated of mine twin, Zsadist ."

Feeling cheap that he didn't help clean up, but figuring it was better than him having an aneurism, he pushed through the butler's door into the dining room. Halfway down the thirty-foot-long table, he ran out of gas, pulled free a random chair, and dropped into the thing.

Man, his heart was pounding.

When he looked up, Vishous was standing on the other side of the table, staring down at him. " Christ !"

"Little tense there, my brother?" At six-feet-six, and descended of the great warrior known only as the Bloodletter, V was a massive male. With his blue-rimmed ice white irises, his jet-black hair, and his angular, cunning face, he might have been considered beautiful. But the goatee and the warning tattoos at his temple made him look evil.

"Not tense. Not at all." Phury splayed his hands out on the glossy table, thinking about the blunt he was going to light up the instant he got to his room. "Actually, I was going to come find you."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Wrath didn't like the vibe at this morning's meeting." Which was an understatement. V and the king had ended up chin-to-chin on a couple of things, and that wasn't the only argument that flew. "He's taken us all off rotation tonight. Said we need some R amp; R."

V arched his brows, looking smarter than a matched set of Einsteins. The genius air wasn't just an appearance thing. The guy spoke sixteen languages, developed computer games for kicks and giggles, and could recite the twenty volumes of the Chronicles by rote. The brother made Stephen Hawking seem like a candidate for vo-tech.

"All of us?" V said.

"Yeah, I was going to hit ZeroSum. Wanna come?"

"Just scheduled some private biz."

Ah, yes. V's unconventional sex life. Man, he and Vishous were on such opposite ends of the sexual spectrum: Him knowing nothing, Vishous having explored everything, and most of it on the extremes… the untrodden path and the Autobahn. And that wasn't the only difference between them. Come to think of it, the two of them had absolutely nothing in common.

"Phury?"

He shook himself to attention. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, I dreamed of you once. Many years ago."