Lover Avenged(173)

Only she hadn’t been dead-just wishing for it while her body was worked on with all kinds of “instruments.” And the whole chivalrous, hero-on-a-white-horse act hadn’t gone well for her avenger. Murhder had been driven mad. He’d thought he was rescuing a vampire, but surprise! He was actually risking his life to bring home a symphath.

Oops. Guess she forgot to tell her lover that little part.

She wished she had revealed herself. Considering what she was, he’d had a right to know, and maybe if he had, he’d still be in the Brotherhood. Maybe mated to a nice female. Definitely wouldn’t have lost his sanity and taken off for God only knew where.

Avenging was dangerous business, wasn’t it. In the case of Chrissy, it was fine. Everything had worked out. But sometimes what you sought to honor wasn’t worth the effort.

Xhex hadn’t been, and it hadn’t just cost Murhder his mind. And Rehv was still paying for her mistakes.

She thought of John Matthew and wished like hell she hadn’t fucked him. Murhder had been a casual thing for her. John Matthew? Going by the ache in the center of her chest every time she thought of him, she suspected he was a lot more than that-which was why she was trying to lock out of her mind what had happened between them back at her basement place.

The problem was how John Matthew had been with her. The tenderness he had shown threatened to crack her in half, his emotions everything that was soft and gentle and respectful…loving-even though he knew what she was. She’d had to shut him down hard because unless he’d cut that shit, she’d been in danger of pressing her lips to his and losing herself completely.

John Matthew was her well of soul, as the symphaths called it, or her pyrocant, to the vampires. Her essential weakness.

And she was very weak when it came to him.

With a wave of pain, she pictured him on that security monitor with his hands all over Gina. Like the barbed bands she wore, the image overwhelmed her with agony, and she couldn’t help thinking that she deserved what it was going to be like to watch him drown himself in mindless, empty sex.

She turned off the shower, picked up her cilices and the knife from the slick marble flooring, and stepped out, dumping all her metal in a sink to drip-dry.

As she put one of Rehv’s superluxurious black towels to use, she wished it-

“Were sandpaper, right?” Rehv drawled from the doorway.

Xhex paused with the towel across her back and looked into the mirror. Rehv was lounging against the jamb, his sable coat turning him into a great bear of a male, his mohawk and his sharp purple eyes testifying to his warrior side in spite of all the metrosexual clothes he wore.

“How did tonight go?” she asked, putting one foot up on the counter and running the black terry cloth down to her ankle.

“I might ask you the same thing. What the fuck’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.” She put her other leg up. “So how was the meeting?”

Rehv kept his eyes on hers, not because he was respecting the fact that she was buck-ass naked, but because he honestly didn’t care one way or another. Hell, he’d be the same with Trez or iAm flashing their ass: She’d long ago ceased to be female to him even though they fed from each other.

Maybe that was what she liked about John Matthew. He’d looked at her and touched her and treated her like she was a female. Like she were precious.

Not because she wasn’t as strong as he was, but because she was rare and special-

Christ. Spare her from the estrogen. And that would all be in the past tense now, anyway.

“The meeting?” she prompted.

“Fine. Be that way. As for the council? They didn’t show, but this did.” Rehv took a long flat envelope out of his breast pocket and tossed it onto the counter. “I’ll let you read it later. Needless to say my secret’s been known for quite some time. Stepdad blabbed on the way to the Fade, and it was a miracle the shit didn’t get out before now.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“That’s an affidavit, by the way. Not some kind of random scribble on the back of a napkin.” Rehv shook his head. “I’m going to have to get into that house of Montrag’s. See if there are any more copies around.”

“I can do it.”

Those amethyst eyes narrowed. “No offense, but I’ll pass on the offer. You don’t look right.”

“That’s just because you haven’t seen me without clothes on in a while. Get me in leather and you’ll be back to knowing I’m a hard-ass.”

Rehv’s eyes went down to the ragged wounds around her thighs. “Hard to imagine you got on me about what I was doing to my arm, considering what those pins of yours look like.”