Lover Mine(117)

"Damn."

"Yup."

Bracing himself, Blay ducked into the weight room--

"Jesus . . . Christ. John."

His voice didn't carry at all. Then again, the roar of the treadmill and John's slamming strides would have drowned out a car backfiring.

The guy's massive body was in a full-out bolt on the machine, his T-shirt and torso dripping with sweat, droplets flicking off his cranked fists and creating twin tracts of damp on either side on the floor. Both his white socks had red blushes streaking up from his heels as if he'd worn patches of skin off, and the black nylon shorts he had on his hips slapped like a wet towel.

"John?" Blay shouted, as he measured the burned-out machine next to the one the guy was on. "John!"

When yelling didn't bring that head around, Blay stalked over and waved his hands right in the guy's visual field. And then wished he hadn't. The eyes that locked on his were blazing with a hatred so vicious, Blay took a step back.

As John refocused on the air in front of his face, it was pretty damn clear that the fucker was going to keep this up until he was a yard shorter from having run his legs into stubs.

"John, how 'bout you step off!" Blay hollered. "Before you fall off?"

No response. Just the screaming whirl of the treadmill and the carpet-bombing sound of those feet.

"John! Come on, now! You're killing yourself!"

Fuck this.

Blay walked around behind the piece of equipment and yanked the cord out of the wall. The abrupt slowdown caused John to trip and fall forward, but he caught himself on the console's arms. Or maybe just collapsed onto them.

His heaving breaths tore in and out of his lax mouth as his head lolled on his arm.

Blay pulled a weight bench over and parked it so he could look into the guy's face. "John . . . what the hell's going on?"

John let go of the console and fell back on his ass, his legs giving out from under him. After a series of sawing breaths, he drew his hand through his wet hair.

"Talk to me, John. I'll keep it just between us. I swear it on the life of my mother."

It was quite a while before John lifted his head, and when he did, his eyes were shiny. And not from sweat or exertion.

"Talk to me and it goes nowhere," Blay whispered. "What happened? Tell me."

When the guy eventually signed, it was messy, but Blay read the words just fine.

He hurt her, Blay. He . . . hurt her.

"Well, yeah, I know. I heard about the shape she was in when she--"

John squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

In the tense silence that followed, the skin on the back of Blay's neck tightened. Oh . . . shit.

There had been more to it. Hadn't there.

"How bad," Blay growled.

Bad as it gets, John mouthed.

"Motherfucker. Bastard ass motherfucker. Cocksucking rat-bitch bastard mother fucker!"

Blay wasn't big into the swearing thing, but sometimes that was all you had to offer the ears of others: Xhex wasn't his female, but you didn't hurt the fairer sex as far as he was concerned. For any reason . . . and never, ever like that.

God, her pained expression hadn't been just worry for John. It had been about memories. Awful, hideous memories . . .

"John . . . I'm so sorry."

Fresh drops fell from the guy's chin onto the treadmill's black band, and John wiped his eyes a couple of times before he looked over. In his face, anguish warred with the kind of fury that made your balls get tight.

Which made perfect sense. With his history, this was a crusher on so many levels.

I've got to kill him, John signed. I can't live with myself if I don't take him out.

As Blay nodded, the whys of the vengeance were obvious. Bonded male with a bad history?

Lash's death warrant had just had PAID stamped on it.

Blay curled up a fist and offered his knuckles. "Anything you need, anything you want, I'm with you. And I won't say a word."

John waited a moment and then met fist with fist. I knew I could count on you, he mouthed.

"Always," Blay vowed. "Always."





FORTY-TWO





Eliahu Rathboone's house went fully silent again about an hour after

Gregg's aborted trip to the third floor, but he waited long after that butler had gone back downstairs before he gave the ascension another shot.

He and Holly passed the time not by fucking, which was their old MO, but by talking. And the thing was, he realized the more they said, the less he knew about her. He didn't have a clue that her hobby was something as apple pie-ish as knitting. Or that her larger ambition was to segue into real television news--which wasn't a shocker on the face of things: Lot of bobble-headed females in the reality world had loftier ambitions than introducing amateur high-steppers or commenting on how cockroaches were eaten. And he even knew that she'd given local news a shot in the Pittsburgh market before getting fired from that entry-level position.