Lover Mine(4)

Not exactly the norm, and against the health code, but R.I.P. had no trouble being flexible for the right customer. "No prob, my man."

He got back to work with the carp and Keri resumed her bitten lip and little-girl moaning routine. When he was finished, he was not at all surprised that Sarah, after having watched her friend go through "agony," decided that she wanted a refund instead of some pretty, rainbow-colored ink of her own.

Which was good news. It meant that he could get to work on the guy with the dead eyes right away.

As he snapped off his black gloves and cleaned up, he wondered what in the hell the design was going to look like. And exactly how long it was going to take Mar to get inside the pierced guy's pants.

Former was likely to be fairly good.

And the latter . . . he'd give that about ten minutes, because she'd caught his mismatched stare and Mar was a fast worker--not just behind the counter.





Across town, away from the bars and tat shops on Trade Street, in an enclave of brownstones and cobbled lanes, Xhex stood in a bay window and stared out of wavy antique glass.

She was naked and cold and bruised.

But she was not weak.

Down below, on the sidewalk, a human female strolled along with a little yappy dog on a string and a cell phone up to her ear. Across the way, people in other elegant walk-ups were drinking and eating and reading. Cars went by slowly out of both respect for the neighbors and fear for their suspension systems on the uneven street.

The Homo sapiens peanut gallery couldn't see or hear her. And not just because the capacities of that other race were so diminished in comparison to those of vampires.

Or in her case, half-symphath vampires.

Even if she turned the ceiling light on and screamed until her voice box gave out, even if she waved her arms until they fell out of their sockets, the men and women who were all around would just keep up whatever they were doing, unaware that she was trapped in this bedroom, thick in their midst. And it wasn't as if she could pick up the bureau or the bedside table and break the glass. Same with kicking down the door or crawling through the bathroom vent.

She'd tried all that.

The assassin in her had to be impressed by the pervasive nature of her invisible cell: There was, quite literally, no way to get around, through, or out of it.

Turning away from the window, she paced around the king-size bed with its silk sheets and horrible memories . . . and went by the marble bathroom . . . and kept going by the door that led out into the hall. Given the way things went with her captor, it wasn't as if she needed more exercise, but she couldn't keep still, her body twitchy and humming.

She'd done this against-her-will thing once before. Knew how the mind, like a starved body, could cannibalize itself after too long if you didn't feed it something to churn over.

Her favorite distraction? Mixed drinks. After having worked in clubs for years, she knew legions of cocktails and concoctions and she ran through them, picturing the bottles and the glasses and the pouring and the ice and the spice.

That Bartender-pedia routine had kept her sane.

Up until now, she had banked on a mistake, a slipup, an opportunity for escape. None had come and that hope was starting to fade, exposing a huge black hole that was ready to eat her. So she just kept making drinks in her head and searching for her opening.

And her past experience helped in a strange way. Whatever happened here, however bad it got, however much it hurt physically, it was nothing compared to what she'd been through before.

This was the minor leagues.

Or . . . at least she told herself that. Sometimes it felt worse.

More with the pacing, past the two bay windows in front, by the bureau, and then around the bed again. This time she went into the bathroom. There were no razors or brushes or combs, just some towels that were slightly damp and a bar of soap or two.

When Lash had abducted her, using the same kind of magic that was keeping her in this suite of rooms, he had brought her to this elegant crib of his and their first night and day together had been indicative of how it was going to be.

In the mirror over the double sinks, she saw herself and performed a dispassionate review of her body. There were bruises all over her . . . cuts and scrapes, too. He was brutal in what he did, and she fought back because she'd be damned if she let him kill her--so it was hard to tell what marks had been made by him and what had been incidental to what she'd done to the bastard.

Get his ass naked in front of some glass, and she'd bet her last breath he didn't look any better than she did.

Eye for an eye.

The unfortunate corollary was that he liked that she met fire with fire. The more they battled it out, the more he got turned on, and she sensed he was surprised at his own emotions. For the first couple of days, he'd been in punishment mode, trying to pay her back for what she'd done to his last girlfriend--evidently, those bullets she'd put in that bitch's chest had really ticked his shit off. But then things had changed. He'd started to talk less about his ex and more about body parts and fantasies involving a future that included her bearing his spawn.