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Lover Unbound(56)

By:J. R. Ward


Grabbing his books off his desk, he shoved them into his backpack and left. The instant he stepped into the hall he put his arm over his face. The sight of the brilliant foyer made his headache roar, and he stumbled back, bumping into a Greek kuroi. Which made him realize he hadn't put a shirt on.

Cursing to hell and gone, he went back to his room, threw one on, and somehow made it downstairs without tripping over his own feet. Man, everything was getting on his nerves. The sound of his Nikes across the foyer was like a band of squeaky mice following him. The clicking of the hidden door into the tunnel seemed loud as a gunshot. His trip through the underground route to the training center went on forever.

This was not going to be a great day. His temper was flaring already, and going by the last month or so, he knew that the earlier it kicked in, the harder it would be to hold.

And as soon as he walked into the classroom, he knew he was really in for it.

Sitting in the back row at the loner table John had called home before he got tight with his boys was… Lash.

Who now came in the economy-size asshole package. The guy was big and filled out, built like a fighter. And he'd gone through a G.I. Joe makeover. Before he'd worn flashy couture clothes and a vault's worth of Jacob & Co. jewelry; now he was dressed in black cargo pants and a skintight black nylon shirt. His blond hair, which had been long enough to pull back into a ponytail, was now military short.

It was as if all that pretension had been wiped clean because he knew he had the goods on the inside.

One thing hadn't changed: His eyes were still sharkskin gray and focused on John—who knew without a doubt that if he got caught alone with the guy he was in for a world of hurt. He might have taken Lash down the last time, but it wouldn't happen again, and more than that, Lash was going to get him. The promise of payback was in both the set of those big shoulders and the half smile that had fuck you written all over it.#p#分页标题#e#

John took a seat next to Blay, feeling a dark-alley kind of dread.

"Hey, buddy," his friend said softly. "Don't worry about that bastard, okay?"

John didn't want to look as weak as he was feeling, so he just shrugged and unzipped his backpack. God, this headache was a killer. But then, the flight-or-fight response on an empty, rolling stomach was hardly a dose of Excedrin.

Qhuinn leaned over and dropped a note in front of John. We gotchu, was all it said.

John blinked quickly from gratitude as he got out his firearms book and thought about what they were going to cover today in class. How appropriate it was guns. He felt like one was leveled at the back of his skull.

He looked to the rear of the room. As if Lash had been waiting for the eye contact, the guy leaned forward and put his forearms on the table. His hands slowly cranked into two fists that seemed big as John's head, and when he smiled, his new fangs were sharp as knives and white as the afterlife.

Shit. John was a dead man if his transition didn't come soon.



* * *





Chapter Fifteen





Vishous woke up, and the first thing he saw was his surgeon in the chair across the room. Apparently even in his sleep, he'd been keeping track of her.

She was watching him, too.

"How are you?" Her voice was low and even. Professionally warm, he thought.

"I'm better." Although it was hard to imagine feeling worse than he had when he'd been throwing up.

"Are you in pain?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't bother me. More an ache, really."

Her eyes went over him, but again it was with professional purpose. "Your coloring is good."

He didn't know what to say to that. Because the longer he looked like shit, the longer she could stay. Health was so not his friend.

"Do you remember anything?" she asked. "About the shooting?"

"Not really."

Which was only a partial lie. All he had were flashes of the events, partial clippings of the articles instead of the full columns: He remembered the alley. A fight with a lesser. A gun going off. And after that ending up on her table and getting evac'd from the hospital by his brothers.

"Why did someone want to shoot you?" she asked.

"I'm hungry. Is there food around?"

"Are you a drug dealer? Or a pimp?"

He rubbed his face. "Why do you think I'm either?"

"You got shot in an alley off Trade. The paramedics said you had weapons on you."

"It didn't occur to you I could be undercover police?"

"Cops in Caldwell don't carry martial-arts daggers. And your kind wouldn't go that route."

V narrowed his eyes. "My kind?"

"Too much exposure, right? Besides, you wouldn't worry much about policing another race."