Lover Unbound(7)

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—"#p#分页标题#e#

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.