Blood Kiss (27 page)

With a frown, she turned the Bally over and dumped everything out. As she waded through Kleenex packets and her wallet and random mascara tubes and her
Kindle and loose money and ChapStick and other stuff, she knew she had to get better organized. Okay, where was . . .

Her phone was
not
in there.

What the hell? Had she left the thing at home? She could have sworn she'd put it in with the rest of her junk.

Tilting the open mouth of the bag toward her, she fished around the empty belly, and then unzipped the front pocket just to see what other useless crap—

Her phone was in that flap.

Frowning, she looked around the empty room for no good reason. The problem was, she never put the damn thing in there—she was always in too much of a hurry to bother with the unzipping. Plus she had this paranoia that she'd forget to secure the pocket back up and she'd lose her cell.

Never once had she put the phone in there.

Had someone been through her stuff?

One by one, she sorted through the items on the table. Nothing was missing that she could see, although it wasn't like she kept a detailed mental list of her necessaries. And when she checked her wallet, her ID, credit cards and cash were all still in there.

Well, if anything had been taken, it wasn't worth more than two cents.

As she put her things back in, she swallowed a load of creeped-out, but what was she going to do? Go to the Brothers with an, “Oh, my phone moved to this other pocket here and . . .”

Yeah. Right.

With no bars showing on her reception, she went over to the landline that was mounted on the wall by the glass-fronted refrigerator filled with Gatorade, Coke, and juices of various sorts. When she picked the receiver off the cradle, the dial tone was just like it was at the audience house, so she hit 9 for an outside line and punched in her father's number.

Fedricah answered, and in a cheerful voice, she told
the butler that she was going to spend the day at the training center because she was working on something for extra credit. She also assured him that she was going to be chaperoned.

And it was true. She wasn't going to be alone—not if she had any say in things.

Craeg was going to take care of her.

“Does it hurt?”

As she hung up, she looked over to the door. Craeg was standing in the jambs, his bare chest gleaming, his pecs and abs standing out in stark relief under the ceiling lights.

Dropping her lids, she ate up the sight of his body—and thought, actually, she did have an ache all of a sudden.

“Hello?” he demanded.

“I'm crashing here for the day.”

As he went stock-still and narrowed his eyes, she held up her cell phone to him. “No bars. No service. Guess we're going to have to figure out another way to hook up at seven, won't we.”

O
ut in the training center's parking garage, Butch escorted the four trainees who were leaving to the door of the bus, making sure they all got on with their shit. Then he went back inside and walked the long corridor toward the office with a slow stride. He had no idea where Marissa was, but he was hoping, when he resurfaced up at the mansion, that she had called him back, texted him, something.

He'd left his phone on the dining room table up in the mansion by mistake. But maybe that was a good thing. He'd been driving himself crazy checking the device at First Meal.

Meandering down the empty hall toward the office, he became acutely aware that he was essentially alone in the facility: V and Tohr had already headed back to the house with Doc Jane, Manny, and Ehlena to get ready for Last Meal, and likewise, all
doggen
were working up in Fritz's big kitchen. And Paradise, Craeg and Axe were eating in the break room.

Dear Lord, what if Marissa had moved out of the Pit? he thought.

Oh, fuck, what was he going to do if—

As he opened the glass door, he froze.

“Hi,” his
shellan
said from behind the desk.

She was so beautiful, sitting there with her office clothes on and her blond hair down. Man, he loved those waves falling over her shoulders like something out of
Game of Thrones
, and that silk blouse with its slight hint of pink brought out her skin like she was in a magazine ad for Estée Lauder.

“I got your calls. Your texts,” she said as she stared across at him.

Entering the office proper, he let the door close by itself and wasn't sure whether he should sit down in a chair. Pace. Fall to his knees and start apologizing.

“I'm sorry—”

“I'm sorry—”

They both shut up. And the silence that came next was a period of each of them waiting for the other to speak.

“Look, I should have told you about Xhex,” he said, biting the bullet. “I didn't because I just . . . it was before you and I were together seriously. I met her one night at Rehv's club—it was just that night, and it wasn't anything on either side. I had no idea she was going to end up living with us, and by the time she was, it was just one more thing I was leaving behind, you know?”

“I know. I get it.”

He waited for her to say more, but when all she did was look down at her hands, he frowned and sat in the chair opposite from her. “You sure about that.”

“Yes.”

Butch shook his head at the continued quiet. “I know I'm not perfect here, but if you honestly think I want her now over you, I'm going to get pretty fucking pissed off.”

“No, I know you don't.”

And still she said nothing further. In the vacuum, while he tried to convince himself not to jump out of his own skin, he thought of him and Xhex high-fiving each other and joking about how he owed her because she'd saved him in a fight in an alley with some slayers. “She's one of the guys, for fuck's sake.”

“I know.”

Bringing up a hand, he rubbed his twitching left eye. “Do you.”

Jesus, what was wrong with them? Talking had always been so easy, like breathing. Now . . . all this silence.

“Just say it,” he muttered. “Whatever it is, however
much it will hurt me, say it—just don't leave me sitting here wondering what the fuck you're thinking. My head's going to explode.”

“Why didn't you tell me about the hair?” she said in a rush.

Butch snapped his head up. “Excuse me?”

“I saw the interview. With that trainee.” She pointed to the computer screen. “I watched part of it. The part where you were telling a perfect stranger something that you'd never shared with me.”

“The interview—? Oh. That.”

“Yes, that.”

Butch resumed scrubbing his eye. “That wasn't anything important.”

“Yeah, I guess I'm stuck wondering how many other things you've decided that about? I mean, what else don't I know about you? After this long together, I thought I knew everything. . . . I thought . . .” She got choked up a little, but was able to cast that aside. “What else don't I know, Butch.”

As he looked across the desk into her eyes, a feeling of unease rippled down his spine. She was staring at him as if she didn't know him at all.

“Marissa—”

“Seeing that beaten girl on the couch in the living room of Safe Place completely ruined me. The whole . . . violent ugliness of it, the suffering, the up-close pain, the way she looked at me, pleaded at me with her eyes.” Marissa's slender shoulders trembled. “I didn't tell you all that because I was afraid to trigger you about your sister. I didn't talk to you because I didn't want to upset you. There. I said it. It doesn't make me happy, and it really doesn't make me feel any better . . . but that's what I've been hiding from you. Oh, that, and seeing my brother again broke my heart in half, just crumbled me. It made me miss parts of my old life, and that made me feel like I was betraying you.” She put her hands up. “That's what I got. So what have you been hiding.”

When he went to open his mouth, she stopped him. “Before you speak, be very aware that I love you. I love you with everything I have and all that I am. But if you do not get real with me, I'm going to go back to the Pit, pack a bag, and move to Safe Place for a while.” She held his stare with unwavering eyes. “You and I are not going to survive long term, regardless of love or bonding, if you keep airbrushing things. If I keep airbrushing things. It's not a good strategy for us—and if this makes you feel like you're on the spot? As if I'm giving you an ultimatum? I don't care. If anything gets in the way of our relationship,
anything
, I will mow that shit down—even if it is you.”

Butch realized he'd stopped breathing only because his lungs began to burn—and inflating them with a ragged inhale did little to improve that sense of suffocation.

Marissa shook her head gravely. “This is not about whether or not you were ever with Xhex. It's about the fact that you didn't think I could handle you telling me. Isn't it. You didn't want to hurt my feelings, and that's noble, but don't couch what happened between the two of you in terms of being ‘unimportant.' That's a copout.” She shook her head sadly. “The whole sex-club thing is the same. So is your issue about blow jobs—which you also refuse to discuss with me. The bottom line is, you have a very flattering, but very limiting opinion of me. You want to caretake me, but you're putting me in a prison—and no offense, I grew up in the
glymera
being told all the things I couldn't do because of who and what I was. I'm not going to put up with that anymore.”

God . . . he felt like he'd been shot. And not because anything in particular was hurting. It was more that sense of encroaching cold as your blood leaked out all over the place that he was dealing with. Same sense of dizziness and disassociation from reality, too.

“So what's it going to be, Butch?” she said softly. “What are you going to do.”

•   •   •

As Marissa fell silent, she honestly had no idea where her
hellren
was, what he was thinking about, whether he'd even heard a word she'd said. And it was weird: Her heart wasn't even hammering, and her palms were not sweaty—which, considering the crossroads they'd gotten to, was a surprise.

Then again, she'd said her bit as calmly and kindly as she could. Now it really was up to him; their future was in his hands alone in so many ways.

When he shifted in the chair, she braced herself for him to walk out, but all he did was plug his elbows into his knees and rub that shadow of a beard on his jaw. His other hand took the giant gold cross he wore out of his black shirt.

Okay, wait, now her hands were getting a little sweaty.

“I, ah . . .” He cleared his throat. “That's a lot to take in.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

“All right.”

For some reason, the soft hum of the computer became very loud, as if her ears were trying so hard to pick up sound from her mate that they'd amplified everything else.

He cleared his throat again. “I didn't know I was so bad at this.”

“Bad at what?”

“Our relationship.”

“I'm still in love with you. I still want you. You haven't failed at everything—and I'm part of the problem. It's not like I've been so chatty-Cathy, either.”

“Not so sure about that. The me failing part of it, that is.”

Now she sat forward, too, and extended an arm across the desk even though she couldn't quite reach him—and wasn't there a metaphor in that. “Butch, don't . . . please don't beat yourself up about it. That's not going to help
either one of us. Talk to me. You've got to talk to me—that's all I'm saying.”

“You're saying a lot more than that.”

She threw up her hands. “I don't have to go to the club if it's that horrific for you. I don't have to finish you off with a blow job if it really doesn't turn you on. All I'm saying is, you need to tell me why, and we need to talk things through—there has to be another kind of communication that goes on other than you going silent after you tell me it's because I'm a ‘good girl and good girls don't do that, can't handle that.'”

Butch steepled his fingers and bumped the tips against his lips. “I didn't tell you about the nightmare stuff because I find it so fucking disturbing when it happens that the last thing I want is to bring it up when it's not on my mind. I get really fucking pissed off at the shit that's still haunting me, and I feel like . . . if I talk about it, it gives it more power over me.”

She thought about her conversation with Rhage's
shellan
the night before last. “I'm pretty sure Mary would say the opposite. That the more you talk about it, the less power it has.”

“Maybe. I wouldn't know.”

Marissa found herself wanting to press, but dialed that back. She had the impression the door had been cracked, and the last thing she wanted to do was scare the damn thing closed.

“As for the blow jobs . . .” A flush hit his cheeks. “You're right. I don't want to talk to you about that because I'm ashamed of myself.”

“For what?” she breathed.

“'Cause . . .”

Tell me, she thought at him as he struggled. You can do this . . .
tell me
.

His eyes flicked up to hers. “Listen, I'm not interested in you pulling some position paper on what I'm about to say next, okay? How I'm supposed to get over myself. Are we clear?”

Marissa's eyebrows popped. “Of course. I promise.”

“You want me to talk, that's fine. But if you come back at me with some PC bullshit, I'm not gonna take it well.”

As she had never before hit him with any “PC bullshit,” she was very sure he was drawing boundaries because he felt vulnerable.

“I promise.”

He nodded as if they'd struck a deal. “I was raised Catholic, okay? And that would be
real
Catholic, not casual Catholic. And I'm sorry—I got taught that only whores and sluts did that. And you . . . you're everything I could ever want in a female.”

Abruptly, he dropped his eyes and couldn't seem to go on.

“Why are you ashamed?” she whispered.

He grimaced so hard his whole face nearly disappeared into his brows. “Because I . . .”

“Because you want me to finish?”

All he could manage was a nod. Then he looked up sharply. “Why is that a relief for you?”

“I'm sorry?”

“You just exhaled like you're relieved.”

She started to smile at him. “I thought you were never going to let me do it—and I've always wanted to find out what it's like.”

Her
hellren
's face turned beet red. Beet. Red. “I just . . . I don't want to disrespect you. And that's what my background tells me happens when you do that in a girl's mouth—you don't like her, you don't love her, you
don't respect her. And yeah, sure, I should throw all that hardwiring out, but it's not so easy.”

Marissa thought about her struggles with what her upbringing had left her with. “Boy, do I get that one. I feel like I should stop being bitter and insecure about my brother and my years in the
glymera
. But it's like I learned too well that that stove burned, you know?”

“Totally.” He smiled a little. Then rubbed his face. “Am I as red as I think I am.”

“Yes. And it's adorable.”

He laughed in a short burst—but then he got serious. And stayed that way. “There's another reason. Well, with the club thing, there's another reason . . . but it's crazy thinking. I mean, really crazy.”

“I'm not afraid. As long as you're talking, I am honestly not afraid of anything.”

Already she could feel the connection growing between them—and it wasn't the short-lived kind you got when you just had some good orgasms, but then had to return to everything that still hadn't been fixed.

This was the concrete kind. The bedrock kind.

The I-loved-my-partner-before-but-now-it's-even-more kind.

And she knew he was getting ready to talk about his sister because his entire body went still—to the point that he didn't appear to be breathing. And then a glaze of tears appeared across his beautiful hazel eyes.

When she went to get up and go to him, he slashed his hand through the air. “Don't you dare. Don't touch me, don't come over here. If you want me to talk, you gotta give me some space right now.”

Marissa slowly lowered herself back into the chair. And as her heart thundered against her ribs, she had to part her lips to keep drawing breath.