“Sex?!” he sputtered. “What?”
She pivoted back around to the sight of him buck-ass naked, covered with vaguely pinkish bubbles, in the midst of a giant pool of water, with an expression of total, abject, and enduring horror on his face.
Mary burst out laughing so hard, she had to reach out and steady herself on the wall. “Oh, my God, I need to stop—”
“Tell me we’re still having sex—”
“Of course! Just maybe not in the tub with that much water!”
“Jesus, don’t scare me like that. You’ll give me a damn aneurysm.”
“You may already have one. And can I let them in now?”
Rhage grunted as he sat up, the tattoo on his back writhing as if the beast were feeling a little beaten-up, too. “Fine, but I don’t know what they’re bitching about. Jeez, you spill a little water and everyone has a fucking cow.”
“Try a swimming pool’s worth.”
It was a relief to get out onto the carpet, where the traction was good and she didn’t have to think about exactly how she was stepping.
“I’m coming! You can stop pounding now!” she hollered over the din.
When she got to the door, she found that it had been locked. No doubt Rhage had willed the dead bolt into place—which made her smile.
Opening things up, she faced off with—
“Wow.” Okay, there were a lot of Brothers out there. “It’s a convention.”
Butch was in the front of the pack, a glass of what had to be Lagavulin in his hand, a wry smile on his face. John Matthew was behind him, along with Blay and Qhuinn. V. Zsadist. And Phury. And Tohr.
“What are you two doing in there?” someone asked.
“Don’t answer that, Mary!” Rhage shouted.
“Did you think there was a fire in the pantry?”
“I’m coming!” Rhage said.
“I think he already did,” somebody else muttered.
A collective oooooooooooow! rose from the group as Rhage appeared behind her.
“That arm is wicked bad,” Butch said. “I mean, it’s like you have a second elbow.”
As Mary glanced over her shoulder, she recoiled, too. “Oh, Rhage, you need to get that set.”
Rhage glared at the group. “Just gimme a Band-Aid, I’ll be fine. Now will you give us some privacy?”
Butch shook his head. “Okay, one, no, we will not, because where do you think all that water is going? And two, you are on your way to the clinic—”
“It’s fine!”
“Then why are you holding it with your free hand?”
Rhage looked down at himself as if he’d been unaware of what he’d been doing. “Oh, shit.”
Mary patted his shoulder. “I’ll go with you, okay?”
He stared at her, and dropped his voice. “This was not how I envisioned the session ending.”
“They’ll be other opportunities—”
“Just not in water,” came the collective response.
Striding back to the bathroom, she snagged a towel and returned, wrapping it around her mate’s waist and tucking the end in so the thing stayed put.
Getting up onto her tiptoes, she whispered, “If you’re a good boy, I’ll play nurse and patient with you after you get your cast.”
Rhage’s laugh was low and a little evil, his eyes going half-lidded and hot. “Deal.”
FORTY-ONE
As night fell, Rhage was, yet again, back down in the clinic, sitting shirt-less on an exam table, his leather-clad legs and shitkickered feet dangling free off one end. His weapons were over on a chair, and as soon as he got this cast sawed off, he was going to catch a quick meal in the cafeteria that had been set up for the future trainees and go to work.
Mary had left early for Safe Place so she could get ready for a staff meeting—although she’d offered to stay for the buzz cut. Man, thank God he’d fed a week ago from one of the Chosen, and his body could heal a simple fracture like that in a matter of twelve hours. He’d heard humans had to live with these plaster deadweights for weeks and weeks.
Insanity.
When a knock sounded on the door, he called out, “Come on in, Manny. I’m ready to get this—oh, hey, V. Wassup.”
His brother was dressed to fight, black daggers strapped to his chest, a newspaper folded up under his arm by one of his twin forties. “How’s that arm?”
“You’re coming to free me from my cage of plaster?” Rhage knocked on the thing with his fist. “Or whatever it’s made out of.”
“Nope.” V settled back against the door. “I got no news and bad news, what do you want first?”
“You didn’t find shit on Bitty’s uncle, did you.”
When his brother shook his head, Rhage released a tense breath, his whole body easing up with a relief that was all wrong. And then he had to tell himself not to get ahead of things. He and Mary were not adopting Bitty.
Really.
Yeah, ’cuz that would be crazy. Especially as he was basing the compatibility and interest on the kid’s part on the fact that a pair of chocolate-chip waffle cones had been ordered and consumed the night before at Bessie’s Best.
Vishous shrugged. “I checked every database, every contact down South that the Brotherhood has. I’m not saying there aren’t families under the radar, but there was nothing I could come up with that matched Bitty’s name, her mother’s, her father’s or the name of the uncle.”
Gripping the edge of the table, Rhage stared past the tips of his shitkickers to the linoleum floor.
“You and Mary thinking of taking her in?” As he glanced up in surprise, V gave him a well-duh. “It’s cool if you are. I mean, you were talking about kids the other night, and then asking about an orphan’s family situation. That math ain’t complex, true.”
Rhage cleared his throat. “You say nothing about this. To anyone.”
“Yeah, ’cuz I’m such a fucking gossip.”
“I’m serious, V.”
“Come on, you know me better than that. And I know what your next question is going to be.”
“What’s that.”
“You need to go talk to Saxton. He’ll be able to tell you what the requirements are to adopt her. I think in the old days, the King had to sign off whenever nobility was involved—and even though Bitty is a commoner, you, as a member of the Brotherhood, are aristocracy. I think a lot of that had to do with inheritance issues, but again, Saxton would know the ins and outs.”
Okay, that was good advice, Rhage thought. He hadn’t even considered that there might be paperwork involved, and how naive was that?
Oh, and yeah, it wasn’t like he’d spoken about all this to Mary. Or Bitty.
Shit. He was already so far ahead, wasn’t he.
“Thanks, V.” Feeling awkward, Rhage nodded at the rolled-up copy of what had to be the Caldwell Courier Journal. “What’s your other news? And I’m surprised you’re not online, my brother. Was it you or Egon Spengler who said that print is dead?”
“Both of us. Around the same time, actually.” V unfolded things and flashed the front page of the CCJ. “Fritz was the one who picked this hard copy up.”
Rhage whistled under his breath and held out his good hand to take the thing. “Annnnd we’re back in business.”
The headline read in bold letters, “Ritual Murder Scene at Abandoned Factory,” and lengthy columns of text were accompanied by pixilated photos of blood and buckets next to a broken-down manufacturing line of some kind. Rhage scanned the print and flipped to the interior to finish the article, the scent of the ink and the sound of sloppy pages flapping against one another making him think of days gone by.
He shook his head as he put the paper back together. “Not a very big scale, though.”
“Only twelve to fifteen new recruits. Clearly, there were some in the pipeline, and maybe the Omega hurried up the induction. But that’s not a huge scale.”
“Nope. We’re making progress.”
“I want to be there when the last one is poofed out of existence.”
Rhage narrowed his eyes. “The only way that’s going to happen is taking out the Omega.”
“I’ve been thinking about how to do that.” V took the newspaper back. “Trust me—”
A round of rapping on the door cut the brother off.
“Come in, Manny,” Rhage said. “Let’s get this—”