Now was one of these moments for Vishous.
As he lay on the latex-sheeted hospital bed, he was floating on a cloud, his body cotton candy. The inside of a good sofa cushion. Wonder Bread.
And his brain, his magnificent, complicated, PITA brain . . . was likewise, the integration complete.
He smiled.
Off in the distance, he could hear water running in a sink, but he didn’t worry about it. He didn’t worry about anything. He just was. With nothing teeing up his hair-trigger mind, no pain in his heart, no choking grip of the past threatening to suffocate him, he was able to be in the moment to such a degree that he became just another second clicking by, inseparable from the eternal instant.
Bliss.
Taking yet another deep breath, he opened his eyes and looked down his body. The bed was at a tilt, so he could see the bruising on his ankles and his wrists, the skin there bright red and inflamed. Likewise, all over his legs and his torso, patches of red dotted him like he was a leopard. And at his hips, his cock was in a well-used, exhausted deflation off to one side.
The cleanup was done, the blood and come washed away, the tools removed, the session over.
But it wasn’t like it had never happened. The pain had receded to a glow, like a banked fire to warm his hands by, something to cozy up to and relax beside, not anything that could ever, ever hurt him.
And that was true both for the shit on the outside of him . . . as well as what was on the inside.
All he knew was peace—which was what he had been after. Jane came through the connecting door. She was dressed in surgical scrubs, her hair a mess, her face still flushed. As their eyes met, she paused and leaned against the jamb. Crossing her arms over her chest, she smiled slowly.
And that said it all, didn’t it.
When V extended his arm out to her, she came over. Bent over. Laid herself across his big-ass chest. Her lips were soft as they brushed the side of his neck, and his palm was slow over her back, and his heart was full, as was hers.
“Can you help me back to the Pit,” he asked after a little while. “I want to be in our bed.”
“Absolutely.”
Jane straightened and stroked his hair. Then she offered him her hands, and he pulled himself up and shifted his legs off the table.
That was when he saw the chair. Over by the door.
Butch actually had been here. And so had Marissa. Hadn’t they.
Unsure how he felt about that, V met Jane’s eyes. “I am . . .”
“Surrounded by people who love you,” she finished for him.
Yes, he thought. That was so true.
With a sense of feeling lucky, he put his bare feet on the tile and stood up. The next thing he knew, Jane was pulling a set of scrubs on him, top first, then the bottoms. He was stiff as he started for the way out, and his mate was right beside him, his arm looping across her shoulders so that she took some of his weight.
When she opened the door, he was hit with the characteristic smell of the training center: part cement, part shampoos and conditioners from the showers by the weight room, plus a whiff of far-off chlorine from the pool and a tinge of gunpowder from the shooting range.
The whole of it was beyond pleasant to breathe in.
It was . . . home.
As they started off at a slow rate, it was the best walk of his life, the pair of them bumping hips and shuffling along—well, he was the one doing the shuffling, Jane was strong as ever as she led him down to the office.
There was still nothing in his mind as they entered the underground tunnel. Continuing along, their pace stayed at a stroll, like they were in a city park, on a sunny day in the fall, just another pair of lovers perfectly in tune with each other. From time to time, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. Just ’cuz he wanted to. And halfway to the Pit, she reached over and entwined her fingers through his dangling dagger hand.
“I want to feel like this forever,” he murmured.
“How’s that?”
“At peace.” He kissed her above her brows again. “And grateful.”
Unfortunately, this rare feeling of relaxation wasn’t going to last. As powerful as it was, it was also fragile, incapable of surviving the punches of the real world. He was going to get maybe twelve hours like this—no more than that, though. Sooner than later, the texts would come from the field, and the IT shit in the household would resume, and then other crap would fall on his head. Gradually, the tension would seep back in, tightening the nape of his neck, stiffening his spine, shortening his temper. And then later, much later, something big-ish would happen. Like Butch running into his old partner again, or Wrath wanting to engage something other than a civilian at the Audience House, or fuck all only knew what.
And then he would be where he had been.
But as for now . . .
Even the prospect of returning to his touchy normal was nothing but a figment floating off on the periphery, not anything he had to worry about at the moment, just something he accepted as inevitable, but wasn’t going to dwell on.
When they came to the door to go up to the Pit, Jane punched in the code. The short stack of steps was rough on him, and he needed the little balustrade as well as Jane’s steady hand. Not that his reliance on either bothered him. And then he was cresting the rise and stepping into the shallow hall that ran between the bedrooms.
His and Jane’s. Butch and Marissa’s.
“V?”
The male voice down in the living area was yet another balm to his soul.
Jane rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth. “You go hang for a bit, I’m heading to bed.”
“You worked hard tonight.”
“So did you.”
They smiled for a while. Then they kissed again, and said I love you without speaking a word: All it took was the eye contact—and yup, V was totally looking forward to coming down to their bedroom and easing between the sheets to find his shellan’s warm body.