“What you’re drinking, you mean. As in out of your glass.”
“Come on, Elise. Gimme a break, will you. You think this is going to be easy for me?”
Shaking her head, she crossed her arms. But then cursed and stepped around him, entering his suite. “You shouldn’t need to be intoxicated to talk about things.”
“That and a bag of chips will get you lunch.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered as he shut his door.
His room was the size of a football stadium, it seemed, with a sitting area kitted out with sofas and chairs like a living room, a TV with a screen as big as a movie theater’s, and a bed that, naturally, was king-size but round. The decor was done by Grey Goose—as in bottles of vodka. Which were empty—oh, no, wait, over there by the open bathroom, there were eight fresh, unopened ones.
And of course, you could do laps in his Jacuzzi, she thought as she looked into the marble expanse. Who knew those kinds of tubs came in Olympic-swimming-pool?
“Will you do me a favor and put a shirt on?” she said as she turned back to him.
Peyton had stretched out on his bed, and crossed his feet at the ankles, his hooded eyes the kind of thing that might have set a female’s pulse racing a little—if they didn’t know Axe.
Hadn’t been with Axe.
Weren’t going to be with Axe again soon.
Nothing compared to her tattooed male.
“Want to join me?” Peyton drawled, running his hand in a circle on the monogrammed duvet. His pillows were monogrammed, too, as was the great canopy of cloth that hung from a gold crown on the high ceiling.
But the grandeur made sense. He was the equivalent of a prince, the high-bred son of a Founding Family, the heir to great wealth, one of the race’s most eligible bachelors.
And he was also a looker, what with that blond hair and those blue eyes that were the stuff of fantasies.
“Are you telling me no?” he said. “I’m not used to no.”
“I believe that.”
There was a pause. “So did your bodyguard call you up and brag about what he did last night?”
“He did not—and I’m going to do you a favor right now and tell you to shut up about him. If you don’t have anything nice to say, then I don’t want to hear it.”
“He didn’t mention anything? I find that hard to believe.”
Elise frowned. She was not interested in playing hide-and-seek with a drunk for information, but if it was about Axe? “So what did he do?”
“He saved the life of a Brother.”
“What?”
“Single-handedly.” Peyton’s eyes drifted to the TV screen across the way and the football game that was on it. “Real live hero stuff. The Brother Rhage, literally, would not be alive tonight if it weren’t for the fact that Axe, even after having been shot himself, managed to put his own body in the way of a knife—while a lesser was on his back, beating him with a steel whip.”
The world spun around and Elise threw out a hand to steady herself. When there was nothing to catch her fall, she stumbled over to the foot of that palace bed of his and sat down.
“It was amazing,” Peyton said softly, his eyes getting a faraway look to them. “I saw it happen. We were stationed on different streets, but there were suddenly slayers everywhere. I followed mine right to the alley Axe was fighting in—just as he got himself stabbed. I thought … I really thought Axe was dead, you know?”
“He didn’t say a thing,” she whispered.
Peyton reached over to the bedside table and picked up a tumbler that was full of ice and something fizzy. He took a long drink, emptying a good quarter of the thing.
“I’ve never done anything close to that.” Peyton took another drink. “Maybe he is the right male for your job, you know?”
“He has been …” She cleared her throat. “Perfectly professional. Were you hurt last night?”
“No. No one else was seriously, either. It was like Axe took all of our injuries at once.”
Peyton fell silent and so did she … while across the way, that football game played on, humans in the stands dressed in blue-and-orange and red-and-white.
“What is this?” she asked numbly. “On the screen?”
“It’s the Iron Bowl from ’thirteen. Auburn–’Bama. Auburn wins with a one-hundred-and-nine-yard kick back run. War Damn Eagle.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not a clue. It’s the Auburn fight song. Our vet, who is human, went to school there? So that’s how I started rooting for them about twenty years ago. Habits, you know.”
Peyton finished his drink, then added, “I can’t believe Axe didn’t tell you.”
“I don’t think he cares about showing off.”
Peyton laughed. “Yeah, he doesn’t give a shit about much.” Abruptly, the male grew serious. “So you want to know about Allishon, huh.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay,” he said after a long moment. “I’ll tell you.”
It really wasn’t rocket science.
As Axe leaned into the mirror over the sink in his bathroom, he wiped the condensation from the shower off the glass with his forearm and then picked up the pair of fingernail scissors he’d found in the cabinet. Twisting around, he got his torso at the right angle and went to work.
Pushing the small, sharp-tipped blades under each one of the shit ton of sutures, he went snip, snip, snip … then he used a pair of tweezers to get the knots of thread out. Repeated on his thigh. Checked to make sure he didn’t have any others anywhere. Nope. Clean. And everything had healed so well, the scars were nearly invisible. By dawn, no one would ever know he’d been hurt.
His body wasn’t stiff, either. Eyesight and hearing were perfect. No headaches, muscle pulls, joint discomfort.
That Chosen blood was a thing.
Well, that and the fact that after Elise had left, he’d passed out—and shit, had he dreamed of her, vivid, erotic fantasies playing in his mind to the point where, when he finally woke up, he reached out as if she were beside him.
And what do you know, for the first time in recorded history, he had no interest in going to The Keys. What he was actually into was getting back home in time to see Elise at four a.m. But he’d promised to take Novo out—and while they were at the sex club, he was going to put her up for membership so that she didn’t have to ask him anymore.
She was a female who could really use a place like that.
And who knows. Maybe he was transitioning out of that phase in his life—
Axe stopped himself, a low-level anxiety threatening to break through and ruin his fantasy of what the night was going to be like.
God, for some reason, he saw those figurines of his father’s, those impotent little exercises in mourning.
With how much he was becoming attached to Elise already, was he just going to end up like his pops? In ruins when the relationship ended … likely because Elise recognized where she properly belonged.
In the glymera, with her kind.