Lover Forbidden -- Scene 6

 

The Black Dagger Brotherhood world and characters

are the property of JR Ward.

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Scene 6

Phury punched, lashed out with fists and feet, but the monsters kept coming at him.  Swarming him.  He was too slow, too weak.  His blood flowed in great gushes to the asphalt and he tried to hold it in.  Every time he’d cover a spot a new one would open up.  He saw his bones, his insides, his veins twisting out from his torn flesh like snakes.

He saw his father off in the distance.

“Help me!” He cried out but Ahgony turned away.

Wrath raced toward him and he felt relief, but the king didn’t even acknowledge him.  He ran right past, sloshed through the puddle of blood at Phury’s feet.

“Please!” If someone could get him to Doc Jane, she’d stitch him up. 

Vishous ran past with Rhage and Butch.  Phury called out to them but they didn’t hear, didn’t see what was happening, his flesh tearing from his body and leaving raw nerve and bloody, exposed viscera. 

“We’re washing our hands of you.”  His twin’s voice wafted past him and he looked up.  Z wasn’t there.  He was alone.

“Help me.”  He was down to whimpering now, his screams earning him only a raw, destroyed throat.

Voices assailed him, some he knew, some he found familiar and some must have been from deep in the past because he didn’t know them but they damn sure knew him.

“What a disappointment you are.” 

“Might’ve known you’d end up like this.”

“Why do you keep living in a world that doesn’t want you?”

“Some fucking primale.”

“It’s okay.  You’re almost through the worst part.  Just hold on.”

The deep, kind voice was the cruelest.  Because kindness never lasted and disgust was forever.

Phury wept.  Because there was nothing else he could do.

“Ssshhh.  Sleep now.  It’ll be better when you wake up.”  A different voice.  He knew it, knew who it belonged to, but he didn’t want confirmation.  They were tricking him.  Making him feel safe and cared for when such things were always beyond his reach.  Ha!  He wouldn’t fall for it so suck on that, phonies!

But the two voices didn’t go. They stayed with him.  He tried to push them away, tried to kill them before they could hurt him, but they lingered.  After a while he just sank into them and stayed there. 

He must have slept.  He looked up to see two shapes far in the distance.  They weren’t leaving him.  They weren’t ignoring him.  They were looking at him.  Waiting for him.  One small and one large.  They anchored him. 

A glowing line seemed to stretch from the two to him, pulling him forward slowly.  He wanted to rush, they might be able to get him some help for his wounds, but he could only go at the pace the line allowed.  They waited for him patiently.  He hoped he didn’t bleed out before he got there.

He knew he was getting close when his vision failed him.  A sleepy fog rolled in and he lost the image.  But he didn’t lose them.  They were there, he could feel them.  So he slept, trusting they’d be there later.  And if they weren’t, well, then he really didn’t have so much to lose after all, did he?

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“Would you like more?”  Rehvenge offered Cormia the serving bowl of Fettucini Alfredo made especially for the two of them by iAm.   The Chosen had surprised him with her appetite. 

She nodded and served herself some more pasta.

“I have not eaten in a while,” she said self-consciously.

“Why?”

“I was worried about the primale and had no appetite, and then I was injured.  Then they sent me to the Other Side and I didn’t feel like eating.  They were wrong to send me away from the primale.  Only he can send me away.”  Was she convincing herself, or Rehvenge?

“I heard him tell you to go back for your own safety, but you didn’t.”  Rehv pointed out.

“He was in distress, I could hardly leave him.”

“We can take care of him.  I give you my word, we won’t harm him.” Rehv told her earnestly. 

“I still do not understand what you do when you hold him down to calm him.”  She scowled.  She didn’t trust him.  Rehvenge had to give her credit for that one.

“It’s not something I can describe,” no shit, “It’s just something I’ve found that works when someone’s getting a little too worked up.”

“Your friend, Xhex, came to talk to me.”  Cormia wiped her pretty mouth.

“I know.  I asked her to.”

“Then you probably know that I explained to her that I cannot leave until the primale tells me to.  Rationally tells me.”  She took a small sip of water and waited for Rehvenge to respond.

“And when he tells you will you just declare him irrational again?  If lessers had come to the alley you’d be dead now or wishing you were.  How do you think that would have made him feel… if he’d survived?  Telling you to go back was the most rational thing he’s done in days.”  Rehvenge tried not to get hot under the collar.  She obviously had it bad for Phury and that was just damned annoying.

Cormia’s confidence seemed to collapse in on itself.  She grew smaller, weaker.  She was visibly pondering Rehvenge’s words and getting more than a bit down about them.

“You could go back to the Brotherhood.  Now that Phury isn’t there you’re not in so much danger.  It’s a very safe place.”

“They threw him away,” she shook her head sadly, “they may as well have thrown me away as well.”

A lightning bolt of anger crashed through Rehv at the reminder of what had happened to Phury.  It was particularly fierce now that he’d actually visited aspects of the warrior’s life and seen them for himself.  The male didn’t deserve what had been handed to him from the day he was born. 

Rehv got absolutely nowhere with the Chosen, which is what Xhex had told him would happen.  He tried not to get desperate with wanting to tend to Phury on his own, but he hated Cormia holding the cool cloth and stroking it across the warrior’s clammy skin.  That was Rehvenge’s job.

So, although it was incredibly alarming and he’d have to deal with it, it was also helpful when he received an e-mail from the princess:  I’ve seen the pretty female you keep in your club.

The threat was inherent.  The princess thought he was involved with the Chosen.  He had to get Cormia out of there.

With some cajoling, some diagramming of the sympath race, and some heavy handed, terrifying description from Xhex, they finally took the Chosen to a quiet space away from the club where she could cross over.  Rehv’s mother had built a small shrine to the scribe virgin in their home.  It seemed to delight Cormia even as she angled a few dirty looks at Rehvenge.

“This is a coincidence, is it not?”  She had said.

“What is?”

“You have been trying to convince me to leave and suddenly you have been given the gift of an actual, pointed threat.  You have to admit it is convenient.”

“It is, I won’t lie.  It’s always nice when warnings are borne out without any actual blood being shed.  Now you can trust me that Xhex and I have been telling you the truth.”

Cormia snorted, which seemed incongruous to her angelic demeanor.  She wouldn’t trust him if the princess walked up and spoke her threats to her face.  Did she know he considered her competition for the primale?  Or, after everything she’d seen, could she still think Rehv might mean to hurt him? 

Once she was gone Rehvenge went straight back to the apartment.  Trez was watching over Phury, it was late in the evening.  The warrior had been mostly asleep for two days by this time. His fits, interspersed between bouts of incredibly deep sleep, had lessened in both length and fervor.  In fact, he hadn’t had one in a good six hours.  That was definitely progress. 

Once Trez took off and he was alone, Rehv took up the coveted chair by the bed. At last he could relax in the privacy of his own crash pad.  And he could watch over Phury, which was the big bonus of the day.

The warrior breathed softly in and out.  Rehvenge pushed back a lock of multi-hued hair that had gone astray.  The male was out cold. 

He sat in the chair, watching the sleeping warrior, bouncing his legs with excessive energy.  It wasn’t enough.  Looking wasn’t enough.

He paced.  Difficult while trying to keep his eyes on the bed the entire time. 

Approaching the bed again, he ran his hand along the side of Phury’s face.  Cool, no fever.  He stroked the hair back again.  And again.  No change in the warrior, but Rehv was definitely feeling it.  Definitely.

He bent down, not sure when the tawdry idea had come to him, only that it had latched and wouldn’t let go.

Rehv pressed his lips to Phury’s.  He would not lick.  He would not … oops, he licked.  Just the outside of those firm lips that felt so perfect against his own.

And suddenly a hand was at his throat.  Shit!  Yellow eyes pinned him.  Within their depths, confusion warred with guilt and longing, the same emotions he’d detected before.  And then they cleared and stared at him with an intensity Rehv had rarely ever seen.  Recognition, plain and simple. 

Rehvenge was just about to reach out to grab his cane when Phury’s choking hand slid up the side of the sympath’s neck to the back of his head.  Rehv allowed himself to be pulled down and …

No sneak attack this time.  This kiss was real.  Totally, mind-numbingly, breath-catchingly real. 

Phury pulled Rehvenge down to his lips and raised his other hand to cup and caress Rehv’s jaw.  Rehvenge felt their lips join and Phury’s tongue thrust greedily into his mouth.  Rehv sank to his knees by the bed to get a better angle and burrowed his fingers into the mass of hair, pulling the warrior impossibly closer.

Fusion.  Rehv licked the inside of Phury’s mouth, tasting him, swirling his tongue for maximum coverage.  In turn the warrior plunged back, nipping, sucking, invading. They pushed each other, kissing hard with aggression and care in equal measure. 

And later, as they reluctantly but necessarily broke the kiss, Rehv decided it had been the most exhilarating ten minutes or so of his life to date.  

Phury was exhausted, that much was clear.  He smiled wearily, but with satisfaction, at Rehvenge and closed his eyes.  Rehvenge sat back in the chair and pulled it forward.  He took Phury’s hand and was rewarded with a full finger-thread from the warrior who then brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of Rehv’s fingers.  And then he fell asleep.

Rehv’s heart thundered in his chest.  He stayed awake watching the warrior for a very long time, unable to turn away.  No more fits disturbed the night.  The worst of the withdrawal was over, Rehvenge realized gratefully.  But what would come next?

Inevitable note:  Finally!

Inevitable soundtrack:  Natalie Merchant's "My Skin"

Scene 7