Chapter Thirty-Two

Thomal followed Pandra into thesweaty, gyrating flotsam and jetsam of the worst society had to offer, the song You Done Told Everybody by Pearlene booming a dance-grind beat from several six-foot-tall speakers. Multiple pairs of hands caressed his upper body and grabbed his ass along the way, igniting a hot knot of aggression in his gut. Fucking 'verts. Everyone might think they had the right to take whatever liberties they damned well pleased because this was a sex club, but being treated like tonight's daddy-mack without even being asked didn't exactly put lead in his pencil.

One woman made a grab for his dick, another ran her tongue suggestively over her teeth at him, her huge tits joggling and bobbling; without benefit of upper body clothing, those things made quite a spectacle. Others might find those enormous jugs par excellence, but Thomal had the misfortune of being married to the hottest thing going on two legs. He'd turned impervious to every other female in existence the instant he'd sunk his fangs into a certain black-eyed half-R?u.

Pandra found a spot on the dance floor near the bar and started shakin' her thang. Taut, well-defined muscles flexed along her thighs and in her sweet ass, her body made to look even hotter by the tight covering of leather; like she was naked, but not really. It'd been a long time since he'd seen her wear something so sexy, and his balls were taking note of the outfit with a hard pull north. Not that he'd ever lost sight of how gorgeous she was for even a nanosecond.

Everywhere his wife had gone in the community over these past months, he'd gravitated to a place nearby. Partially out of a mate-thing, but also because of some strange… compulsion to watch her: observe the luscious curve of her calves when she scaled a ladder, ogle her perfectly formed rump as she bent over a playground sandbox, appreciate the way her bouncy breasts filled out a red lifeguard bathing suit. And watch her transform from black-eyed beast into some version of woman, vulnerable in some ways, wounded in lots of others.

Right before his eyes, Pandra had stopped being so ruthlessly contained. No longer did she listen to people with a blank, sphinxlike face, as if she was holding herself in constant readiness to react to the next bad thing coming down the pike—not a matter of if that bad thing was coming, just when and where. Which was a sad way to imagine her living, and the thought sometimes did weird things to his stomach.

These days she tilted her head when people talked to her, warmed her expression, smiled, which really weirded-out his insides, sending his guts slipping and sliding, like icing off the top of a double-layer cake left in the sun too long. And all the while Pandra had been making this miraculous transformation, Thomal had remained at a fucking standstill.

He just couldn't seem to figure out how to move forward. It didn't help that he wasn't sure what he wanted from Pandra. A part of him craved a wife in truth: somebody to come home to, a chance at a family, regular sex. But so much of those longings got ruined by the short-fused triggers littering the space between them: the word tequila, the cord that plugged his telephone into the wall, the shackles hanging in ??ran?'s armory reserved for misbehaving Varcolac. The sight of a blonde chick giving head to a blonde guy. Arc a ruined mess.

Hell, how could Thomal make a life for himself with the woman who'd so totally screwed up his brother? How could he allow himself to find happiness with the woman he should have killed?

He didn't know how. He didn't know what to do to save Arc or how to get his own head on straight. He didn't know how to quit being such a cold bastard to the woman who'd set all this crap in motion or even if he wanted to stop. And if he decided he wanted Pandra, he didn't have a clue how to take the first step toward her. No, the second step. Pandra had already taken the first with her apology. His dazzling response to that? A grunt. For shit's sake, he was such a total waste of skin about this whole thing, he was more impotent than even when his dick hadn't worked. A joyful thought.

Pandra spun around on the dance floor, her long hair whiplashing across his face, soft and filled with her sent. Tension landed square between his shoulder blades as his semi-aroused member launched upward another few inches. It'd been too long since he'd been inside his wife's warm kooch. For-fucking-ever. In eight months of sexual functioning, he'd only been laid one time. Once. Which was absolute bullshit.

Pandra wrapped her arms around his neck, her body moving sinuously against him with her dirty dancing. A quick slice of her eyes acknowledged the stiff length of wood she found in the vicinity of his zipper, but then she was peering over his shoulder, padlocking Edgar. She gave the ass gasket a smoldering look that oozed if I get my hands on you, your clothes are coming off with my teeth.

Hostile jealousy spread like peanut butter cement in Thomal's gut. He forced a swift breath. Cool it, Costache. She's only on the mission.

Yeah, but was she? His body was rubbing hers as closely as vice versa, yet he might as well have been a department store dummy for all the reaction he was getting out of her. He knew her sex-scent—every time he fed on her, his olfactory lobe got a knee-trembling blast of it—and right now it was nowhere to be found. Maybe she really did want to fuck Videon's scumbag friend. A girl like her had needs, after all, and she certainly wasn't getting any action out of Thomal's Fruit of the Looms.

"Edgar's watching us," she said into his ear. "Grab my arse or something, will you? He'll want to think he's nabbing me from you."

Well, gee… He complied, of course, grabbing and squeezing her moneymaker, ripe flesh over firm muscle in his palms, the solid curve of her lower buttocks rounding toward heaven's tightest gate. Lust shot through his balls and ransacked his brain. With his hands, he jacked her hips forward, anger and arousal surging through him until he was insane with the need to have her beneath him, legs spread wide, the vigor of his hips pounding his cock deep inside her body.

Pandra lurched out of his hold, ignoring him as she danced around, putting her back to his front. She rotated her caboose against his crotch, and he nearly groaned as he imagined taking her from behind and…screw it. He grabbed her by the waist and pumped his hips forward as if he was doing that very thing. The feel of her butt cheeks bumping into his member squeezed some pre-come to the head of his fully aroused staff. Shit. His pants were so tight, if he accidentally shot his wad, he'd probably blow his boots off.

With his mind still on a screw it path to trouble, he ran his hands up the side of her ribcage to—

She still wasn't paying any attention to him. He growled low, the noise scorching a path from his chest, up his throat, and through his nostrils. Hauling her around, he tangled a fist in her hair, forcing her to meet his eyes—his eyes. "Stop looking at that fuck pig."

She startled for a heartbeat, then she must've figured he was setting their fight in motion.

She gave him a hard shove.

He stumbled backward two paces, then caught his footing.

Pandra turned toward a tall, broad dude working his way through the dancers. Edgar. Her hips moved sinuously as she sauntered in the other man's direction, promising him all kinds of ecstasy.

Thomal lifted his lip in a possessive snarl. She's playing the game. Chill-ax. He watched a dark, venal desire come into his wife's gaze that guaranteed Edgar everything she wasn't giving to her own husband, and there was no chilling to be had.

Thomal stepped forward, manacled his fingers around Pandra's wrist, and jerked her back toward him.

Rolling with what she clearly thought was more of the show, her other hand shot out and cracked him across his face, rattling several back teeth. He staggered.

She spun away from him and launched herself at Edgar. Her legs wrapped his waist, her arms circled his neck, and then a nuclear bomb went off because…She planted her lips against the dude's in an open-mouthed, jaw-working kiss.

Vicious heat napalmed Thomal's entire body. Reasonable warrior went see ya later, alligator and bonded male Varcolac came rampaging out.

His fangs ruptured out of his gums and he flew forward with a wall-rattling roar.

* * *

Panting from streaking down flourflights of stairs wearing five-inch heels, Pandra dove into the Dodge cargo van, making it inside just as the filth arrived. Three black and white cruisers squealed to a stop in front of the Iron Cock's apartment building, their bright lights strobing through the Dodge's windshield. The van door slammed shut, and Dev rammed his foot to the gas pedal, stonking it around a corner.

Pandra straightened in her seat, her outfit plastered uncomfortably to her body by sweat. The van was fitted with two long, removable bench seats facing each other. She was on the bench aimed forward, next to Nyko. Thomal and Gábor were seated across from her on the rear-facing one.

Several tense moments throbbed past.

Dev's hands were knuckle-white on the steering wheel. "Did anyone see your fangs during your shit fit?"

"I don't know," Thomal answered, tight-lipped, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.

You should see the other guy, would've fit perfectly here. Edgar was now wearing his head backward and the Iron Cock was all but demolished. When a Varcolac went berserk, he certainly didn't do the job half-arsed.

"Dammit to hell," Dev ground out. "You're on report, Costache, and I'm putting you on elevator cable duty next month."

"What?!" Thomal blasted.

"Oh, ho, ho," Gábor laughed.

That wouldn't be any fun. From what Pandra understood, a group of ??ran?'s construction workers had to climb the half-mile elevator shafts once a year to grease the cables and check for fraying. She'd heard it was sweaty, exhausting, back-breaking work.

"That's assed up, Nichita."

"You knew what needed to go down on this mission," Dev countered sharply. "And you approved it."

Thomal's face darkened. "Maybe I didn't expect my mate to be quite so fucking thorough in her seduction." He rounded on her. "You kissed that cockbox, Pandra."

"No," she said quietly.

"I saw you," Thomal hissed.

"I mean, no, I'm not your mate. I'm a bottle of blood you booze up on whenever you need a fix." Her lungs hurt. Going back to smoking after so many months, probably. Or maybe it was the pain of being filled with too many cobras. "You don't have the right to call me a mate, or even to expect me to act like one, if you're not going to treat me like one."

Thomal's eyes flashed. "What the hell does that mean, Pandra? You wanted to bone Edgar?"

"Jesus wept." He was so stupid. And blind. "Why don't you admit why you're truly in a dither, Thomal?" She leaned forward in her seat. "Not because Edgar wanted to shag me. But because you did. Dirty, disgusting, hateful Pandra." Tears balled in her chest. Her stomach wrenched. "I fully realize that I've had a dear bill to pay for what I did. I understand that. So tell me what I need to do to pay it. Tell me what I need to do to earn your forgiveness and I'll do it, I swear. Because I can't keep living like this."

Thomal swiped the back of his hand across his bloody lip.

She sat back. "Living in ??ran? has…has done things to me, Thomal. It's changed me. It's not fair to show me all the possibilities in life and then not give me a chance to have them. Family and children, and…" A tear rose to the corner of her eye, but she blinked it back. "I've always known that I'd have nippers one day—it's what I'm bred for—but Raymond would've controlled them. Now there's this whole community, and…I want things. But if I can't have them, ever, then I am hanging on a meat hook as no more than your blood source, even if it's only fecking metaphorical."

Thomal stared down at the floor of the van, his face and neck rigid, his voice sadly absent.

So that's your answer.She swallowed once and shored herself up, puttying enough pieces back into place to say what needed to be said next. "You have to kill me, then."

Thomal's gaze bolted up.

She didn't waver. "Or if you can't, have someone else do the task. My death will free you." No actual tears fell, but on the inside, her heart wept huge, drowning droplets. "And me, as well," she added on a whisper.

Dev's grip tightened on the steering wheel again.

Nyko fiddled his hands together in his lap.

Silence engulfed them all like a malaise.

At last there was the grumble of the elevator moving, then twenty long minutes later, the bicycle chain whisk of the garage doors opening.

Then there was another noise.

As the five of them stepped from the van, they all heard it.

The community's emergency Om R?u breach alarm was blaring.