He was just dropping his hand as Wellsie stuck her head in the door. "I need to go to-ah... I'm sorry. I didn't know that you two..."
John tried to marshal a nothing-special smile and then noticed that Wellsie's eyes were fixated on his chest. He looked down. His shirt was wide-open.
Scrambling to button the damn thing up just made the situation worse, but he couldn't help himself.
"I'd better go," Sarelle said easily. "My mahmen wanted me home early. John, I'll be on the computer later, okay? We'll figure out what movie to go see or whatever. Night, Wellsie."
As Sarelle walked down toward the living room, he couldn't resist glancing around Wellsie. He watched as Sarelle took her coat out of the hall closet, put it on, and got her keys from her pocket. Moments later the muted sound of the front door closing drifted down the hall.
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There was a long silence. Then Wellsie laughed and pushed back some of her red hair.
"I, ah, I have no idea how to handle this," she said. "Except to say that I like her a lot and she has good taste in males."
John rubbed his face, aware that he was the color of a tomato.
I'm going to go for a walk, he signed.
"Well, Tohr just called. He was going to swing by the house and pick you up. Thought you might want to hang with him at the training center, since he's got some admin work to do. Anyway, it's your choice to stay or not.
And I'm off to a Princeps Council meeting."
He nodded as Wellsie started to turn away.
"Ah, John?" She paused and looked over her shoulder. "Your shirt's... um, it's buttoned up kind of off-kilter."
He glanced down. And started to laugh. Even though he made no sound he just had to let his joy out, and Wellsie smiled, obviously happy for him. As he did the buttons up the right way, he had never loved the woman more.
Bella spent the hours after she returned to the mansion sitting up in Zsadist's bed with her diary in her lap. She didn't do anything with the journal at first, too caught up in what had happened at her house.
Jesus... She couldn't say she was surprised that Zsadist was every bit the menace she'd thought he was. And he'd saved her, hadn't he? If that lesser he'd killed had gotten its hands on her, she would have ended up back in a hole in the ground.
The trouble was, she couldn't decide whether what he'd done was evidence of his strength or his brutality.
As she decided it was probably both, she worried about whether he was okay. He'd been hurt and yet he was still out there, probably trying to find more slayers. God... What if he-What if. What if... She was going to drive herself crazy if she kept this up.
Desperate for something else to focus on, she leafed through what she'd written in her journal over the past year. Zsadist's name had played a prominent role in the entries right before she'd been abducted. She'd been so obsessed by him, and couldn't say that had changed. Matter of fact, her feelings were so strong for him now, even after what he'd done tonight, that she wondered if she didn't...
Love him. Oh... man.
Suddenly she couldn't be alone, not with that realization shooting around her head. She brushed her teeth and her hair and made a go for the first floor, hoping she'd run into someone. Except halfway down the stairs, she heard voices from the dining room and came to a halt. The last meal of the night was in progress, but the idea of joining all the Brothers and Mary and Beth seemed overwhelming. Besides, wouldn't Zsadist be there? And how could she face him without giving herself away? No way that male was going to deal well with her loving him. No way.
Ah, hell. She was going to have to see him sooner or later. And hiding wasn't her thing.
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But when she got to the bottom of the staircase and stepped off onto the foyer's mosaic floor, she realized she'd forgotten to put any shoes on. How could she go into the king and queen's dining room with bare feet?
She looked back up at the second floor and became utterly exhausted. Too tired to go up and come down again, too embarrassed to go forward, she just listened to the sounds