The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,142

until the features all but liquefied under the beating, bones crushing in, jaw hinging free. With each inhale he drew his arm up; with every exhale he slammed his fist down, his steady pace of respiration driving the impacts.

Zypher had better work fast.

He needed to fuck his way out of this mood as well.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Layla’s hands trembled as she held her phone in both palms. She had already read what had been sent to her, and not just once. In fact, she had been reading the words ever since she had been awoken at dusk to the sound of her cell vibrating on her bedside table.

Do not come to see me again. I shall not be ever at the cottage nor the farmhouse again nor consent to be in your presence. I am uninterested in anything you have to offer.

Xcor must have dictated it into his iPhone. He had never sent her anything via text before, and she had always suspected that he could not read or write.

Of all the ways she had seen their relationship ending for them, of all the ways she could have imagined them parting, it was not like this. Not because she had ended up getting him naked and trying to force him to feed from her.

“…hello?”

She jumped, the phone flying out of her hands and landing on the short-napped carpet. As Qhuinn stepped over to pick the thing up, she panicked and scrambled off the bed to get there first. Or tried to scramble.

With her belly, she couldn’t get far very fast and she caught her breath as his lean hand scooped up the cell phone.

“Are you okay?” he said. “You look pale.”

Don’t look at it. Don’t look at the screen—

“Oh, my God, are you crying?”

“No.” She held out her hand. “I’m not.”

Give me the phone, give me—

Qhuinn came over to her and tilted her face up. “What’s going on?”

As his thumb brushed across her cheek, he put the goddamn fucking cell phone back where it had been, on the bedside. Face down.

“I knocked and no one answered,” he said. “I got worried.”

With a shudder, she closed her eyes, her raw nerves still vibrating at the near-miss. “Just reading a sad story online. Guess I’m more emotional than I thought.”

He sat down next to her. “Lot of shit going on the last few days—”

Before she knew it, she burst into tears and leaned into his big chest.

Circling her with his heavy arms, he held her gently and let her cry it all out—and the fact that he mistakenly assumed the tears were only because she was pregnant and having twins and overly hormonal made her cry even harder.

She cried for the months and months of lying and deception; she cried for all the trips to that meadow; for her sneaking in and out of the house; for using the car Qhuinn had bought her to do it.

And most of all, worst of all, she cried for a sense of loss so powerful it was as if someone had died before her and there had been naught she could do to save them.

Images of Xcor bombarded her, from his attempts to make himself comely and see to it that he had been always clean even fresh from fighting … to the way he looked in that shower, silhouetted as his body climaxed behind the curtain … to the defeat that had hung his head as he had stared into the fire like some vital part of him had been exposed and was bleeding him, weakening him, changing him.

She tried to tell herself it was for the best. No more double life. No more falsity. No more hiding her phone or worrying about whether her whereabouts were discovered.

No more Xcor—

“I’ll call Doc Jane,” Qhuinn said urgently as he went for the house phone.

“What? No, I’m—”

“How bad are your chest pains?”

“What?” she said through the sniffles. “What are you—”

He pointed to her sternum. Looking down, she found that she had grabbed onto the front of her flannel nightgown, the soft fabric bunching up under her tight fist.

It was the origin of the tears, she thought.

They were coming from her heart.

“Honestly,” she whispered. “I’m all right. I just had to get it out—I’m so sorry.”

Qhuinn’s hand hovered over the receiver. And even when he finally retracted his arm, she was very clear that he was not convinced.

“I think I need to eat something,” she said.

It was the farthest thing from the truth,