eyes, his head falling back, his heavy braid swinging as he held on to the doorjamb and the wall on the other side to keep his balance.
It was getting time for another orgasm. Ad knew his buddy's body as well as he knew his own, so he stopped the furious in-and-out and gripped Eddie's erection, pumping it off as the female waited for the payload like a porn star, mouth open, puffy lips licked in anticipation.
Sometime between the stroking and when the female's face got glossed, Ad felt Devina leave the club. And it wasn't a mirage. Her physical presence was not fakeable.
But she lingered, anyway.
As Eddie panted in recovery, the female on her knees ran her fingers over her cheeks and brought them into her mouth. Sucking them in, she dropped her lids and stared up at Adrian, all wouldja-do-me.
Staring down at her, he tried to draw in a breath, but there was a weight on his chest that refused to be budged, and for some reason, the only thing he could see was the tail end of all that fake black hair of hers pooling on the dirty bathroom tile.
Her frantic, sex-starved eyes belied her fragility: There was a lost soul behind her desperate stare, an emptiness that reminded him too much of himself.
Up above her, there was a paper towel dispenser stuck to the wall, its offering like a tongue lolling out of its dull silver head.
Taking her chin in his palm, he held her face with care and snapped a white towel free. With careful strokes, he cleaned off her delicate, pale skin.
"Not tonight," he said hoarsely. "Not tonight, baby girl."
She blinked first in confusion, and then in sadness. But that was what happened when you were forced to stop and see yourself clearly: Not all mirrors were made of glass, and you didn't always need your reflection to take a good, hard look at yourself. The truth was something you wore sure as the suit of flesh that bound and gagged your soul until you were set free, and you couldn't ignore it forever.
Leaning forward, he snagged her bustier from the sink's counter, and like a child she held her arms up so that he could bind her naked breasts.
In attending to her, he felt as though he were taking care of the most broken part of himself ... and all the while, Eddie played witness with his red eyes.
"Go on, now," Adrian said when he'd done up the last of the fasteners. "Go home ... wherever that is."
She left on unsteady feet, but not because of the sex or the drinking, and as the door shut, Adrian settled back on the loo, put his hands on his thighs, and stared at the floor.
I'm inside you, Adrian. I'm right in there, wrapped around your heart.
It was a strange night to realize his disease, but then, as was probably typical, when you lived with something a long time, you got used to the symptoms that told you what you had was fatal.
He had the cancer. In him. It had started growing long ago, this tumor no one could see. He'd let Devina in that first time he'd bartered something of himself for something he needed in the war, and she'd been taking over ever since then, inch by inch.
He had nothing to pull him out of the oblivion that was coming for him, not even Eddie.
And damn them all, she was doing exactly the same thing with Jim.
Looking up at his best friend, he heard himself say, "I'm dying, Eddie."
Eddie's tan skin went gray, but he said nothing. Hell, no doubt the only surprise to the guy was that Ad actually brought it up.
"I'm not going to live to see the end of this war." Ad cleared his throat. "I'm just ... not going to make it."
Chapter 19
As Reilly pulled her unmarked into the driveway of a nice-looking clapboard colonial, Veck ran his hand across his jaw and wished he'd had time to hit a razor before they'd left HQ. Then again, a five-o'clock shadow was the least of his problems. He was well aware he had bags under his eyes and was sporting a lot of lines that he hadn't remembered from even a week before.
He glanced over at his partner. "Thank you for this."
She smiled in such an open and honest way that he was momentarily immobilized: Reilly was definitely not one of those women who needed drugstore crap on her face to get