The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12) - J.R. Ward Page 0,137

her eyes, letting her head fall back. The warmth on her face made her think of Assail.

Being with him had been like touching the sun and not getting incinerated. And her body wanted more—hell, just the passing thought of him was enough to take her back to those moments in that bed, the night so quiet, the gasps so loud.

As her breasts tightened, she felt a welling between her thighs—

“Sola, you are ready,” her grandmother said from behind her.

Getting to her feet, she leaned out over the glass balcony, trying to find her fisherman. She couldn’t. He was gone.

Brr, it was cold out here—

“Sola?” came a gentle prodding.

Strange. Ordinarily, her grandmother’s voice was like the woman’s hands—never soft. In fact, she spoke like she cooked: out front, forthright, no holds barred.

But now the tone was as close to gentle as Sola had ever heard it.

“Sola, you come eat now.”

Sola took one last stab at seeing her fisherman. Then she turned around and faced her grandmother.

“I love you, vovó.”

Her grandmother could only nod as those ancient eyes of hers steamed up. “Come, you’ll catch the dead of a cold.”

“The sun is warm.”

“Not warm enough.” Her grandmother stepped back and motioned. “You must eat.”

As Sola entered the house, she froze.

Without looking, she knew that Assail had come down the stairs and was staring at her.

Shit, she wasn’t sure she could leave him behind.

After having been sequestered in his room for the last couple days, Trez found the world to be a stretch for the senses, like having a strobe light in his face and a pair of speakers up to each ear: Getting onto the Northway to head into downtown Caldwell, he found himself putting his sunglasses on and turning off the radio—

From out of nowhere, some dumb shit did a two-lane sweep and cut him the hell off.

“Watch where you’re going!” he shouted into the windshield, pounding on his horn.

For a split second, he hoped the guy behind the wheel of the Dodge Charger decided to go road rage back at him. He wanted to hit something. Shit, it would probably be good practice for his meeting with s’Ex. Mr. Charger, however, just took his overload of testosterone and his pencil-size dick off at the next exit, jogging in front of a minivan and a pickup truck in the process.

“Asshole.”

With any luck, the bastard would drive off into a ditch with no seat belt on.

About ten minutes later, Trez peeled off from the sixty-mile-an-hour-ers and entered a maze of one-ways. Confronted by all the traffic lights and the stop signs, his brain cramped up and he forgot the way to the condo—

When a horn sounded behind him, he locked his molars and hit the gas. In the end, he was forced to pilot around by tracking the Commodore’s twenty-story-plus height, gradually zeroing in on the high rise and finding the ramp that led down into the parking garage. As he descended, he got his pass out from the visor, swiped it through the reader, and proceeded to one of their two reserved spots.

The elevator ride up took fifty years and then he was stepping off onto the carpet runner. Their condo was down a little and he used its main door, not the service one, letting himself in with his copper key.

As he came into the kitchen, he saw two mugs on the counter, an already open bag of Cape Cod potato chips, and the coffeepot half-full.

He paused over an open GQ. He’d already gone through it. “Nice jacket,” he murmured as he shut the mag.

No reason to will on any lamps. The day was bright and sunny and all the glass let in plenty of light—

The towering black shape that arrived on the terrace was a harbinger of doom if he’d ever seen one.

Striding over, Trez opened the door by hand and stepped outside, closing things up behind him.

s’Ex’s voice from under the executioner’s hood was mildly amused. “Your brother invited me in.”

“I’m not my brother.”

“Yes. We’ve noticed.” As the queen’s hatchet man crossed his arms over his chest, his massive forearms bunched up even under the folds of fabric. “To what do you owe the honor of my presence?”

The fact that it was freezing cold out seemed appropriate. “I don’t want you to fuck with my parents.”

“Then you need to come back. That’s it.” The executioner leaned in. “Don’t tell me you called me all this way in hopes of negotiating. Did you. Surely you are not that stupid.”

Trez