The King (Black Dagger Brotherhood #12) - J.R. Ward Page 0,227

of paper and checked to see if he could read the text.

No blind spot—yet.

Giving up on trying to get anything done, he sat back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared across at the closed door. The distant thumping of the bass made him think he needed to get some earplugs.

What he really wanted to do was get the fuck out of here. And not just this club. Or the one that was going up in that warehouse across town. He wanted out of the whole cocksucking enterprise, from the booze sales to the prostitutes, from the money to the madness.

For shit’s sake, every time he closed his eyes, he saw Selena’s face. Heard her voice as she said she wanted to get dressed. Smelled the scent of her disappointment.

As he thought back over their “relationship,” if you could call it that, he defined things in terms of pullouts. Failed conversations. Half-truths. Hidden secrets.

All his.

And it was weird. His brother had been yakking at him to clean up his act for how long? Telling him he had to get a grip and stop the sexing, warning him that time was getting tighter, hoping and praying that a turnaround would come—even when there had been no hope of that ever occurring. Meanwhile, he’d been balling whores in public places, getting migraines, and riding a huge wave of self-destruction—poppin’ his collar and paying no attention.

In spite of all of iAm’s best efforts, Selena had been the one to make him really see himself.

Seemed disrespectful to his brother to admit that, but there you go.

God … he prayed the queen had a daughter who was chosen. Maybe that way, at least part of this nightmare would be over—

The knock on his door was soft, and he caught a whiff of body spray even before the thing opened.

“Come in,” he muttered.

The working girl who walked in was leggy enough to be a model, but her face wasn’t quite there: nose a little too big, lips a little too small, eyes a little off center. And that was even after all the plastic surgery. Still, from a distance or in the dark, she was a goddamned knockout.

“I heard you want to see me?”

Her voice was up to phone-sex standards, deep and raspy, and her hair, as she pushed it over her shoulder, was naturally thick.

“Yeah.” Good thing she didn’t know him well enough to be aware he was half-dead. “I’ve got a special client who—”

“Is this the guy they’ve been talking about?” Her eyes widened in a rush. “Like, the sex god?”

“Yeah. I want to know if you can go to an apartment tomorrow and meet him.” He and s’Ex had agreed to be on a once-a-week schedule, but when your blackmailer called you up and wanted a date? You went with it. “I’ll introduce you and—”

“Oh, fuck, yeah. The other girls were talking about him—he’s a stallion.”

She started running her hands up and down her body, cupping her breasts and her sex.

“Tomorrow noon.” He gave her his Commodore address. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Thanks, boss.”

As her eyes narrowed, he had a feeling what was coming next. Sure enough, she said, “What can I do to show my gratitude?”

He shook his head. “Nada. Just come on time tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

Staring across at her, part of him wanted to give in. It was so much easier that way—like falling backward into a swimming pool in July—splash, and you weren’t hot anymore. The problem was, in that hypothetical, he didn’t know how to swim. And every single time he let himself go just to get cooled down, he ended up underwater, unable to breathe.

The struggle to get to the surface simply wasn’t worth the momentary relief.

“Thank you, baby girl. But I gotta pass.”

The woman smiled. “You got a female there, boss?”

Trez opened his mouth to say no. “Yeah, I do.”

Ha, he thought. Yeah, right.

After their happy little convo, Selena had not come down to the Brotherhood house again, and he sure as hell hadn’t gone up to the great camp.

He could still remember exactly what she’d looked like as she’d stared at him. Eventually he’d gotten up and left her room—after the silence had stretched waaaaay out. Yeah, sure, he could have pressed her for some kind of closure or something. But the bottom line was, whether or not he had to go back to the s’Hisbe, he’d still contaminated himself.

What he had to offer her or anybody else wasn’t worth the breath to