As Xhex waited outside of the weight room, she regarded her emotions with dispassionate interest. It was, she supposed, like staring at a stranger's face and taking note of the imperfections and the coloring and the features for no other reason than that they had presented themselves for observation.

Her urge for revenge had been eclipsed by an honest concern for John.

Surprise, surprise.

Then again, she'd never imagined seeing that kind of fury up close and personal, especially from the likes of him. It was as if he had an inner beast that had roared free from some interior cage.

Man, the bonded male was not something you fucked around with.

And she wasn't kidding herself. That was the reason he'd reacted the way he had--and was also the cause of those dark spices she'd scented around him since she'd gotten out of Lash's prison: Sometime during the weeks of her brutal holiday, John's attraction and respect for her had jelled into the irrevocable.

Shit. What a mess.

As the sound of the treadmill got cut off abruptly, she was willing to bet Blaylock had pulled the cord out of the wall, and good for him if he had. She'd tried to get John to stop pulling a death-by-Nike, but when reasoning with him had gotten her absolutely nowhere, she'd taken up sentry duty out here.

No way she could watch him run himself into the ground. Listening to the punishment was bad enough.

Down the hall, the glass door to the office swung open and the Brother Tohrment appeared. Given the glow that emanated from behind him, Lassiter had come into the training center as well, but the fallen angel hung back.

"How is John?" As the Brother he walked over, his concern was in his hard face and his tired eyes, and also in his grid, which was lit up in the regret sectors.

Made sense on a lot of levels.

Xhex glanced at the weight room door. "Appears to have rethought a career change to marathoner. Either that or he just killed another treadmill."

Tohr's towering height forced her to tilt her head up, and it was a surprise to see what was behind his blue eyes: There was knowledge in his stare, deep knowledge that made her own emotional circuits fire with suspicion. In her experience, strangers who looked at you like that were dangerous.

"How are you?" he asked softly.

It was strange; she hadn't had a lot of contact with the Brother, but whenever their paths had crossed, he'd always been particularly... well, kind. Which was why she always avoided him. She dealt much better with toughness than she did with anything tender.

Frankly he made her jumpy.

As she stayed quiet, his face tightened as if she'd disappointed him but he didn't blame her for the shortfall. "Okay," he said. "I won't pry."

Jesus, she was a bitch. "No, it's all right. You just really don't want me to answer that right now."

"Fair enough." His eyes narrowed on the weight room door and she got the distinct impression he was trapped outside of it as much as she was, shut down by the male who was suffering on the other side. "So you called up to the kitchen to get me?"

She took out the key John had used to let them into the guy's former house. "Just wanted to give this back to you and tell you there was a problem."

The Brother's emotional grid went black and vacant, everything lights-out. "What kind of problem?"

"One of your sliding glass doors is broken. It's going to need a couple of sheets of plywood to cover it up. We were able to reengage the security alarm so the motion detectors inside are on, but you've got a hell of a draft. I'll be happy to fix it today."

Assuming John either finished off the rest of the exercise machines, ran out of running shoes, or fell over in a dead heap.

"Which..." Tohr cleared his throat. "Which door?"

"The one in John Matthew's room."

The Brother frowned. "Was it broken when you got there?"

"No... it just spontaneously busted."

"Glass doesn't do that without a good reason."

And hadn't she given John Matthew one. "True enough."

Tohr stared at her and she looked right back at him and the silence grew thick as mud. The thing was, though, as nice a guy and as good a soldier as the Brother was, she had nothing to share with him.

"Who do I talk to about getting some plywood," she prompted.

"Don't worry about it. And thanks for letting me know."

As the Brother turned and walked back into the office, she felt like hell--which she supposed was yet another connection she had with John Matthew. Except instead of setting a land/speed record, she just wanted to take a knife and cut her inner forearms to release the pressure.

God, she was such a crybaby emo sometimes, she truly was. But those cilices of hers not only kept her symphath side in check, they helped her dim down the things she didn't want to feel.

Which was abooooooout ninety-nine percent of emotion, thank you very much.

Ten minutes later, Blaylock ducked his head out of the door. His eyes were locked on the floor and his emotions were in an upheaval, which made sense. No one liked to see a buddy self-destruct, and having to conversate with the person who'd sent the poor bastard into a free fall wasn't exactly a happy-happy.

"Listen, John's gone into the locker room to take a shower. I got him to quit the Running Man impression, but he's... He needs a little more time, I think."

"Okay. I'll keep waiting for him here in the hall."

Blaylock nodded and then there was this awkward pause. "I'm going to go work out now."

After the door eased shut, she picked her jacket and her weapons up and wandered down toward the locker room. The office was empty, which meant Tohr had gone along his merry way, no doubt to set up some Tim the Tool Man Taylor time with a doggen.

And the resonant quiet told her there was no one in any of the classrooms, gym, or clinic.

Sliding down the wall, she let her ass bottom out on the floor and hung her arms off her knees. Letting her head fall back, she closed her eyes.

God, she was exhausted....

"John's still in there?"

Xhex snapped awake, her gun pointed right up at Blaylock's chest. As the guy leaped back, she immediately flipped on the safety and lowered the muzzle.

"Sorry, old habits die hard."

"Ah, yeah." The guy motioned his white towel toward the locker room. "Is John still in there? It's been over an hour."

She flipped her wrist up and looked at the watch she'd snagged.

"Christ."

Xhex got to her feet and cracked the door. The sound of the shower running wasn't much of a relief. "Is there any other way out?"

"Just through the weight room--which opens only into this hall."

"Okay, I'm going to go talk to him," she said, praying it was the right thing to do.

"Good. I'll finish my workout. Call me if you need me."

She pushed through the door, and inside, the place was standard-issue, all banks of beige metal lockers separated by wooden benches. Following the sound of falling water to the right, she passed by a bay of urinals, stalls, and sinks that seemed lonely without a bunch of sweaty, naked, towel- snapping males putting them to use.

She found John in an open area with dozens of showerheads and tile on every square inch of the floors, walls, and ceiling. He was in his T-shirt and running shorts and was sitting against the wall, his arms hanging off his knees, his head down, the water rushing over his huge shoulders and torso.

Her first thought was that she had been outside in exactly the same position.

Her second was that she was surprised he could stand being so still. His emotional grid was not the only thing lit up; that shadow behind it was likewise afire with anguish. It was as if the two parts of him were both in a kind of mourning no doubt because he'd suffered or been witness to too many cruel losses in this life... and perhaps another. And where all that put him emotionally terrified her. The dense black void created in him was so powerful, it warped the superstructure of his psyche... taking him where she had been in that fucking OR.

Taking him to the pinpoint of madness.

Stepping over the tiled lip in the floor, her skin goose bumped at the chill in the air that came from his feelings... and the reality that she'd done it again. This was Murhder, only worse.

Jesus Christ, she was a fucking black widow when it came to males of worth.

"John?"

He didn't look up, although she wasn't sure whether he was even aware she was in front of him. He was back in the past, sucked in and held in the vise of memory....

Frowning, she found her eyes following the path of the water that rivered its way out from under him and traveled across the tilted tile plane... to the drain.

The drain.

Something with that drain. Something to do with... Lash?

Within the embrace of the solitude and against the backdrop of the quiet sound of the water's spray, she unleashed her bad side for a good purpose: In a great rush, her symphath instincts dove into John, penetrating through his physical territory and going deep into his mind and his recollections.

As he lifted his head and looked up at her in shock, everything went red and two-dimensional, the tile becoming a blush pink, John's dark, damp hair changing to the color of blood, the water twinkling like rose champagne.

The images she got were drawn with a quill of terror and shame: a dark stairway in an apartment building not unlike the one he'd taken her to; him a small pretrans being forced by a fetid human male...

Oh. God.

No.

Xhex's knees gave out and she wobbled--then just let herself go to the ground, landing on the slick tile so hard her bones rattled and her teeth clapped together.

No... not John, she thought. Not when he was defenseless and innocent and so very alone. Not when he was lost in the human world, scrounging to survive.

Not him. Not like that.

With her symphath side out and her eyes undoubtedly glowing red, they sat there staring at each other. He knew she'd read him and he hated her knowledge with such a fury she wisely kept any sorrow or commiseration to herself. He didn't appear to resent that she'd invaded him, though. It was more like he wished like fuck he didn't have that to share with anybody.

"What does Lash have to do with it," she said roughly. "Because he's all over your mind."

John's eyes shifted to the drain in the center and she got the impression he was seeing blood pooling around the stainless-steel cap. Lash's.

Xhex narrowed her eyes, the backstory becoming pretty damned guess-able: Lash had found out about John's secret. Somehow. And she didn't need her symphath side to tell her what the fucker would have done with information like that.

A baseball announcer would seek less of an audience.

As John's stare came back to her, she felt a shattering communion with him. No barriers, no worries about being vulnerable. Even though they were both fully clothed, each was naked before the other.

She knew damn well she was never going to find this with any other male. Or any other person. He knew without words all she had been through and everything that those kind of experiences spawned when they were triggered. And she knew the same for him.

And maybe that shadow on his emotional grid was a kind of bifurcation of his psyche caused by the trauma he'd been through. Maybe his mind and his soul had gotten together and agreed to cut the past out and put it toward the back of his mental and emotional attic. Maybe that was why these two parts of him were so vividly animated.

Made sense. And so did the vengeance he was feeling. After all, Lash had been intimately involved in both sets of wrongs, his and hers.

Information like John's in the wrong hands? Almost as bad as the horror that had actually happened because you relived that shit every time someone else learned of the story. Which was why she never talked about her time up in the colony with her father, or that shit in the human medical clinic... or... yeah...

John raised his forefinger and tapped beside his eye.

"Mine are red?" she murmured. When he nodded, she rubbed her face. "Sorry. I'm probably going to need to get another pair of cilices."

As he shut the water off, she dropped her hands. "Who else knows. About you."

John frowned. Then mouthed, Blay, Qhuinn. Zsadist. Havers. A therapist. When he shook his head, she took that to mean it was the end of the list.

"I'm not going to say anything to anyone."

Her eyes went over his huge body from those shoulders to his powerful biceps and his tremendous thighs--and she found herself wishing he'd been this size back in that grungy stairwell. At least he wasn't as he'd been when he'd been hurt anymore--although that was true only on the outside. Inside, he was all the ages he'd ever lived through, the infant who'd been abandoned, the child who'd been unwanted, the pretrans who'd been out in the world on his own... and now the grown male.

Who was an ass-kicker in the field and a loyal friend and, going by what he'd done to that lesser in the brownstone and what he undoubtedly wanted to do to Lash, a very nasty enemy.

And didn't this add up to a problem: As far as she was concerned, the son of the Omega was hers to murder.

Not that they needed to cover that right now.

As the dampness from the tile sneaked into the seat of her scrubs, and water dripped off of John, she was surprised by what she wanted to do.

On a lot of levels, it didn't make sense and it certainly wasn't a hot idea. But logic wasn't a big player in this moment between them.

Xhex shifted forward and put her palms on the slick shower floor. Moving slowly, going hand, knee, hand, knee, she went toward him.

She knew when he caught her scent.

Because under the sopping wet running shorts his cock twitched and hardened.

When she was face-to-face with him, she locked her eyes on his mouth. "Our minds are already together. I want the flesh to follow."

With that, she leaned in and tilted her head. Just before she kissed him, she paused, but not because she was worried he was going to turn away--she knew by the dark bonding spice he was throwing out that John was not interested in pulling back.

"No, you've got it all wrong, John." Reading his emotions, she shook her head. "You're not half the male you could be because of what was done to you. You're twice what anyone else is because you survived."

You know, life put you in places you never expected.

Under no circumstances, not even in the worst nightmares his subconscious had burped up, had John ever thought he would be able to handle Xhex knowing about how he'd been hurt when he was young.

The thing was, no matter how big or strong his body got, he'd never shed the reality of how weak he'd once been. And the threat of those he respected finding out brought that weakness back not just once, but perpetually.

Yet here they were with his skeleton not just out of the closet, but draped in strobe lights.

And as for his two-hour shower? He was still dying inside that she'd been hurt like that... It was too painful to think about, too horrible not to dwell on. Then add in his need as a bonded male to protect her and keep her safe? And the fact that he knew exactly how awful it was to be victimized in that way?

If he'd only found her sooner... if he'd just worked harder...

Yeah, but she'd freed herself. Hadn't she. He hadn't been the one to spring her--for fuck's sake, he'd stood in the goddamn room she'd been raped in with her and not even known she was there.

It was almost too much to live with, all the layers and the intersections making his head hum to the point where he felt like his brain had turned into a helicopter that was on the verge of levitating up, up, and away, never to return again.

The only thing keeping him grounded was the prospect of killing Lash.

As long as he knew the fucker was out there breathing in the world, John had a focus that kept the roof on his house.

Killing Lash was his link to sanity and purpose, the galvanizing in his steel.

One more intrinsic weakness, though, like not avenging his female, and he was game-over.

"John," she said, clearly in an effort to pull him out of his tailspin.

Focusing on her, he stared into her red, glowing eyes and was reminded that she was a symphath. Which meant she could burrow into him and trigger all of his inner trapdoors, springing his demons just to watch them dance. Except she hadn't done that, had she--she'd gotten into him, yes, but only to understand where he was at. And upon seeing into his dark parts, she wasn't yukking it up and pointing fingers at him, or recoiling in disgust.

Instead, she'd prowled over to him like a she-cat, looking like she wanted to kiss him.

His eyes dropped down to her lips.

What do you know, he could stand some of that kind of connection. Words weren't enough to assuage the self- loathing he felt, but her hands on his skin, her mouth on his, her body up against his own... that, not talking, was what he needed.

"That's right," she said, her eyes burning, and not just from the symphath in her. "You and I need this."

John reached up and put his cold, wet hands on her face. Then he looked around. Now might be the time, but here was not the place.

He was not making love to her on the hard tile.

Come with me, he mouthed, standing up and pulling her to his side.

His hard-on tented the front of his running shorts as they left the locker room, the urge to mate a roar in his blood that was nonetheless held in check by the need to do right by her and give her something gentle in place of the violence she'd suffered.

Instead of heading for the tunnel back to the main house, he took them to the right. There was no way he was going up to his room with her under his arm and him sporting an erection the size of an I-beam. Besides, he was soaking wet.

Way too much to explain to the perma-peanut gallery the mansion offered.

Next to the locker room, but not connected to it, was a stretching facility with massage tables and a whirlpool bath in the corner. Place also had a shitload of blue mats that hadn't been used since they'd been laid down--the Brothers barely had time to spar, much less play ballerina with their precious hamstrings and glutes.

John buttressed the door closed with a plastic chair and turned to face Xhex. She was walking around, her lithe body and smooth strides better than an entire strip show, as far as he was concerned.

Reaching to the side, he killed the lights.

The red-and-white Exit sign over the door created a pool of dim light that his body split in half, his shadow a tall, dark divide that stretched all the way across the blue flooring to Xhex's feet.

"God, I want you," she said.

She wasn't going to have to say that twice. Kicking off his Nikes, he pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall to the mats in a flap. Then he linked his thumbs in the waistband of his running shorts and drew them down his thighs, his cock popping free and standing straight out of him. The fact that it pointed to her like a divining rod was no big surprise--everything from his brain to his blood to his beating heart was focused on the female who stood no more than ten feet away.

But he wasn't going to just jump on her and pound away. Nope. Not even if it gave him balls the color of a Smurf--

His thoughts stopped being logical as her hands went to the bottom hem of her sweatshirt and, in an elegant shift, she pulled it up her torso and over her head. Underneath, she had on nothing except for her beautiful, smooth skin and her tight, high breasts.

As her scent roared across the way and he began to pant, those nimble fingers of hers went to the tie on the scrubs and loosened it, the thin green cotton falling in a rush to her ankles.

Oh...sweet God, she was gloriously bared to him, and the impressive lines of her body were astonishing: Although they'd had sex two times, both had been fast and hot, so he'd never had the chance to look at her properly--

John blinked hard.

For a moment, all he could see were the bruises that had been on her when he'd found her, especially the ones on the insides of her thighs. To know now that she hadn't gotten them from just hand-to-hand fighting...

"Don't go there, John," she said hoarsely. "I'm not and you shouldn't. Just... don't go there. He's already taken too much from both of us."

His throat tightened around a roar of vengeance, which he managed to stifle only because he knew she was right. With sheer force of will, he decided that that door behind him, the one he'd jammed shut with the chair, was going to keep out not just passersby of the living variety, but the ghosts of wrongs as well.

There would be time on the other side of this private commune for evening the score.

You are so beautiful, he mouthed.

But of course she couldn't see his lips.

Guess he was going to have to show her.

John took a step forward and another and another. And it wasn't just him going toward her. She met him in the middle, halfway between her point A and his point B, her form encased in the shadow thrown by his body and yet nevertheless the only thing he saw.

As they came together, his chest was pumping and so was his heart. I love you, he mouthed in the dark slice he'd cut out of the light.

They each reached for the other at the same moment: He went for her face. She put her hands on his ribs. Their mouths finished the journey in the still, electrified air, their lips latching on, soft to soft, warm to warm. Drawing her against his bare chest, John wrapped his thick arms around her shoulders and held her tight as he deepened the kiss--and she was right there with him, sliding her palms around his sides and slipping them down to the small of his back.

His cock folded up between them, the friction of his stomach and hers sending shafts of heat licking up and down his spine. But he wasn't in a hurry. With lazy pushes, his hips moved in and back, stroking his arousal against her as he shifted his hands onto her arms and then to her waist.

Thrusting deep with his tongue, he dragged one hand up to the short hair at the base of her neck and let the other fall to the back of her thigh. Her leg came up on his gentle pull, the sleek muscles flexing--

With a lithe surge, she jumped the gun, leaping onto him and wrapping the remaining leg that had borne her weight around his hips. As his cock hit something hot and wet, he groaned and took them down to the floor, holding her to him as he sank them to the mats and stretched her out underneath him.

John broke the seal of their kiss and pulled back enough so he could run his tongue up the side of her throat. Latching on, he sucked on the cords of her neck and followed them downward until his fangs, which throbbed to the beat of his erection, traced over the thrust of her collarbone. As he went south, her fingers were deep in his hair and holding him down to her skin, moving him toward her breasts.

Pulling back, he towered over her and traced with his eyes the way her body was set off by the glowing light of the Exit sign. Her nipples were tight and her ribs were pumping hard and her six-pack flexed as she rolled her hips. Between her thighs, her smooth sex had him opening his mouth in a soundless hiss--

Without warning, she reached up and put her hand on his cock.

The contact had him rearing back to the point where he had to throw his arms out and catch himself on his palms.

"Goddamn, you're beautiful," she said on a growl.

Her voice snapped him into action and he shifted forward, popping his cock free of her palm and positioning himself so he was kneeling between her thighs. Dropping his head, he covered one of her nipples with his mouth and flicked at it with his tongue.

The moan that rippled out of her nearly had him coming all over her sex and he had to freeze his body to regain control. When the tingling tide retreated enough, he resumed sucking at her... and let his palms drift slowly down her ribs and her waist and her hips.

Typical of her, she was the one who put him to her sex.

Xhex covered one of his hands with her own and got him right where they both wanted him to be.

Hot. Silky. Slick.

The orgasm at the head of his erection broke free the instant his fingers slipped through and came flush against the entry he was dying to breach: There was absolutely no holding the release back and she laughed in a throaty way as he jetted his marking on her legs.

"You like the way I feel," she murmured.

He looked into her eyes and instead of nodding, brought the hand that she had drawn down onto herself up to his mouth. As he extended his tongue and slid what was covered with her between his lips, she did some shuddering of her own, her body jacking up off the mats, her breasts surging, her thighs falling further open.

From beneath lowered lids, he kept his stare locked on hers as he planted his palms on either side of her hips and bent down to her sex.

Might have been smoother to do that butterfly-kisses bullshit. Might have shown more finesse to tease her with his tongue and his fingertips.

Fuck that.

With a raw, whipping need, he latched onto her core with his mouth, sucking her into him, taking her deep, swallowing her up. His orgasm had left some of him on her and he tasted that along with her honey--and the bonded male in him relished the combination.

Which was lucky for him. By the time he was through with this session, his dark spice was going to be all over her, inside and out.

As he lapped and flicked and penetrated, he dimly felt one of her legs get thrown over his shoulder and then she was working herself against his chin and lips and mouth, adding to the magic, driving him to drive her harder.

When she orgasmed, she said his name. Twice.

And didn't it make him glad that even though he had no voice, his ears worked just fine.