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Lover Enshrined JR Ward 63420K 2023-08-31

Don at zerosuht, and his chief of security wasin front of his desk with her ar shit on a hot night

He rubbed his eyes, then glared back at her "And why are you telling me to stay in here?"

"Because you&039;re toxic and the staff are scared of you"

Which proved they had half a brain, he thought

"What happened last night?" she asked softly

"Did I tell you I bought that lot four blocks down?"

"Yes Yesterday What happened with the Princess"

"This town needs a Goth club I think I&039;ll call it the Iron Mask" He leaned in toward the glowing screen of his laptop "Cash flow here is h for me to cover a construction loan Or I could just cut a check, although that would get us audited again Dirtycoht oneto kick you the fuck out of here"

"Well, aren&039;t we feeling precious"

His upper lip twitched as his fangs shot out into his mouth "Don&039;t push me, Xhex I&039;m so not in the mood"

"Look, you can keep your yap shut, that&039;s fine, but don&039;t take your head fuck out on the staff I&039; up the interpersonal debris¡ª Why are you rubbing your eyes again?"

Wincing, he gave his watch a look-see In the midst of his vision&039;s flat plane of red, he realized that it had been only three hours since his last hit of dopamine

"Do you need another dose already?" Xhex asked

He didn&039;t bother nodding, just opened his drawer and took out a glass vial and a syringe Peeling his suit jacket off, he rolled up his sleeve, tourniqueted his upper arh the red seal on the drug&039;s container

He couldn&039;t quite e to hit the bull&039;s-eye With no depth perception, he was fishing through e to match the point of the needle with the top of the little bottle and getting a whole lot of skipping misses

Symphaths saw only shades of red, and in two di didn&039;t work, either because he was stressed or had n of trouble

"Here, let h him, he found he couldn&039;t speak, so he just shook his head at her and kept at it with the syringe In the meantime, his body started to wake up fro into his arles

"Okay, enough with your ego" Xhex came around the desk in all-purpose et his shirtsleeve down in time Didn&039;t make it

"Jesus Christ," she hissed

He shuffled his forearm away from her, but it was too late Way too late

"Lether hand on his shoulder "Just ease up, boss and let entle hands, she took the syringe and vial, then extended his wretched black-and-blue forear up so much lately that even with how fast he healed, his veins were decimated, all swollen and full of holes, pitted like roads too heavily traveled

"We&039;re going to use your other ared the whole needle-in-the-lid thing with no proble out what should have been his norers so she&039;d double it

"That&039;s way too e, but she moved it out of reach

He slammed his fist into the desk, and his eyes shot to hers, all stark demand

With a couple of choice words, she drewout of the vial, and he watched as she hunted around his drawer for an alcohol towelette, tore the thing open, and scrubbed a patch on the crook of his elbow After she shot him up, she snapped free the tourney, and put his hit kit back in the desk

Easing into his chair, he shut his eyes The red persisted even with his lids down

"How long&039;s this been going on?" she asked quietly "The double dosing? The shooting up without disinfecting the injection site? Howthis every day?"

He just shook his head

Mo the Bentley around Right as he was getting ready to no-fucking-way her, she took one of his sable dusters out of the closet

"We&039;re going to Havers&039;s," she said "And if you argue with oing to carry you out of this office like a rug roll"

Rehv glared at her "You are not the boss around here"

"True But do you think if I tell your boys how infected your ar you? If you were nice, you ht end up in the backseat instead of the trunk If you were a prick, you&039;d be the hood ornament"

"Fuck you"

"We tried that, remember? And neither of us liked it"

Shit, there was soht now

"Be s this one, so why bother with the argue? Sooner you go, sooner you&039;ll be back" They glowered at each other until she said, "Fine, leave out the double-dipping Just let Havers look at your arm One word: sepsis"

As if the doc wouldn&039;t figure out as doing when he saw the thing?

Rehv palmed his cane and slowly pushed up off his chair "I&039;ing it so that when the dopaet a chill"

Xhex offered hi at him because she kneas too much of a pride-filled dickhead to lean on her otherwise And he needed to lean on her He eak as shit

"I hate when you&039;re right," he said

"Which explains why you&039;re usually so short-teether they walked slowly out of the office and into the alley

The Bentley was there waiting, with Trez behind the wheel The Moor asked no questions and made no comments, as was his way

And, of course, all the crushing quiet alwaysan ass

Rehv ignored the fact that Xhex settled him into the backseat and slid in next to hiet carsick or some shit

The Bentley took off with the s apropos, because he felt as if he were on one With his sy the seesaeen his bad side and his halfway decent one, and the shifts inhiht to be concerned about the throwing-up thing

They hung a left on Trade, hooked up with Tenth Avenue, and shot doard the river, where they got on the highway Four exits up, they turned off and glided through a high-rent district, where big houses on parklike lots were set back fro to be knelt before

With his red, two-dimensional vision Rehv didn&039;t see much with his eyes With his symphath side, he knew too much He could sense the humans in the mansions, knew the inhabitants by the ey their feelings released Whereas his sight was flat as a TV screen, his sense of the people was in three dirid patterns, their interplay of joy and sadness, guilt and lust, anger and hurt creating structures that to hih his stare couldn&039;t penetrate the retaining walls and well-planted trees, couldn&039;t breach the stone-and-mortar of the manses, his evil nature saw the men and women inside as clearly as if they stood before him naked, and his instincts ca in those e the loose parts in the people&039;s boxes and wanting to rattle them even more He was the canny cat to their meek mouse, the clawed stalker anted to toy with them until their little heads bled with their dirty secrets and their dark lies and their shameful worries

His evil side hated them with calm detachment To his symphath nature, the ere not to inherit the earth They were to eat it until they choked to death And then you were to grind their carcasses in the et to your next victim

"I hate the voices in low of the backseat, her hard, smart face was curiously beautiful to him, probably because she was the only one who truly understood the deht, and that connection made her lovely

"Better to despise that part of you," she said "The hate keeps you safe"

"Fighting it&039;s a bore"

"I know But would you have it any other way?"

"Sometimes, I&039;m not so sure"

Ten ates of Havers&039;s property, and by then the nu, and his core temperature had dropped As the Bentley went around back and stopped at the clinic&039;s entrance, the sable duster was a godsend, and he huddled into it for warot out of the car, he noted that the red vision receded as well, the world&039;s full palette of colors returning to his sight, his depth perception putting objects in the spatial orientation he was used to

"I&039; out here," Xhex said from the backseat

She never went into the clinic But then, considering what had been done to her, he could understand why

He pal"

"You&039;ll be as long as it takes And Trez and I&039;ll be waiting"

Phury returned froht to ZeroSum He made his buy froe, and then he went back ho to have a blunt to take the edge off before he knocked on Cormia&039;s door and told her she was free to return to the Sanctuary And when he talked to her, he was going to give her his vow that he would never call on her as Primale, and tell her that he would protect her fro toher out on this side