As Adirondack Great Camps went, Rehv's had everything: huge rustic main house sided in cedar shingles and covered with porches. A number of outer buildings, including guest cottages. Lake view. Lotta bedrooms.
After Trez and iAm took form in the side yard, they walked around through the snow to the back entrance into the kitchen. Even in winter, the place gave off a cozy vibe, with all that buttery glow coming through the diamond-paned glass. But not everything was Sugar Plum Fairy time: The wealthy Victorians who had built these compounds as a way to escape the heat and industrialization of the cities during the summers had most certainly not equipped them with laser-sighted motion detectors, state-of-the-art contacts on all windows and doors, and not one, but several, different motherboards controlling a fully integrated, multi-interface alarm system.
Boo-yah.
Trez's thumbprint on the discreetly mounted pad to the left of the door opened the way into the house's hub - an industrial-size kitchen that was kitted out with stainless-steel appliances on a level with Sal's.
Something was baking in the Viking oven. Bread, it smelled like.
"I'm hungry," Trez remarked as he shut the door. The locking mechanism bolted itself, but he checked anyway out of habit.
Off in the distance, someone was vacuuming - probably a Chosen. Ever since Phury had taken over as Primale, and essentially freed that cloistered group of females from the Far Side, Rehv had been letting them stay at the camp. Made sense. Lot of privacy, especially off-season, plus the remoteness from the city provided a soft transition from, if Trez understood things correctly, the placid sameness of the Sanctuary to the frenetic, sometimes traumatic nature of life on Earth.
It had been a long time since he'd been in the house - not since the Chosen had taken up res, as a matter of fact. Then again, when Rehv had blown up ZeroSum, and ended his role as a drug kingpin, that debt between them had lost some of its repayment traction.
Besides, now that the guy didn't have to make deliveries of rubies and sex to the princess anymore, there hadn't been much reason to come north.
Apparently that had changed, however.
"Yo, Rehv, where you at?" Trez hollered, his voice booming.
As much as his stomach protested, he and his brother walked out into the main hall. Victorian ephemera was everywhere, from the garnet-colored Orientals on the floor, to the tapestry-covered benches, to the taxidermied bison, deer, moose, and bobcat heads mounted around the rough stone fireplace.
"Rehv!" he called out again.
Man, that racoon lamp had always given him the creeps. So did the stuffed owl with the sunglasses.
"He'll be right down."
Trez turned around at the female voice.
And in that one moment, had the course of his life change forever.
The staircase down from the second floor was a straight shot, the shallow steps and their simple railing emerging from above without architectural artifice.
The female in the white robe standing at their base turned them into a stairway from heaven. She was tall and slender, but her curves were in all the right places, her loose dress unable to conceal her high, large breasts or the graceful swell of her hips. Her skin was smooth and the color of cafe au lait, her hair dark and coiled up high on her head. Eyes were pale and heavily fringed.
Lips were full and rosy.
He wanted to kiss them.
Especially as they moved, enunciating whatever she was saying with intoxicating precision -
iAm's sharp elbow in his rib cage made him jump. "Ow! What the fuck - frick, I mean. Shit - I mean, crap."
Way to be calm, cool, and collected, asshole.
"She asked if we wanted any food," iAm muttered. "I said, no, not for me. Now it's your turn."
Oh, he wanted to eat something, all right. He wanted to fall to his knees at her feet and get under that -
Trez closed his eyes and felt like a total flipping bastard. "Nah, I'm good."
"I thought you said you were hungry."
Trez popped his lids and glared at his brother. Was the guy trying to make him look like an idiot?
The knowing light in those black eyes suggested, yes, iAm was.
"No. I'm fine," he ground out. Subtext: Don't push it, douche.
"I was just going to check on my bread."
Trez's eyes shut again, the Chosen's voice lilting in his ears, the sound of it both raising his blood pressure and calming him down at the same time.
"You know," he heard himself say, "maybe I will see if I can scrounge up a meal."
She smiled at him. "Follow me. I'm sure we can find something to your liking."
As she headed around for the entryway they'd just come through, Trez blinked like the dumb-ass he was.
It had been a very, very long time since a female had spoken anything to him without a double entrendre...but as far as he could tell, those words, which could arguably be considered a come-on - at least given his lust filter - had held no promise of a blow job or some full-on sex. Or even attraction of any kind.
Naturally, this made him want her more.
His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him -
iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. "Don't even fucking think about it."
Trez's first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother's grip. "I don't know what you're talking about - "
"Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point," iAm hissed.
Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. "I'm not going to..." Fuck her came to mind, but God, he couldn't use the f-word around that female, even in the hypothetical. "You know, do anything."
"You actually expect me to believe that."
Trez's eyes flipped over to the doorway she'd disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no credibility on the subject of abstinence.
"She is not available to you, do you understand me," iAm gritted out. "That's not fair to someone like her - more to the point, if you tap that, Phury is going to come after you with a black dagger. That is his, not yours."
For a split second, Trez bristled at that - except not because his inner feminist was roaring about females being treated as property, although of course that was wrong. No, it was because...
Mine.
From somewhere deep inside of him, that word emanated outward, as if every cell in his body had suddenly found its voice and was speaking the only truth that mattered.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
At the sound of Rehv's voice, Trez dragged his consciousness back from the cliff it had unexpectedly found itself flying off of.
The symphath king was coming down the same stairs the Chosen had used, the male's cane steadying him, his black mink coat keeping his medicated body warm.
As iAm said something and Rehv replied, Trez refocused on the doorway to the kitchen. What was she doing in there - oh, man. Probably bending down to look at that bread...
A subtle growl percolated up his throat.
"Excuse me?" Rehv demanded, purple eyes narrowing.
Another shot in the ribs brought Trez back to reality. "Sorry. Indigestion. How you been?"
Rehv cocked a brow, but then shrugged. "I need your help."
"Anything," Trez said, meaning it.
"There's a Council meeting tomorrow night. Wrath's going to be there. The Brotherhood will provide protection, but I want you both to come on the QT."
Trez recoiled. The Council had met regularly prior to the raids of a couple of years ago, and Rehv had never needed backup. "What's doing?"
"Wrath got shot back in the fall."
What. The. Fuck.
Trez ground his molars. "Who?" After all, he liked the king.
"Band of Bastards. You don't know them, but you may meet them tomorrow night - if you agree to come."
"Of course we'll be there." As iAm nodded, Trez crossed his arms over his chest. "Where?"
"I'm having it at this estate in Caldwell at midnight. It's one of the few that wasn't infiltrated by the Lessening Society - the family was mostly wiped out nonetheless, however, because they were visiting another bloodline in town at the time the attack went down." Rehv went over and sat down on the tapestry-covered sofa, twirling his cane on the floor between his legs. "Let me tell you how we're going to roll. Wrath is now totally blind, but the glymera don't know this. I want him seated in the morning parlor when those aristocrats arrive so they don't see him relying on anyone to find his place. Then..."
As Rehv continued to lay out the plan, Trez took a seat in front of the fire and nodded in the right places.
In his mind, however, he was in that kitchen, with that female....
What was her name? he wondered.
Just as important...
When could he see her again?
