Vishous screamed as he felt the metal clamp onto his thinnest skin. There was a spearing pain and a tearing and then-

"Sweet Jesus" Jane said.

V shook himself back to the present. He wondered how much he'd said out loud, and decided that, going by the look of horror on her face, it had been pretty much everything.

He watched the candlelight flicker in her dark green eyes. "They weren't able to finish."

"Not out of decency," she said softly.

He shook his head and raised his gloved hand. "Even though I was about to pass out, my whole body lit up. The soldiers who were holding me down were killed instantly. So was the blacksmith-he was using a metal tool, and it conducted the energy right into him."

She closed her eyes briefly. "Then what happened?"

"I rolled over, threw up some more, and dragged myself to the exit. The whole camp watched me go in silence. Not even my father got in the way or said a thing." V cupped himself loosely, remembering the mind-numbing pain. "The, ah… the cave floor was covered with this loose, powdery kind of dirt that had various minerals in it-one of which must have been salt. The wound sealed up so I didn't bleed out, but that's how I got the scars."

"I am… so sorry." She lifted her hand as if she wanted to reach out, but then dropped her arm. "It's a wonder you survived."

"I barely made it through that first night. It was so cold. I ended up using a branch to help me walk, and went as far as I could in no particular direction. Eventually I collapsed. My will to keep going was there, my body was not. I'd lost blood, and the pain was exhausting.

"Some civilians of my race found me just before dawn. They took me in, but only for a day. The warnings…" He tapped his temple. "The warnings on my face and my body did what my father wanted them to. They made me a freak to be feared. At nightfall I left. I wandered alone for years, sticking to the shadows, staying out of people's way. I fed from humans for a while, but that just didn't sustain me for long enough. A century later I ended up in Italy, working as a hired thug for a merchant who dealt with humans. In Venice there were whores of my kind who would let you feed, and I used them."

"So lonely." Jane put her hand to her throat. "You must have been so lonely."

"Hardly. I didn't want to be with anyone. I worked for the merchant for a decade or so then one night, in Rome, I ran into a lesser who was in the process of killing a female vampire. I took the bastard out, but not because I particularly cared about the female. It was… See, it was her son. Her son was watching in the shadows of the dark street, crouched next to a cart. He was like… shit, definitely a pretrans, and a young one at that. I saw him first, actually, then caught the action across the way. I thought of my own mother, or at least the image I had made up about her, and was like… hell, no way was this little boy going to watch the female who'd birthed him die."

"Did the mother live?"

He winced. "She was gone by the time I could get to her. Bled out from a throat wound. But I promise you, that lesser got shredded. Afterward I didn't know what to do with the kid. I ended up going to the merchant I killed for, and he put me in touch with some folks who took the boy in." V laughed in a short burst. "Turned out the mother who died was a fallen Chosen, and that pretrans? Well, he ended up being the father of my brother Tohrment. We got a small world, true?

"So because I saved a kid of warrior blood, word got out, and my brother Darius ended up finding me and introducing me to Wrath. D… D and I had a certain connection, and he was probably the only one who could have gotten my attention at that point. When I met Wrath, he wasn't into being king, and he was no more interested in ties than I was. Which meant the two of us clicked. Eventually I was inducted into the Brotherhood. And there… shit, yeah, there you have it."

In the silence that followed he could only guess what was going through her mind, and the idea that she pitied him made him want to do something to prove he was strong.

Like bench-press a car.

Except instead of going all soft on him and making him feel even more rattled, Jane just looked around, even though he knew she could see nothing but the two candles that were lit. "And this place… this place means what to you?"

"Nothing. Means nothing more than any other."

"Then why are we here?"

V's heart rate spiked.

Shit… Standing here with her now, after spilling his guts, he wasn't sure he could go through with what he'd planned.

Chapter Twenty-nine

As Jane waited for V to speak, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to throw a whole lot of very sincere, ultimately lame words at him. She wanted to know whether his father had, in fact, died in flames, and she hoped the bastard had.

When the silence continued, she said, "I don't know if this will help… probably won't, but I have to say something here. I can't stomach oatmeal. To this day, it makes me sick." She prayed she wasn't going to say to wrong thing. "It is okay that you're still struggling with everything that was done to you. Anyone would. It doesn't make you weak. You were violently maimed by someone who should have protected and nurtured you. The fact that you're still standing is a miracle. I respect you for it."

V's cheeks went pink. "I, ah… don't really see it that way."

"Fine. But I do." To give him a break, she cleared her throat and said, "You going to tell me why we're here?"

He rubbed his face like he was trying to clear his brain. "Shit, I want to be with you. Here."

She exhaled in relief and sadness. She wanted a goodbye with him, also. A good-bye that was sexual and private and not in the bedroom they'd been locked in together. "I want to be with you, too."

Another candle came to life over by a bank of curtains. Then a fourth by a wet bar. A fifth next to a big bed with black satin sheets on it.

She started to smile… until the sixth one lit up. There was something hanging off the wall… something that looked like… chains?

More candles flared. Masks. Whips. Canes. Gags.

A black table with restraints that hung down to the floor.

She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled. "So this is where you do the tying-up."

"Yeah."

Oh, Jesus… She didn't want that kind of good-bye. Trying to stay calm, she said, "You know, it makes sense, given what happened to you. That you'd like that." Shit, she couldn't handle this. "So… is it men or women? Or, like, a combination?"

She heard the creaking of leather and turned back to him. He was taking off his jacket, and a set of guns she hadn't seen were next. Followed by two black knives that had been hidden as well. Christ, he'd been totally armed.

Jane tightened the hold on herself. She wanted to be with him, but not tied down and masked while he pulled a 9 1/2 Weeks on her head and whipped the shit out of her body. "Listen, V, I don't think-"

He took his shirt off, his back muscles flexing up his spine, his pecs pumping fully, then settling. He kicked off his boots.

Holy… shit, she thought, as it dawned on her what this was really about.

His socks and his leathers were next, and, as he'd gone commando, there were no boxers to get rid of. In total silence he padded across the glossy marble floor and got up on the table in a coordinated surge. Stretching out, he was utterly magnificent, his body heavy with muscle, his movements elegant and masculine. He took a deep breath, his rib cage rising and falling.

Fine tremors licked over his skin… or maybe it was the candlelight?

He swallowed hard.