“Don’t be frightened of me,” he whispered.

“I’m not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely positive,” she lied.

SIX

She was lying, Rehv thought. She was definitely frightened of him. And talk about a pity.

This was the nurse Rehv hoped he would get each time he came in. This was the one who made these visits even partially bearable. This was his Ehlena.

Okay, so she wasn’t his in the slightest. He knew her name only because it was on the blue-and-white pin on her coat. He saw her only when he came to be treated. And she didn’t like him at all.

But he still thought of her as his, and that was just the way of it. The thing was, they had something in common, something that crossed species lines and eclipsed social stratifications and bonded them together even though she would have denied it.

She was lonely, too, and in the same way he was.

Her emotional grid had the same footprint his did, Xhex’s did, and Trez’s and iAm’s did: Her feelings were surrounded by the disconnected void of someone separated from her tribe. Living among others, but essentially apart from it all. A shutout, a castaway, one who had been expelled.

He didn’t know the whys, but he sure as fuck knew what life was like for her, and that was what had first gotten his attention when he met her. Her eyes and her voice and her scent had been next. Her intelligence and quick mouth had sealed the deal.

“One sixty-eight over ninety-five. That’s high.” She ripped the cuff’s lip free with a quick jerk, no doubt wishing it were a strip of his skin. “I think your body’s trying to fight off the infection in your arm.”

Oh, his body was fighting something off, all right, but it had fuck-all to do with whatever was cooking in his needle sites. With his symphath side battling the dopamine, the impotent state he usually existed in when fully medicated had yet to report in for work.

Result?

His cock was stiff as a bat in his slacks. Which, contrary to popular opinion, was actually not a good sign-especially tonight. Coming off that convo with Montrag, he was feeling hungry, driven…a little crazy from the inner burn.

And Ehlena was just so…beautiful.

Although not in the way his working girls were, not in that obvious, over-the-top, injected, implanted, sculpted way. Ehlena was naturally lovely, with fine small features and that strawberry blond hair and those long, lean limbs. Her lips were pink because they were pink-not from some eighteen-hour, glossy, frosted grease coat. And her toffee-colored eyes were luminescent because they were yellow and red and gold all mixed together-not from a whole lot of paint-by-numbers shimmery shadow and slathered-on mascara. And her cheeks were flushed because he was getting under her skin.

Which, even though he sensed she’d had a hard night, didn’t bother him at all.

But that was a symphath for you, wasn’t it, he thought with derision.

Funny, most of the time he didn’t care that he was what he was. His life as he’d always known it had been a constantly shifting mirage of lies and deceptions and that was that. Around her, though? He wished he were normal.

“Let’s see what your temperature is,” she said, bringing an electronic thermometer over from the desk.

“It’s higher than usual.”

Her amber stare flipped up to his. “Your arm.”

“No, your eyes.”

She blinked, then seemed to shake herself. “I seriously doubt that.”

“Then you underestimate your appeal.”

As she shook her head and clicked one of the plastic covers onto the silver wand, he caught a whiff of her scent.

His fangs elongated.

“Open.” She brought the thermometer up and waited. “Well?”

Rehv stared into those amazing tricolored eyes of hers and dropped his jaw. She leaned in, all business as usual, only to freeze. As she looked at his canines, her scent surged with something dark and erotic.

Triumph singed in his veins as he growled, “Do me.”

There was a long moment, during which the two of them were bound together by invisible strings of heat and longing. Then her mouth flattened out.

“Never, but I will take your temperature, because I have to.”

She jabbed the thermometer in between his lips, and he had to clamp his teeth together to keep the thing from deflating one of his tonsils.

S’all good, though. Even if he couldn’t have her, he turned her on. And that was more than he deserved.

There was a beep, an interval, and another beep.

“One oh nine,” she said as she stepped back and released the plastic cover into the biohazard bin. “Havers will be with you as soon as he’s able.”

The door clapped shut behind her with the hard syllabic smack of the f-word.

Man, she was hot.

Rehv frowned, the whole sexual attraction thing reminding him of something he didn’t like to think about.

Someone, rather.

What erection he had instantly limped out as he realized it was Monday night. Which meant tomorrow was Tuesday. The first Tuesday of the last month of the year.

The symphath in him tingled even as every inch of skin he had tightened like his pockets were full of spiders.

He and his blackmailer had another one of their dates tomorrow night. Christ, how was it possible another month had gone by? It seemed like every time he turned around it was the first Tuesday again and he was making the drive upstate to that godforsaken cabin for another command performance.

The pimp becoming the whore.

Power plays and hard edges and base fucking were the currency of the meetings with his blackmailer, the basis of his “love” life for the past twenty-five years. It was everything dirty and wrong and evil and degrading, and he did it over and over again to keep his secret safe.

And also because his dark side got off on it. It was Love, Symphath Style, the only time he could be how he was with no holds barred, his one slice of horrible freedom. After all, much as he medicated himself and tried to fit in, he was trapped by his dead father’s legacy, by the evil blood in his veins. You couldn’t negotiate with your DNA, and though he was a half-breed, the sin-eater in him was dominant.

So when it came to a female of worth like Ehlena, he was always going to be on the far side of the glass, nose pressed up hard, palms spread with need, never getting close enough to touch. It was only fair to her. Unlike his blackmailer, she didn’t deserve what he brought to the table.

The morals he’d taught himself told him at least that much was true.

Yay. Rah. Go, him.

Next tat he got was going to be of the frickin’ halo over his head.

As he looked down at the mess running up his left arm, he saw what festered there with total clarity. It wasn’t just a bacterial infection from him deliberately using needles that weren’t sterile on skin that hadn’t been hit with an alcohol rub. It was a slow suicide, and that was why he was damned if he was showing it to the doctor. He knew exactly what would happen if that poison got deep into his bloodstream, and he wished it would get off its ass and take over.

The door swung open and he glanced up, ready to tango with Havers-except it wasn’t the doc. Rehv’s nurse was back, and she didn’t look happy.

Matter of fact, she looked exhausted, like he was one more hassle in her castle and she didn’t have the energy to deal with the shit he pulled when she was around.

“I spoke with the doctor,” she said. “He’s closing in the OR now, so it’s going to be a while. He would like me to draw some blood-”

“I’m sorry,” Rehv blurted.

Ehlena’s hand went up to the collar of her uniform and she pulled the two halves closer together. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry for playing you. You don’t need that from a patient. Especially on a night like tonight.”