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But she also believed in present-moment living. Sitting up, she turned toward Reyes. He had his arm thrown over his face, his eyes closed. “Reyes, I’m starved. How about you?”
At that he shifted and opened one eye, his lips curving. “You need some food?”
“I do. And maybe another quick shower would not be unwelcome, either.”
“Very pragmatic.”
“It’s either that or I’m going to start screaming at the top of my lungs out of fear about what we’ll have to do tomorrow night.”
He winced, sitting up as well, his gaze falling to her bare br**sts. They were puckered in the cool air of the room. She didn’t bother covering up. She wanted him looking. She wanted him to miss her when she was gone. She also knew her br**sts were one of her finest assets.
She put her hands behind her back and arched just a little.
He met her gaze, his brows raised. “What are you doing?”
But she just laughed. “You were staring, so I thought I’d help you look at me better.”
He reached for her, covering her breast with his hand and fondling her.
One thing led to another until he asked, “Think you can wait for your meal a little longer?”
“I think I can do that.”
He made love to her again and again.
Later he called his housekeeper to have a tray sent up.
After a quick shower Angelica dipped into yet another fragrant soup and savored a glass of white wine. Reyes seemed preoccupied.
“Anything on your mind?”
He glanced up from a full spoon that had been sitting midair for about minute. Lowering it to the bowl, then leaning back, he drank from a bottle of beer. “Just the usual. I’m feeling the need to check the Starlin Web site, to see what’s going on, if anything’s developed that would require our attention.”
“Good idea.”
He rose, crossing to his desk, and brought his laptop back with him. He sat down in a different chair adjacent to his meal and watched the screen as he began tapping keys.
She watched his expression shift as some kind of video began running and the changing light played over his face. She heard laughter and shouts, lots of voices.
Suddenly he slammed the lid shut, shading his face with his hand.
Angelica had the worst feeling, and the chain at her neck vibrated with an emotion that ranged somewhere between full-out rage and a pit of despair.
She left her seat, rounding the table. She tried to lift the laptop lid, but he wouldn’t let her. “Don’t.”
“Starlin, right?”
“Yes. On the f**king home page.”
If this had been any other situation, if she hadn’t already been abducted by the vilest people she’d ever known, she would have let it go.
Instead, she knew she had to see what had so swiftly taken him down. He rubbed three fingers across his forehead, digging in as though trying to force the images away.
“You have to let me see.” How calm her voice sounded.
He stared up at her, that familiar haunted look in his blue eyes, the one that seemed to be the sheerest gateway to his soul and to what gave him the greatest pain. “I don’t want you to see this. I don’t want this for you. Dammit, it isn’t right. You shouldn’t have to know this kind of thing exists.”
Angelica was torn. She valued that he was trying to protect her from what he knew to be the worst of his kind, and part of her wanted to stay in that safe garden. But another part, the part of her that had chosen to stay with Reyes through the duration of the Starlin Festival, had already gotten her hands dirty and didn’t intend to stop now.
She drew close to him, then slid onto his lap and put her arms around his neck. She held him, not saying anything.
For a long moment, he did nothing as well but remained immobile, unyielding. But in the end, he wrapped her up in his arms and held her tight, even rubbing his hands every now and then up and down her back. She remained silent but let him feel her determination, knowing that their blood-chain bond would communicate what he needed to know.
Finally, she drew back and met his gaze straight on. “Show me, Reyes. I can take it.”
“Just prepare yourself.”
He shifted her on his lap, turning her toward the table, then lifted the lid, and the video began to play.
The young Russian woman’s body, eyes wide and empty now, lay on a bloody sheet. She was na**d and had cuts and bruises everywhere. She wasn’t alone, either, which might have been the worst part, because there seemed to be a party going on in the background. Several pairs of na**d muscular male legs surrounded her. Laughter ensued. Some cheering as well.
Her skin was pure white, with smears of blood on various parts, and fang-puncture marks that hadn’t closed up. There couldn’t have been a drop of blood left inside her. She’d not only been brutalized, but she’d also been drained.
“They killed her.”
“Yes. And they were betting on the moment of death.”
Angelica felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She kept thinking she’d never be shocked again; then a new horrible event would knock her off her feet once more.
Closing her eyes, she worked at adjusting to the reality of the murder, that the innocent woman had died by torture and that there’d been nothing Angelica could have done to have stopped it. In this moment she thought she knew better than ever what drove Reyes to keep going and her resolve deepened.
When she opened her eyes she forced herself to witness the gruesome spectacle all over again.
But this time, as she settled her eyes once more on the laptop screen and started replaying the video, familiar waves began to flow all around the edges of computer. The actual images of the video began to grow indistinct and a revisiting vision arrived.
Uncertain what to do, she told Reyes what was happening.
“Just go with it,” he said. “There’s something here you’re meant to see.”
“Okay.”
She watched, panning backward, and found that the room was full of about thirty people, most of them drinking. One part of the crowd was clustered around a series of flat screens that each held stats of one kind or another, typical betting windows.
Now that she’d moved into the past, Angelica could hear the young woman moaning and words spoken in what sounded like Russian. She told Reyes.
He held her tight. “You can stop anytime.”
But she couldn’t. She felt it now, what she was meant to see.
Hearing a voice that sounded familiar, she panned to her left within the vision and kept turning until she reached the arched doorway to the large room. “Your former captor is there, Sweet Dove, the one with the red hair. She’s definitely a Starlin member. She’s standing in a doorway and a man is with her. He has his arm around her, but I can’t quite see him. I’ll have to pan just a little bit more.” She could almost see him. She shifted the vision slightly so that he came into view.
