Feverborn Read Free

out of it carefully, so slowly it made the muscles in my legs burn, as I tried to keep it from squeaking or shifting even slightly and betraying my presence. I inched around the side and backed against a wall.
    Belatedly I realized the two previously hidden panels on Ryodan’s desk were now in plain view and the monitors that had been showing public parts of the club were showing things I wasn’t sure Lor knew. Private was too mild a word for Barrons and Ryodan. Stay-the-fuck-out-of-my-business was their shared surname. I had no idea if they’d told Lor I was currently invisible, but if they hadn’t I meant to keep it that way.
    Lor glanced over his shoulder, up and down the hall, to ascertain whether he was unobserved, then stepped quickly into the office as the door whisked closed behind him.
    I raised a brow, wondering what he was up to.
    He walked straight for the desk but drew up short when he saw the hidden panel had slid out.
    “What the fuck, boss?” he murmured.
    He headed for the chair and drew up short again when he saw the panel behind the desk was also exposed. “Christ, you’re getting sloppy. What the fuck sent you outta here so fast you couldn’t close things up?”
    His assumption worked for me.
    Shaking his head, Lor dropped into Ryodan’s chair and slid the hidden panel out farther than I knew it went, revealing two small remotes. I eased near, peering over his shoulder, then drew back sharply when he dropped the chair back into recline and kicked his boots up on the desk with a wolfish grin. He fiddled with the remote, seemingly unaware that the monitors he was preparing to watch were already on.
    I inched forward again.
    He hit Rewind for a few seconds, punched Play, then looked straight up at the monitor I’d watched him and Jo having sex on no more than ten minutes ago.
    Was he kidding me? He’d come up here to watch the sex he just had with Jo? Freaking men!
    I refused to watch it twice. Once had been bad enough. I closed my eyes, waiting for him to notice what was playing on the monitors next to the one he was watching. It didn’t take long.
    “What the bloody fuck?” he said in a near-whisper. I heard the sound of something breaking, bits of plastic hitting the floor.
    Yep. He definitely didn’t know.
    “Fuck,” he barked, staccato sharp.
    After a moment, he growled, “Fuuuu-
uuuck
.”
    Then, “Aw, fuck, fuck, FUCK.”
    Lor seemed to have gotten stuck on the word he likes the most. No surprise there.
    I opened my eyes. He was standing behind the desk, ramrod straight, legs spread, arms folded, muscles bulging, tense from head to toe. The remote was on the floor in pieces.
    “Bloody fucking fuck, are you fucking crazy? Have you lost your motherfucking mind?”
    I’d been wondering the same thing.
    “We don’t do this shit. That’s rule the fuck number one in our motherfucking universe. Not even you can get away with it, boss!”
    While I found it oddly reassuring to know there were repercussions, I found it equally disconcerting. The last thing our world needed on top of all its other problems was war breaking out among the Nine. Rather, now…the Ten.
    “Sonofamotherfuckinggoddamnbitch!
Jay
sustittyfuckingChrist!”
    That was Lor. Man of few words.
    He seized the second remote, punched a button, and the office was filled with harsh groans of pain. The Highlander was curled in a tight ball on the stone ledge. I glanced at Barrons and Ryodan, now sitting in stony silence, watching the Highlander. Apparently they were done arguing. Figured once we had volume they were no longer speaking to each other.
    My gaze lingered on Barrons, savage, elegant, despotic, and enormously self-contained. I recognized that shirt, openat the throat, cuffs rolled back. I knew the pants, too, so dark gray they were nearly black, and his black and silver boots. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been gutted on a frigging cliff again—me, Barrons, and cliffs are a proven recipe for disaster—and his