Page 84 of Black Curtain

Brick had gone to an enormous amount of trouble to provide this diversion for us.

Some part of me couldn’t get past the reality of that.

Maybe because I couldn’t fathom it at all.

This whole thing was deeply weird. Even for Brick.

My mind fought to make sense of that, to decide what Brick was even doing.

The weirdness had to be intentional, a part of the game.

Brick could just as easily have fitted the room with a virtual recording that didn’t interact with us at all, but simply kept playing. Hell, he could have left us a box of files, or a computer monitor that showed us a video explaining everything we needed to know.

Instead he was giving us a tour of this house, a tour of these fucked up lives.

Weirder still, he’d given us the ability to ask the house questions.

Clearly, a lot of this on our part would be figuring out the right questions to ask.

Black must have come to a similar conclusion.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

The woman laughed, looking Black up and down. “My, my…” She fanned herself, glancing at her husband coyly. “How do you feel about asking this big one to join us, Denis. I can only imagine he’s amazingly…”

Her eyes focused deliberately on Black’s crotch.

“…Talented. Not to mention well-equipped.”

“They’re not going to tell us anything,” Jax complained, his voice hard. “This is another one of that vampire’s stupid games.”

Black looked at him. I could feel he didn’t disagree.

He wasn’t entirely ready to give up yet, though.

His gold eyes shifted back to the D’aurevilles.

“Why did you come to New York?” he asked.

“We had to,” the woman said promptly. “We had to get away from them.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

I looked up at Black. Taking his hand, I squeezed his fingers in mine.

That was such a good question,I told him, smiling.

He smiled back with disarming openness.

My compliment pleased him. It also distracted Black long enough for him to lean down and kiss me lingeringly on the mouth. Heat slid through both of us when his mouth touched mine. My fingers gripped his hair, but he loosened them a few seconds later. I felt him pull us apart with an effort. I remembered again that it was our wedding night… or our weddingsomething,given I had no idea what time it was at this point.

The thought brought my anger back in a hard flush.

Motherfucking Brick.

Motherfucking Brick,Black agreed softly.

He turned, staring at me with hard eyes.

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