Read Online Blood Kiss by J.R. Ward - Free Book Online

a
doggen
asked her.
    â€œOh, thank you, no, but I appreciate the kindness.”
    The
doggen
bowed at the waist and approached the male who had been behind her in line. Glancing over her shoulder, she nodded to her fellow candidate—and recognized him from the festivals that the
glymera
had put on before the raids. Like all members of the aristocracy, they were distant cousins, although she was not close to him or his people.
    His name was Anslam, if she remembered correctly.
    After he nodded back, he popped a
canapé
into his mouth.
    Pivoting around, Paradise checked out all the athleticequipment that had been set up throughout the open space. Parallel bars, chin-up bars, mats for tumbling, a pummel horse, leg press . . . oh, good, they had an erg machine.
    At least there was one thing she wasn’t going to fail at.
    Glancing over her shoulder, she found that many of the recruits were awkwardly fending off the
doggen
with the trays, looking as if they had never seen servants before. Peyton was hitting the munchies hard—not a surprise. And Axe, the latent serial killer, was standing at the edge of things, arms crossed over his chest, eyes surveying the landscape like maybe he was picking out victims.
    Why half of him with the tats? she wondered. And the piercings?
    Whatever.
    And yeah, wow, looked like there was only one other female at the moment. And given the hard-as-nails expression on that lean face, and her broad shoulders, she was probably more suited to the program than a lot of the males in here.
    Rubbing her damp palms on her thighs, Paradise shook off a feeling of disappointment: That male, Craeg, who’d come to the audience house for the application wasn’t in the group.
    But come on, that was probably a good thing. He’d been a total distraction the second he’d walked up to her desk—and she was going to need all her focus to get through this.
    Assuming tonight was anything other than a
canapé
hour.
    Where were the Brothers? she wondered.
    A flash of movement at the corner of her eye turned her head. One of the males had hopped up on the pummel horse and was slowly spinning his lower body in circles as his massive arms held his weight aloft. The smacking of his palms hitting the padded leather formeda beat that gradually got faster and faster as his speed increased.
    â€œNot bad . . .” she murmured as his incredibly strong torso threw his legs out and around in a blur.
    He never missed a beat. Not once. And the more he whirlwinded, the more she became convinced she should have spent eight years in the gym instead of weeks. If the rest of the applicants were like this guy? She was screwed.
    Then again, she didn’t seem like the only one who was intimidated. The entire class had stopped milling about and was staring at him, transfixed by the sheer excellence of the performance in the otherwise empty expanse of the gym.
    Clank
.
    The sound of a door closing made her glance over her shoulder—and she gasped before she could help herself.
    There he was, the one she had waited for, the one she had hoped to see again.
    Paradise patted at her ponytail, some estrogen-linked receptor going bat-shit, sixteen-year-old as the male walked over to the sign-in station.
    Taller. He was so much taller than she remembered. Broader, too—his shoulders stretching a huge Syracuse sweatshirt to its seams. He was in blue jeans again, different ones that nonetheless had the same kinds of rips and tears the other pair he’d worn had. His shoes were scuffed and dirtied Nikes. No baseball cap this time.
    Really nice dark hair.
    He’d recently gotten the stuff cut, the sides so tight she could see his scalp underneath the fine dark shading around his ears and at his nape, the top short enough so that it stood up on its own. His face was . . . well, it probably wasn’t a showstopper for anyone else, his nose a little too big, his jaw a little too