The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  “You watch because it makes you think of me,” he said in a deep, rough voice.

  "Yes . . .”

  He reached out and touched her face. “And what do you think about?”

  She pulled up her courage and threw out words that made no sense. “I think about how I . . . have certain feelings for you.”

  His erotic laugh was a dark thrill. "Feelings . . . And where exactly do you feel me, I wonder?” His fingertips drifted from her face to her neck to her collarbone. “Here?”

  She swallowed, but before she could answer, his touch drifted over her shoulder and down her arm. "Here, maybe?” He gave her wrist a squeeze, right at her veins, and then his hand slipped onto her waist and curved around, easing onto the small of her back, pressing in. “Tell me, is it right here?”

  Suddenly, he gripped her hips with both hands, leaned toward her ear, and whispered, “Or is it perhaps lower?”

  Something swelled in her heart, something warm as the light in his eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, barely breathing. “But also here. Most of all . . . here.” She put his hand to her chest, right over her heart.

  He stilled, and she felt the change in him, the hot current in his blood cooling, the flames extinguished.

  Ah, yes, she thought. In revealing herself, she had exposed his truth.

  Although it had been obvious all along, hadn’t it.

  The Primale stepped back and drew a hand through his outrageously beautiful hair. “Cormia . . .”

  Drawing up her dignity, she squared her shoulders. “Tell me, whatever shall you do with the Chosen? Or is it me in specific whom you do not wish to mate?”

  He stepped around her and paced in front of the screen. The frozen image from the movie, of Johnny and Baby lying so closely together, played over his body, and she wished she knew how to turn the movie off. The sight of Baby’s leg up on Johnny’s hip, his hand gripping her thigh as he ground himself against her, was not what she needed to be seeing at the moment.

  “I don’t want to be with anyone,” the Primale said.

  "Liar.” As he turned to face her in surprise, she found that the consequences of candor didn’t matter to her anymore. “You knew all along you didn’t want to lay with any of us, didn’t you. You knew it and yet you went along with the ceremony before the Scribe Virgin, even though you were in love with Bella and couldn’t bear being with anyone else. You lifted the hopes of forty females of worth on a lie—”

  “I met with the Directrix. Yesterday.”

  Cormia’s legs went weak, but she kept her voice strong. “Did you. And what have the two of you decided.”

  “I’m . . . going to let you go. From the position of First Mate.”

  Cormia fisted her robing so tightly, there was a soft tearing sound. “Going to or have done so.”

  “Have done so.”

  She swallowed hard and let herself sink back into the chair.

  “Cormia, please know that it’s not you.” He came over and knelt down in front of her. “You’re beautiful—”

  “No, it is me,” she said. “It’s not that you can’t mate with any other female, you don’t want me.”

  “I just want you to be free of all this—”

  “Don’t lie,” she snapped, throwing off all pretense of civility. “I told you all along that I would take you within me. I have neither said nor done aught to discourage you. So if you are setting me aside, it is because you don’t want me—”

  The Primale grabbed her hand and put it palm-first between his legs. As she gasped at the contact, his hips surged and pushed something long and hard into her palm. “The wanting is not the problem.”

  Cormia’s lips parted. “Your grace . . .”

  Their eyes met and clung. When his mouth opened slightly, as if he couldn’t breathe, she gained the courage to gently wrap her hand around his rigid sex.

  His massive body trembled and he let go of her wrist. “It’s not about the mating,” he said hoarsely. “You were forced into this.”

  True. In the beginning, she had been. But now . . . her feelings for him were not forced in the slightest.

  She looked into his eyes and felt a curious relief. If she wasn’t his First Mate, none of this counted, really, did it. Moments like this, with them together—they were just two private bodies, not vessels of immense significance. It was just him and her. A male and a female.

  But what about the others, she had to ask herself. What about all her sisters? He was going to be with them; she could see it in his eyes. There was resolve in that yellow stare of his.

  And yet, as the Primale’s breath left him on a shudder, she pushed all that out of her mind. She would never truly have him as her own . . . but she had him alone right now.

  “I’m not being forced anymore,” she whispered, leaning into his chest. Tilting her chin up, she offered what he wanted. “I want this.”

  He stared down at her for a moment, and then the words he spoke in a guttural voice made no sense: “I’m not good enough for you.”

  “Untrue. You are the strength of the race. You are our virtue and power.”

  He shook his head. “If you believe that, I’m not at all who you think I am.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m not—”

  She silenced him with her mouth, then pulled back. “You can’t change what I think of you.”

  He reached up and brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “If you truly knew me, everything you believe would change.”

  “Your heart would be the same. And that is what I love.”

  As his eyes flared at the word, she kissed him again to get him to stop thinking, and evidently it worked. He groaned and took the lead, taking those soft, soft lips of his and stroking her mouth until she couldn’t breathe and didn’t care. When his tongue licked at her, she sucked it in on instinct, and felt his body jerk and surge against her.

  The kissing went on and on. There seemed to be no end to the ways of it or the different sensations of rasp and drag and thrust and suck, and it wasn’t just her mouth that was a part of it . . .Her whole body felt what they were doing, and clearly going by its heat and urgency, so did his.

  And she wanted him even more involved. Moving her arm up and back, she rubbed at his sex.

  He pulled away sharply. “You might want to be careful with that.”

  “With this?” As she stroked him through his trousers, he threw his head back and hissed—so she did it some more. She kept at him until he was biting into his lower lip with long fangs and the muscles running up the sides of his throat were straining.

  “Why must I be careful, your grace?”

  His head righted and he brought his mouth to her ear. “You’re going to make me come.”

  Cormia felt something warm pool between her thighs. “Was that what you did when we were in your bed? That first day?”

  “Yes . . .” He drew the word out, the s drifting.

  With a curious, single-minded drive, she found that she wanted him to do that again. Needed him to.

  She angled her chin so that she was right at his ear. “Do it for me. Do it now.”

  The Primale growled deep in his chest, the sound vibrating up between their bodies. Funny, if she’d heard the sound from anyone else she would have been terrified. Coming from him, in this situation, she was thrilled: His leashed power was in the palm of her hand. Literally. And she had the control.

  For once in her forsaken life, she was in control.

  As he pushed his hips into her palm, he said, “I don’t think we should—”

  She cranked her hand down on him hard, and he moaned in pleasure. “Don’t you take this from me,” she demanded. “Don’t you dare take this from me.”

  Following an impulse that came from the Virgin Scribe only knew where, she bit down on his earlobe. The response was immediate. He barked out a curse and leaped up, pinning her to the chair, all but mounting her with lust.

  Not about to shrink b
ack, she held her hand right to his sex and worked at him, playing counterbalance to the thrusting of his lower body. He seemed to relish the friction, so she kept at it even as he took her chin and forced her head toward his.

  “Let me see your eyes,” he bit out. “I want to be looking in your eyes when I—”

  He released a wild groan as their stares met, and his body went tense all over. His hips jerked once . . . twice . . . three times, each spasm punctuated by a moan.

  As his body expressed its pleasure, the Primale’s rapt face and straining arms were the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. When he finally settled, he swallowed hard and didn’t move away from her. Through the fine wool twill of his slacks, she felt a wetness on her hand.

  “I like it when you do that,” she said.

  He let out a brief laugh. “I like it when you do that to me.”

  She was about to ask him if he wanted to try it again, when his hand brushed her hair back from her cheek. “Cormia?”

  “Yes . . .” Funny, she drew out the word just as he had.

  “Would you let me touch you a little?” He looked down at her body. “I can’t promise you anything. I’m not . . . well, I can’t promise you the same thing you gave me. But I would love to touch you. Just a little.”

  Desperation stole the air out of her lungs and replaced it with fire. “Yes . . .”

  The Primale closed his eyes and seemed to gather himself. Then he bent down and pressed his lips to the side of her throat. “I do think you’re beautiful, never doubt that. So beautiful . . .”

  As his hands drifted to the front of her robe, the tips of her breasts grew so tight, she twisted under him.

  “I can stop,” he said, hesitating. “Right now—”

  “No.” She grabbed onto his shoulders, holding him in place. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she needed it, whatever it was.

  His lips moved up higher on her neck, then lingered on her jaw. Just as he pressed his mouth to hers, a featherlight brush ran over the robe . . . to one of her breasts.

  As she surged up, her nipple pushed into his hand and they both groaned.

  "Oh, Jesus . . .” The Primale eased back a little and carefully, reverently pulled the lapel of her robe away from her breast. “Cormia . . .” His deep, approving tone was like a caress, nearly tangible and all over her body.

  “Can I kiss you here?” he groaned, his touch circling her nipple. “Please.”

  “Sweet Virgin, yes . . .”

  His head went down and his mouth covered her, warm and moist, pulling gently, suckling.

  Cormia threw her head back and thrust her hands deep into his hair, her legs parting for no reason and every reason. She wanted him at her sex, in any way he would come at her—

  “Sire?”

  Fritz’s respectful intrusion from the far end of the theater snapped them both to attention. The Primale quickly straightened and covered her up, even though the chair prevented the butler from seeing anything.

  “What the hell is it?” the Primale said.

  “Forgive me, but the Chosen Amalya is here with the Chosen Selena to see you.”

  An ice wave went through Cormia, freezing out all the heat and the urgency in her blood. Her sister. Here to see him. How perfect.

  The Primale got to his feet, uttering a horrid word Cormia couldn’t help but echo in her own head, and he excused Fritz with a quick movement of his hand. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  After the doggen left, the Primale shook his head. “I’m sorry—”

  “Go do what you need to do.” As he hesitated, she said, “Go. I’d like to be alone.”

  “We can talk later.”

  No, not really, she thought. Talk wasn’t going to solve any of this.

  “Just go,” she said, tuning out whatever else he spoke.

  When she was alone once more, she stared at the frozen picture on the screen until all of a sudden it was replaced by a black wash, and a little grouping of English letters reading Sony flashed here and there.

  She felt wretched, inside and out. Apart from the ache in her chest, her body had hunger pangs as if from a meal denied or a vein left untapped.

  Except it wasn’t food that she needed.

  What she needed had just walked out the door.

  Into the arms of her sister.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Far upstate in the adirondacks, on the verge of dawn’s arrival over Saddleback Mountain, the male who had taken the deer down the night before the male who had taken the deer down the night before was tracking another. Slow and uncoordinated, he knew the hunter role he was playing was a joke. The strength he got from the animal blood just wasn’t enough anymore. Tonight as he’d left his cave, he was so weak he wasn’t sure whether he could dematerialize at all.

  Which meant he probably wasn’t going to be able to get close enough to his prey. Which meant he wasn’t going to feed. Which meant . . . the time had finally come.

  It was so odd. He’d wondered, as he imagined everyone did from time to time, how exactly he was going to die. What would the circumstances be? Would it hurt? How long would it take? He’d assumed, given what his line of work had been, that it would have been fighting.

  Instead, it was going to be here in this quiet forest by the hand of dawn’s burning glory.

  Surprise.

  Up ahead, the buck lifted its heavy rack and prepared to bound away. Gathering what little energy he had, the male willed himself to cross the distance between their two bodies . . . and nothing happened. His corporeal form flickered in space, blinking on and off as if his light switch were being triggered, but he didn’t change positions, and the deer shot off, white tail flicking as it crashed through the underbrush.

  The male let himself fall back on his ass. As he looked at the sky, his regrets were many and deep, and most involved the dead. Not all, though. Not all.

  Although he was desperate for the reunion he expected to find in the Fade, though he hungered for the embrace of the ones he’d lost so recently, he knew he was leaving a part of himself behind here on earth.

  It couldn’t be helped. The leaving behind, that was.

  His only solace was that his son had been left in very good hands. The best. His brothers would look after his son, as was the proper way of things in families.

  He should have said good-bye, though.

  He should have done a lot of things.

  But the shoulds were over now.

  Ever mindful of the suicide legend, the male made a couple of attempts to stand, and when they failed, he even tried to drag his deadweight body in the direction of his cave. He got nowhere, and it was with a slice of joy through his dark heart that he finally allowed himself to collapse onto the pine needles and leaves.

  The male lay there facedown, the cool, dewy forest bed filling his nose with smells that were clean even though they came from the dirt.

  The first rays of the sun come from behind him, and then he felt the blast of the heat. The end had arrived, and he welcomed it with open arms and with eyes that were closed in relief.

  His last sensation before he died was his liberation from the ground, his broken body being drawn up into the brilliant light, drawn unto the reunion it had taken eight horrible months for him to find.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  As night fell some sixteen hours later, Lash stood at the foot of a rolling lawn that led up to a sprawling Tudor house . . . and turned the ring the Omega had given him round and round.

  He had grown up here, he thought. Been raised and fed and tucked into bed here as a young. When he was older, he’d stayed up to watch movies and read books with dirty shit in them, and surfed the Net and eaten junk food here.

  He’d gone through his transition and had sex for the first time up in his room on the third floor.

  "Y’all want some help?”

  He turned and looked at the lesser who was behind the wheel
of the Ford Focus. It was the little slayer, the one he’d drunk from. The guy had pale hair like Bo from The Dukes of Hazzard, all curling up around the cowboy hat he wore. His eyes were a faded cornflower blue, suggesting that before he’d been inducted he’d been a real middle-America white boy.

  The guy had survived the feeding, thanks to some true depravity on the Omega’s part, and Lash had to admit he was glad. He needed help understanding where he was at, and he wasn’t threatened by Mr. D.

  “Hello?” the lesser said. "Y’all okay there?”

  “You stay in the car.” It felt good to say that and know there wasn’t going to be any discussion. “I won’t be long.”

  “Yes, suh.”

  Lash looked back up at the Tudor palace. Lights glowed yellow in windows made of diamond-paned glass, and the house was spotlit from the ground like a beauty queen on a stage. Inside, people moved around, and he knew who they were by the shapes of their bodies and where they were.

  On the left, in the sitting room, were the two who had raised him as their own. The one with the broad shoulders was his father, and the male was pacing, hand going up and down to his face as if he were drinking something. His mother was on the couch, all bobble-head proportioned with her elaborate chignon and her slender neck. She kept touching her hair, as if trying to make sure everything was in place even though it was no doubt sprayed stiff as a boxwood shrub.

  To the right, in the kitchen wing, several doggen scurried around, moving from stove to cabinet to refrigerator to counter to stove.

  Lash could practically smell the dinner, and his eyes watered.

  By now, his parents must know about what had happened in the locker room and then at the clinic. They must have been told. They’d been out at the glymera’s ball last evening, but they’d been home all day, and both appeared to be unsettled.

  He glanced at the third floor and the seven windows that marked his room.

  “You going in?” the slayer asked, making him feel like a pussy.

  “Shut the fuck up before I cut your tongue out.”

  Lash unsheathed the hunting knife that hung from his belt and walked forward over the cropped grass. The lawn was soft under the new combat boots he had on.