by J. R. Ward
Forcing them to start walking again, she told herself that he was what he was: a warrior. She hadn’t married a goddamned nancy. That fighting blood was in him, and he’d been chained to the house for the past year, so it was inevitable he’d crack.
But, oh, God, did he have to go out there and—
The grandfather clock started chiming. Five o’clock.
Why weren’t they back—
The door to the vestibule opened, and she heard Zsadist and Phury and Vishous and Rhage come in. Their deep voices were hopping, their words fast with power and life. They were juiced about something, invigorated.
Surely if Wrath were injured they wouldn’t behave like that. Right? Right?
Beth went to the doorway . . . and had to grab onto the jamb. Z was bleeding, his skintight turtleneck soaked with a red rush, his daggers wet and glossy as well. Except it wasn’t as if he noticed. His face was shining, a sparkle lighting up those eyes of his. Hell, he carried himself as if he had a couple of bug bites instead of two gaping wounds.
Feeling light-headed, because she felt like someone should on his behalf, she watched the four head for the hidden door under the staircase. She knew they were making a beeline for the first-aid station in the training center and she wondered how Bella would feel if she saw Z like that. Then again, knowing the Brothers, the female wouldn’t get a chance to. The mated males in the house were always careful to get stitched and cleaned before they found their shellans.
Before the Brothers disappeared down in the tunnel, Beth stepped into the foyer, unable to stand it any longer. “Where is he?” she said loudly.
The bunch of them stopped and their faces masked up tight, as if they didn’t want to offend her by how pumped they were.
“He’ll be right here,” Phury said, his yellow eyes kind, his smile even kinder. “He’s just fine.”
Vishous smiled darkly. “He’s more than fine. He’s alive tonight.”
And then she was left alone.
Just as she was about to get pissed off, the vestibule’s door swung open, and a cold rush unfurled across the foyer like a rug rolling out.
Wrath stepped into the mansion, and her eyes popped wide. She hadn’t seen him leave earlier, hadn’t been able to watch, but she saw him now.
Holy Christ, did she see him now.
Her hellren was as she had first known him that night he had come into her old apartment: a killing menace dressed in black leather, the weapons strapped on his body as fundamental as his skin or his muscles. And in his war dress he radiated power, the kind that broke bones and slit throats and bloodied faces. In this his fighting dress, he was a horror, a nightmare . . . who was nonetheless the male she loved and had mated and always slept beside, who fed her from his hand, who held her during the day, who gave himself to her, body and soul.
Wrath’s head twisted on his thick neck until he stared at her and he spoke in a distorted voice, one so low that she barely recognized it as his. “I need to fuck you right now. I love you, but I need to fuck you tonight.”
She had one and only one thought: Run. Run, because he wants you to. Run, because he wants to come after you. Run, because you’re just a little scared of him and it makes you hot as hell.
Knowing that she smelled of her arousal, Beth took off in her bare feet, flashing toward the stairs, taking them fast, her legs a blur. Within seconds she heard him behind her, his shitkickers pounding like thunder. The erotic threat of him bore down on her, enticing her until she couldn’t breathe, not because of exertion, but because she knew what was coming as soon as he got his hands on her.
When she reached the second floor, she randomly tore down a hallway, not knowing where she was headed, not caring. With every yard she covered, Wrath was closing in on her. . . . She could feel him tight on her heels, a wave about to break all over her, crash down on her, sweep her up and hold her down.
She burst into the second floor sitting room and—
He caught her by the hair and the arm, pulling her around, tripping her up, sending her to the floor.
Just before she made impact, he twisted so his body absorbed their fall and cushioned her. As she fought to get up, she had the dim thought that she was faceup on him, his chest under her shoulders, his erection right where it needed to be.
And then she didn’t think anymore.
Wrath’s legs shot up and linked around her shins, spreading her legs wide, trapping her. With rough authority his hand shot between her thighs, and she arched with a cry as he found out exactly how turned-on she was. As she stopped fighting the double doors in front of her slammed shut, and then he rolled her, laying her out facedown on the floor. He mounted her, holding her in place by the back of the neck and the way he straddled her legs. Up close he smelled like clean sweat and the bonding scent and the leather of his clothes and the death of their enemies.
She nearly came.
Wrath was breathing hard, and so was she as he hauled back and split her old cutoffs right up the crotch, the worn fabric letting go as if it didn’t dare disobey him.
Jesus, she knew how that felt.
Cool air hit her ass as his fangs bit through one side of her panties, and then there was the sound of a zipper. His hands angled her hips, and the head of him bumped down to what was waiting for him, what was his for the taking.
He slammed into her, shoving in hard as a board, wide as a fist.
Beth splayed her hands out on the marble as he locked into her body and started pumping with a fierce pace, two hundred and eighty pounds of sex all over the top of her, stretching the inside of her. Her palms squeaked against the marble as the first of the orgasms jumped into her.
She was still climaxing as he clamped his hand on her chin and pulled her mouth around. His rhythm was so hard he couldn’t kiss her. . . .
So he hissed and bit her right in the jugular.
He froze in midstroke as he started to feed, sucking hard, pulling at her vein with a wild supremacy. The pain swirled and tingled, mixed with the tail end of the orgasm, kicked off another rush of pleasure. And then he was riding her again, his lower belly rubbing on her ass, his hips slapping against her, his growl that of a lover. . . .
And an animal.
He roared loud as a beast as he started to come, his erection kicking in her like a living thing with its own mind. The bonding scent rose even stronger as he filled her up, his pulses hot as embers, thick as honey.
The instant he was finished, he flipped her over and loomed between her legs, his sex glistening and proud and completely erect. He wasn’t done with her yet. Linking his tattooed forearm behind one of her knees, he pulled her leg up high and entered her from the front, his huge arms knotting as he held himself above her body. As he stared down at her his hair came forward, great falls of black that tumbled from his widow’s peak and got tangled in the weapons on his body.
His fangs were so long he couldn’t close his mouth, and as his jaw unhinged and he got ready to bite into her again, she shivered. But not from fear.
This was the raw edge, the reality of him under the clothes he wore and the daily life he led. This was her mate at his purest, distilled essence: Power.
And God, she loved him.
Especially like this.
Wrath was taking Beth with furious action, his cock hard as a bone, his fangs like ivory nails driven deep in her neck. She was everything he needed and would ever want: the soft landing for his aggression, the female sex squeezing him, the love that captivated and captured him.
He was the storm bearing down on her; she was the land with the strength to take what he had to let out.
As she sang again from her body splintering apart with pleasure, he pitched himself off the ledge and went flying with her. His balls clenched up hard and his orgasm pistoled out of him . . . bang, bang, bang, bang . . .
Releasing her vein, he collapsed into her hair as he shuddered and bucked.
And then there was only their desperate breathing.
He bit into his own wrist and brought it to her lips. As she nursed quietly, he stroked her hair with a gentle hand and felt a stupid fucking weak-ass urge to tear up.
When her blue-black eyes lifted to his, everything disappeared. Their bodies dematerialized. The room they were in ceased to exist. Time became nothing.
And in the void, in the wormhole, Wrath’s chest opened up sure as if he’d been shot, a piercing pain licking over his nerve endings.
He knew then that there are many ways for a heart to break. Sometimes it’s from the crowding of life, the compression of responsibility and birthright and burden that just squeezed you until you couldn’t breathe anymore. Even though your lungs were working just fine.
And sometimes it’s from the casual cruelty of a fate that took you far from where you had thought you would end up.
And sometimes it’s age in the face of youth. Or sickness in the face of health.
But sometimes it’s just because you’re looking into the eyes of your lover, and your gratitude for having them in your life overflows . . . because you showed them what was on the inside and they didn’t run scared or turn away; they accepted you and loved you and held you in the midst of your passion or your fear . . . or your combination of both.
Wrath closed his eyes and focused on the soft pulls at his wrist. God, they were just like the beat of his heart. Which made sense.
Because she was the center of his chest. And the center of his world.
He opened his eyes and let himself fall into all that midnight blue.
“I love you, leelan.”
In the Nature of Phury
posted August 15, 2006
This one was written after Lover Awakened as well, when Phury’s yearnings for Bella were at their strongest:
Over this past weekend I found myself alone in the house, pacing around. I was skipping over the surface of everything around me . . . not really tracking, roaming. Restless. I do this a lot, because I’m a high-strung nutcase and my head just chews on things practical and impractical until I think I’ll go mad.
In a Hail Mary move, I got into the car and opened the windows and the sunroof and cranked the bass: Sometimes our escape hatches have four wheels and righteous beats. And bless these chariots of relief.
When I took off, the sun was starting to set and I drove far, far from home. . . . I drove to the Ohio River and took the road that coasts along its bank. I’ve been doing this lately . . . just getting away, nothing but me and the car and the summer air and the music. The trees were black green overhead, a tunnel I followed with desperate hope that it could take me somewhere other than where I was.
It worked.
As I went along, to the left the sun was a big fat disk drifting down, like someone had hooked it and was trying to pull it out of the sky, but its inherent buoyancy was fighting the draw. Around me the air was so damned wet, thick as a cloud, smelling like . . . summer, really. And that sweet humidity coated my skin, and I liked what I was wearing when it was there.
Out there on the road life was sweet. Life was a precious gift, not the burden it can be sometimes. Life was the vivid mystery it should be.
And I found myself thinking of Phury.
Driving along, driving alone, driving out far from home . . . he followed me. Like he was in the car with me, elbow on the open window sash, the air moving all that hair of his around. I pictured his yellow eyes as the color of the setting sun, glowing like that, warm like that, beautiful like that.
Now, of course, he wasn’t with me. Would have been up in flames had he been. But he was in my head and looking out of my eyes and listening to what was around me. And he slid into my chest like a ghost and took up the space in my marrow and he assumed the wheel and the gearshift and the gas pedal.
And while he was with me, he spoke to me of the nature of the Do Not Have. The Cannot Have. The Never Possible.
The Unfulfilled.
I saw him sitting at the dining room table. Bella was across the way, across the china and the silver and the crystal, across the divide of the mahogany . . . across a million miles that would never be walked. He was watching her hands. Watching her cut her meat and switch the fork and knife back and spear the lamb and bring it to her lips. He watched her hands because it was the only remotely, socially acceptable option he had.
It is a special hell to want what you cannot have. Because his mind wanders. Takes him in directions he doesn’t want. Teases him with tastes he will never have on his tongue, curves he will never learn, feelings he can never, ever express.
He is trapped in his honor and his love for his twin, trapped also by his respect for Bella . . . a slave to his moral nature.
I think what makes it hardest for him is that she is always around him. He sees her every day. He knows each dawn when he returns she is where he lives.
What does he do? He lies in his big bed and smokes the blunts that keep him calm and he prays that it will all fade soon. What makes it even worse is his honest-to-God happiness for Z: There is tremendous relief in Phury’s special hell because he knows that Z has a future now.
Relief . . . yes, relief. But there are times that that pales. Phury looks down at his missing leg and feels unwhole and unworthy and weak and lame, and it’s not really all about the amputation, because he has no regrets there. What stings during the days when the house is quiet and Bella and Z are sleeping entwined in their mated bed . . . what stings Phury is the fact that he is sexually clueless and inept, and there is no way out of that desert. Even if he gave up the celibacy, even if he found a female and put her on her back and rode her out, what would that cure exactly? A graceless, uncaring sex act wouldn’t make him feel any better. If anything, that would cut him deeper . . . because he knows that isn’t what’s doing between Z and Bella.
No . . . Phury’s on the far side of the riverbank, watching a sunset. Unable to touch. Only able to look. And Never Have.
So in his ineptness and his pathetic yearning, in his despicable weakness, in his deplorable swill of emotion . . . he watches Bella’s hands as she eats. Because that’s all he can do.
He waits for some relief. Knowing it’s not coming anytime soon.
And he hates himself.
The descent he is on seems bottomless, and he has no rope to cast out for purchase, no net to fall into, nothing to break his fall. All he can do is anticipate a hard impact, a shattering body blow whenever the bottom finds him.
For Phury, the nature of the Do Not Have, the Cannot Have, the Never Possible, the Unfulfilled, is taking him into darker places than he could have predicted. I think he assumed that if Z ever healed a little, that his own suffering would be over.
Wrong. Because the flavor of Z’s healing is a taste Phury would kill to have.
Anyway . . . that was what I found out by the Ohio River the other night in the summer air . . . in the bass-ridden solitude . . . where all there was was myself and the headlights of oncoming cars and the wet breeze of the air.
Some distances will never ever be closed.
The Interview That Never Happened
posted October 6, 2007
This was done right after Lover Unbound was released:
Last night I showed up at the Brotherhood’s compound for a scheduled interview with Butch and Vishous. They kept me waiting—which shouldn’t have been a surprise and wasn’t. And the interview didn’t happen, either. Also not a surprise . . .