The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 1-4

by J. R. Ward

  “Marissa, look at me.”

  She dragged her eyes to his face, but all she could pay attention to was the voice in her head. Oh, Jesus, it wasn’t supposed to hurt this badly, was it? Oh, Jesus…she was defective…

  “How you doing?” he said roughly. “Talk to me. Don’t keep it inside.”

  “What if I can’t stand it?” she blurted.

  His expression went utterly bland, becoming a deliberate mask of calm. “I don’t imagine many women like their first time. That romantic version of losing your virginity is a lie.”

  Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was the problem.

  The word defect raced around her head even faster, even louder.

  “Marissa?”

  “I wanted it to be beautiful,” she said with despair.

  There was a horrible silence…during which all she knew was the strain of his erection in her body. Then Butch said, “I’m sorry you’re disappointed. But not all that surprised.”

  He started to pull out, and that was when something changed. As he moved, the dragging sensation caused a tingle to go through her.

  “Wait.” She grabbed on to his hips. “That’s not all there is to it, right?”

  “Pretty much. Just gets more invasive, though.”

  “Oh…but you haven’t finished—”

  “I don’t need to anymore.”

  When his erection slipped free of her, she felt curiously empty. Then he moved off her body and she grew instantly cold. As he flipped a comforter over her, she felt his arousal brush against her thigh for an instant. The shaft was wet and had softened.

  He settled on his back next to her, resting both forearms over his face.

  God…what a mess. And now that she’d caught her breath, she wanted to ask him to keep going, but she knew what he would say. The “no” was in the stiffness of his body.

  While they lay side by side, she felt like she should say something. “Butch—”

  “I’m really tired and not at all coherent. Let’s just go to sleep, okay?” He rolled away, punched a pillow, and exhaled in a long, uneven breath.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Marissa woke up later, surprised she’d slept at all. But that was feeding for you. No matter what, she always had to take rest afterward.

  In the dimness, she checked the red glow of an alarm clock. Four hours to dawn and she had things to do that she needed the night for.

  She looked over her shoulder. Butch was on his back, his hand on his bare chest, his eyes flickering to and fro under his lids as he slept deeply. His beard had grown in, his hair was all over the place, and he looked a lot younger. Handsome, too, in his slumber.

  Why couldn’t it have worked out better for them, she wondered. If only she could have held on a little longer, given it more of a chance. And now she had to go.

  She slipped out from under the comforter, and the air was chilly on her skin. Moving quietly, she gathered up her slip, her corset…panties, where were her panties—

  Stopping short, she looked down with surprise. On the inside of one of her thighs, there was a trickling warmth—blood. From when he’d taken her.

  “Come here,” Butch said.

  She nearly dropped her clothes. “I—ah, I didn’t know you were awake.”

  He held his hand out and she went to him. When she got close to the bed, he snaked his arm behind her leg and pulled her onto the mattress so her weight was resting on one knee. Then he leaned into her and she gasped as she felt his tongue on her inner thigh. In a warm stroke, he went up to her core and kissed away the remnants of her virginity.

  She wondered where he’d learned the tradition from. Couldn’t imagine human males practiced it on the females they took for the first time.

  Whereas for her kind, it was a sacred moment between mates.

  Shoot, she wanted to cry again.

  Butch released her and lay back down, watching her with eyes that gave nothing away. For some reason, she felt so very naked before him, even with her slip clutched to her breasts.

  “Take my robe,” he said. “Put it on.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Closet. Hanging on the door.”

  She turned around. His robe was deep red and marked with the scent of him, and she drew it on awkwardly. The heavy silk hung down to the floor and covered her feet, the tie so long she could have wrapped her waist four times with it.

  She eyed the ruined dress on the floor.

  “Leave it,” he said. “I’ll throw it out.”

  She nodded. Went over to the door. Grabbed the handle.

  What could she say to make this better? She felt as if she’d made a mess of everything: first her biological reality driving a wedge between them, then her sexual deficiency exposed.

  “It’s okay, Marissa. You can just go. You don’t need to say anything.”

  She dropped her head. “I’ll see you at First Meal?”

  “Yeah…sure.”

  In a numbed-out daze, she walked from the gatehouse to the mansion. When a doggen opened the vestibule’s innermost door, she picked up the bottom of Butch’s robe so she didn’t trip…and was reminded she had nothing to change into.

  Time to talk to Fritz.

  After she found the butler in the kitchen, she asked him for the way to the garage.

  “Are you looking for your clothes, mistress? Why don’t I bring some up for you?”

  “I’d rather go and pick out a few things myself.” As he anxiously glanced to a door on the right, she walked in that direction. “I promise to call if I need you.”

  The doggen nodded, totally unappeased.

  When she stepped into the garage, she stopped dead and wondered what the hell she’d walked into. There were no cars inside the six-bay space. No room for them. Good God…crates and crates and crates. No…not crates. Coffins? What was this?

  “Mistress, your things are over here.” From behind her, Fritz’s voice was respectful but very firm, as if all those pine boxes were none of her business. “Please to follow me?”

  He led her over to her four wardrobe trunks and her luggage and her boxes. “Are you sure I may not bring dresses up for you?”

  “Yes.” She touched the brass lock on one of her Vuittons. “Would you…leave me?”

  “Of course, mistress.”

  She waited until she heard the door shut and then she freed the latch on the wardrobe trunk in front of her. As she pulled the two halves apart, skirts burst free, multihued, lush, beautiful. She remembered wearing the gowns to balls and Princeps Council meetings and her brother’s dinners and…

  Her skin crawled.

  She went to the next trunk. And the next. And the last. Then she started again with the first and went through each one again. And then again.

  This was ridiculous. What did it matter what she wore? Just pick something.

  She reached and grabbed…No, she’d had this on feeding from Rehvenge that first time. What about this one? No…that was the dress she’d worn at her brother’s birthday party. Then what about…

  Marissa felt the anger come upon her like a fire. Fury blew into her, overheated her, blazed through her blood. She grabbed gowns randomly and yanked them from their padded hangers, searching for one that didn’t trigger a memory of being subjugated, caged, made fragile in fine cloth. She moved to another trunk and more dresses went flying, her hands wrenching, material ripping.

  Tears began to flow and she wiped them away with impatience—until she couldn’t see anything and had to stop. She scrubbed her face with her hands, then dropped her arms, just standing in the midst of a rainbow mess.

  It was then that she spied a door in the far corner.

  And beyond it, through its glass panes, she saw…the back lawn.

  Marissa stared out at the patchy snow. Then she looked to the left, at the riding mower parked next to the door—and the red can sitting on the floor next to it. Her eyes kept going, moving over weed whackers and bins of what looked like fertili
zer until they landed on a gas grill, which had a little box resting on its lid.

  She glanced at the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of haute couture.

  It took her a good twenty minutes to drag each one of her gowns out into the backyard. And she was careful to include the corsets and the shawls in the pile as well. When she was finished, her clothes were ghostly in the moonlight, muted shadows of a life she would never go back to, a life of privilege…restriction…and gilded degradations.

  She pulled out a sash from the tangle and went back into the garage with the pale pink strip of satin. Picking up the gas can, she grabbed the box of matches and didn’t hesitate. She walked out to the priceless swirl of satins and silks, doused them with that clear, sweet accelerant, and positioned herself upwind as she took out a match.

  She lit the sash. Then threw it.

  The explosion was more than she’d expected, knocking her back, scorching her face, flaring into a great fireball.

  As orange flames and black smoke rose, she screamed at the inferno.

  Butch was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, when the alarms started going off. Shooting himself out of bed, he pulled on some boxers and slammed into Vishous as the brother bolted out of his bedroom and into the hallway. Together they scrambled to the computers.

  “Jesus Christ!” V barked. “There’s a fire on the back lawn!”

  Some sixth sense sent Butch out the door immediately. Running barefoot across the courtyard, not even feeling the cold air or the pebbles under his feet, he cut around the front of the main house and ran into the garage. Oh, shit! Through the windows on the far side, he could see a great orange fury in the backyard.

  And then he heard the screams.

  As he burst through the rear door, Butch was overcome by heat and the treacle smells of gasoline and burning cloth. And he wasn’t half as close as the figure right in front of the inferno.

  “Marissa!”

  Her body was angled forward toward the fire, her mouth wide open, her shrill hollering cutting through the night as surely as the flames did. She was crazed, roaming around the periphery…now running.

  No! The robe! She was going to trip—

  With horror, he saw it happen. His long, bloodred robe twisted around one of her legs and tangled up her feet. Lurching forward, she started to fall facefirst into the fire.

  As panic hit Marissa’s expression and her arms went out into thin air, everything went slo-mo: Butch ran hard, yet seemed not to move at all.

  “No!” he screamed.

  Just before she was lost to the flames, Wrath materialized behind her and scooped her up into his arms. Saving her.

  Butch skidded to a halt, a paralytic weakness making his legs go jelly on him. With no air left in his lungs, he fell to the ground…just collapsed.

  So he was on his knees, staring up as Wrath held Marissa in his arms and she sagged all over him.

  “Thank God my brother got there in time,” V muttered from somewhere close by.

  Butch pushed himself to his feet, wobbling like he was on rocky ground.

  “You okay?” V asked, reaching out.

  “Yeah. Fine.” Butch stumbled back to the garage and kept going, tripping through random doors, banging into walls. Where was he? Oh, inside the kitchen. Blindly, he looked around…and saw the butler’s pantry. Pushing his way into the little room, he leaned back against the shelves and shut himself in with all the canned goods and the flour and the sugar.

  His whole body started to shake until his teeth rattled, and his arms flapped like bird wings. God, all he could think about was Marissa burning. On fire. Helpless. In agony.

  If it had been just him going for her, if Wrath hadn’t somehow seen what was happening and dematerialized right to her, she would be dead now.

  Butch wouldn’t have been able to save her.

  The thought naturally shot him right back to the past. With horrible precision, flashes of his sister getting in that car two and a half decades ago pinged around his skull. Shit, he hadn’t been able to save Janie, either. Hadn’t been able to pull her out of that Chevy Chevette in time.

  Hell, maybe if Wrath had been around back then, the king could have rescued his sister, too.

  Butch rubbed at his eyes, telling himself that the blurriness was just the aftereffects of all the smoke.

  A half hour later, Marissa sat on the bed in the blue toile room, enveloped by a fog of mortification. Damn it, she’d taken her rule number one way too far.

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  Wrath, who was standing in the doorway, shook his head. “You shouldn’t be.”

  “Well, I am.” She tried to smile at him and missed the mark by a million miles. God, her face felt stiff, the skin tight from having been so close to all that heat. And her hair—her hair smelled like gas and smoke. So did the robe.

  She shifted her eyes over to Butch. He was out in the hall, leaning back against the wall. He hadn’t said a thing since appearing there a few minutes ago and he didn’t look like he was coming into the room, either. He probably thought she was crazy. Hell, she thought she was crazy.

  “I don’t know why I did that.”

  “You’re under a lot of stress,” Wrath said, even though he wasn’t the one she was looking at.

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “Marissa, don’t take this the wrong way, but no one cares. We want you safe and well. We could give a shit about the lawn.”

  When she just stared past Wrath at Butch, the king glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, I think I’ll leave you two alone. Try and get some z’s, okay?”

  As Wrath turned around, Butch said something that didn’t carry. In response, the king clapped a hand to the back of the man’s neck. More quiet words were shared.

  After Wrath left, Butch came forward, but only as far as the doorway. “You going to be all right?”

  “Ah, yes. After I have a shower.” And a lobotomy.

  “Okay. I’m going back to the Pit.”

  “Butch…I’m sorry I did what I did. It was just…I couldn’t find one gown that wasn’t contaminated with memories.”

  “I can understand that.” Except clearly he didn’t. He looked completely numb, as if he’d unplugged himself from everything. Especially her. “So…take care of yourself, Marissa.”

  She leaped to her feet as he backed away. “Butch?”

  “You don’t worry about anything.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  She started to go after him, but Beth appeared in the doorway with a bundle in her hands. “Um, hi, you guys…Marissa, you have a minute?”

  “Butch, don’t go.”

  He nodded a greeting to Beth, then looked down the hall. “I need to sober up.”

  “Butch,” Marissa said sharply, “are you saying good-bye here?”

  He flashed her a haunting smile. “You’re always going to be with me, baby.”

  He walked away slowly, like the floor was slippery under his feet.

  Oh…Jesus…

  Beth cleared her throat. “So, yeah, Wrath suggested you might like some clothes? I brought a few things if you’d like to try them on.”

  Marissa was desperate to go after Butch, but she’d already made a spectacle of herself tonight and he looked like he was in serious need of a break from the drama. Boy…she knew exactly how he felt, except for her there was no escape. Everywhere she went, there she was.

  She looked at Beth, feeling like this was quite possibly the single worst twenty-four hours of her life. “Did Wrath mention that I burned my entire wardrobe?”

  “Um…that did come up.”

  “I also left a crater in the lawn. It looks like a UFO landed. I can’t believe he isn’t upset with me.”

  The queen’s smile was gentle. “The only thing he’s not thrilled about is your giving Fritz that bracelet to sell.”

  “I can’t have you two renting me somewhere to live.”

  “As a ma
tter of fact, we wish you would just stay here.”

  “Oh…no, you’ve already been too kind. Actually, tonight, I’d planned…Well, before I got sidetracked by that gasoline and matches thing, I was going to go to my new place and look around. See what kind of furniture I’ll need to buy.”

  Which would be everything.

  Beth frowned. “About that rental house. Wrath wants Vishous to check out the security system before you move in. And chances are good that V will want to upgrade whatever is there.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary—”

  “Nonnegotiable. Don’t even try it. Wrath wants you to stay here at least until that’s done, okay? Marissa?”

  She thought about Bella getting abducted. As much as independence was a good thing, there was no reason to be stupid. “Yes…I…all right. Thank you.”

  “So would you like to try on some clothes?” Beth nodded at what was in her arms. “I don’t have many dresses, but Fritz can get you some.”

  “You know what?” Marissa eyed the blue jeans the queen had on. “I’ve never worn a pair of pants before.”

  “I’ve got two pairs here if you want to try them out.”

  Well, wasn’t this a night for firsts. Sex. Arson. Pants. “I think I would like to…”

  Except Marissa burst into tears. Just totally lost it. And the meltdown was so bad, all she could do was sit on the bed and weep.

  When Beth shut the door and knelt in front of her, Marissa wiped up quickly. What a nightmare. “You are queen. You shouldn’t be before me like this.”

  “I’m the queen, so I can do anything I want.” Beth put the clothes aside. “What’s wrong?”

  Yeah, now there was a list.

  “Marissa?”

  “I think…I think I might need someone to talk to.”

  “Well, you have someone right here. You want to give me a shot?”

  God, there was so much, but one thing mattered more than all the rest. “Fair warning, my queen, this is about an improper subject. Sex, actually. It’s about…sex.”

  Beth eased back and arranged her long legs yoga style. “Hit me.”

  Marissa opened her mouth. Shut it. Opened it. “I was taught not to speak of this kind of thing.”