Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(4)

“Maybe you just need to focus a little harder.”

Do not tell him to f*ck off, O thought. Fail this test of wills and your female is dog food.

As O tried to rein in his temper, Mr. X smiled. “Your restraint would be more admirable if it weren’t the only appropriate response. Now about tonight. The Brothers will go for the jars of those slayers they wiped out. Get over to Mr. H’s house ASAP and get his. I’ll assign someone to A’s place, and I’ll cover D’s myself.”

Mr. X paused at the door. “About that female. If you use her as a tool, that’s fine. But if you’re keeping her for any other reason, we’ve got a problem. You go soft and I’ll feed you to the Omega piece by piece.”

O didn’t even shudder. He’d lived through the Omega’s tortures once, and he figured he could do it again. For his woman he would go through anything.

“Now, what do you say to me?” the Fore-lesser demanded.

“Yes, sensei.”

As O waited for Mr. X’s car to get gone, his heart was going off like a nail gun. He wanted to take his woman out and feel her against him, except then he’d never leave. To try and calm himself, he quickly cleaned his S&W and armed up. It didn’t really help, but at least his hands had stopped shaking by the time he was through.

On his way to the door he picked up the keys to his truck and engaged the motion detector over the third hole. That techno prop was a real ass-saver. If the infrared laser was broken, a triangulated gun system would go off, and whoever got curious would have a serious case of the leaks.

O hesitated before leaving. God, he wanted to hold her. The thought of losing his woman, even in the hypothetical, made him mental. That female vampire…she was his reason for living now. Not the Society. Not the killing.

“I’m going out, wife, so be good.” He waited. “I’ll come back soon and then we’ll wash you.” When there was no answer, he said, “Wife?”

O swallowed compulsively. Even though he told himself he should be a man, he couldn’t make himself leave without hearing her voice.

“Don’t send me out with no good-bye.”

Silence.

Pain seeped into his heart, making the love he felt for her soar. He took a deep breath, the delicious weight of despair settling into his chest. He’d thought he’d known love before he’d become a lesser. He’d thought that Jennifer, the woman he’d f*cked and fought with for years, had been special. But he’d been such a naive fool. Now he knew what passion really was. His captive female was the burning pain that made him feel like a man again. She was the soul that replaced the one he’d given to the Omega. Through her he lived, though he was undead.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, wife.”





Bella sagged inside the hole as she heard the door shut. The fact that the lesser was going out off-kilter because she hadn’t answered him pleased her. So the madness was complete now, wasn’t it?

Funny that this insanity was the death that awaited her. From the moment she’d woken up in the pipe however many weeks ago, she’d assumed her demise was going to be of the conventional, broken-body variety. But no, hers was the death of self. As her body lingered in relative health, the inside of her was no longer living.

The psychosis had taken its time getting a hold on her, and like corporeal illness, there had been stages. At first she’d been too petrified to think of anything except how the torture would feel. But then days passed and nothing like that happened. Yes, the lesser struck her, and his eyes on her body were revolting, but he didn’t do to her what he did to others of her species. Nor did he rape her.

In response, her thoughts had gradually shifted, her spirits reviving as she’d grown hopeful that she’d be rescued. This phoenix period had lasted longer. A whole week, maybe, though it was hard to measure the passage of days.

But then she’d begun the irreversible slide, and what had sucked her down was the lesser himself. It had taken her a while to realize it, but she had a bizarre power over her captor, and after some time had passed, she’d started using it. At first she pushed him to test boundaries. Later she tormented him for no other reason than that she hated him and wanted to make him hurt.

For some reason the lesser who had taken her…loved her. With all his heart. He yelled at her sometimes, and he did terrify her when he was in one of his moods, but the harder she was on him, the better he treated her. When she withheld her eyes from him, he’d go into a tailspin of anxiety. When he brought her gifts and she refused them, he wept. With increasing fervor, he worried over her and begged for her attention and curled up against her, and when she shut him out, he crumbled.

Toying with his emotions was her whole, hateful world, and the cruelty that fed her was killing her. Once she’d been a living thing, a daughter, a sister…a someone…. Now she was hardening, setting like concrete in the midst of her nightmare. Embalmed.

Dear Virgin in the Fade, she knew he wasn’t ever going to let her go. And sure as if he’d killed her outright, he’d taken her future. All she had now was just this god-awful, infinite present. With him.

Panic, an emotion she hadn’t felt for a while, surged into her chest.

Desperate to go back to the numbness, she concentrated on how cold it was in the earth. The lesser kept her dressed in clothes he had taken from her own drawers and closet, and she was insulated by long johns and fleeces and warm socks and boots. Except, even with all that, the chill was relentless, sneaking through the layers, burrowing into her bones, turning her marrow into an icy slush.