Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(76)

“You already are, Zsadist. Your blood is in me.”

There was a long silence. “Do you know my reputation?”

She frowned. “That’s not relevant—”

“What do people say about me, Bella? Come on, I want to hear it from you. So I know you get it.” Her despair was palpable as he pushed her, but he had to snap her out of whatever daze she was in. “I know you must have heard about me. Gossip reaches even your social level. What do they say?”

“Some…some think you kill females for sport. But I don’t believe—”

“Do you know how I got that rep?”

Bella covered her breasts and stepped back, shaking her head. He bent down and handed her the towel, then pointed to the skull in the corner.

“I murdered that female. Now tell me, do you want to be taken by a male who could do something like that? Who could hurt a female like that? You want that kind of bastard on top of you, pumping into your body?”

“It was her,” Bella whispered. “You went back and killed your mistress, didn’t you?”

Z shuddered. “For a while I thought it could make me whole.”

“It didn’t.”

“No shit.” He brushed by her and walked around, pressure building in him until he opened his mouth and the words just shot out. “A couple of years after I got out, I heard she…shit, I heard she had another male in that cell. I…I traveled for two days straight and snuck in close to dawn.” Z shook his head. He didn’t want to talk, he really didn’t, but his mouth just kept moving. “Christ…he was so young, so young, just like I was when she got me. And I didn’t have any intention of killing her, but she came down right as I was leaving with the slave. When I looked at her…I knew if I didn’t strike, she was going to call for her guards. I also knew that eventually she would take another male and chain him down there and make him…Ah, f*ck. Why the hell am I telling you this?”

“I love you.”

Z squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t be a tragedy, Bella.”

He left the room in a rush, but couldn’t go more than fifteen feet down the hall.

She loved him. She loved him?

Bullshit. She thought she loved him. And as soon as she got back to the real world, she was going to realize that. Christ, she’d come out of a horrific situation and was living in a bubble here at the compound. None of this was her life, and she was spending too much time with him.

And yet…God, he wanted to be with her. Wanted to lie side by side and kiss her. Wanted to do even more than that. Wanted…to do it all to her, the kissing and the touching and the sucking and the licking. But where exactly did he think all that was going to lead to? Even if he could get past the idea of penetrating her for the sex, he didn’t want to risk coming inside of her.

Not that he’d ever done that with any female. Hell, he’d never ejaculated under any circumstances. When he’d been a blood slave, it wasn’t as if he’d ever been sexually excited. And afterward, when he was with those few whores he’d bought and f*cked, he hadn’t been after an orgasm. Those anonymous interludes were just experiments to see whether sex was as bad as it always had been for him.

As for masturbating, he couldn’t stand touching the damn thing to take a piss, much less when it stood up for attention. And he’d never wanted to relieve himself, never been all that aroused, even when the it was hard.

Man, he was so whacked with the sex shit. Like there was a short in his brain.

Actually, he had a lot of them, didn’t he?

He thought about all the holes in him, the blank places, the voids where others felt things. When it came down to it, he was really just a screen, more empty than solid, his emotions blowing through him, only the anger catching and holding.

Except that wasn’t entirely true, was it? Bella made him feel things. When she had kissed him on the bed before, she had made him feel…hot and hungry. Very male. Sexual, for the first time in his life.

From out of a sharp desperation, some echo of what he’d been before the Mistress had had him started looking for airtime. He found himself wanting again that feeling he’d gotten from kissing Bella. And he wanted to crank her up, too. He wanted her gasping and breathless and starved.

It wasn’t fair to her…but he was a son of a bitch, and he was greedy for what she’d given him before. And she would be leaving soon. He had this one day now.

Zsadist opened the door and went back inside.

Bella was lying in the bed and obviously surprised he was back. As she sat up, the sight of her brought back a lick of decency. How the hell could he be with her? God, she was so…beautiful, and he was nasty, a nasty bastard.

His momentum lost, he stalled in the middle of the room. Prove you’re not a bastard by bailing, he thought. But explain yourself first.

“I want to be with you, Bella, and not to f*ck you, either.” As she started to say something, he silenced her by holding up his hand. “Please, just listen to me. I want to be with you, but I don’t think I’ve got it in me to give you what you need. I’m not the right male for you, and this is definitely the wrong time.”

He released his breath, thinking he was such an *. Here he was telling her no, playing the gentleman…while in his mind he was yanking back those sheets and replacing them with a blanket of his own skin.