Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood #3)(77)

The thing hanging from the front of his hips pounded like a jackhammer.

What would she taste like, he wondered, in that soft, sweet place between her legs?

“Come over here, Zsadist.” She opened the covers, baring herself to him. “Stop thinking. Come to bed.”

“I…” Words he’d never spoken to anyone hovered on his lips, a confession of sorts, a treacherous unveiling. He looked away and let them go for no good reason he could think of. “Bella, when I was a slave things were…ah, things were done to me. Sexual shit.” He should stop. Right now. “There were males, Bella. Against my will, there were males.”

He heard a little gasping sound.

This was good, he thought, even as he cringed. Maybe he could get her to save herself by revolting her. Because what female could stand being with a male who’d had that kind of thing done to him? Not the heroic ideal. Not by a long shot.

He cleared his throat and stared a hole right through the floor. “Look, I’m not…I don’t want your pity. The reason I’m telling you this is not to sap you out. It’s just…I’m scrambled. It’s like my wires are all crossed when it comes to the whole…you know, the f*cking thing. I want you, but it’s not right. You shouldn’t be with me. You’re cleaner than that.”

There was a long silence. Ah, shit… He had to look at her. The moment he did, she rose from the bed as if she’d been waiting for him to lift his eyes. She walked to him naked, nothing on her skin except the candlelight from the single wick that burned.

“Kiss me,” she whispered in the dimness. “Just kiss me.”

“God…what is wrong with you?” As she winced, he said, “I mean, why? Of all the males you could have, why me?”

“I want you.” She put her hand on his chest. “It’s a natural, normal response to the opposite sex, isn’t it?”

“I’m not normal.”

“I know. But you’re not dirty or contaminated or unworthy.” She took his shaking hands and placed them on her shoulders.

Her skin was so fine, the idea of marring it in any way froze him. So did the image of him pushing the it into her. Except he didn’t have to involve the lower half of his body, did he? This could be all about her.

Oh, yeah, he thought. This could be for her.

He turned her around and drew her back against his body. With slow sweeps he ran his hands up and down the curves of her waist and hips. When she arched her spine and sighed, he could see the tips of her breasts over her shoulder. He wanted to touch her there…and realized he could. He moved his hands over her rib cage, feeling up the pattern of delicate bones until his palms enveloped her breasts. Her head kicked back farther and her mouth parted.

As she opened for him like that, he had a screaming instinct to get inside of her any way he could. On reflex, he licked his upper lip while he rolled one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. He imagined himself thrusting his tongue into her mouth, going in between her teeth and fangs, taking her in that way.

Like she knew what he was thinking, she tried to turn and face him, but it seemed too close somehow…too real that she was giving herself to him, that she was going to let someone like him do intimate, erotic things to her body. He stopped her by grabbing her hips and pulling her hard into his thighs. He ground his teeth at the feel of her ass against that stiff thing straining his shorts.

“Zsadist…let me kiss you.” She tried to turn around again and he stopped her.

As she struggled in his hold, he kept her in place easily. “It’ll be better for you this way. If you can’t see me, it’ll be better.”

“No, it won’t.”

He put his head down on her shoulder. “If I could just get Phury for you…I used to look like him once. You could pretend it’s me.”

She yanked her body free of his hands. “But it wouldn’t be. And it’s you I want.”

As she looked at him with feminine expectation, he realized they were headed for the bed right behind her. And they were going to get down to it. But, God…he had no idea how to make her feel good. He might as well have been a virgin for all the shit he knew about pleasuring a female.

With that happy little revelation, he thought about the other male she’d had, that aristocrat who undoubtedly knew so much more about sex than he did. From out of nowhere, he was struck by a totally irrational urge to hunt down her previous lover and bleed him out.

Oh…hell. He closed his eyes. Oh…shit.

“What?” she asked.

This kind of violent, territorial impulse was characteristic of a bonded male. The hallmark of one, actually.

Z lifted his arm, put his nose to his bicep, and breathed in deep…. The bonding scent was coming out of his skin. It was faint, probably only recognizable to him, but it was there.

Shit. Now what was he going to do?

Unfortunately, his instincts answered. As his body roared, he picked her up and headed for the bed.





Chapter Twenty-seven


Bella stared at Zsadist’s face while he carried her across the room. His black eyes were narrowed into slits, a dark, erotic greed glittering in them. As he put her on the bed and looked down at her body, she had the distinct thought that he was going to eat her alive.

Except he just loomed over her.