Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(105)

In the silence, she drew him back to the bed and they both sat down.

As she just stared at him, he mouthed, What?

"You sure you want me to go there?" When he nodded, she looked him right in the eye. "I know you left something out. I can sense it. There's a gap between the orphanage and that apartment building."

Not one facial muscle moved or even twitched on him and he didn't

blink, either. But the tells of a male who was good at covering up his reactions were irrelevant. She knew what she knew about him.

"It's okay, I'm not going to ask. And I'm not going to press."

His faint blush was something she would remember long after she was

gone . . . and the thought of leaving him was what brought her fingertips to his lips. As he jerked in surprise, she focused on his mouth.

270

J. R.Ward

"I want to give you something of me," she said in a low, deep voice.

"It's not about making the score even, though. It's just because I want to."

After all, it would have been great if she could have taken him to her places and walked him through her life, but his knowing more about her past was just going to make her suicide mission harder for him: however she felt about John, she was going after her captor and she wasn't about to fool herself on the odds of her surviving that showdown.

Lash had tricks.

Bad tricks that he did bad things with.

Memories of the bastard came back to her, horrible ones that made her thighs tremble, ugly ones that nonetheless served to push her into something that she might not really be ready for. But she couldn't go to her grave with Lash having been her last.

Not when she had the one male she'd ever love in front of her.

"I want to be with you," she said hoarsely.

John's shocked blue eyes traced her face like he was looking for signs that he might be reading her wrong. And then a hot, hard lust broke through all his emotions, shattering them and leaving nothing behind but a full-blooded male's urge to mate.

To his credit, he did his best to beat back the instinct and hold on to some semblance of rationality. But all that meant was that she was the one who ended the battle between sense and sensibility--by putting her mouth against his.

Oh . . . God, his lips were soft.

In spite of the thundering she sensed in his blood, he kept himself in check. Even when she slid her tongue inside of him. And that restraint made it easier for her as her mind flickered back and forth between what she was doing now . . .

And what had been done to her mere days ago.

To help focus her, she sought out his chest and ran her palms down

the pads of muscle over his heart. Easing him back onto the mattress, she breathed in his scent and smelled the bonding he felt for her. The dark spices were unique to him, and about as far as you could get from the sickening stench of a lesser.

Which helped her separate this experience from her most recent ones.

The kiss started out as an exploration, but it didn't stay that way. John moved closer, rolling his massive body against hers, his heavy leg riding up until the weight of it pushed down on her own. At the same time, his arms wrapped around her, bringing her in tight to him.

He was moving slowly, as was she.

271

J. R.Ward

And she was fine until his hand slipped onto her breast.

The contact scrambled her, yanking her out of this room and this bed, taking her away from John and the moment with him and landing her back in hell.

Fighting her mind's defection, she tried to stay connected to the

present, to John. But as his thumb brushed over her nipple, she had to force her body to stay still. Lash had liked to hold her down and draw out the inevitable by scratching and pawing at her, because as much as he'd enjoyed his orgasms, he'd been even more into the foreplay of f*cking with her head.

Psycho-smart move on his part. She'd have infinitely preferred to just get it over with--

John pushed his erection into her hip.

Snap.

Her self-control rubberbanded on her, reaching its limit and splitting in half: With a surge, her body bolted away from the contact of its own volition, breaking the communion with him, blowing up the moment.

As Xhex sprang off the bed, she could feel John's horror, but she was too busy reeling from her own fear to be able to explain. Pacing around, desperately trying to hold on to reality, she breathed in deeply, not from passion but derivative panic.

Well, wasn't this a bitch.

Fucking Lash . . . she was so going to murder him for this. Not for

what she was going through, but for the position she'd put John in.

"I'm sorry," she groaned. "I shouldn't have started it. I'm really sorry."

When she was able, she stopped in front of the dresser and looked into the mirror that hung on the wall. John had gotten up while she paced and gone to stand before the sliding glass door, his arms crossed over his chest, his jaw clenched hard as he stared out into the night.

"John . . . it's not you. I swear."

As he shook his head, he didn't look at her.

Scrubbing her face, the silence and strain between them amplified her urge to run. She just couldn't deal with any of this, with what she was feeling and what she'd done to John and all that shit with Lash.

Her eyes went to the door and her muscles tensed for her exit. Which