Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(119)

Lash.

As long as he knew the f*cker was out there breathing in the world,

John had a focus that kept the roof on his house.

Killing Lash was his link to sanity and purpose, the galvanizing in his steel.

One more intrinsic weakness, though, like not avenging his female,

and he was game-over.

"John," she said, clearly in an effort to pull him out of his tailspin.

Focusing on her, he stared into her red, glowing eyes and was

reminded that she was a symphath. Which meant she could burrow into him and trigger all of his inner trapdoors, springing his demons just to watch them dance. Except she hadn't done that, had she--she'd gotten into him, yes, but only to understand where he was at. And upon seeing into his dark parts, she wasn't yukking it up and pointing fingers at him, or recoiling in disgust.

Instead, she'd prowled over to him like a she-cat, looking like she

wanted to kiss him.

His eyes dropped down to her lips.

What do you know, he could stand some of that kind of connection.

Words weren't enough to assuage the self-loathing he felt, but her hands on his skin, her mouth on his, her body up against his own . . . that, not talking, was what he needed.

"That's right," she said, her eyes burning, and not just from the symphath in her. "You and I need this."

John reached up and put his cold, wet hands on her face. Then he

looked around. Now might be the time, but here was not the place.

He was not making love to her on the hard tile.

Come with me, he mouthed, standing up and pulling her to his side.

His hard-on tented the front of his running shorts as they left the

locker room, the urge to mate a roar in his blood that was nonetheless held in check by the need to do right by her and give her something gentle in place of the violence she'd suffered.

Instead of heading for the tunnel back to the main house, he took them to the right. There was no way he was going up to his room with her under his arm and him sporting an erection the size of an I-beam. Besides, he was soaking wet.

Way too much to explain to the perma-peanut gallery the mansion

offered.

Next to the locker room, but not connected to it, was a stretching

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facility with massage tables and a whirlpool bath in the corner. Place also had a shitload of blue mats that hadn't been used since they'd been laid down--the Brothers barely had time to spar, much less play ballerina with their precious hamstrings and glutes.

John buttressed the door closed with a plastic chair and turned to face Xhex. She was walking around, her lithe body and smooth strides better than an entire strip show, as far as he was concerned.

Reaching to the side, he killed the lights.

The red-and-white Exit sign over the door created a pool of dim light that his body split in half, his shadow a tall, dark divide that stretched all the way across the blue flooring to Xhex's feet.

"God, I want you," she said.

She wasn't going to have to say that twice. Kicking off his Nikes, he pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall to the mats in a flap. Then he linked his thumbs in the waistband of his running shorts and drew them down his thighs, his cock popping free and standing straight out of him. The fact that it pointed to her like a divining rod was no big surprise--everything from his brain to his blood to his beating heart was focused on the female who stood no more than ten feet away.

But he wasn't going to just jump on her and pound away. Nope. Not

even if it gave him balls the color of a Smurf--

His thoughts stopped being logical as her hands went to the bottom

hem of her sweatshirt and, in an elegant shift, she pulled it up her torso and over her head. Underneath, she had on nothing except for her beautiful, smooth skin and her tight, high breasts.

As her scent roared across the way and he began to pant, those nimble fingers of hers went to the tie on the scrubs and loosened it, the thin green cotton falling in a rush to her ankles.

Oh...sweet God, she was gloriously bared to him, and the impressive

lines of her body were astonishing: Although they'd had sex two times, both had been fast and hot, so he'd never had the chance to look at her properly--

John blinked hard.

For a moment, all he could see were the bruises that had been on her

when he'd found her, especially the ones on the insides of her thighs. To know now that she hadn't gotten them from just hand-to-hand fighting . . .

"Don't go there, John," she said hoarsely. "I'm not and you shouldn't.

Just . . . don't go there. He's already taken too much from both of us."

His throat tightened around a roar of vengeance, which he managed to

stifle only because he knew she was right. With sheer force of will, he decided that that door behind him, the one he'd jammed shut with the chair, 307

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was going to keep out not just passersby of the living variety, but the ghosts of wrongs as well.

There would be time on the other side of this private commune for

evening the score.

You are so beautiful, he mouthed.

But of course she couldn't see his lips.

Guess he was going to have to show her.

John took a step forward and another and another. And it wasn't just

him going toward her. She met him in the middle, halfway between her