Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(170)

J. R.Ward

delicately dragged them over her skin to the crook of her neck.

Arching back to him, she stretched way up and ran her hands through

his thick dark hair. Although he'd cut it short, it was growing in, which was nice. She preferred it long because it felt so damn good going through her fingers, so silky, so smooth.

"Come inside me," she said hoarsely.

John swept his hand up and captured the breast she'd stroked for him; then he reached between their bodies, angled himself, and eased into her sex.

At the same moment, he ran his fangs across her throat to her vein.

He didn't need to feed. She knew this. So she was strangely thrilled

when he struck because it meant he was doing it just because he wanted to: He wanted her in him, too.

Beneath the overhead lighting, she watched as he took her from

behind, his muscles flexing, his eyes burning, his erection pushing in and pulling out, pushing in and pulling out. She watched herself, too. Her breasts were tight at the tips, her nipples rosy, not just because that was the color of them, but because he'd been working on them so much over the day's hours.

Her skin was aglow all over, her cheeks blazing, her lips puffy from the kissing, her eyes low-lidded and erotic.

John broke the seal he'd formed over her vein and his pink tongue

came out, licking over the punctures, sealing them up. Turning her head, she captured his mouth with her own, relishing the slick slide of their tongues as their bodies followed the same rhythm down below.

It didn't take long for the sex to grow urgent and raw, no longer

sensual, but powerful. As John's hips pistoned against her, their bodies slapped and their breath roared. Her orgasm tackled her so strongly that if he hadn't had a death grip on her hip bones, she would have lost her knees and fallen from him. And just as she came, John's own shudders rolled through her, the ripples emanating outward from his erection and sweeping through her body . . . and her soul.

And then it happened.

At the pinnacle of their release, her vision flipped into red and went flat--and as ectascy eventually faded, the unsummoned appearance of her bad side was a wake-up call she'd been subconsciously waiting for.

Gradually, she became aware of the growing humidity and warmth

from the shower . . . and the twinkling sound of falling water . . . and the thousand points of contact between them . . . and how all things were in shades of blood.

John reached up to her face and touched next to her red eyes.

"Yeah, I need my cilices," she said.

433

J. R.Ward

He brought his hands forward in front of her and signed, I have them.

"You do?"

I saved them. He frowned. But are you sure you have to--

"Yes," she bristled. "I am."

The hard expression that tightened his face reminded her of the way

he'd been when he'd sprung out of that bed as she'd screamed: Tough.

Intractable. All-male. But there was nothing she could do to help him out of his current disapproval. She had to take care of herself, and whether or not he was down with what she did to keep herself in a "normal" bandwidth wasn't going to change her reality.

Man, they just weren't meant to be together, no matter how

compatible they could be sometimes.

John withdrew from her core and stepped back, running his fingers

down her spine as a kind of a thank-you . . . and given the dark knowledge in his eyes, probably a goodbye of his own. Turning away, he headed for the sh--

"Oh . . . my . . . God . . ."

Xhex's heart stopped as she looked at him in the mirror. Across his

upper back, in a glorious spread of black ink . . . in a declaration that didn't whisper, but shouted . . . in a billboard-size font with flourishes . . .

Her name in the Old Language.

Xhex wheeled around as John froze. "When did you get that done?"

After a tense moment, his shoulder shrugged and she was captivated

by the way the ink moved, stretching and then returning into place. Shaking his head, he reached in to test the warm spray, and then stepped through the glass door, put his back to the running water and grabbed the soap, frothing up the bar in his hands.

As he refused to look at her, he sent a clear message that her name in his skin was none of her business. Which was the same kind of line she'd drawn with her cilices, wasn't it.

Xhex went up to the glass door that separated them. Putting her hand

up, she knocked hard.

When, she mouthed.

His eyes squeezed shut, as if he were remembering something that

made his stomach hurt. And then with his lids down, he signed slowly . . .

and broke her in half:

When I thought you weren't coming home.

John made quick work with the soap and the shampoo, very aware

434

J. R.Ward

that Xhex was standing on the cold side of the glass, staring at him. He wanted to help her out with the surprise and all, but given where things stood between them, he was so not about to throw himself on the sword of all his feelings.

Or the tattoo needle, as it were.

When he'd asked her about the cilices, she'd been pretty clear about

shutting him out--and that had rebooted his brain. Since he'd been injured the night before, they'd fallen back into their sex connection, and that had a way of blurring reality. But no more.