Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood #8)(75)

"Almost four?" When he nodded, she took elaborate care

straightening the fold on the sheet that ran across her chest. "Almost . . .

four."

Well, the humans had had her for a matter of months before she'd

been able to get away from them. Just under four weeks should be a

cakewalk to get over.

Ah, but she wasn't sticking around, was she. There was no "getting over." There was just "getting done."

"Do you want to sit down?" she said, indicating a chair by the side of the bed. The thing was standard-issue institutional, which meant it looked about as comfortable as a stake up the ass, but she didn't want him to leave.

John's brows lifted again and he nodded as he came over. Arranging

his huge body on the little seat, he tried first to cross his legs at the knees, then the ankles. He ended up jacked halfway around, his shitkickers under the bed and his arm over the back of the chair.

She fiddled with her goddamn sheet. "Can I ask you something?"

In her peripheral vision, she saw him nod, then shift around and take a pad and pen out of his back pocket.

Clearing her throat, she wondered exactly how to phrase her question.

In the end, she copped out and went with something impersonal.

"Where was Lash last seen."

He nodded and curled over his paper, writing quickly. As his words

took form on the white page, she got to watch him . . . and realized she never 196

J. R.Ward

wanted him to go. She wanted him here beside her forever.

Safe. She was truly safe with him around.

He straightened and flashed the pad. Then seemed to freeze.

For some reason, she couldn't focus on what he'd written and she

strained--

John slowly lowered his arm.

"Wait, I haven't read it. Could you . . . What. What's wrong?" Damn it, now her eyes were refusing to see him clearly.

John leaned to the side and she heard a quiet pfft sound. Then a Kleenex was presented to her.

"Oh, for f*ck's sake." She took what he offered and pressed it against both eyes. "I hate being a girl. I really f*cking despise being a girl."

As she went on a rant about estrogen, and skirts, and pink nail polish, and frickin' stilettos, he fed her Kleenex after Kleenex, gathering up the red-stained ones she'd used.

"I never cry, you know that." She glared over at him. "Ever."

He nodded. And handed her another cocksucking tissue.

"Jesus Christ. First I get a case of the screams, now the dripping nonsense. I could kill Lash for this bullshit alone."

A frigid blast shot through the room and she looked over at John--only to recoil. He'd gone from sympathetic to sociopath in a split second. To the point where she was almost positive he had no conscious clue that he'd bared his fangs.

Her voice dropped to a whisper and what she'd really wanted to ask

came barreling out. "Why did you stay? In the OR, back then." She dropped her eyes from his, focusing on the red blotches that marked the tissue she'd just used. "You stayed and you . . . you just seemed to get it."

In the silence that followed, she realized she knew the context of his life so very well: who he lived with, what he did in the field, how he fought, where he spent his time. But she knew none of his specifics. His background was a black hole.

And for some unknown reason, she needed illumination on it.

Fuck that, she knew exactly why: In that incandescent horror she'd

faced in the OR, the only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now.

He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't left and he hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned.

It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had been melded

together.

197

J. R.Ward

This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul.

"What the hell happened to you, John. In your past."

His brows drew tight and his arms crossed over his chest as if now he was the one trying to figure out how to express himself. What was more, his emotional grid suddenly lit up with all kinds of dark things and she got the impression he was thinking of bolting.

"Look, I don't want to pressure you." Shit. Fuck. "And if you want to deny that you've had anything but complete hunky-dory in your life, I will totally accept it and move on. But I just . . . Most people would have at least flinched. Hell, even Doc Jane came in with a tread-carefully on her puss after I lost it. You, though? You just hung in there." She stared into his hard, closed face. "I looked into your eyes, John, and there was more than hypothetical understanding in them."

After a long pause, he flipped to a new page on the pad and wrote

quickly. When he flashed what he'd written, she could see his point, but she wanted to curse:

Tell me what they did in the OR. Tell me what was wrong with you

first.

Ah, yes, classic tit for tat.

It only took Lash about an hour to get himself, the whore, and the

Mercedes from the farmhouse back to the ranch in town. He was in raw

survival mode, moving fast and decisively, making only one stop on the way.