Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #4)(151)

He squeezed her even tighter. “I’ll be careful, I swear. I swear.”

They stayed on the floor, locked together, for a while. Then Butch lifted his head and looked at Wrath, who had taken Beth into his arms.

“So, brother,” Butch said. “You got a knife and some salt? Time to finish a certain mating, you feel me?”

“We’ve got you covered, my man.”

Fritz came forward with the same pitcher and bowl of Morton’s best that had been used at Wrath and Beth’s ceremony. And Rhage and Mary’s. And Zsadist and Bella’s.

As Butch looked into his shellan’s pale blue eyes, he murmured, “Darkness will never take me…because I have you. Light of my life, Marissa. That’s what you are.”





Chapter Fifty




The following evening, Marissa smiled as she looked up from her desk. Butch filled her office’s doorway, his body so very big.

God, even though his neck was still healing from his induction, good Lord, he looked good. Strong. Powerful. Her mate.

“Hi,” he said, flashing that chipped front tooth of his. As well as his fangs.

She smiled. “You’re early.”

“Couldn’t stay away a moment longer.” He came in and shut the door…and as he subtly turned the lock into place, her body heated up.

He walked around her desk and swiveled her chair to face him, then knelt down onto the floor. As he spread her thighs, he nestled in close, his bonding scent filling the air as he nuzzled her collarbone. With a sigh, she wrapped her arms around his heavy shoulders and kissed the soft skin behind his ear.

“How fare you, hellren?”

“Better now, wife.”

While she held on to him, she shifted her eyes to her desk. There, amidst the papers and folders and pens, was a little white figurine. The exquisitely carved piece was a marble sculpture of a female sitting cross-legged with a double-bladed dagger in the palm of one hand, an owl on her opposite wrist.

Beth had had them made. One for Mary. One for Bella. One for Marissa. And the queen had kept one for herself. The dagger’s significance was obvious. The white owl was a link to the Scribe Virgin, a symbol of prayers spoken for the safekeeping of their warrior mates.

The Brotherhood was strong, a unit, a powerful force in their world for good. And so too were the females. Strong. A unit. A powerful force for good in their world.

Banded together as tightly together as their warriors.

Butch lifted his head and looked up at her in total adoration. With the mating ceremony completed, and her name in his back, she had dominion over his body by both law and instinct, a control he willingly surrendered to her, lovingly surrendered to her. He was hers to command and it was, as the glymera had always said, beautiful to be truly mated.

Only thing those fools ever got right.

“Marissa, I want to take you to meet someone, okay?”

“Of course. Now?”

“No, tomorrow at nightfall.”

“All right. Who—”

He kissed her. “You’ll see.”

Looking deeply into his hazel eyes, she stroked back his thick, dark hair. Then traced his eyebrows with her thumbs. Ran a fingertip down his bumpy, broken-too-many-times nose. Tapped lightly on his chipped tooth.

“Kind of battle-worn, aren’t I?” he said. “But you know, with some plastic surgery and a couple caps, I could be a high-flier just like Rhage.”

Marissa glanced back at the figurine and thought about her life. And Butch’s.

She shook her head slowly and leaned in to kiss him. “I wouldn’t change a thing about you. Not one single thing.”





Epilogue




Joyce O’Neal Rafferty was in a rush and thoroughly bitched out as she headed into the nursing home. Baby Sean had spent all night throwing up and it had taken three hours of waiting at the pediatrician’s before the doctor could squeeze them in. Then Mike had left a message that he was working late, so he didn’t have time to go to the supermarket on the way home.

Goddamn it, they had nothing in the refrigerator or the cupboards for dinner.

Joyce hitched Sean up on her hip and raced down the corridor, dodging meal carts and a gang of wheelchairs. At least Sean was asleep now and hadn’t thrown up for hours. Dealing with a fussy, sick baby as well as her mother was more than Joyce could handle at once. Especially after a day like today.

She knocked on the door to her mother’s room, then went right in. Odell was sitting up in bed, leafing through a Reader’s Digest.

“Hey, Mom, how’re you feeling?” Joyce went over to the Naugahyde-covered wing chair by the window. As she sat down, the cushion squeaked. And so did Sean as he woke up.

“I’m good.” Odell’s smile was pleasant. Her eyes vacant as dark marbles.

Joyce checked her watch. She’d stay ten minutes, then hit Star Market on the way home.

“I had a visitor last night.”

“Did you, Mom?” And without a doubt, she was going to buy enough for a week straight. “Who was it?”

“Your brother.”

“Teddy was here?”

“Butch.”

Joyce froze. Then decided her mother was hallucinating. “That’s nice, Mom.”

“He came when no one was around. After dark. He brought his wife. She’s so pretty. He said they’re getting married in a church. I mean, they’re already husband and wife, but it was in her religion. Funny…I never figured out what she was. Maybe a Lutheran?”