Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #4)(35)

From out of nowhere, a question shot into his mind, one he had no right to ask, one that tripped him up and had him losing his rhythm. He pulled back from her.

“Butch, what is it?”

He stroked her mouth with his thumb, wondering if she’d had a man. In the nine months since he’d kissed her before, had she taken a lover? Maybe had more than one?

“Butch?”

“Nothing,” he said, even as a fierce possessive streak clawed into his chest.

He took her mouth again, and now he kissed her with an ownership he had no right to, one hand shooting down to the small of her back, pressing her into his arousal. He felt this urgent need to stake a claim on her so that anything male would know whose woman she was. Which was nuts.

Abruptly she jerked back. As she sniffed the air, she seemed confused. “Do human males bond?”

“Ah…we get emotional, sure.”

“No…bond.” She buried her face in his neck, inhaled, then started to rub her nose against his skin.

He gripped her hips, wondering just how far things were going to go. He wasn’t sure he had the strength for sex, even though he was totally erect. And he didn’t want to presume anything. But Jesus God in heaven he wanted it from her.

“I love the way you smell, Butch.”

“It’s probably the soap I just used.” As her fangs dragged up his neck, he groaned, “Oh, shit…don’t…stop…”





Chapter Eleven




Vishous came into the clinic and headed straight back to the quarantine room. No one at the nursing station questioned his right to barge on through, and as he went down the hall, the medical staff tripped over their own feet to get out of his way.

Smart. He was heavily armed and edgy as hell.

The day had been a wasteland. He hadn’t found anything in the Chronicles that approached what had been done to Butch. Nothing in the Oral Histories either. And worse, he was sensing things in the future, parts of people’s destinies realigning, but he could see nothing of what his instincts told him was happening. It was like watching theater with the curtain down: Every once in a while he would see the velvet drape move as a body brushed the far side or he would hear indistinct voices or the lighting would shift under the tasseled hem. But he knew no particulars, his gray cells shooting blanks.

He strode past Havers’s lab and went into the housekeeping closet. As he stepped through the concealed door, he found the anteroom empty, the computers and the monitors carrying on their sentry duties alone.

V stopped dead.

On the glowing screen closest to him, he saw Marissa lying on the bed on top of Butch. The cop’s arms were around her, his bare knees split wide to accommodate her body as the two of them moved against each other in waves. V couldn’t see their faces, but it was obvious their mouths were fused and their tongues wrapped.

V rubbed his jaw, dimly aware that under his weapons and his leathers, his skin had grown hot. God…damn…Butch’s palm was slowly sliding up Marissa’s spine now, going under her profusion of blond hair, finding, caressing the back of her neck.

The guy was totally sexed up, but he was so gentle with her. So tender.

V thought of the sex he’d had the night Butch had been taken. Nothing gentle about that. Which had been the point for both parties involved.

Butch shifted and rolled Marissa over, making a move to mount her. As he did, the hospital johnny broke open, the ties ripping free and revealing his strong back and powerful lower body. The tattoo at the base of his spine flexed as he pushed his hips through her skirts, trying to find home. And as he worked what was no doubt a rock-hard erection against her, her long, elegant hands snaked around and bit into his bare ass.

As she scored him with her nails, Butch’s head lifted, no doubt to let out a moan.

Jesus, V could just hear the sound…. Yeah…he could hear it. And from out of nowhere an odd yearning feeling flickered through him. Shit. What exactly in this scenario did he want?

Butch’s head dropped back down into Marissa’s neck, and his hips started to surge and retract, then surge again. His spine undulated and his heavy shoulders shrugged and released as he found a rhythm that made V blink really quickly. And then not at all.

Marissa arched up, her chin lifting, her mouth opening. Christ, what a picture she was under her male, her hair strewn all over the pillows, some of it tangled around Butch’s thick biceps. In her passion, in her vibrant peach gown, she was a sunrise, a dawn, a promise of warmth, and Butch was basking in what he was lucky enough to touch.

The anteroom’s door opened and V wheeled around, blocking the monitor with his body.

Havers put Butch’s medical chart down on a shelf and reached for a hazmat suit. “Good evening, sire. You’ve come to heal him again, have you?”

“Yeah…” V’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “But now’s not a good time.”

Havers paused, suit in hand. “Is he resting?”

Not in the slightest. “Yeah. So you and I are going to leave him alone right now.”

The doctor’s brows shot up behind his horn-rimmed glasses. “I beg your pardon?”

V picked up the chart, shoved it at the doctor, then grabbed the suit and hung it back up. “Later, doc.”

“I—I need to do an examination. I think he may be ready to go home—”