Lover Revealed (Black Dagger Brotherhood #4)(36)

“Great. But we’re leaving.”

Havers opened his mouth to argue and V got bored with the conversation. Clamping a hand on the doctor’s shoulders, he looked into the male’s eyes and willed him into agreement.

“Yes…” Havers murmured. “Later. T-tomorrow?”

“Yeah, tomorrow works.”

As V frog-marched Marissa’s brother back out into the hall, all he could think about were the images on that screen. So wrong of him to watch.

So wrong of him to…want.



Marissa was on fire.

Butch…good Lord, Butch. He was heavy on top of her and big, so big her legs were stretched wide beneath her gown to accommodate him. And the way he moved…the rhythm of his hips was making her crazy.

When he finally broke the kiss, he was breathing hard and his hazel eyes were full of sexual hunger, a rank male starvation. Maybe she should have been overwhelmed because she had no idea what she was doing. Instead, she felt powerful.

As silence stretched, she said, “Butch?” Though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking for.

“Oh…God, baby.” With a light brush, his hand went down her neck to her collarbone. He paused as he got to the top of her dress, clearly asking for permission to take off her gown.

Which cooled her down fast. Her breasts seemed average enough, but it wasn’t as if she’d seen any other female’s to compare. And she couldn’t bear to catch the sort of disgust males of her kind had looked at her with. Not on Butch’s face, and especially not if she were naked. That distaste had been hard enough to bear fully clothed and coming from males she didn’t care about.

“It’s okay,” Butch said, removing his hand. “I don’t want to push you.”

He kissed her lightly and rolled off her, dragging a sheet over his hips as he eased onto his back. He covered his eyes with his forearm, his chest going up and down like he’d been running.

Marissa looked down at her bodice and realized she was clutching the fabric so hard her knuckles were white. “Butch?”

His arm dropped and his head turned on the pillow. His face was still swollen in places, one of his eyes still black and blue. And she noticed that his nose had been broken, but not recently. Yet to her he was beautiful.

“What, baby?”

“Have you…have you had many lovers?”

He frowned. Inhaled. Looked like he didn’t want to reply. “Yeah. Yeah, I have.”

Marissa’s lungs turned to concrete as she imagined him kissing other females, unclothing them, mating. She was willing to bet the vast majority of his lovers hadn’t been clueless virgins.

God, she was going to throw up.

“Which is another reason it’s good that we stop,” he said.

“How so?”

“I’m not saying it would have gone this far, but I would need a condom.”

Well, at least she knew what one of those was. “But why? I’m not fertile.”

The long pause didn’t inspire confidence. And neither did the way he cursed under his breath. “I haven’t always been careful.”

“With what?”

“Sex. I’ve had…a lot of sex with people who might not have been clean. And I did it without protection.” He flushed as if ashamed of himself, the color riding up his neck and slamming into his face. “So yeah, I’d need a condom with you. I don’t have any idea what I’m carrying.”

“Why weren’t you more careful with yourself?”

“Just didn’t give a sh—er, yeah…” He reached out and took a piece of her hair. As he carried it to his lips and kissed it, he said under his breath, “Now I wish I were a goddamned virgin.”

“I can’t catch human viruses.”

“I wasn’t just with humans, Marissa.”

Now she went completely cold. For some reason, if it was with females of his own species, with women, that struck her as different. But another vampire?

“Who?” she asked tightly.

“Somehow I don’t think you’d know her.” He dropped the strand of hair and put his arm back over his eyes. “God, I wish I could undo that. Undo a lot of things.”

Oh…Jesus. “It happened recently, didn’t it.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you…love her?”

He frowned and looked over at her. “God, no. I didn’t even know her—oh, shit, that sounds worse, doesn’t it.”

“Did you take her into your bed? Did you sleep beside her afterward?” Why in the hell was she asking these questions? It was like poking at a cut with a steak knife.

“No, it was in a club.” Shock must have shown on her face, because he cursed again. “Marissa, my life isn’t pretty. The way you’ve known me, being with the Brotherhood, dressed in fancy clothes…that’s not the way I lived before. And that’s really not who I am now.”

“Who are you, then?”

“No one you’d ever know. Even if I were a vampire, our paths would never cross. I’m a blue-collar kind of guy.” At her look of confusion, he said, “Lower-class.”

His tone was factual, as if he were reciting his height or weight.

“I don’t think of you as lower-class, Butch.”