Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(21)

As she joined him, she put her gun away, but kept that trigger in her hand.

“You can relax.” He took the sandwiches she and Nexi had made out of the backpack. “If I were going to hurt you, I wouldn’t be handing you calories.”

“How far away are we?” she asked as she accepted what he held out—and kept that trigger on her thigh. “How much more do we have to travel.”

Frustration that had nothing to do with her made him want to argue the point that he wasn’t going to get aggressive on her. He started eating to keep himself from wasting hot air.

“Not all that far.”

“How far.”

As she stared at him, he knew it was a fair question. Hell, after what he’d seen and experienced in the cult, he knew all too well the dangers that came with putting your life in the hands of another. And he was tempted to tell her everything: the location of the hidden entrance to the cult’s underground facility, the plan for after they’d breached the security system, where Chalen’s beloved was kept, and how to work the evac.

There were two problems with full disclosure. One, it had been twenty years, and although he knew the cult was still going strong—because the Dhavos had relished his role as a demigod too goddamn much to ever give it up—there was no knowing what had changed since Duran had last been there. What intel he had could be obsolete, and without him to figure things out? She was going to fail spectacularly.

The second reason he kept quiet? He had to remain indispensable or he lost his only leverage with her. There was going to come a moment when he was going to need to go his own way, when their objectives of infiltrating the compound and evading capture were going to shift to separate imperatives.

When her goal to get the beloved and his only chance for revenge were going to take them in different directions.

There was no telling when this split was going to occur, and because of the way Chalen had set this up, she was supposed to bring Duran back to that cell in the conqueror’s dungeon. Not going to happen. And he had to make sure she was placed in the position of having to choose between her brother’s life and his own freedom.

It was his only chance.

As the grim reality of their “relationship” resonated with him, he thought it was ironic that his version of freedom was about killing another. It wasn’t a safe home, a mate, or even an absence of physical pain.

Freedom was murdering his father for everything that had been done to his mahmen. And then, if he lived through that?

He was going to return to Chalen’s castle. But not as a prisoner.

So no, he could not provide her with more information.

Abruptly, Duran’s eyes lowered to her mouth—and a thought that was truly, fundamentally, incredibly unhelpful ricocheted like a stray bullet through his head: He wished he could provide her with other things.

Like his blood . . . his sex.

That he went to such an inappropriate place, even if it was only in his mind, made him recall when her scent had first registered. There was something about this particular female that kindled him, and he couldn’t explain it. Back when he’d been in the cult, there had been no sex allowed—at least not unless the Dhavos decreed it, and then it involved the great male himself.

Duran had always been too worried about rescuing his mahmen to think much about the ban or to follow through on whatever might have, ever so briefly, turned his eye. And then when he’d been in the dungeon? Taking those veins had been about survival, not attraction.

This female . . . Ahmare . . . had changed all that for him. Not that either one of them were in a position to do anything about it. Or, in her case, so inclined.

“Water?” he asked as he held out a jug.



This had to be what canned corn felt like, Ahmare thought as she chewed and looked around at all the metal.

The bunker had been fabricated from sheets of steel bolted together, the seams overlapping and riveted with vertical lineups of bolts. For some reason, the orderly rows of hexagonal heads made her think of the old Victorian dresses that had been in her mahmen’s closet, the buttons down the backs evenly spaced in their hooks or holes like well-behaved pupils.

Taking another bite of the sandwich she’d made with the Shadow, she found the bread and salami all texture, no taste in her mouth. But it wasn’t like she was eating to enjoy.

“More water?” the prisoner said.

As she took what he held out and drank again, a part of her brain acknowledged that she was placing her lips where his had been.

Her eyes went to his beard. She could see nothing of his mouth with the long growth and she decided that was a good thing. Unless, of course, everything under there was ugly, then maybe it would help—because she shouldn’t be thinking about things like lips . . . and tongues.

His lips. His tongue.

The trouble was, his scent in her nose, replacing as it did the tinny high notes of the metal-laced air, was working telephone lines on her switchboard that hadn’t rung in a very, very long time.

And then there were his shoulders. Under the well-washed flak shirt he’d put on, they shifted as he took his bites, unbaggied a second sandwich, drank more water. Every time his arm rose, his bicep pulled the sleeve so tight she knew its seam was straining, and every time his arm went down, the shirt seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, a test passed.

His hair was drying now that they were out of the humidity, the waves turning into curls at the long ends, and she had a feeling it would be soft to the touch in a way his body would not. The shampoo he’d used in the Shadow’s shower had left it all shiny—or maybe it had just been soap that he’d rubbed all over his head.