Prisoner of Night (The Black Dagger Brotherhood #16.5)(27)

“The time will pass quickly.”

It already had. And God, he was glad she’d changed the subject.

She repositioned herself again. “Actually, it’ll pass the same as it always does. The length of minutes doesn’t change, and neither does the number of them required to make up an hour. But man, it feels like forever.”

“This is true.”

He didn’t know what the hell he was saying. The sound of her voice was a caress against his body, and he was thickening again. Hardening again. For someone who had never had to worry about that kind of shit, he had fresh insight into the inconveniences of the male sex.

“Your scent has changed,” she said in a lower voice.

Duran closed his eyes and banged the back of his head into the smooth wall. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“We should go to sleep.” Great suggestion. Yup. “It will—”

“I’m not a virgin.”

His mouth fell open. And then he considered the idea of her with another male, any other male. As jealousy heated his blood for absolutely no good reason, he redirected himself by thinking about Chalen’s guards.

“Neither am I,” he said tightly.

“Have you ever been mated? Do you have a shellan?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t have to feel guilty then. I’m single, too, by the way. Before the raids, there was a male or two, but no one serious. No one I brought home to my parents.”

Duran put his hands up to his face and scrubbed.

“It’s sad,” she continued, “that they’ll never meet any young I might have. Any hellren I may take.”

“I’m glad.”

“Excuse me?” she said sharply.

“No, no.” He dropped his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m glad that you’re thinking like there’s something on the other side of this. That your life continues. It’s a good thing to focus on a happy future.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she said.

You’re still way ahead of me, he thought.

That was why he wasn’t crossing the distance between them. No matter how open she seemed and how much he wanted her, he wasn’t going to do to her on purpose what he’d done to Nexi by mistake.

One goal. He had one goal. After which, like a fuse having done its job to set off a bomb, he would cease to exist.

Literally.





16




AHMARE HAD MEANT WHAT she’d said about time. It was true that seconds and minutes and hours were fundamentals, unchanging in spite of your perception. But damn, in this silent, darkened bunker, sheltered by the dirt skirt of a mountain, she and the prisoner had tapped into infinity.

Duran, that was.

She and Duran had entered a strange kind of forever, sure as if all of time was a serene, temperate pond so perfectly calibrated to their body temperature and utterly, completely still that they had been unaware of all the wading steps they’d taken to this submersion. In fact, the illusion of infinity was so complete that even her brother’s reality had lost some of its sting. It wasn’t that she had forgotten Ahlan’s situation; it was more like that sense of urgency she’d been motivated by had run itself out on the racetrack of her fight-or-flight response and was taking a breather on a bench off to the side, gulping water and panting as it prepared for the next relay.

Her panic would be back the second it was safely dark outside.

And in its place, a different urge was consuming her.

Across the way, Duran’s body was giving off all kinds of arousal signals: Those dark spices, for one. For another, he was moving around a lot, his boots squeaking as he crossed and recrossed his legs, his throat clearing, his shoulder cracking as he stretched again. And again. And . . . again.

She knew exactly the kind of ants that were under his skin. The tingle in the spine. The flush of heat in the vein that flowed but did not ebb.

She had been hoping he would act on their sexual tension first, and that was some cowardly stuff right there. Such a lame move, as if she didn’t have to be responsible for her own choice if he was the one to cross over and kiss her first: Like if it happened that way, she didn’t have to feel guilty that her brother was suffering and she was getting off with a stranger.

Closing her eyes, she crossed her arms over her chest and resolved to cut the crap and go to sleep.

Two seconds later, she was sitting up. Putting her weight on her feet. Going to him.

Being the one who forged the trail across the vacant yet somehow utterly cluttered space between them. And just as time had become distorted, so, too, did distance—miles, she walked miles over the course of the fifteen or so feet that separated them.

Duran cursed in a low mutter as she stopped in front of him.

“You can tell me no,” she said, “but I’m not going to apologize.”

“I don’t know what that word means right now.”

“Which one?”

“The one that matters.”

Lowering herself down, she straddled his outstretched legs, staying on her knees. Her hands went to his shirt, finding the soft fabric, pressing into the hard chest underneath. When she leaned forward, she tilted her head to one side and hesitated.

He seemed frozen. Incapable of response. Shocked, as if he didn’t know what to expect. He wasn’t pushing her away, though. Far from it. And those dark spices were a roar in her nose now, a dense erotic scent that intoxicated her even further.