The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #1)(68)

It went on for so long, even though there were so many reasons to stop . . . but eventually, their bodies halted, and he rolled them to the side. As rough as he had been, his arms were gentle now, and she felt herself slipping into a post-feeding drift as she lay, hot and steaming from exertion, against his bare chest.

Just as she was falling asleep, something registered in the back of her mind, something that her consciousness refused to release.

“Why did you wish I didn’t have to stop feeding?” she murmured just before she fell asleep. “Not safe.”

“Hmm?” he said in a groggy way.

“Why didn’t you want me to stop?”

For the life of her, she didn’t know why she was pressing the issue. What a weird thing to say.

As if he agreed with that, it was a while before he answered, and when he did, she wasn’t sure whether she was dreaming or not: “If I could, I would bleed out in your arms. I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be when I die.”

Nyx’s eyes flared open.

“Shh,” he soothed. “We have some time. Let’s just enjoy this for a little longer. Before we have to leave this all behind.”





Come into the pool with me?”

Jack wasn’t sure exactly how long he let his female rest. But when the same internal clock that had always helped him keep track of the guards’ schedules started to ring, he felt compelled into action.

And he really needed her to take a bath before they left here.

She already had a target on her back. If the Command scented him on her? Fuck.

Nyx stirred against him, her dark lashes lifting, her eyes unfocused and contented. Smiling down at her, he brushed her lips with his own. Then he couldn’t resist. He licked his way into her mouth. Their bodies had separated, but his was quick to want a return, and given the way her hand snuck onto the nape of his neck and pulled him on top of her, the feeling was mutual.

“Come,” he repeated. “Into the bath with us.”

He lifted her up and carried her over to the pool. As she rested in his arms, her weight was not a burden, it was a gift, and he was content to continue to hold her as she stripped her shirt and her bra—

The sight of her bare breasts shorted out his thinking, and he let her feet down so she could reveal herself in all her naked glory to his captivated eyes. Then there was nothing but glorious flesh, from the cleft of her sex to the flat plane of her abdomen to her beautiful breasts.

She smiled in an ancient way as she stepped into the pool. First one foot. Then the other.

And as she sank down into the burbling warm water, she removed the banding on her hair.

Jack was not so graceful. He ditched his pants like they had insulted his moral code, and as he straightened, his arousal was so erect, it stuck out from his hips at a right angle. Before he joined her, he tucked his hand behind one of the stones that rimmed the pool and took out the bar of herbal soap he left here.

As he jumped in and ducked under the water, he had to ignore a grim urgency. He didn’t know how much time they had left—no, he knew that answer and he hated it. Therefore, when he came up out of the pool with his hair smoothed to his skull, he refused to allow himself to waste even a moment on remembering how he’d used this particular bar of soap before.

The memories came anyway. Here was where he washed himself when the Command was done with him. Here was where he cleaned himself of the smells and residue after he was used.

He would have preferred to put something, anything, else on Nyx’s skin. But he had to clean her of him.

“Let me wash you,” he said as he palmed the bar and called up suds from the packed lye-and-herb combination.

He was gentle with her, worshipping her with his hands, cleaning her hair, her neck, her shoulders, the familiar tangy scent of the spices rising up between them. And then he continued below her waist, reaching between her thighs, his fingers through the waves within the water—

And that was when he got sidetracked.

As he caressed her sex, his fingers entered her, and the next thing he knew, he was lifting her out of the pool and propping her up on the smooth rocks of the rim. Spreading her thighs, he nestled himself in and brought his mouth to her collarbone, her sternum . . . the side of her breast. He sucked on her while he stroked her sex with both his thumbs, and as she ran wet at her core for a reason other than the water that dripped off of her, he licked at her nipple, nibbled at it.

He did the same to the other breast.

And then he kept going with his mouth. Lower . . . lower . . .

“Jack!” she cried out.

Her fingers speared into his hair, and she pulled him tight to where he wanted to go, his lips to her sex, his tongue replacing his fingers. Plying at her, sucking at her, putting one of her legs over his shoulder, he pleasured her with his mouth until she orgasmed on his face—and then he kept right on going.

Jack had not intended to take things where they were, but he was glad—

For a moment, he paused.

He hadn’t realized that he’d begun thinking of himself with the name she used for him. It was a shift, like so many, that she created within him.

Something else to keep after she was gone.



Well, that happened, Nyx thought some time later as she sat alone on the sofa rock and twiddled her thumbs.

On a reflex that served no purpose, she lifted her wrist and pulled back the sleeve of the fresh tunic she’d put on. But there was no watch there. In fact, she never wore watches.