The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(91)

As the heroic arrivals had clustered around the injured male, Throe had been sorely tempted to stay and continue to play witness.

But the risk was too great, especially as yet another Brother arrived.

With an unspoken order, Throe had called his shadows into travel, and return to home they had gone, arriving the now in the snowy yard behind the grand house.

Throe paused and considered his options in the cold. There was the prospect of doing another attack this evening, but no. He wanted to see how the natural course of this first one played out. How long it took for the story to percolate and be expressed on social media. How others in the race, especially other aristocrats, responded. What Wrath, the great Blind King, did.

When one was sowing the seeds of social dissension, one had to proceed with care, lest the bonfire thus started got out of bounds and spread in directions that did not support the larger goal.

Originally, he had assumed he needed an army of shadows to attack the Brotherhood and kill the King. But upon further reflection, he decided he did not need such a largesse. Instead, he could use what he had to create social unrest—and that was a far better avenue for him to realize his ambitions. If enough attacks like this occurred, in a short enough period of time, it would not take long before Wrath and the Brotherhood would be perceived as weak: Unable to protect their citizens, they would suffer a rightful fall from grace—and the race would be looking for a hero.

And vacuums needed to be filled, didn’t they.

It was one of the laws of physics.

“Come,” he ordered his balloons. “Let us get out of the cold. The dominoes have just started to fall, and it will be a while as of yet.”

Naturally, his shadows did exactly what he told them to.





FORTY-ONE


Not long after Sola helped bring the groceries in, and Assail and his cousins started to cook, Dr. Manello came to check on the patient—which was fine, great, whatever, Sola thought.

It was just…well, that that other nurse in the long robes was with him. And hey, the woman was perfectly professional and solicitous, but Sola had to cop to feeling a spike of that’s-my-man. Which was frickin’ ridiculous.

In lieu of giving herself a time-out, she went downstairs and wasted ten minutes tidying her already neat guest room. And then she flipped through some TV. And then…

Unable to settle for some reason, she decided a shower was in order, and she was naked, and under the hot spray, when Assail came and found her: One moment she was alone and doing a quick wash of things…the next, a dark shape was just outside the shower stall.

Jerking the door open, she leaned out into the cold. “What did Dr. Manello say? Everything still okay?”

Assail didn’t respond verbally. Instead, he took off his clothes, letting them fall to the damp tile floor.

His sex was totally erect, sticking out straight out from his hips.

“I need you,” he said with a growl.

As she stepped back to make room for him, she was aware of a heady scent, some kind of delicious cologne that he had been wearing lately. Damn, the stuff went into her nose and through her body—

His hands were rough as he pulled her against him, and his mouth was the same, grinding, taking, demanding. And as she kissed him back, she was aware of a strange taste, as if he had been drinking wine? It was not unpleasant at all, it was just…a type of Cabernet she had never had before.

When he put one of her hands on his arousal, she started stroking him—and he climaxed immediately, coming on her belly, the ejaculations hot and powerful. In the back of her mind, she had a split second of disappointment that he had finished so soon, the session ending before it got started for her.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Before she knew what was happening, he was lifting her up and she was grabbing on to the top of the stall’s glass panels. Suspending herself at his hip height, he entered her core with a hard shove, the penetration slicing through her with an erotic sharpness. And as he began to move inside of her, an unusual tingling flowed throughout her body, as if her blood had turned to sparkles.

So hot. So heavy. So hard. And then his mouth was at her breasts, his dark head moving as wet suction locked on her nipples.

How great that his hair was already growing in, she thought in the back of her mind.

And then she didn’t think about anything at all. Her orgasm was no ripple—it was a roar, a great fireball that incinerated her from the inside out, the sensations wiping everything out of her consciousness except the pleasure. Three thrusts later, and he came along with her, locking his hips into her pelvis, his sex filling her up.

But Assail didn’t stop. He kept going, ravishing her, moving his mouth from her breasts to her neck, where he nipped and sucked at her. Gritting her teeth, she tried not to make any sound. This was not upstairs, where there was privacy. No, he had come to her down in the basement, as if he had been too impatient to wait.

At least his cousins and Markcus were upstairs cooking, her grandmother supervising them with frustration as the men tried to provide for her.

But that could change at any moment.

“I want more,” Assail said in her ear. “I want…more from you.”

Snaking a hand up the back of his neck, she pulled him closer. “Then take it. Take all of me—”

A lance of something so pleasurable it stung made her forget herself and she cried out as she lost her hold on the shower stall. With a squeak, her hand slipped down the glass, shifting her position, crashing them together, arms, legs, bodies tangling as slippery skin and awkward angles conspired to send her into a fall.