Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood 8)

Hell no, you do not get to run. After what you put me through, you do not get to run the fuck out of here just because you can't deal with shit you created. I couldn't run from today. I had to stay caged here and you can damn well return the favor. Her eyes wanted to focus elsewhere, but then she couldn't track what he was saying with his hands. You want to know how I am? Fucking resolved, that's how I am. You and I are turning a corner tonight. You say you have a right to go after Lash? I do, too.

That locker room, in the shower, she thought. The betrayal that she didn't know the details of, but that she sensed had everything to do with what had happened to John when he'd been young, and alone, and defenseless.

Here's the deal and it's nonnegotiable. We work together to find him and get him and kill him. We work as a team, which means where one of us is, the other goes. And at the end, whoever takes him to ground gets the honors. That's where we stand.

Xhex exhaled with relief, instantly knowing it was the right answer. She hadn't liked how it felt being at that farmhouse without him. It had seemed wrong.

"Deal," she said.

His face didn't register surprise or satisfaction--which told her whatever he'd planned if she said no must have been a doozy.

Except then she learned why he was so calm.

After it's over, we go our separate ways. We're done.

The blood drained out of her head and abruptly, her hands and feet went numb. Which was such bullshit. What he was proposing was the best arrangement and the best outcome: two fighters working together and once their goal was accomplished, there was no reason to retain any tie between them.

Matter of fact, this was precisely what she'd seen of the future when she'd first come out of that nightmare with Lash. Get him good and dead. Then end this fiasco of life.

Trouble was. . . her plans that had been so clear were foggy now, the path that she had set with her head the instant she got free obscured by things that had nothing to do with what was in her skull and everything to do with the male who was naked against her.

"Okay," she said hoarsely. "All right. "

Now that caused a reaction in him. His body relaxed against hers and he planted his hands on the wall on either side of her head. As their eyes met, her body roared with a blast of heat.

Man, desperation was gasoline to a match for her when it came to John Matthew--and g

iven the way he subtly rolled his hips against her, he felt the same way.

Xhex reached up and clamped a hold on the side of his neck. She wasn't gentle and neither was he as she pulled him down to her mouth, their lips crushing together, their tongues not so much meeting as dueling. When she suddenly heard a tearing sound, she realized he'd grabbed both sides of her muscle shirt and ripped it in half down the front--

Her breasts came up against his bare chest, her nipples rubbing against his skin, her core weeping for him. To hell with desperation; the need to have him inside went farther than that, until her emptiness without him was an agony.

Her leathers were on the floor a split second later.

Then with a quick hop, she jumped up and locked her thighs around his waist. Reaching down, she positioned him against her sex and squeezed her heels into his ass, making the penetration so very real. As his arousal sank deep, she took all of him, the sliding push enough to make her orgasm wildly.

Riding her release, her fangs shot out into her mouth, and John broke the kiss to tilt his head and flash his vein.

The puncture was sweet. The strength that came from him meteoric.

With hard draws, she drank as his body hammered into her, pitching her off that cliff again, sending her into a crazy descent that somehow had no hard landing--and he followed her, making that glorious leap without a parachute, his orgasms shuddering into her.

There was only the briefest of pauses. . . and then John started pumping again--

No, he was carrying her to the bed in the darkened room, the motion of his striding thighs pushing him inside of her and pulling him free and pushing him back.

She remembered every single sensation, storing each one deep in her mind, making the moment infinite and ageless by virtue of the power of memory. And as he settled on top of her, she did what he had done for her: offering her vein to him, she ensured that they were the most powerful team they could be.

Partners.

Just not the permanent kind.

Chapter Fifty-two

As John's body got it on with Xhex's, his mind briefly retreated to that moment in the bathroom when he'd waited for her to agree to their arrangement.

Sure, he'd sounded all lay-down-the-law, but the truth was he'd had no leverage: She was either going to go with it or not, and if she didn't, he had nothing to hold over her. Bottom line? There was absolutely no threat of withdrawal, no proactive anything, no if-this-then-that he could bring to the situation.