Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood 9)

“I’ll text you with it. Do you have a gun? Any weapon?”

“Yeah. I do.” Manny was already taking the licensed forty out of his closet. He’d been living in the city all his adult life and shit happened—so he’d learned his way around a gun about twenty years ago.

“Tell me it’s bigger than a nine.”

“Yup.”

“Get a knife. You’re going to need a stainless-steel blade.”

“Roger that.” He headed for the kitchen and took out the biggest, sharpest Henckels he had. “Anything else?”

“A flamethrower. Nunchakus. Throwing stars. Uzi. You want me to go on.”

If only he had that kind of arsenal.

“I’m going to get her back, vampire. Mark my fucking words—I’m getting her back.” He grabbed his wallet and was heading for the door when dread stopped him. “How many of them are there. Your enemies.”

“An endless supply.”

“Are they . . . male?”

Pause. “Used to be. Before they got turned, they were human men.”

A sound came out of Manny’s mouth . . . one that he was very sure he had never uttered before.

“Nah, she can handle herself with the hand-to-hand,” her brother said in a dead tone. “She’s tough like that.”

“Not what I was thinking.” He had to scrub his eyes. “She’s a virgin.”

“Still . . . ?” the guy asked after a moment.

“Yeah. It wasn’t right for me to . . . take that from her.”

Oh, God, the idea she could be hurt . . .

He couldn’t even finish the sentence to himself.

Snapping into action, he stepped out of his place and went over to call the elevator. As he waited, he realized that there had only been silence on the other end of the phone for a while. “Hello? You there.”

“Yeah.” Her twin’s voice cracked. “Yeah. I’m here.”

The connection between them remained open as Manny got into the elevator and hit P. And the entire trip down to his car was passed with the two of them saying absolutely nothing at all.

“They’re impotent,” her twin finally muttered just as Manny was getting into the Porsche. “They can’t have sex.”

Well, didn’t that do nothing to make him feel better. And going by the tone of her brother’s voice, the other guy was thinking the same way.

“I’ll call you,” Manny said.

“You do that, my man. You frickin’ do that.”

FIFTY-TWO

When Payne came back to consciousness, she did not open her eyes. No reason to give away the fact that she was aware of her surroundings.

Bodily sensation informed her of her situation: She was on her feet, with her wrists shackled and pulled out to the sides and her back against a stone wall that was damp. Her ankles were likewise tethered and stretched apart and her head had lolled forward into a very uncomfortable position.

When she drew breaths in, she smelled musky dirt, and the voices of males percolated up from the left of where she was.