Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood 3)

As he stared at her throat, his thirst rose and his fangs elongated. God, he was dry enough to drain her.

"What are you going to do?" she snapped. "Bite me?"

"Yeah."

He struck quickly and held her in place as she thrashed. To make it easier on her, he calmed her with his mind, relaxing her, giving her a kind of high she was no doubt very familiar with. While she settled down, he swallowed as much as he could without gagging, tasting the coke and alcohol in her blood as well as the antibiotics she was on.

When he was finished, he licked the puncture marks so the healing process would get its groove on and she wouldn't bleed out. Then he popped her collar to hide the bite, cleaned himself from her memory, and sent her back into the club.

Alone again, he sagged against the bricks. Human blood was so weak, it barely got him what he needed, but he wasn't about to drink from females of his own species. Not again. Ever.

He looked up at the sky. The clouds that had brought the flurries earlier were gone, and between the buildings he could see a slice of the clear pincushion of stars. The constellations told him he had only two hours left to be out.

When he had the strength, he closed his eyes and dematerialized to the only place he wanted to be.

Thank God there was still enough time to go there. To be there.

Chapter Three

John Matthew moaned and rolled over in his bed onto his back.

The woman followed his lead, her naked br**sts pressing down on his broad, bare chest. With an erotic smile, she reached down between his legs and found his heavy ache. He kicked his head back and moaned as she stood his erection up and sat down on it. While he gripped her knees, she fell into a good, slow ride.

Oh, yeah...

With one hand she played with herself; with the other she tantalized him, sweeping her palm over her br**sts and up to her neck, taking her long, platinum blond hair with her as she went. Her hand moved higher to her face, and then her arm was over her head, a graceful arc of flesh and bone. She arched back and her br**sts pushed out, the hard tips distended, rosy. Her skin was so pale it looked like fresh snow.

"Warrior," she said, grinding. "Can you handle this?"

Handle it? Damn straight, he could. And just so they were clear on who was handling what, he grabbed her thighs and thrust his hips up until she cried out.

When he retreated, she smiled down at him, working against him faster and faster. She was slick and she was tight, and his erection was in heaven.

"Warrior, can you handle this?" Her voice was deeper now from the exertion.

"Hell, yeah," he growled. Man, the second he came, he was going to flip her over and pound into her all over again.

"Can you handle this?" She pumped even harder, milking him. With her arm still over her head, she was riding him like a bull, bucking against him.

This was great sex... awesome, incredible, great -

Her words began to warp, distort... fall below the register of a female. "Can you handle this?"

John felt a chill. Something was off here. Something was way off...

"Can you handle this? Can you handle this?" Suddenly a man's voice was coming out of her throat, a man's voice was sneering at him. "Can you can handle this?"

John struggled to throw her off, but she was clamped on to him, and the f**king wouldn't stop.

"Do you think you can handle this? Do-you-think-you-can-handle-this? Doyouthinkyoucanhandlethis?" The male voice was screaming now, roaring out of the female's face.

The knife came at John from over her head - only she was a man now, a man with white skin and pale hair and eyes the color of fog. As the blade flashed silver, John reached up to block it, but his arm wasn't heavy with muscle anymore. It was thin, emaciated.

"Can you handle this, warrior?"

With a graceful slice, the dagger landed square in the middle of his chest. A blazing pain lit off from where it penetrated him, the violent burning sluicing through his body, ricocheting around inside of his skin until he was alive with agony. He gasped for breath and choked on his own blood, choked and gagged until he could get nothing into his lungs. Railing around, he fought against the death that was coming for him -

"John! John! Wake up!"

His eyes popped wide. His first thought was that his face hurt, though he had no idea why, because he'd been stabbed in the chest. Then he realized his mouth was stretched open, accommodating what would have been a scream if he'd been born with a voice box. As it was, all he was doing was letting out a steady stream of air.

Then he felt the hands... hands were pinning his arms. Terror returned, and in what was for him an awesome surge, he threw his little body off the bed. He landed face-first, his cheek skidding on the low-napped carpet.

"John! It's me, Wellsie."

Reality came back at the sound of the name, shaking him free of the hysteria like a slap.

Oh, God... It was okay. He was okay. He was alive.

He launched himself into Wellsie's arms and buried his face in her long red hair.

"It's all right." She pulled him into her lap and stroked his back. "You're home. You're safe."

Home. Safe. Yes, after only six weeks this was home... the first he'd ever had after growing up in Our Lady's orphanage and then living in hovels since he was sixteen. Wellsie and Tohrment's was home.

And he wasn't just safe here; he was understood. Hell, he'd learned the truth about himself. Until Tohrment had come and found him, he hadn't known why he'd always been different from other people or why he was so scrawny and weak. But male vampires were like that before they went through the transition. Even Tohr, who was a full-fledged member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, had apparently been small.

Wellsie tilted John's head up. "Can you tell me what it was?"

He shook his head and burrowed deeper into her, holding on to her so hard he was surprised she could still breathe.

Zsadist materialized in front of Bella's farmhouse and cursed. Someone had been in the place again. There were fresh tire tracks through the powdered snow in the driveway and footprints to the door. Ah, shit... There were a lot of footprints, so many back and forth to whatever car had been parked there that it looked as if things were being moved out.

This made him anxious, like little bits of her were disappearing.

Holy hell. If her family dismantled the house, he didn't know where he would go to be with her anymore.

With a hard eye, he stared at the front porch and the long windows of the living room. Maybe he should pack up some of her stuff for himself. It would be a bastard thing to do, but then, he wasn't above being a thief.

Once again, he wondered about her family. He knew they were aristocrats of the highest social order, but that was about it, and he didn't want to meet them to find out more. Even on his best day, he was shit-awful with people, but the situation with Bella made him dangerous, not just nasty. No, Tohrment was the liaison with her blood ties, and Z was always careful not to run into them.

He went around the back of the house, entered through the kitchen, and turned off the security alarm. As he did every night, he checked on her fish first. Flakes of food were scattered across the top of the water, evidence that someone had already taken care of them. He was pissed off that he'd been robbed of the opportunity.

Truth was, he thought of her house as his space now. He'd cleaned it up after she'd been abducted. He'd watered the plants and taken care of the fish. He'd walked the floors and the stairs and stared out of the windows and sat on every chair and sofa and bed. Hell, he'd already decided to buy the damn thing when her family sold it. Though he'd never had a house before or many personal possessions, these walls and this roof and the shit sheltered inside - he would own it all. A shrine to her.

Z made a quick trip through the house, cataloging the things that had been removed. It wasn't much. A painting and a silver dish from the living room and a mirror from the front hall. He was curious why those particular objects had been chosen and wanted them back where they belonged.

As he came into the kitchen again, he pictured the room after she'd been abducted, all the blood, the glass shards, the busted chairs and china. His eyes went down to a black streak of rubber on the pine floor. He could guess how it had been made. Bella struggling against the lesser, being dragged, the sole of her shoe squeaking as it left a trail.

Anger crawled around his chest on all fours until he was panting from the ugly, familiar feeling. Except... Christ, the whole thing didn't make sense: him searching for her and obsessing over her shit and walking around her house. They hadn't been friends. Hell, they hadn't even been acquaintances. And he hadn't been nice to her on the two occasions he'd met her.