Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood 8)

Just because lessers were impotent didn't mean they couldn't do other things with. . .

The cold breeze that shot through the OR brought V's head up again. "Word of advice, John. I'd keep your suppositions to yourself. Assuming you want to be the one who kills Lash, true? No sense Rehv or the Shadows, much as I respect them, doing what is your right. "

My God, the Brother was cool, John thought.

Nodding once, he went over to Xhex's room, thinking those males weren't the only reason he was going to keep a lid on things. Xhex didn't need to know the lengths he was going to go to, either.

Xhex felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen bus in her uterus.

The pressure was so great, she actually lifted her head and looked down her body to see if she was swollen to garage dimensions.

Nope. Flat as always.

She let her head fall back.

On some level, she couldn't believe where she was now: on the other side of the operation, lying in a bed with her arms and legs and head still attached. . . and the tear in her uterine wall repaired.

When she was in the grips of her iatrophobia, she couldn't see past what her brain had marked as deadly. To her, in that flipped-out state, she was not in a safe environment, surrounded by people she knew and could trust.

Now, having gone through the fire, the fact that she was unscathed and well gave her a weird buzz of endorphins.

There was a soft knock, and she knew who it was by the scent beneath the door.

Touching her hair, she wondered what the hell she looked like and decided it was better not to know. "Come in. "

John Matthew's head ducked inside and his eyebrows lifted in a how're-you-feeling arch.

"I'm okay. I'm better. Groggy from the meds. "

He slipped through and leaned back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets and crossing one shitkicker over the other. His T-shirt was nothing but a white Hanes, which was probably a good call, given that it was stained with lesser blood.

He smelled like a male should. Soap and clean sweat.

And he looked like a male should. Tall and broad and deadly.

God, had she really lost it that badly in front of him?

"Your hair's shorter," she said for no particular reason.

He unplugged one of his hands and awkwardly brushed at the skull trim. With his head tilted down, the powerful muscles that ran from his shoulders up into his neck flexed under his golden skin.

Abruptly, she wondered if she would ever have sex again.

It was an alien thought, to be sure. Considering how she'd spent the last--

She frowned. "How many weeks have I been gone?"

He held up four fingers and then made a pinching motion.

"Almost four?" When he nodded, she took elaborate care straightening the fold on the sheet that ran across her chest. "Almost. . . four. "

Well, the humans had had her for a matter of months before she'd been able to get away from them. Just under four weeks should be a cakewalk to get over.

Ah, but she wasn't sticking around, was she. There was no "getting over. " There was just "getting done. "

"Do you want to sit down?" she said, indicating a chair by the side of the bed. The thing was standard- issue institutional, which meant it looked about as comfortable as a stake up the ass, but she didn't want him to leave.

John's brows lifted again and he nodded as he came over. Arranging his huge body on the little seat, he tried first to cross his legs at the knees, then the ankles. He ended up jacked halfway around, his shitkickers under the bed and his arm over the back of the chair.