Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood 9)

V forced himself to back out of the doorway—

“How’re they doing?”

As he wheeled around, he dropped his fucking cigarette.

Butch picked it up. “Need a light?”

“Try a knife.” He took the thing back and got out his new Bic, which actually frickin’ worked. After he inhaled, he let the smoke drift from his mouth. “We going out for a drink?”

“Not yet. I think you need to go talk to your female.”

“Trust me. I don’t. Not right now.”

“She’s packing up a bag, Vishous.”

The bonded male in him went crazy, but nonetheless, he forced himself to stand there in the hall and keep smoking. Thank God for his nicotine addiction: Sucking on the hand-rolled was the only reason he wasn’t cursing.

“V, my man. What the hell is going on?”

He could barely hear the guy for the scream inside of his head. And couldn’t come close to a full explanation. “My shellan and I have had a difference of opinion.”

“So talk it out.”

“Not right now.” He put the tail end of the cig out on the sole of his shitkicker and deep-sixed the butt. “Let’s go.”

Except . . . well, when it came down to it, he somehow couldn’t walk off to the parking garage where the Escalade had been getting its oil changed. He was literally incapable of leaving, his feet having glued themselves to the floor.

As he glanced down toward the office, he mourned the fact that just an hour ago it had looked like things were back on track. But no. It was almost as if the shit before had been nothing except a warm-up for where they were now.

“I got nothing to say to her, true.” As always.

“Maybe it’ll come to you.”

Doubt that, he thought.

Butch clapped him on the shoulder. “Listen to me. You have the fashion sense of a park bench and the interpersonal skills of a meat cleaver—”

“Is this supposed to be helping?”

“Let me finish—”

“What’s next? The size of my cock?”

“Hey, even pencils can get the job done—I’ve heard the moaning from your room to prove it.” Butch gave him a shake. “I’m just telling you—you need that female in your life. Don’t fuck that shit up. Not now—not ever, feel me?”

“She was going to help Payne kill herself.” As the guy winced, V nodded. “Yeah. So this ain’t about some he-said, she-said argument about the cap on the fucking toothpaste.”

After a moment, Butch murmured, “There must have been a pretty damn good reason.”

“There is no reason. Payne’s the only blood I’ve got and she was going to take that away from me.”

With the situation boiled down to its basics like that, the buzzing at the base of V’s brain got so much stronger and louder, he had to wonder if he was going to stroke out—and in that moment, for the first time in his life, he was scared of himself and what he was capable of. Not hurting Jane, of course—no matter how fried he was, he would never touch her in anger—

Butch took a step back and raised his palms. “Hey. Easy there, roomie.”

V looked down. In his hands were both of his daggers . . . and his fists were so tight he wondered whether the grips were going to have to be surgically removed from his palms.

“Take these,” he said numbly, “away from me.”