The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8

by J. R. Ward

  He didn’t turn on any lights. Just took her hand and urged her forward with a tug.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Don’t worry. Nothing will hurt you, and I know the way.”

  She hung onto his palm and wrist and shuffled along behind him until he stopped. With the way their footsteps echoed, she had a sense of great space, but no idea of the contours of the penthouse.

  He turned her to face to the right and then stepped away.

  “Where are you going?” She swallowed hard.

  A candle flared over in the far corner, some forty feet away from her. It didn’t illuminate much, however. The walls…the walls and the ceiling and…the floor…it was black. All black. As was the candle.

  V stepped into the lee of the light, nothing but a looming shadow.

  Jane’s heart pounded.

  “You asked about the scars between my legs,” he said. “How they happened.”

  “Yes…” she whispered. So that was why he wanted everything dark as night. He wasn’t going to want her to see his face.

  Another candle came on, this one on the opposite side of what she realized was a vast room.

  “My father had it done to me. Right after I almost killed him.”

  Jane inhaled sharply. “Oh…God.”

  Vishous stared at Jane but saw only the past and what had come after him taking his father down to the ground.

  “Bring me my blade,” the Bloodletter said.

  V fought against the soldier who was holding his arms and got nowhere. As he struggled two more males appeared. Then another pair. Now three others.

  The Bloodletter spat on the ground as someone put a black dagger into his hand, and V braced himself for the stabbing that was coming…except the Bloodletter just streaked the blade across his palm, then sheathed the knife in his belt. Bringing both hands together, he rubbed them one against the other, then slammed his right one into the center of V’s chest.

  V looked down at the print on his skin. Expulsion. Not death. But why?

  The Bloodletter’s voice was hard. “You shall be ever unknown to those who dwell herein. And death shall come to any who aid you.”

  The soldiers started to let Vishous go.

  “Not yet. Bring him into the camp.” The Bloodletter turned away. “And get the blacksmith. It is incumbent upon us to warn others of this male’s evil nature.”

  V bucked wildly as another soldier swept up his legs and he was carried like a carcass into the cave.

  “Behind the screen,” the Bloodletter told the blacksmith. “We shall do this afore the painted wall.”

  The male blanched, but took his rough wooden tray of tools around the partition. Meanwhile, V was laid out on his back with a soldier at the end of each of his limbs and one holding his hips down.

  The Bloodletter stood over V, his hands dripping bright red. “Mark him.”

  The blacksmith looked up. “In what manner, great one?”

  The Bloodletter spelled out the warnings in the Old Language, and the soldiers held V down as his temple and his groin and his thighs were tattooed. He fought the whole of it, but the ink sank into his skin, the characters permanent. When it was finished he was utterly drained, weaker than when he’d come out of his transition.

  “His hand. Do it upon his hand as well.” The blacksmith started to shake his head. “You will do it or I will get another blacksmith for the camp, as you will be dead.”

  The blacksmith shook all over, but was of care not to touch V’s skin so the marking was completed without incident.

  When it was done, the Bloodletter stared down at V. “There is one more necessary task, methinks. Spread wide his legs. I shall do the race a favor and ensure he never procreates.”

  V felt his eyes pop as his ankles and his thighs were yanked apart. His father once more unsheathed the black dagger from his belt, but then paused. “No, something else is needed.”

  He ordered the blacksmith do the deed with a pair of pliers.

  Vishous screamed as he felt the metal clamp onto his thinnest skin. There was a spearing pain and a tearing and then—

  “Sweet Jesus,” Jane said.

  V shook himself back to the present. He wondered how much he’d said out loud, and decided that, going by the look of horror on her face, it had been pretty much everything.

  He watched the candlelight flicker in her dark green eyes. “They weren’t able to finish.”

  “Not out of decency,” she said softly.

  He shook his head and raised his gloved hand. “Even though I was about to pass out, my whole body lit up. The soldiers who were holding me down were killed instantly. So was the blacksmith—he was using a metal tool, and it conducted the energy right into him.”

  She closed her eyes briefly. “Then what happened?”

  “I rolled over, threw up some more, and dragged myself to the exit. The whole camp watched me go in silence. Not even my father got in the way or said a thing.” V cupped himself loosely, remembering the mind-numbing pain. “The, ah…the cave floor was covered with this loose, powdery kind of dirt that had various minerals in it—one of which must have been salt. The wound sealed up so I didn’t bleed out, but that’s how I got the scars.”

  “I am…so sorry.” She lifted her hand as if she wanted to reach out, but then dropped her arm. “It’s a wonder you survived.”

  “I barely made it through that first night. It was so cold. I ended up using a branch to help me walk, and went as far as I could in no particular direction. Eventually I collapsed. My will to keep going was there, my body was not. I’d lost blood, and the pain was exhausting.

  “Some civilians of my race found me just before dawn. They took me in, but only for a day. The warnings…” He tapped his temple. “The warnings on my face and my body did what my father wanted them to. They made me a freak to be feared. At nightfall I left. I wandered alone for years, sticking to the shadows, staying out of people’s way. I fed from humans for a while, but that just didn’t sustain me for long enough. A century later I ended up in Italy, working as a hired thug for a merchant who dealt with humans. In Venice there were whores of my kind who would let you feed, and I used them.”

  “So lonely.” Jane put her hand to her throat. “You must have been so lonely.”

  “Hardly. I didn’t want to be with anyone. I worked for the merchant for a decade or so then one night, in Rome, I ran into a lesser who was in the process of killing a female vampire. I took the bastard out, but not because I particularly cared about the female. It was…See, it was her son. Her son was watching in the shadows of the dark street, crouched next to a cart. He was like…shit, definitely a pretrans, and a young one at that. I saw him first, actually, then caught the action across the way. I thought of my own mother, or at least the image I had made up about her, and was like…hell, no, was this little boy going to watch the female who’d birthed him die.”

  “Did the mother live?”

  He winced. “She was gone by the time I could get to her. Bled out from a throat wound. But I promise you, that lesser got shredded. Afterward I didn’t know what to do with the kid. I ended up going to the merchant I killed for, and he put me in touch with some folks who took the boy in.” V laughed in a short burst. “Turned out the mother who died was a fallen Chosen, and that pretrans? Well, he ended up being the father of my brother Murhder. We got a small world, true?

  “So because I saved a kid of warrior blood, word got out, and my brother Darius ended up finding me and introducing me to Wrath. D…D and I had a certain connection, and he was probably the only one who could have gotten my attention at that point. When I met Wrath, he wasn’t into being king, and he was no more interested in ties than I was. Which meant the two of us clicked. Eventually I was inducted into the Brotherhood. And there…shit, yeah, there you have it.”

  In the silence that followed he could only guess what was going through her mind, and the idea that she pitied him made him want to do something to
prove he was strong.

  Like bench-press a car.

  Except instead of going all soft on him and making him feel even more rattled, Jane just looked around, even though he knew she could see nothing but the two candles that were lit. “And this place…this place means what to you?”

  “Nothing. Means nothing more than any other.”

  “Then why are we here?”

  V’s heart rate spiked.

  Shit… Standing here with her now, after spilling his guts, he wasn’t sure he could go through with what he’d planned.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  As Jane waited for V to speak, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She wanted to throw a whole lot of very sincere, ultimately lame words at him. She wanted to know whether his father had died and in what way. She hoped the bastard had gone badly and with pain.

  When the silence continued, she said, “I don’t know if this will help…probably won’t, but I have to say something here. I can’t stomach oatmeal. To this day, it makes me sick.” She prayed she wasn’t going to say the wrong thing. “It is okay that you’re still struggling with everything that was done to you. Anyone would. It doesn’t make you weak. You were violently maimed by someone who should have protected and nurtured you. The fact that you’re still standing is a miracle. I respect you for it.”

  V’s cheeks went pink. “I, ah…don’t really see it that way.”

  “Fine. But I do.” To give him a break, she cleared her throat and said, “You going to tell me why we’re here?”

  He rubbed his face like he was trying to clear his brain. “Shit, I want to be with you. Here.”

  She exhaled in relief and sadness. She wanted a good-bye with him, also. A good-bye that was sexual and private and not in the bedroom they’d been locked in together. “I want to be with you, too.”

  Another candle came to life over by a bank of curtains. Then a fourth by a wet bar. A fifth next to a big bed with black satin sheets on it.

  She started to smile…until the sixth one lit up. There was something hanging off the wall…something that looked like…chains?

  More candles flared. Masks. Whips. Canes. Gags.

  A black table with restraints that hung down to the floor.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled. “So this is where you do the tying-up.”

  “Yeah.”

  Oh, Jesus… She didn’t want that kind of good-bye. Trying to stay calm, she said, “You know, it makes sense, given what happened to you. That you’d like that.” Shit, she couldn’t handle this. “So…is it men or women? Or, like, a combination?”

  She heard the creaking of leather and turned back to him. He was taking off his jacket, and a set of guns she hadn’t seen were next. Followed by two black knives that had been hidden as well. Christ, he’d been totally armed.

  Jane tightened the hold on herself. She wanted to be with him, but not tied down and masked while he pulled a 9½ Weeks on her head and whipped the shit out of her body. “Listen, V, I don’t think—”

  He took his shirt off, his back muscles flexing up his spine, his pecs pumping fully, then settling. He kicked off his boots.

  Holy…shit, she thought, as it dawned on her what this was really about.

  His socks and his leathers were next, and, as he’d gone commando, there were no boxers to get rid of. In total silence he padded across the glossy marble floor and got up on the table in a coordinated surge. Stretching out, he was utterly magnificent, his body heavy with muscle, his movements elegant and masculine. He took a deep breath, his rib cage rising and falling.

  Fine tremors licked over his skin…or maybe it was the candlelight?

  He swallowed hard.

  No, it was fear that was making him twitch.

  “Pick out a mask for me,” he said in a low voice.

  “V…no.”

  “A mask and a ball gag.” He turned his head toward her. “Do it. Then put the cuffs on me.” When she didn’t move, he nodded at what hung on the wall. “Please.”

  “Why?” she asked, watching the sweat break out over his body.

  He closed his eyes, and his lips barely moved. “You’ve given me so much—and not just a weekend of your life. I tried to think of what I could give you in return—you know, fair-trade shit, throwing up oatmeal for deets on my scars. The only thing I’ve got is me and this….”He tapped the rack’s hard wood with his knuckles. “This is as exposed as I could ever be, and that’s what I want to give you.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I know.” His lids flipped open. “But I want you to have me as no one else has or will. So pick out the mask.”

  As he swallowed, she watched his Adam’s apple roll along the column of his thick throat. “This is not the kind of gift I want. Or the kind of good-bye.”

  There was a long silence. Then he said, “Remember I told you about the arranged-marriage thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s going down in a matter of days.”

  Oh, now she really didn’t want this. To think she was with someone else’s fiancé—

  “I haven’t met the female. She hasn’t met me.” He looked over at Jane. “And she’s the first of about forty.”

  “Forty?”

  “I’m supposed to sire all their children.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “So here’s the thing. Sex is all about biological function from here on out. And see, I haven’t really ever put myself out there, true? I want to do this with you because…Well, anyway, I just do.”

  She looked at him. The cost of laying himself out like this was in his wide, bouncing eyes and his pale face and the sweat that beaded his chest. To say no was to degrade his courage.

  “What…” Holy shit. “What exactly do you want me to do to you?”

  When V finished telling her, he turned away and stared at the ceiling. The candlelight played across the broad, black expanse, making it look like a pool of oil. As he waited for Jane’s response, he was hit by vertigo, feeling as if the room had flipped itself over and he was suspended above the ceiling, about to be dropped into it and swallowed by Quaker State’s best.

  Jane didn’t say a word.

  Jesus… Nothing like offering yourself raw and being shut down.

  Then again, maybe she didn’t like vampire sushi.

  He jumped as her hand came to rest on his foot. And then he heard the metal-on-metal sound of a buckle being lifted. He looked down his naked body as a four-inch leather strap looped around his ankle. At the sight of her pale hands working to restrain him, his cock punched into an erection.

  Jane’s face was all concentration as she put the end of the leather tongue through the buckle and tugged to the left. “Is this okay?”

  “Tighter.”

  Without glancing up she gave a good solid pull. As the strap bit into his skin, V’s head dropped back on the wood and he moaned.

  “Too much?” she asked.

  “No…” He trembled outright as she anchored his other leg, both terrified and really fucking aroused. The feelings intensified as she did one wrist, then the other.

  “Now the gag and the mask.” His voice was hoarse because his blood was running hot and cold, and his throat was as tight as the restraints.

  She looked at him. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. One of the masks is the kind that just goes over the eyes, and that will fit.”

  When she came back to him she had a red rubber ball in a head halter and the mask in her hands.

  “The gag first,” he told her, opening his mouth wide. Her eyes shut for a moment, and he wondered if she was going to stop, but then she leaned forward. The ball tasted like latex, a stinging, bitter bite on his tongue. As he lifted his head so she could strap it on him, his breath whistled through his nose.

  Jane shook her head. “I can’t do the mask. I need to see your eyes. I can’t…Yeah, I won’t do this without eye contact. Okay?”

  It was probably a good idea. T
he gag was doing what it should, making him feel suffocated…and the restraints were doing what they should, making him feel trapped. If he couldn’t see and know that it was her, he’d probably totally fucking lose it.

  When he nodded she dropped the mask onto the floor and took off her coat. Then she went over and picked up one of the black candles.

  V’s lungs burned as she came at him.

  She took a deep breath. “You sure?”

  He nodded again even as his thighs twitched and his eyes bugged out. With dread and excitement, he watched as she extended her arm over his chest…and tipped the candle.

  Black wax dripped onto his nipple, and he ground his teeth into the ball gag, straining against what kept him on the table until the leather creaked. His cock jumped on his belly, and he had to suck back the orgasm.

  She did exactly what he’d told her he wanted, going down lower and lower on his torso, then skipping over his privates to start at his knees and work her way up. The pain had a cumulative effect, at first nothing more than bee stings, later growing intense. Sweat rolled down his temples and ribs, and he panted through his nose until his whole body was bowing up from the table.

  He came the first time when she put the candle away, picked up a length of cane…and touched the head of his erection with the end of it. He barked against the gag and ejaculated all over the hardened black wax on his stomach.

  Jane froze, as if the reaction surprised her. Then she ran the cane through the mess he’d made, coating his chest with what had come out of him. The bonding scent flooded the penthouse, and so did his groans of submission as she stroked up and down his torso, then onto his hips.

  He came a second time when she slipped the cane between his legs and stroked the insides of his thighs with it. Fear and sex and love filled out his skin from the inside, becoming the muscles and bones that made him up; he was nothing but emotion and need, with her as the driver of him.

  And then she brought the cane down across his thighs with a slice of her arm.