The Black Dagger Brotherhood

by J. R. Ward

Vishous had rolled the fetal incubator over, and Bella had gotten her first look at their daughter. Dragging with her the IV line that was in her arm, she’d put her fingertips on the Plexiglas shell. The instant her touch fell upon the clear shield, the young had turned her head.

  Bella had looked at Zsadist. “Can we call her Nalla?”

  His eyes had watered. “Yes. Absolutely. Anything you want.”

  He had kissed her and given her his vein and been everything you could want in an attentive, caring mate.

  Coming back to the present she shook her head. “You seemed so happy. Right after the birth. You were rejoicing with the others. You were there for the ribboning of her crib . . . You went to Phury and you sang to him. . . .”

  “Because you were alive and you didn’t have to suffer the loss of your young. My worst fears hadn’t come to pass.” Zsadist lifted one of his hands as if he wanted to rub his eyes, but he frowned, clearly realizing he couldn’t because of the bandages. “I was happy for you.”

  “But after you fed me, you sat by the incubator and reached out to her. You even smiled as she looked your way. There was love in your face, not just relief. What changed?” As he hesitated, she said, “I’m willing to give you more time if that’s what it takes, but I can’t be shut out of the process. What happened?”

  Z stared up at the cage of medical lighting hanging above him and there was a long silence, one so long that Bella thought maybe they’d hit an insurmountable wall.

  But then a single fat tear had formed at the corner of his left eye. “She’s in the dream with me.”

  The words were so soft, Bella had to make sure she’d heard him right. “I’m sorry?”

  “The dream I have of still being with the Mistress. Nalla . . . she’s in the cell. I can hear her crying as the Mistress comes for me. I strain at the shackles to get free . . . so I can protect her . . . get her out . . . stop what’s going to happen. But I can’t move. The Mistress is going to find the young.” His haunted eyes shifted over. “The Mistress is going to find her, and it’s my fault Nalla’s in the cell.”

  “Oh . . . my love . . . oh, Z.” Bella stood up and draped herself carefully over his upper body, hugging him lightly. “Oh . . . God . . . and you’re afraid the Mistress will kill her—”

  “No.” Z cleared his throat once. And again. And again. His chest started to pump up and down. “She’s going to . . . make Nalla watch . . . what they do to me. Nalla has to watch. . . .”

  Zsadist struggled to keep his emotions in, then lost the fight, weeping in the hard, powerful bursts of a male. “She’s going to have . . . to watch her . . . father get . . .”

  All Bella could do was hold on tight and wet his hospital gown with her own tears. She’d known whatever it was was bad. But she’d had no idea how bad.

  “Oh, my love,” she said, as his arms came around her and his head lifted so that his face was buried in her hair. “Oh, my darling love . . .”

  SEVEN

  It was about five the following afternoon when Zsadist finally woke up properly. It was good to be in his own bed. It was not so great having a cast on his lower leg.

  Rolling over, he opened his eyes and looked at Bella. She was awake and staring back at him.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Okay.” Physically speaking, at least. The rest of him, his mind and his emotions, were open to question.

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  “Yeah. In a little bit.” What he really wanted was to just lie around and stare into his shellan’s eyes for a while.

  Bella eased over onto her back and looked up to the ceiling.

  “I’m glad we talked,” he said. As much as he hated the past, he’d do anything to keep her from leaving, and if that meant conversation, he’d blabber on until his voice box bit it.

  “Me too.”

  He frowned, feeling the distance. “What’s on your mind?”

  After a moment she said softly, “Do you still want me?”

  He actually had to shake himself. She couldn’t possibly be asking . . . “Good Lord, of course I want you as my shellan. The idea of you leaving is just—”

  “Sexually, I mean.”

  He blinked, thinking about the hardcore arousal he’d gotten the night before—just from watching her towel off. “How could I not?”

  She turned her head to him. “You don’t feed and you haven’t reached for me . . . well, I haven’t either, but I mean—”

  “Nalla needs you most right now.”

  “But you do, too . . . at least for my vein.” She nodded down his body. “Would your leg have broken if you’d been fed properly? Probably not.”

  “I don’t know. I fell through a floor . . . onto glass.”

  “Glass?”

  “A chandelier.”

  “God . . .”

  There was a long silence, and he wondered what she wanted him to do. Was she opening the door to . . . ?

  At even the prospect of sex, his body woke up sure as if it were a gong she’d banged with one hell of an over-the-shoulder shot.

  Except Bella stayed where she was. And he stayed where he was.

  As silence stretched, he thought about how close to the edge of no return they were. If they didn’t take steps to reconnect . . .

  He reached through the sheets, took her hand, and brought it forward to his body.

  “I want you,” he said as he placed it on his erection. At the contact, he let out a groan and rolled his hips, pushing himself into her palm. “Oh . . . man . . . I’ve missed you.”

  The fact that Bella seemed surprised shamed him and made him think about her in the bathroom with that towel. When she’d stopped and looked at herself in the mirror, she’d been inspecting her body, he realized now—looking for flaws that weren’t there. And she’d covered herself when she’d seen him not because she didn’t want to attract his attention, but because she was sure she didn’t have it anymore.

  He moved her hand up and down on his shaft. “I’m desperate to touch you again. All over.”

  She came closer to him, moving through the sheets. “You are?”

  “How could I not be? You’re the most perfect female I’ve ever seen.”

  “Even after—”

  He shot forward and pressed his lips to hers. “Especially after.” He pulled back so she could read his eyes. “You are just as beautiful as the first time I saw you in the gym all those nights and days ago. You stopped my heart then—just froze it in my chest. And you stop it now.”

  She blinked quickly, and he kissed her tears away. “Bella . . . if I had known, I would have said something . . . done something. I just assumed you knew that nothing had changed for me.”

  “Since Nalla’s come around, everything is different. The rhythm of my nights and days. My body. You and me. So I just assumed—”

  “Feel me,” he groaned, arching into her. “Feel me and know—Oh, God.”

  She felt him, all right. Wrapped both her hands around him and stroked him up and down, riding his hard length.

  “Is this good for you?” she whispered.

  All he could do was nod and moan. With her gripping him like that, surrounding him with her palms, working him, his brain had pretty much shorted out. “Bella . . .” He reached for her with his bandaged hands, then stopped. “Damn gauze—”

  “I’ll take it off for you.” She pressed her lips to his. “And then you can put your hands wherever you like—”

  “Fuck.”

  He came. Right then and there. But instead of feeling let down, Bella just laughed in the deep, throaty way of a female who knows she’s about to get sex from her male.

  He recognized the sound. Loved it. Missed it. Needed to hear—

  From across the room Nalla let out a warm-up wail that quickly escalated into a full-blown, carrier jet—launching, I-need-my-mahmen-NOW cry.

  Bella felt Z’s erection deflate and was well aware it wasn’t because he’d just had
a release. He was capable of going four or five orgasms at a clip—and that was on an average night, not after a dry spell of months and months.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the crib, feeling torn as to which one she tended to.

  Zsadist took her face in his bandaged palms and turned her to him. “Go take care of the young. I’ll be fine.”

  There was absolutely no censure in his eyes or his tone. But then, there never had been. He’d never been resentful of Nalla; if anything he’d been too self-sacrificing.

  “I’ll just be—”

  “Take your time.”

  She got off the bed and went to the crib. Nalla reached her little hands out and calmed some—especially as she was picked up.

  Right. Wet diaper and hungry.

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Not to worry.” Z lay back against the black satin sheets, his scarred face no longer pulled in hungry lines, his body still, not straining.

  She hoped it was because the orgasm had relaxed him. Feared it was because he didn’t think she’d be back anytime soon.

  Bella nipped into the nursery, executed a fast diaper swap, then went to the rocker and gave Nalla what she needed. As she held her young and rocked, she realized how true it was that having a baby changed everything.

  Including the concept of time.

  What she’d meant to be a quick fifteen-minute feeding turned into a two-hour fuss, throw-up, fuss, feed, throw-up, burp, cry, diaper-change, fuss, feed marathon.

  When Nalla finally settled, Bella let her head fall back against the rocker in a familiar state of exhaustion and satisfaction.

  The mother business was amazing, transformative, and a little addictive—and she could now understand how females got way overfocused on their offspring. You were fed by taking care of and doing right by them. You were also all-powerful as The Mother. Anything she said went when it came to Nalla.

  Thing was, though, she missed being Z’s shellan. Missed waking up with him moving on top of her, hot and hungry. Missed the feel of his fangs going deep into her throat. Missed the way that scarred face of his looked after they’d made love, all flushed and soft and full of reverence and love.

  The fact that he was so hard with everyone else, even his Brothers, made his sweetness with her even more special. Always had.

  God, that dream of his. She wasn’t willing to say it changed everything between them, but it changed enough so that she wouldn’t leave him now. What she wasn’t sure of was what came next. Z required more help than she could provide him. He needed professional intervention, not just loving support from his mate.

  Maybe there was a way Mary could step in. She had a counseling background and had been the one to teach him to read and write. There was no way he would talk to a stranger, but Mary . . .

  Ah, hell, there was no way he’d talk to Rhage’s shellan about the ins and outs of his past. The experiences were too horrific and the pain went too deep. Plus he hated getting emotional in front of anybody.

  Bella got up and put Nalla in the smaller crib in the nursery—on the off chance Zsadist was still in bed, naked and in the mood.

  He wasn’t. He was in the bathroom, and going by the whirring sound and the spray of water, he was trimming his hair in the shower. On the bedside table there was a pair of scissors and the bandages that had been on his hands, and all she could think of was that she wished she had done it for him. No doubt he’d waited and waited and waited for her, and then given up, not just about the sex but about the help. He must have struggled to get the scissors to work with just the top half of his fingers showing . . . but given what time it was, he either stripped off the gauze himself or had no shower before he went out to fight.

  Bella sat on the bed and found herself arranging the split in her robe so that when she crossed her legs they’d stay covered. This was a familiar ritual, she realized, her waiting for him outside of the bath. When Z finished showering and emerged in a towel, they would talk about nothing at all while he dressed in his closet. Then after he went down for First Meal, she would bathe and dress with equal privacy.

  God, she felt small. Small compared to the problems they had and the demands of their daughter and the fact that she wanted a lover for a hellren, not a polite roommate.

  The knock on the door made her jump. “Hello?”

  “It’s Doc Jane.”

  “Come on in.”

  The doctor poked her head around the door. “Hey, is himself around? I thought I’d remove his bandages—Okay, clearly you two have covered that part.”

  As the doctor jumped to the wrong conclusion, Bella kept her mouth shut. “He should be out of the bathroom soon. Can his cast come off?”

  “I believe so. Why don’t you tell him to meet me down in the PT suite when he’s ready? I’m working on the medical facility expansion, so I’ll just be puttering around with my tool belt.”

  “Will do.”

  There was a long moment with just the buzzing razor and the shower running in the background.

  Doc Jane frowned. “Are you okay, Bella?”

  Forcing a smile, she put both hands up in ward-off mode. “I’m perfectly healthy. I don’t need another examination. Ever.”

  “That I believe.” Jane smiled, then glanced at the bathroom’s doorway. “Listen . . . maybe you should go wash his back, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  Another silence. “May I make a suggestion that is completely intrusive?”

  “Hard to imagine you can be more intrusive than you already have,” Bella said with a wink.

  “I’m serious.”

  “All right.”

  “Keep Nalla’s main crib in the nursery and leave the door mostly closed as she sleeps in there. Get a baby monitor so you can hear her.” Doc Jane swept her eyes around. “This is the room you and your husband share . . . you need to be something more than mommy, and he needs you to himself for a little bit each day. Nalla will be fine and it’s important she get used to sleeping on her own.”

  Bella looked at the crib. The idea of moving it out was oddly and irrationally terrifying. As if she were throwing their daughter to the wolves. Except if she wanted more than a roommate, they needed the kind of space that had nothing to do with square footage.

  “That might be a good idea.”

  “I’ve worked with a lot of people who have had babies. Doctors like to procreate. What can I say. After the first one comes along, there’s always an adjustment period. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the marriage, it just means that new boundaries have to be established.”

  “Thank you . . . really, I appreciate it.”

  Doc Jane nodded. “I’m always here if you need me.”

  When the door shut, Bella went over to the crib and smoothed the multicolored satin ribbons that hung from its rails. As the cool lengths slid through her fingers, she thought of the pledging ceremony and all the love that had been shared. Nalla would always be adored in this house, cared for, protected.

  She had a moment of panic as she released the brakes and started rolling the infant’s bed toward the nursery—but she was going to get over that. Had to. And she would buy a baby monitor right away.

  She parked the crib next to the one that was there, the one Nalla never slept as well in. Even now the young’s forehead was crinkled, and she was pinwheeling her arms and legs, a sure sign she was going to wake up soon.

  “Shhh, mahmen’s got you.” Bella lifted the young up and put her down in her preferred place. The young snuffled and positively cooed as she snuggled into herself and put her little hand through the slats, grabbing onto Wrath and Beth’s red-and-black bow.

  This was promising. Deep breathing and a full belly meant a nice long sleep.

  At least Nalla didn’t feel as though she’d been kicked to the curb.

  Bella went back into the bedroom. The bath was quiet, and as she put her head through the doorway, she saw the f
ine humidity left in the air from the shower and caught the lingering scent of cedar shampoo.

  He was gone.

  “You moved the crib?”

  She turned around. Z was standing in the double doors of his closet, his boot-cut leathers on and his black shirt hanging from his hand. His chest, with its marking of the Brotherhood and its nipple rings, gleamed in the light thrown over his shoulders.

  Bella glanced over to where Nalla had always slept. “Well, this is . . . you know, our space. And, ah, she’s fine in the other room.”

  “You sure you’re going to be okay with this?”

  If it meant she could be with him as his shellan? “Nalla will be fine. She’s just next door if she needs me, and she’s started to sleep through big hunks of the day so . . . yes, I feel all right about it.”

  “You’re . . . sure?”

  Bella looked up at him. “Yes. Absolutely sure—”

  Z threw down his shirt, dematerialized right at her, and took her down on the bed, all but tackling her. His bonding scent went crazy as his mouth ground into hers and his hard, heavy weight pushed her down into the mattress. His hands were rough with her nightgown, ripping it as he wrenched the two sides apart. As her breasts were bared, he growled deep and low.

  “Oh, yes . . .” she moaned, frantic as he was.

  She shoved her hands between their hips and broke a nail flipping his fly open and unzipping it—

  Z let out another animal sound as his erection popped out into her hand. Rearing back, he nearly shredded his leathers trying to get them down his legs and off the cast. After struggling, he left them around his knees with a “Fuck it.”

  He leaped back on her, finished tearing apart her nightgown, and split her thighs wide. Except then he paused, a worried look threatening to overtake the passion in his face. He opened his mouth, clearly about to ask her if she was okay with—

  “Shut up and get inside of me,” she barked, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him down to her lips.

  He roared and punched into her core, the penetration a bomb that went off in her body, sparks shooting through her, igniting her blood. She gripped his ass hard as his hips jackhammered until he followed where she was, coming in a massive, full-torso contraction.