The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider's Guide (the black dagger brotherhood)

by Дж. Р. Уорд

  Just before she made impact, he twisted so his body absorbed their fall and cushioned her. As she fought to get up, she had the dim thought that she was faceup on him, his chest under her shoulders, his erection right where it needed to be.

  And then she didn’t think anymore.

  Wrath’s legs shot up and linked around her shins, spreading her legs wide, trapping her. With rough authority his hand shot between her thighs, and she arched with a cry as he found out exactly how turned-on she was. As she stopped fighting the double doors in front of her slammed shut, and then he rolled her, laying her out facedown on the floor. He mounted her, holding her in place by the back of the neck and the way he straddled her legs. Up close he smelled like clean sweat and the bonding scent and the leather of his clothes and the death of their enemies.

  She nearly came.

  Wrath was breathing hard, and so was she as he hauled back and split her old cutoffs right up the crotch, the worn fabric letting go as if it didn’t dare disobey him.

  Jesus, she knew how that felt.

  Cool air hit her ass as his fangs bit through one side of her panties, and then there was the sound of a zipper. His hands angled her hips, and the head of him bumped down to what was waiting for him, what was his for the taking.

  He slammed into her, shoving in hard as a board, wide as a fist.

  Beth splayed her hands out on the marble as he locked into her body and started pumping with a fierce pace, two hundred and eighty pounds of sex all over the top of her, stretching the inside of her. Her palms squeaked against the marble as the first of the orgasms jumped into her.

  She was still climaxing as he clamped his hand on her chin and pulled her mouth around. His rhythm was so hard he couldn’t kiss her…

  So he hissed and bit her right in the jugular.

  He froze in midstroke as he started to feed, sucking hard, pulling at her vein with a wild supremacy. The pain swirled and tingled, mixed with the tail end of the orgasm, kicked off another rush of pleasure. And then he was riding her again, his lower belly rubbing on her ass, his hips slapping against her, his growl that of a lover…

  And an animal.

  He roared loud as a beast as he started to come, his erection kicking in her like a living thing with its own mind. The bonding scent rose even stronger as he filled her up, his pulses hot as embers, thick as honey.

  The instant he was finished, he flipped her over and loomed between her legs, his sex glistening and proud and completely erect. He wasn’t done with her yet. Linking his tattooed forearm behind one of her knees, he pulled her leg up high and entered her from the front, his huge arms knotting as he held himself above her body. As he stared down at her his hair came forward, great falls of black that tumbled from his widow’s peak and got tangled in the weapons on his body.

  His fangs were so long he couldn’t close his mouth, and as his jaw unhinged and he got ready to bite into her again, she shivered. But not from fear.

  This was the raw edge, the reality of him under the clothes he wore and the daily life he led. This was her mate at his purest, distilled essence: Power.

  And God, she loved him.

  Especially like this.

  Wrath was taking Beth with furious action, his cock hard as a bone, his fangs like ivory nails driven deep in her neck. She was everything he needed and would ever want: the soft landing for his aggression, the female sex squeezing him, the love that captivated and captured him.

  He was the storm bearing down on her; she was the land with the strength to take what he had to let out.

  As she sang again from her body splintering apart with pleasure, he pitched himself off the ledge and went flying with her. His balls clenched up hard and his orgasm pistoled out of him…bang, bang, bang, bang…

  Releasing her vein, he collapsed into her hair as he shuddered and bucked.

  And then there was only their desperate breathing.

  Dizzy, out of it, satiated, he lifted his head. Then his arm.

  He bit into his own wrist and brought it to her lips. As she nursed quietly, he stroked her hair with a gentle hand and felt a stupid fucking weak-ass urge to tear up.

  When her blue-black eyes lifted to his, everything disappeared. Their bodies dematerialized. The room they were in ceased to exist. Time became nothing.

  And in the void, in the wormhole, Wrath’s chest opened up sure as if he’d been shot, a piercing pain licking over his nerve endings.

  He knew then that there are many ways for a heart to break. Sometimes it’s from the crowding of life, the compression of responsibility and birthright and burden that just squeezed you until you couldn’t breathe anymore. Even though your lungs were working just fine.

  And sometimes it’s from the casual cruelty of a fate that took you far from where you had thought you would end up.

  And sometimes it’s age in the face of youth. Or sickness in the face of health.

  But sometimes it’s just because you’re looking into the eyes of your lover, and your gratitude for having them in your life overflows…because you showed them what was on the inside and they didn’t run scared or turn away; they accepted you and loved you and held you in the midst of your passion or your fear…or your combination of both.

  Wrath closed his eyes and focused on the soft pulls at his wrist. God, they were just like the beat of his heart. Which made sense.

  Because she was the center of his chest. And the center of his world.

  He opened his eyes and let himself fall into all that midnight blue.

  “I love you, leelan.”

  In the Nature of Phury

  posted August 15, 2006

  This one was written after Lover Awakened as well, when Phury’s yearnings for Bella were at their strongest:

  Over this past weekend I found myself alone in the house, pacing around. I was skipping over the surface of everything around me…not really tracking, roaming. Restless. I do this a lot, because I’m a high-strung nutcase and my head just chews on things practical and impractical until I think I’ll go mad.

  In a Hail Mary move, I got into the car and opened the windows and the sunroof and cranked the bass: Sometimes our escape hatches have four wheels and righteous beats. And bless these chariots of relief.

  When I took off, the sun was starting to set and I drove far, far from home…I drove to the Ohio River and took the road that coasts along its bank. I’ve been doing this lately…just getting away, nothing but me and the car and the summer air and the music. The trees were black green overhead, a tunnel I followed with desperate hope that it could take me somewhere other than where I was.

  It worked.

  As I went along, to the left the sun was a big fat disk drifting down, like someone had hooked it and was trying to pull it out of the sky, but its inherent buoyancy was fighting the draw. Around me the air was so damned wet, thick as a cloud, smelling like…summer, really. And that sweet humidity coated my skin, and I liked what I was wearing when it was there.

  Out there on the road life was sweet. Life was a precious gift, not the burden it can be sometimes. Life was the vivid mystery it should be.

  And I found myself thinking of Phury.

  Driving along, driving alone, driving out far from home…he followed me. Like he was in the car with me, elbow on the open window sash, the air moving all that hair of his around. I pictured his yellow eyes as the color of the setting sun, glowing like that, warm like that, beautiful like that.

  Now, of course, he wasn’t with me. Would have been up in flames had he been. But he was in my head and looking out of my eyes and listening to what was around me. And he slid into my chest like a ghost and took up the space in my marrow and he assumed the wheel and the gearshift and the gas pedal.

  And while he was with me, he spoke to me of the nature of the Do Not Have. The Cannot Have. The Never Possible.

  The Unfulfilled.

  I saw him sitting at the dining room table. Bella was across the way, across the china an
d the silver and the crystal, across the divide of the mahogany…across a million miles that would never be walked. He was watching her hands. Watching her cut her meat and switch the fork and knife back and spear the lamb and bring it to her lips. He watched her hands because it was the only remotely, socially acceptable option he had.

  It is a special hell to want what you cannot have. Because his mind wanders. Takes him in directions he doesn’t want. Teases him with tastes he will never have on his tongue, curves he will never learn, feelings he can never, ever express.

  He is trapped in his honor and his love for his twin, trapped also by his respect for Bella…a slave to his moral nature.

  I think what makes it hardest for him is that she is always around him. He sees her every day. He knows each dawn when he returns she is where he lives.

  What does he do? He lies in his big bed and smokes the blunts that keep him calm and he prays that it will all fade soon. What makes it even worse is his honest-to-God happiness for Z: There is tremendous relief in Phury’s special hell because he knows that Z has a future now.

  Relief…yes, relief. But there are times that that pales. Phury looks down at his missing leg and feels unwhole and unworthy and weak and lame, and it’s not really all about the amputation, because he has no regrets there. What stings during the days when the house is quiet and Bella and Z are sleeping entwined in their mated bed…what stings Phury is the fact that he is sexually clueless and inept, and there is no way out of that desert. Even if he gave up the celibacy, even if he found a female and put her on her back and rode her out, what would that cure exactly? A graceless, uncaring sex act wouldn’t make him feel any better. If anything, that would cut him deeper…because he knows that isn’t what’s doing between Z and Bella.

  No…Phury’s on the far side of the riverbank, watching a sunset. Unable to touch. Only able to look. And Never Have.

  So in his ineptness and his pathetic yearning, in his despicable weakness, in his deplorable swill of emotion…he watches Bella’s hands as she eats. Because that’s all he can do.

  He waits for some relief. Knowing it’s not coming anytime soon.

  And he hates himself.

  The descent he is on seems bottomless, and he has no rope to cast out for purchase, no net to fall into, nothing to break his fall. All he can do is anticipate a hard impact, a shattering body blow whenever the bottom finds him.

  For Phury, the nature of the Do Not Have, the Cannot Have, the Never Possible, the Unfulfilled, is taking him into darker places than he could have predicted. I think he assumed that if Z ever healed a little, that his own suffering would be over.

  Wrong. Because the flavor of Z’s healing is a taste Phury would kill to have.

  Anyway…that was what I found out by the Ohio River the other night in the summer air…in the bass-ridden solitude…where all there was was myself and the headlights of oncoming cars and the wet breeze of the air.

  Some distances will never ever be closed.

  The Interview That Never Happened

  posted October 6, 2007

  This was done right after Lover Unbound was released:

  Last night I showed up at the Brotherhood’s compound for a scheduled interview with Butch and Vishous. They kept me waiting—which shouldn’t have been a surprise and wasn’t. And the interview didn’t happen, either. Also not a surprise…

  Fritz is the one who lets me into the Pit, and he fusses over me as he usually does. I swear, nothing makes a doggen more agitated than if they can’t do anything for you. He’s getting so worked up, I actually hand him my purse—a move marked with the kind of desperation usually associated with folks who perform the Heimlich on a choking person.

  Now, I’m not in the habit of turning over my day bag to other people—even a butler who’s suffering from a terminal case of the need-to-pleases. But here’s the thing: My purse has a lot of pale-ish leather detailing, and the strap that runs over the top and down the front has a streak of blue pen ink on it. No one notices this relatively tiny mess-up except me, but it’s bugged me since I did it, and I’ve wanted to get rid of the imperfection like you read about. (Hell, I even went back to LV and asked them if they could take it out. They said no, they couldn’t, because the leather is porous and has absorbed the ink into its fibers. I assuaged my depression with sundry purchases, needless to say.)

  As I hand the bag over to Fritz and ask him if there’s any way he could get the pen ink out, he glows like I’ve given him a birthday present and beats feet out the front door. Just as the Pit’s huge eight-paneled, fortress-worthy, portal-from-a-dungeon-movie slams shut, I realize my only pen, the one that made the mark, is in the damn bag.

  Fortunately, V and Butch tend to be memorable, so I figure I’ll just take mental notes.

  The Pit is empty except for me. Jane is out, doing physical exams at Safe Place. Marissa is there as well, running things. It’s three a.m., and Butch and V are supposed to be coming home from fighting soon. The plan is for them to talk to me and for me to move along smartly when they’re done. Interviews aren’t high on the Brotherhood’s list, and I understand. They get precious little free time, and they’re under constant stress.

  I check my watch and find it hard not to worry. Man, I don’t know how their shellans stand waiting for them to get home. The what-ifs must be a killer.

  I look around. The Foosball table is hale and hearty-looking, fresh as a fricking daisy. This, of course, is the new new one, though. The old new one gave up the ghost during some kind of showdown involving a can of Silly String, twelve feet of duct tape, two paintball guns, and a Rubbermaid container the size of a small car. At least, that’s what I heard from Rhage. Who has a big mouth, but never lies.

  Across the room, on V’s desk, the Four Toys are humming away, the computers looking like a bunch of gossips all huddled together, trading stories about who is where doing what within the Brotherhood’s compound. The stereo system stacked behind them looks just as high-tech—like you could use it to do a brain scan on someone if you had to. Rap is on, but not as loudly as it’s been in the past. 5 °Cent’s Curtis. Yeah, I kind of figured, for V, it wouldn’t be Kanye.

  What I can see of the kitchen is kind of a shock. It’s neat as a pin, the countertops free of glasses, the cupboards all shut tight, the clutter down to a minimum. I’m willing to bet there’s something else in the fridge other than Taco Bell leftovers and packets of soy sauce. Damn, there’s even a bowl of fruit. Peaches. Natch.

  Change, I think. Things have changed here. And you can tell, not just because there’s a pair of black stillies next to the couch and copies of the New England Journal of Medicine in the midst of all those SIs.

  Looking around, I get to thinking about the two guys who live here now with their mates. And I remember back to the good old Dark Lover days, when V and Butch spent the night in that guest room upstairs at Darius’s. Butch asked about V’s hand. V ID’d Hard-ass’s death wish. The two of them clicked. My favorite part was when Wrath came in the next evening and gave them a “Well, isn’t this cozy.” I think you remember what their response was, right?

  Here we are, two years later, and they’re still together.

  Then again, we members of the Red Sox Nation are a loyal lot.

  But everything is different, isn’t—

  The door in from the underground tunnel flips open and Butch comes in. He smells like lesser, all sweet baby powder. I put my hand up to my nose to keep from gagging.

  “Interview’s off,” he says hoarsely.

  “Ah…that’s okay, I don’t have a pen,” I murmur, measuring how grim he looks and how he weaves in his boots.

  Butch trips over his own feet and bangs off the walls as he goes to his bedroom.

  Great. Now what do I do?

  I wait for a minute. Then I go down the hallway because…well, in a situation like this, you want to help, don’t you? When I get to the door of his room, I catch a shot of his naked back and quickly look away.


  “You need anything?” I ask, feeling like an idiot. I may write about the Brothers, but let’s face it, I’m a ghost in their world, an observer, not a participant.

  “V. But he’s coming—”

  The front door bangs open and my head whips around like it’s on a pull cord.

  Oh…shit…

  Now, see, here’s the thing about V. He doesn’t like me. Never has. And considering he’s nearly three hundred pounds of vampire and he’s got that hand of death thing happening, every time I get around him I am reminded of all the panic attacks I’ve ever had in the course of my life. They come back to me. Each one of them. At the same time.

  I swallow hard. V is dressed in black leather and bleeding from a shoulder wound and in a bad fucking mood. One look at me and he bares his fangs.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” He all but rips off his leather jacket and throws it across the Pit. He’s more careful as he removes his daggers. “Man, this night just keeps getting worse.”

  I kept my piehole shut. I mean, like there’s any response to that kind of welcome? Short of hanging myself in the bathroom, I’m pretty confident there’s nothing I can do to cheer him up.

  Vishous stomps by me to get to Butch and I make like a wall hanging, trying to get as flat as I can. Which is easy. I’m built like a plank to begin with, long and curveless.

  I’d like to point out that V is huge, by the way. HUGE. As he passes by my head barely reaches the top of his shoulder, and the size of his body makes me feel like I’m five years old and in a sea of grown-ups.

  As he pauses in Butch’s bedroom doorway, I find myself unable to leave, even though I know I should go. I just can’t, though. Fortunately, V focuses on the cop.

  Poor Butch.

  “What the fuck were you doing?” V barks.

  The cop’s voice is rough, but not weak. “Can we shelve this for about ten minutes? I’m going to throw up—”