Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (52 page)

didn’t want his burglar to see him make payment.

The rest of what was going to happen, however, he very much wanted her to witness.

“Here.”

As the female took the money, he didn’t want her to count it. And she didn’t.

“Thank you.” She stepped back and put the bills in a red pottery jar. “Shall we?”

“Yes. We shall.”

Assail closed in and assumed control, taking the female’s face between his hands, tilting her head

back, and kissing her hard. In response, she moaned, as if the unexpected advance was something she not only welcomed, but hadn’t dared expect.

He was glad she enjoyed it. But her pleasure was not what this was about.

Moving her around, he took her over to the sofa that ran down the little cottage’s far wall, pushing her with his body, using his strength to lay her out with her head in the direction of the fireplace. As she reclined, she cast her arms out to the sides, rolling her breasts upward until they strained the satin cups that covered them.

Assail mounted her fully clothed and with his coat on, his knee going between hers, one of his

hands reaching down and pulling up that floor-length negligee—

“No, no,” he said as she went to wind her arms around his neck. “I want to see you.”

Bullshit. He wanted her to be seen from the window.

Whilst she complied readily, he went back to kissing her and getting that long skirting out of the

way—and the second it was, she split her legs wide.

“Fuck me,” the female said, arching under him.

Well, that wasn’t going to be possible. He wasn’t hard.

But not everyone needed to know that.

In order to appear impassioned, he shrugged his overcoat free of his shoulders, and then with a

quick slash of his fangs, he bit through the negligee’s straps, exposing the female’s breasts to the firelight, the nipples going instantly tight atop acres of pale flesh.

Assail paused, as if taken by what he saw. And then he extended his tongue and dropped his head.

At the last moment, just before he started to lick and suckle, he lifted his eyes, focusing on the

blackened window on the right, meeting the stare of the woman who he knew was there in the

shadows, watching him….

A shot of pure, undiluted lust shot through his body, taking over, replacing higher reasoning as the driver of his actions. The female underneath him ceased to be one of his species that he had bought for a short time.

She became his burglar.

And it changed everything. With a sudden surge, he struck the column of the female’s throat, taking the vein, drawing what he needed…

All the while imagining that the human woman was beneath him.

Sola gasped—

And ripped herself away from the cottage’s window.

As her back hit the hard, bumpy side of the river-stone chimney, she closed her eyes, her heart

pounding against her ribs, her lungs dragging in cold air.

On the backs of her lids, all she saw were the bare-naked breasts laid out before him, his dark

head descending, his tongue flicking free of his mouth…and then his eyes lifting and meeting hers.

Oh, Jesus, how had he known she was there?

And shit, she was never going to forget the image of that woman splayed out beneath him, that coat

of his cast aside, his body surging into the cradle of those slender hips. She could imagine the warmth of the fire beside them, and the even more powerful heat coming off of him—the feel of skin on skin, the promise of ecstasy.

Don’t look again,
she told herself.
He knows you’re here—

The keening cry of a woman orgasming vibrated out of the cottage, laying waste to the wholesome

appearance of the place.

Sola leaned back into the window, peering through the glass again…even though she knew she

shouldn’t.

He was inside the woman, his lower body pumping, his face buried in her neck, his arms bowed

out to support his heavy upper torso.

He wasn’t looking up anymore. And he was going to be busy for a while longer.

Now was the time to retreat.

Besides, like she really needed to watch?

With a curse, Sola ghosted away from the site, beating feet through the scratchy underbrush,

dodging the thin, leafless trees. When she got to her rental car, she jumped in, locked the doors, and started the engine.

Shutting her eyes once more, she replayed the entire scene: her closing in on the cottage, coming

up to the window, staying in the shadows thrown by the chimney.

Him standing across the open room, the woman in front of him, her graceful body covered with

black satin, her long, dark hair reaching down to the small of her back. He had put his hands to her face and kissed her hard, his shoulders curling as he’d bent down to make the contact with an utterly erotic expression…

And then he’d eased the woman over to the couch.

Even though it killed her to admit it, Sola had felt a stab of irrational jealousy. But that hadn’t been the worst of it: her own body had responded, her sex blooming between her legs sure as if it had been her mouth he was working, her waist his hands were on, her breasts that were up against his

chest. And that reaction had only intensified as he’d positioned the woman on that couch, his face

marked with dark hunger, his eyes glittering as if what was beneath him was a meal to be eaten.

Watching was wrong. Watching was bad.

But even the threat to her personal safety—and, arguably, her mental heath—hadn’t been enough

to get her away from the glass. Especially as he’d reared up and dragged that heavy black overcoat

off his shoulders. It had been impossible for her not to picture him naked, seeing his broad chest

exposed to the firelight, imaging what his abs would look like curling up tight beneath his skin….And then it had appeared that he’d bitten—
bitten
, for godsakes—through the spaghetti straps of the negligee’s bodice.

Just as the woman’s goddamn frickin’ perfect breasts were exposed…he had looked at her.

With no warning whatsoever, those glittering, predatory eyes had risen and drilled right into her

own, a sly smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

Like the show was just for her.

“Shit.
Shit
.”

One thing was clear: If he’d wanted to teach her a lesson about spying? Hard to think of a better

way—short of making her eat the barrel of a forty.

Sola eased off the shoulder and got onto the road. As the Ford Taurus took ten miles to accelerate

to the speed limit of forty-five, she wished she were in her Audi: With her blood still pumping

through her veins, she needed some outward expression of the roar trapped in her body.

Some kind of outlet.

Like…sex, for example.

And not with herself.

FORTY-NINE

As Adirondack Great Camps went, Rehv’s had everything: huge rustic main house sided in

cedar shingles and covered with porches. A number of outer buildings, including guest

cottages. Lake view. Lotta bedrooms.

After Trez and iAm took form in the side yard, they walked around through the snow to

the back entrance into the kitchen. Even in winter, the place gave off a cozy vibe, with all that buttery glow coming through the diamond-paned glass. But not everything was Sugar Plum Fairy time: The

wealthy Victorians who had built these compounds as a way to escape the heat and industrialization

of the cities during the summers had most certainly not equipped them with laser-sighted motion

detectors, state-of-the-art contacts on all windows and doors, and not one, but several, different

motherboards controlling a fully integrated, multi-interface alarm system.

Boo-yah.

Trez’s thumbprint on the discreetly mounted pad to the left of the door opened the way into the

house’s hub—an industrial-size kitchen that was kitted out with stainless-steel appliances on a level with Sal’s.

Something was baking in the Viking oven. Bread, it smelled like.

“I’m hungry,” Trez remarked as he shut the door. The locking mechanism bolted itself, but he

checked anyway out of habit.

Off in the distance, someone was vacuuming—probably a Chosen. Ever since Phury had taken

over as Primale, and essentially freed that cloistered group of females from the Far Side, Rehv had been letting them stay at the camp. Made sense. Lot of privacy, especially off-season, plus the

remoteness from the city provided a soft transition from, if Trez understood things correctly, the

placid sameness of the Sanctuary to the frenetic, sometimes traumatic nature of life on Earth.

It had been a long time since he’d been in the house—not since the Chosen had taken up res, as a

matter of fact. Then again, when Rehv had blown up ZeroSum, and ended his role as a drug kingpin,

that debt between them had lost some of its repayment traction.

Besides, now that the guy didn’t have to make deliveries of rubies and sex to the princess

anymore, there hadn’t been much reason to come north.

Apparently that had changed, however.

“Yo, Rehv, where you at?” Trez hollered, his voice booming.

As much as his stomach protested, he and his brother walked out into the main hall. Victorian

ephemera was everywhere, from the garnet-colored Orientals on the floor, to the tapestry-covered

benches, to the taxidermied bison, deer, moose, and bobcat heads mounted around the rough stone

fireplace.

“Rehv!” he called out again.

Man, that racoon lamp had always given him the creeps. So did the stuffed owl with the

sunglasses.

“He’ll be right down.”

Trez turned around at the female voice.

And in that one moment, had the course of his life change forever.

The staircase down from the second floor was a straight shot, the shallow steps and their simple

railing emerging from above without architectural artifice.

The female in the white robe standing at their base turned them into a stairway from heaven. She

was tall and slender, but her curves were in all the right places, her loose dress unable to conceal her high, large breasts or the graceful swell of her hips. Her skin was smooth and the color of café au lait, her hair dark and coiled up high on her head. Eyes were pale and heavily fringed.

Lips were full and rosy.

He wanted to kiss them.

Especially as they moved, enunciating whatever she was saying with intoxicating precision—

iAm’s sharp elbow in his rib cage made him jump. “Ow! What the fuck—frick, I mean. Shit—I

mean, crap.”

Way to be calm, cool, and collected, asshole.

“She asked if we wanted any food,” iAm muttered. “I said, no, not for me. Now it’s your turn.”

Oh, he wanted to eat something, all right. He wanted to fall to his knees at her feet and get under that—

Trez closed his eyes and felt like a total flipping bastard. “Nah, I’m good.”

“I thought you said you were hungry.”

Trez popped his lids and glared at his brother. Was the guy trying to make him look like an idiot?

The knowing light in those black eyes suggested, yes, iAm was.

“No. I’m fine,” he ground out. Subtext: Don’t push it, douche.

“I was just going to check on my bread.”

Trez’s eyes shut again, the Chosen’s voice lilting in his ears, the sound of it both raising his blood pressure and calming him down at the same time.

“You know,” he heard himself say, “maybe I will see if I can scrounge up a meal.”

She smiled at him. “Follow me. I’m sure we can find something to your liking.”

As she headed around for the entryway they’d just come through, Trez blinked like the dumb-ass

he was.

It had been a very, very long time since a female had spoken anything to him without a double

entrendre…but as far as he could tell, those words, which could arguably be considered a come-on—

at least given his lust filter—had held no promise of a blow job or some full-on sex. Or even

attraction of any kind.

Naturally, this made him want her more.

His feet started in her direction, his body following rather as a dog would its master, with no

thought of deviating from the path chosen by her for him—

iAm grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t even fucking
think
about it.”

Trez’s first impulse was to rip himself free, even if he left his own limb behind in his brother’s

grip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Do not make me grab your hard-on to prove my point,” iAm hissed.

Numbly, Trez looked down at the front of himself. Well. What do you know. “I’m not going to…”

Fuck her
came to mind, but God, he couldn’t use the f-word around that female, even in the

hypothetical. “You know, do anything.”

“You actually expect me to believe that.”

Trez’s eyes flipped over to the doorway she’d disappeared through. Shit. Talk about having no