Lover Unleashed (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #9)

by J.R. Ward

All his life he’d wondered why he’d never fallen in love, and now he knew: He’d been waiting for this moment, this woman, this time.

The female is mine, he thought.

And even though that made no sense at all, the conviction was so strong, h...

“What was the Bloodletter like?”

What to reply to that? “Let us just say . . . I killed him for what he did to my brother—and we shall leave it at that.”

Life was what

you determined it to be; regardless of where fate put you, logic and free will meant you could make your cabbage patch anything the fuck you wanted.

And he didn’t want where he was: Not the anonymous sex. Not the desperate stupidity. No...

nagging regrets that got h...

When you were trying to get away from yourself, you gravitated to the loud and obnoxious, to the extremes, to the reckless, because it forced you to scramble and hang on with your clawing nails

to cliffs of your own self-invention.

The moment he’d looked into the Dumpster and seen those missing eyes and that dental job,

he’d known that he was going in search of a serial killer. But he couldn’t have guessed he’d be on another search. Time to find Butch O’Neal. If he could.

Vishous rolled them over, keeping them joined, and his eyes roamed her face for a long moment. “I have no words. Sixteen languages, but no words.”

He knew, she thought. More than anything their mother could have done for her, he had brought her the one thing guaranteed to make her want to live.

“Thank you, brother mine,” she said, eyes locked on him.

“I would do anything for you. Anything.” With that, he pushed his way out . . . and as the door eased shut, she realized that I love you

could indeed be said without actually uttering the phrase. Actions did mean more than words.

Your legs are part of you, but not all of you or what you are. So wherever we go after tonight, I need you to know that you are no less for the injury. Even if you are in a chair, you still

stand as tall as you ever did. Height is just a vertical number—it doesn’t mean shit when it comes to your character or the kind of life you live.”

As the back of his neck went ants-all-over in warning, he passed his glowing hand around, moving outward from the

bodies in a concentric circle. Well, well, well . . . wasn’t this a blast from the past. And so not in a good way.

“What the hell, V.” Butch tightened his grip on his cell and wished there were an app that let you reach through a phone

and bitch slap someone. “You can’t—”

“Love can conquer everything but reality.

Which will win every stinking time.”

them.” Hard not

Who’d have thought acceptance would be as curiously painful as all that rejection had always been.

“Sire, it is all right.” Her voice was rock-solid serious. “I judge you not by the sex of whom you love . . . but by how you love them.”

How ironic. Now that he wasn’t with Blay, he was being faithful to the fucker.

The trouble is, body needs a hell of a lot less than the soul does to connect.”

“You’re the reason I get out of bed every night. And you’re the reason I can’t wait to come home every dawn. Not the war. Not the Brothers. Not even Butch. It’s . . . you.”

Love, he realized, was like the daggers he made in

his forge: When you first got one, it was shiny and new and the blade glinted bright in the light. Holding it against your palm, you were full of optimism for what it would be like in the field, and you couldn’t wait to try it out. Except those first couple of nights out were usually awkward as you got used

to it and it got use...

Over time, the steel lost its brand-new gleam, and the hilt became stained, and maybe you nicked the shit out of the thing a couple of times. What yo...

Besides, it’s hypocritical to deny you what other Brothers have done from time to time. Fuck it, Darius had a kid with a human woman—and Wrath’s now married to that young.

And actually, he should be glad. Of all the destinies he could have seen, this was one hundred percent avoidable, wasn’t it. He just was never going to have sex with Layla. Ever.

So it was all an impossibility. End of.

“I know well the betrayal of blood. I know that pain which you feel now. It is not right, this burden you carry. But base not a vengeance on fiction, I beg of you. For I shall be forced to kill you—and if I do not, my twin will hunt you down with the Brotherhood and make you pray for your own demise.”

Plus if memory served, Payne’s twin drove that black Escalade over there, and that meant payback was going to

be a shitload of Black Veil Bride, Bullet for My Valentine, and Avenged Sevenfold getting loaded into that SUV’s sound system. Just the thought made him smile. All in all?

He felt like he’d won the lottery. In each of the fifty state...

That was how lucky they...