Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8)

by J.R. Ward

Chronologically speaking, Blaylock son of Rocke had known John Matthew for just over a year. But that was not a true reflection of the bromance. There were two timelines to people’s lives: the absolute and the perceived. The absolute was the universal day-and-night cycle that for them added up to something like three hundred and sixty-five. Then there was the way that time period had gone, the events, the deaths, the destruction, the training, the fighting. He figured all told . . . that pegged the two of them at about four hundred thousand years. And counting, he thought, looking over at his buddy.

People felt the way they did and it wasn’t their fault or yours if the connection was one-sided. It just . . . was.

Surprise, motherfucker. This ain’t no Disney World, and once you get on the ride, you are never, ever getting off.

He’d wanted to be owned. He’d wanted someone to say, You’re mine.

Ol’ Blue Eyes was even singing “Fly Me to the Moon.” The overhead speakers would probably refuse anything else.

“Fuck is actually a comma. Or didn’t they teach that shit to you at Harvard?”

Funny how your life could be interrupted: You left a house expecting to come back, but then the path you were on took you left instead of around again to the right.

Although vampires believed in the Scribe Virgin, symphaths had no conception of an afterlife. To them, death was an exit ramp not to another highway, but to a brick wall that you slammed into. After which there was nothing.

Having led a violent life, it was entirely unsurprising that she was going to meet a violent end . . . but true to form, she was sure as fuck going to take out a pound or two of flesh with her on the way to the exit.

It was so hard to be unwanted. Harder still to hold one’s head up after such an affront.

One bene to insomnia was that you didn’t need to recharge your phone from all the snooze buttons you hit.

The yawning, resplendent foyer before him was like a gift you opened with your body as you entered it, each step forward bringing you into a visual embrace of color and gold.

This was, in some ways, an echo of the process of death, she thought. Little by little, inch by inch, what tied her to life was leaving, heading off, departing.

he knew when he was aroused . . . and that was one thing that, no matter how polite a male was, he couldn’t hide in tight leather.

“Far better to be uninterested than unfulfilled. One is a relief. The other an emptiness with heavy weight.”

Slamming the Frigidaire shut, he absolutely despised the world and everyone in it—although that was mostly a function of not having his eggs and bacon already waiting for him.

And sometimes the back of the house knew things the front did not.

She had well and truly broken his heart: There was nothing left for him to anticipate with. But she had not broken him—and didn’t that make her respect the guy like nothing else could.

Bearing witness to her, he heard her and was there for her because that was all you could do during a fall apart.

Males protected their females. It was the universal law if you had the cock and balls.

Lassiter might be a metrosexual pain in the ass, but he’d brought Tohr back to the Brotherhood and that was worth something.

Ever since he’d first met the guy, whether it was the Brother’s size, or his intelligence, or the way he treated his female, or how he fought, or even the deep sound of his voice . . . John had wanted to be like Tohr. This was good. This was . . . right.

it was better to feel something, anything. Even if it was an ache.

Lessers could be anywhere and humans could be idiots.

in a world that was full of taking and cruelty, he was fucking breaking her heart with what he was giving her.

Ironic that a “ghost hunter,” when confronted with a figure who disappeared into thin air, needed Advil and Tums. You’d think he’d be overjoyed that for once he didn’t have to get his camera guy to fudge the footage.

There were advantages to being a pothead.

Did ghosts have souls? he wondered. Or were they souls? Did television execs have souls? Now, that was an existential question and a half.

Stepping out into the hall of statues, he rushed down past the marble figures, envying them their calm poses and their serene faces. Sure as shit the everything’s-cool routine made being inanimate seem like a good deal. Whereas it meant they felt no joy, they didn’t have to go through this burning pain, either.

“You’re not half the male you could be because of what was done to you. You’re twice what anyone else is because you survived.”

“The worst thing that can happen is that I die in the pursuit of an innocent—and that is the very best way to go. And if ’tis a trap, I will guarantee you I shall take out a legion on my way unto the Fade.”

when you couldn’t rely on morality, you could absolutely bank on narcissism: It made the bastard utterly predictable.

There was broad consensus in the room for the plan, as well as some cheap shots involving Lash’s ass and various kinds of large-bore instruments of impact: size-fourteen boots being the most likely to come to pass, but hardly the most creative. For example, John seriously doubted Rhage could in fact park his GTO in the guy’s sun-don’t-shine. Or would want to.

You can’t save someone if they don’t want the fucking lifeboat.”

She was batting a thousand when it came to burying those who had wronged her, the living, breathing “bitch” in that jolly little saying about payback.

This is a nice Aubusson carpet you’re standing on. You get blood on it and I’ll have Fritz so far up my ass I’ll be coughing on his hankie.”

The thing was, males like him, males with something wrong with them . . . like, oh, say, one iris that was blue and another that was green . . . were despised in the aristocracy as evidence of a genetic failure. They were embarrassments to be hidden away, shameful secrets to be buried: He’d spent years watching his sister and his brother get elevated on pedestals while everyone who crossed his path performed evil-eye rituals to protect themselves. His own father had hated him.

“I really like surprising you,” the male said. Bingo. And naturally, those damn fool redhead genes made hiding a blush impossible. Easier to put a sedan in your pocket. It was that obvious.

With a whale tail and an air dam that left about a three-inch ground clearance as well as a paint job that was gray and pink and a retina-burning yellow, it was like a Midwestern girl who’d fallen into porn.

To be forever on the brink of death, with all that pain and suffocation, and yet aware that the vast peace on the other side of all that was never coming? It was enough to make you want to kill yourself. Cue laugh track.

Any woman willing to fuck a guy she didn’t know in a public place with three other males around was not someone he needed to have a relationship with.

Sometimes, when you felt like shit inside and out, you wanted to work your own Krups. Pride mattered in moments like this.

That being said, you compromise my happy home in any way, I’ll slice off your balls and feed them to you.” I love Wrath, Qhuinn thought.

Indeed, there was no paler skin to behold than that of the dead by moonlight.

“Hey, hi! How are you?” Hollywood stuck his hand out. “I’d like to introduce myself. I’m the piece of meat that’s going to force you headfirst into your buddy Qhuinn’s Hummer as soon as it gets here. Just figured I’d introduce myself before I rope your ass and throw you over my shoulder like a bag of sand.”

Then again . . . stranger things had brought people together, hadn’t they. And all that really mattered was that the right pair ended up doing the Hallmark at the end. The means that got them there? Not what ultimately counted.

His cock was standing firm against the assault on his masculinity. Kind of made him proud of the bastard.

The modestly sized door that marked the Scribe Virgin’s private quarters was not what one would expect to herald such a devine space. But then when the whole world was yours, you had nothing to prove, did you.

this was the pair of them in a nutshell: Standing three feet away from each other and being separated by miles.

As the two held stares, it was hard not to feel part of a unique club that no one would ever volunteer to be associated with. Membership wasn’t sought or desirable or something to crow about . . . but it was real and it was powerful: Survivors of similar wrecks could see the horrors of those jagged shoals in the eyes of others. It was like recognizing like. It was two people with the same tattoo on their insides, the divide of a trauma that separated them from the rest of the planet unexpectedly bringing a pair of weary souls closer together.