Lover Unbound

Jane jumped into her bed and pulled the sheets up over her head. As she trembled in the darkness, she felt very small and very scared.

The board had been right. Hannah got no Christmas presents and married no one.

But Jane's little sister kept her promise. She did come back.

Chapter One

'I am so not feeling this cowhide.'

Vishous looked up from his bank of computers. Butch O'Neal was standing in the Pit's living room with a pair of leathers on his thighs and a whole lot of you've-got-to-be-kidding-me on his puss.

'They don't fit you?' V asked his roommate.

'Not the point. No offense, but these are wicked Village People.' Butch held his heavy arms out and turned in a circle, his bare chest catching the light. 'I mean, come on.'

'They're for fighting, not fashion.'

'So are kilts, but you don't see me rocking the tartan.'

'And thank God for that. You're too bowlegged to pull that shit off.'

Butch assumed a bored expression. 'You can bite me.'

I wish, V thought.

With a wince, he went for his pouch of Turkish tobacco. As he took out some rolling paper, laid down a line, and twisted himself a cig, he did what he spent a lot of time doing: He reminded himself that Butch was happily mated to the love of his life, and that even if he weren't, the guy didn't play like that.

As V lit up and inhaled, he tried not to look at the cop and failed. Fucking peripheral vision. Always did him in.

Man, he was a perverted freak. Especially given how tight they were.

In the last nine months he'd grown closer to Butch than anyone he'd ever met in his over three hundred years of living and breathing. He'd roomed with the male, gotten drunk with him, worked out with him. Been through death and life and prophesies and doom with him. Helped bend the laws of nature to turn the guy from human to vampire, then healed him when he did his special business with the race's enemies. He'd also proposed him for membership in the Brotherhood… and stood by him when he'd been mated to his shellan.

While Butch paced around like he was trying to get comf with the leathers, V stared at the seven letters that were carved in Old English across his back: MARISSA. V had done both the As, and they'd come out well, in spite of the fact that his hand had been shaking the whole time.

'Yeah,' Butch said. 'I'm not sure I'm feeling these.'

After their mating ceremony, V had vacated the Pit for the day so the happy couple could have their privacy. He'd gone across the compound's courtyard and shut himself up in a guest room at the big house with three bottles of Grey Goose. He'd gotten saturated drunk, real rice-paddy flooded, but hadn't been able to meet the goal of making himself pass out. The truth had kept him mercilessly awake: V was attached to his roommate in ways that complicated things and yet changed nothing at all.

Butch knew what was doing. Hell, they were best friends, and the guy could read V better than anyone could. And Marissa knew it because she wasn't stupid. And the Brotherhood knew it because those old-maid fool idiots never let you keep secrets.

They were all cool with it.

He wasn't. He couldn't stand the emotions. Or himself.

'You going to try the rest of your gear on?' he asked on an exhale. 'Or you want to whine about your pants a little more?'

'Don't make me flip you off.'

'Why would I deprive you of a favorite hobby?'

'Because my finger's getting sore.' Butch walked over to one of the couches and picked up a chest harness. As he slid it onto his broad shoulders, the leather contoured to his torso perfectly. 'Shit, how'd you get it to fit so well?'

'I measured you, remember?'

Butch buckled the thing in place, then bent down and ran his fingertips across the lid of a black-lacquered box. He lingered over the gold crest of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, then traced the Old Language characters that spelled out Dhestroyer, descended of Wrath, son of Wrath.

Butch's new name. Butch's old, noble lineage.

'Oh, for fuck's sake, open the thing.' V stabbed out his cig, rolled another, and lit up again. Man, it was a good thing vampires didn't get cancer. Lately he'd been chain-smoking like a felon. 'Go on.'

'I still can't believe this.'

'Just open the damn thing.'

'I really can't-'

'Open. It.' At this point, V was twitchy enough to levitate out of his frickin' chair.

The cop triggered the solid-gold lock mechanism and lifted the top. Lying on a bed of red satin were four matching black-bladed daggers, each precisely weighted to Butch's specs and honed to a lethal edge.

'Holy Mary, Mother of God… They're beautiful.'

'Thanks,' V said on an exhale. 'I make good bread, too.'

The cop's hazel eyes shot across the room. 'You did these for me?'

'Yeah, but it's no big thing. I do them for all of us.' V lifted up his gloved right hand. 'I'm good with heat, as you know.'

'V… thank you.'

'Whatever. Like I said, I'm the blade man. Do it all the time.'

Yeah… just maybe not with quite as much focus. For Butch, he'd spent the past four days straight on them. The sixteen-hour marathons working his cursed glowing hand over the composite steel had made his back burn and his eyes strain, but goddamn it, he'd been determined to get each one worthy of the male who would wield them.

They still weren't good enough.

The cop took one of the daggers out, and as he palmed it his eyes flared. 'Jesus… feel this thing.' He began working the weapon back and forth in front of his chest. 'Never held anything so well weighted. And the grip. God… perfect.'

The praise pleased V more than any he'd ever received.

So it irritated the shit out of him.

'Yeah, well, they're supposed to be like that, true?' He stabbed the hand-rolled out in an ashtray, crushing the fragile glow at its tip. 'No sense you going out in the field with a set of Ginsus.'

'Thank you.'

'Whatever.'

'V, seriously-'

'Make that fuck you.' When there was no slappy comeback, he looked up.

Shit. Butch was standing right in front of him, the cop's hazel eyes dark with a knowledge V wished the guy didn't have.

V dropped his stare to his lighter. 'Whatever, cop, they're just knives.'

The black tip of the dagger slid under V's chin and angled his head up. As he was forced to meet Butch's stare, V's body tensed. Then trembled.

With the weapon linking them, Butch said, 'They're beautiful.'

V closed his eyes, despising himself. Then he deliberately leaned into the blade so that it bit into his throat. Swallowing the flare of pain, he held it in his gut, using it as a reminder that he was a fucked-up freak, and freaks deserved to get hurt.