The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,69

much disengage as fall over to the side, as if every ounce of strength had been spent from him. The headboard let out one last bam! as he landed and bounced, his hands and arms, his torso and legs going loose from all that straining effort.

His mouth moved, his dark eyes meeting hers and staying there.

She had no clue what he was saying to her. She didn’t care. Her ass was still up in the air, her sex humming from the hard use, her body as satiated as his looked. Air currents, from the vent above, drifted down from the ceiling, brushing against everything that was exposed, tickling, cooling.

That had been the sex of her life. Hard and raw, the way she had been told and trained it could and should be.

Before Selena allowed herself to lie to the side and slip into her own sleep, she smiled so widely her cheeks hurt.

She had been, for the first time in her life, not just well and truly fucked, but marked by the male she loved.

Even with the future she had to face, it was hard not to feel blessed.

TWENTY-TWO

iAm regained consciousness, but kept his eyes closed. What woke him up was the shooting pain in the back of his head—that and the ice-cold floor his naked body was lying on. For a moment, he considered playing possum and trying to get an idea of where he was through his hearing, sense of smell, and instincts, but there was no reason to.

He knew exactly where they’d put him.

Fucking double-crossing bastard.

Opening his lids, he saw a whole lot of nothing much. Then again, he was on his stomach, one arm trapped under his torso like he’d been thrown in—

A door opened over in the corner behind him. And he knew that not by any hinge creaking, but by the sudden addition of voices and footsteps in the cell.

“Why would I check his marking?” a male asked. Not s’Ex.

“It is procedure.”

Yup. Nothing had changed.

iAm reclosed his eyes and stayed perfectly still except for breathing shallowly as the footfalls came closer.

There was a gasp. And then fingers palpated the small of his back, as if they were stretching the skin where he had been marked, as all males were, when they were six years of age.

“That cannot be right.”

The footsteps left in a hurry, and he assumed the panel was shut again.

Lifting his head, his vision blurred and came back into focus. There was no one else in the well-lit twenty-by-twenty cell, the glossy white walls so slick he could see his dark reflection in the panels of marble.

His head hurt so damned much, he was forced to lay it back down again, his cheek finding the exact spot on the stone that had been warmed to the temperature of his body while he’d been out of it. His arm was killing him, the limb both numb and painful at the same time, but he lacked the energy to move the thing free of his upper body’s weight. Lying there, breathing, existing, he had no idea how long he’d been out, what they were going to do to him, or whether he was going to get out of this bright idea he’d had alive.

From out of nowhere, he had a mental image of him leaving Sal’s the night before, stepping free of the restaurant he loved, talking to the waiters.

He found himself wanting to rewind time and go back to that incarnation of himself, his memories of the way the night had been cool on his face, and how the smoke from his waiters’ cigarettes had curled up off of the lit tips, so clear that, for a moment, it seemed impossible that he could not return to that place in time … step into the shoes he had been wearing then … reassume his suit of skin just as he re-formed after dematerializing.

But of course, time didn’t work like that. And memory was but a television show of your own life, a movie screen you could play witness to, but not interact with, change the course of, redirect.

Desperation for Trez, the great motivator in his life, had propelled him back into the heart of the enemy he and his brother shared.

And there was a very good chance this shit was going to get the best of him.

With a groan, he rolled himself onto his side and blinked a couple of times. His weapons, like the robing he had been wearing, were long gone.