Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7) - J. R. Ward Page 0,211

water all that grounded him. Until someone else approached.

On instinct, he turned to the footfalls and assumed his fighting stance, surprised to find that he wasn’t as defenseless as he’d thought. In the absence of sight, his hearing filled out the picture that was no longer created by his eyes: He knew where the person was by the rustle of their robing and an odd click, click, click and…shit, he could even hear their heartbeat.

Strong. Steady.

What was a male doing here?

“Wrath, son of Wrath.” Not a male voice. A female one. And yet the impression he had was masculine. Or maybe it was just powerful?

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“Payne.”

“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter. Tell me something, you plan on doing anything with those fists? Or are you just going to stand there?”

He dropped his arms immediately, as it was entirely inappropriate to raise a hand to a female—

The uppercut slammed into his jaw so hard, it whipped his head and shoulders around. Stunned, more out of surprise than pain, he fought to regain his balance. The second he did, there was a whizzing sound and he was pounded again, the next blow catching him under his jaw and kicking his skull back.

That was all she got in with the clean shots, though. His defensive instincts and his years of training responded even though he couldn’t see anything, his hearing functioning as his eyes, telling him where things like arms and legs were. He grabbed a surprisingly thin wrist and wrenched the female around—

Her heel made hard contact with his shin, the pain spearing up his leg and pissing him off as something like a rope swung into his face. He grabbed it and hoped it was a braid attached to the female’s—

Yanking it hard, he felt her body torque backward. Yup, attached to her head. Perfect.

Getting her off-kilter was easy, but man, she was a strong motherfucker. With only one leg supporting her weight, she managed to jump and spin, clipping him in the shoulder with her knee.

He heard her land and start to scramble, but he kept a hold on her hair, reining her in. She was like water, though, always fluid, always moving, hitting him time and time again until he was forced to manhandle her onto the ground and pin her down.

It was a case of brute strength winning out over grace.

Panting, he looked into a face he couldn’t see. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“I’m bored.” With that, she head-butted him right in the goddamn nose.

Pain made him feel like he was on a merry-go-round, his hold briefly lessening. Which was all she needed to get free again. Now he was the one on the bottom, her forearm cranked around his throat and pulling back so hard, she must have had a grip on her wrist for greater leverage.

Wrath strained to get air down into his lungs. Holy shit, she was going to kill him if she kept this up. She really was.

Deep within himself, deep down into his very marrow, deep into the double helixes of his DNA, the response came. He was not going to die here and now. No fucking way. He was a survivor. He was a fighter. And whoever this bitch was, she was not going to issue him his ticket to the Fade.

Wrath let out a war cry in spite of the iron bar across his neck, and moved so fast he had no idea what he did. All he knew was that a split second later, the female was facedown on the marble with both her arms twisted up behind her back.

For absolutely no reason, he thought of however many nights ago, when he’d popped the arms off that lesser in the alley before he’d killed the fucker.

He was going to do exactly the same to her—

The laughter rippling up from underneath him was what stopped him. The female…was laughing. And not like someone who’d lost her mind. She was honestly having a good time, even though she must have known she was about to pass out from the kind of pain he was going to inflict on her.

Wrath loosened his hold only slightly. “You are a sick bitch, you know that?”

Her hard body quaked under his as she kept on laughing. “I know.”

“If I let you go, are we going to just end up here again?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Strange, but he kind of liked those odds, and after a moment, he released her as he would have a stallion with a bad