Дж. Уорд: The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider's Guide

“Wait, not even once? He hasn’t gotten her out of the crib or—”

“He won’t touch her. Crap, will you hand me a frickin’ tissue.” When the Kleenex box got in range, she snapped one free and pressed it to her eyes. “I’m such a mess. All I can think about is Nalla going through her whole life wondering why her father doesn’t love her.” She cursed softly as more tears came. “Okay, this is ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” he said. “It’s really not.”

Phury knelt down, keeping the tissues front and center. Absurdly, Bella noticed that the box had the picture of an alley of leafy trees with a lovely dirt road stretching off into the distance. On either side, flowering bushes with magenta blooms made the maples look like they were wearing tulle ballet skirts.

She imagined walking down the dirt road…to a place that was far better than where she was now.

She took another tissue. “The thing is, I grew up without a father, but at least I had Rehvenge. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a dad who was alive but dead to you.” With a little cooing sound, Nalla yawned wide and snuffled, rubbing her face with the back of her fist. “Look at her. She’s so innocent. And she responds to love so well…I mean…Oh, for God’s sake, I’m going to buy stock in Kleenex.”

With a disgusted noise she flipped another tissue free. To avoid looking at Phury as she blotted, she let her eyes wander around the cheery room that had been a walk-in closet before the birth. Now it was all about the young, all about family, with the pine rocker Fritz had hand-made, and the matching dressing table, and the crib that was still festooned with multicolored bows.

When her stare landed on the low-slung bookcase with all its big, flat books, she felt even worse. She and the other Brothers were the ones who read to Nalla, who settled the young on a lap and unfolded shiny covers and spoke rhyming words.

It was never her father, even though Z had learned to read almost a year ago.

“He doesn’t refer to her as his daughter. It’s my daughter. To him, she’s mine, not ours.”

Phury made a disgusted sound. “FYI, I’m trying to resist the urge to pound him out right now.”

“It’s not his fault. I mean, after all he went through…I should have expected this, I guess.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, this whole pregnancy thing wasn’t planned, and I wonder…maybe he resents me and regrets her?”

“You’re his miracle. You know you are.”

She took more tissues and shook her head. “But it’s not just me anymore. And I won’t raise her here if he can’t come to terms with the two of us…I will leave him.”

“Whoa, I think that’s a little premature—”

“She’s beginning to recognize folks, Phury. She’s starting to understand she’s being shut out. And he’s had three months to get used to the idea. Over time, he’s gotten worse, not better.”

As Phury cursed, she lifted her eyes to the brilliant yellow stare of her hellren ’s twin. God, that citrine color was what shone out of her daughter’s face as well, so there was no looking at Nalla without thinking of her father. And yet…

“Seriously,” she said, “what’s this all going to be like a year from now? There is nothing more lonely than sleeping next to someone you’re missing as if they were gone. Or having that as a father.”

Nalla reached up with her fat hand and grabbed onto one of the tissues.

“I didn’t know you were here.”

Bella’s eyes shot to the doorway. Zsadist was standing in it, a tray in his hands bearing salad and a pitcher of lemonade. There was a white bandage on his left hand and a whole lot of don’t-ask on his face.

Looming there, on the verge of the nursery, he was exactly as she had fallen in love and mated him: a gigantic male with a skull trim and a scar down his face and slave bands at his wrists and neck and nipple rings that showed through his tight black T-shirt.

She thought of him the first time she’d seen him, punching a bag down in the training center’s gym. He’d been viciously fast on his feet, his fists flying faster than her eye could track, the bag being driven back from the beating. And then, without even a pause, he’d unsheathed a black dagger from his chest holster and stabbed the thing he’d been pounding, ripping the blade through the bag’s leather flesh, the stuffing falling free like the internal organs of a lesser.

She’d come to learn that the fierce fighter wasn’t all there was to him. Those hands of his had great kindness in them as well. And that ruined face with its distorted upper lip had smiled and looked at her with love.

“I came down to see Wrath,” Phury said, getting to his feet.

Z’s eyes flicked to the Kleenex box his twin held, then went to the wad of tissues in Bella’s hand. “Did you.”

As he came in and put the tray down on the bureau where Nalla’s clothes were kept, he didn’t look at his daughter. She, however, knew he was in the room. The young turned her face in his direction, her unfocused eyes pleading, her chubby little arms reaching for him.

Z stepped back out into the hall. “Have a good meeting. I’m going out hunting.”

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Phury said.

“No time. Later.” Z’s eyes met Bella’s for a moment. “I love you.”

Bella hugged Nalla closer to her heart. “I love you, too. Be safe.”

He nodded once and then he was gone.

As Zsadist came awake in a panic, he tried to calm his breathing and figure out where he was, but his eyes weren’t much help. Everything was dark…he was enveloped in a dense, cold blackness that, no matter how hard he strained his vision, he couldn’t see through. He could have been in a bedroom, out in a field…in a cell.

He’d come out of sleep like this many, many times. For a hundred years as a blood slave, he’d woken up in a panicked blindness and wondered what was going to be done to him and by whom. After he was free? Nightmares caused him to do the same thing.

In both cases it was such bullshit. When he’d been the Mistress’s property, worrying about the who and the what and the when hadn’t helped him. The abuse was inevitable whether he was faceup or facedown on the bedding platform: He was used until she and her studs were sated; then he was left to lie degraded and leaking, alone in his prison.

And now, with the bad dreams? Waking up in the same terror he’d been in as a slave just validated the past horrors his subconscious insisted on burping up.

At least…he thought he was dreaming.

True panic hit him as he wondered which dark owned him. Was it the dark of the cell? Or the dark of his bedroom with Bella? He didn’t know. Both looked the same when there were no visual clues to decipher and only the sound of his pounding heart in his ears.

Solution? He’d try to move his arms and legs. If they were unchained, if they were not shackled, it was just a case of being caught in his mind’s choke hold once again, the past reaching out through the graveyard dirt of his memories and grabbing him with bony hands. As long as he could shift his arms and legs through clean sheets, he was okay.

Right. Move his arms and legs.

His arms. His legs. Needed to move.

Move.

Oh, God…damn you, move.

His limbs didn’t budge, and in the paralysis of his body the clawed truth ripped through him. He was in the damp darkness of the Mistress’s cell, chained on his back, thick iron cuffs keeping him on the bedding platform. She and her lovers would be coming for him again, and they would do to him whatever they wanted, staining his skin, soiling the inside of him.