Black Dagger Brotherhood 11 - Lover at Last (20 page)

Throe spoke above the rising moans. “I shall stay outside on guard.”

Xcor opened his mouth to command otherwise, and then realized it would make him look like he

was avoiding the scene, and that was hardly a masculine thing to do.

“Aye, you do that,” he muttered. “I shall guard the interior.”

His males picked up the female, their dagger hands finding hold on her arms, her thighs, her waist, and en masse they carried her backward into the cozy confines. Xcor was the one who shut the door

and made sure there was no locking device to pen them in. He was also the one to scope out the

inside of the cottage. As his bastards carried their meal toward the fire, where a large fur rug had been laid flat upon the floor, he leaned into the closest window, lifted the drapery, and checked the panes of glass. Old and leaded, with wooden struts, not steel.

Not secure. Good.

“Someone get inside of me,” the female moaned in a deep voice.

Xcor didn’t bother to ascertain whether she was accommodated or not—although her rippling

groan suggested she was. Instead, he looked around for any other doors or places from which an

ambush could be staged. There appeared to be none. The cottage didn’t have a second floor, the

skeleton of its roof arching up above his head, and there was only a shallow bathroom, the door of

which was open, a light left on revealing a claw-footed tub and an old-fashioned sink. The open

kitchen was but a stretch of countertop and a few modest appliances.

Xcor glanced over at the action. The female was lying on her back, her arms T’d out from her

torso, her neck exposed, her legs spread wide. Zypher had mounted her and was rhythmically

thrusting into her, her head moving back and forth on the white fur as she absorbed the pounding. Two of the cousins had latched onto her wrists, and the other had taken out his cock and was fucking her mouth with it. Indeed, there was little of her that was not covered with male vampire, and her ecstasy at being used was obvious not only to the eye, but to the ear: Around the erection that was going in and out of her plump lips, her heavy breathing and erotic moans escaped into the balmy, sex-scented air.

Xcor walked over to the kitchen sink. There was nothing in the deep belly of it, no lingering

remnants of a meal, no half-filled, abandoned glasses. There were dishes in the cupboards, however, and when he opened the European-size refrigerator, bottles of white wine were lined up horizontally on the shelves.

A male curse brought his eyes back to the fun and games. Zypher was just orgasming, his body

bowing forward while his head kicked back—and in the midst of his release, one of the cousins was

shoving him out of the way, taking his place, lifting the hips of the female and digging his arousal into her wet, pink sex. At least Zypher seemed entirely content to trade places; he beared his fangs, ducked his head under the now-heaving chest of his comrade, and nipped the breast of the female so he could feed close to her nipple.

The one at her mouth orgasmed as well, and she swallowed his release, sucking the head of the

fighter’s cock in desperate pulls, then letting go and licking at her slick mouth as if she were still hungry. Somebody else soon obliged, yet another arousal plunging in between her lips, the

counterthrusting rhythm of what was going on at her head as well as between her legs bouncing her

back and forth in a way she seemed to get off on.

Xcor went over and double-checked the bathroom, but his first assessment had been correct:

There was nowhere to hide in its tight confines.

Having secured the interior, he had naught to do but lean back against the corner that offered the

greatest visual access and witness the feeding. As things intensified, his fighters lost what semblance of civility they had, taking swipes at one another as lions would over a fresh kill, their fangs flashing, their eyes wild with aggression as they jockeyed for access. They did not completely lose their heads, however. And they took care of the female.

Soon enough, someone scored his vein and put it to her lips.

Xcor dropped his eyes to his boots and allowed his peripheral vision to monitor the environs.

There was a time when he would have become aroused at the sight—not because he was

particularly interested in the sex, but more in the same manner that when he saw food, his stomach

would grumble. And accordingly, in the past, when he had had the need to take a female, he had done just that. Usually in the dark, of course, so the dear girl wouldn’t be offended or afeared.

He could well imagine the strained expressions males sported when they were in their erotic

throes did little to improve his looks.

Now, though? He felt curiously unplugged from it all, as if he were watching a team of males

move some heavy furniture or perhaps rake a lawn.

It was his Chosen, of course.

Having had his lips against her pure skin, having looked into her luminous green eyes, having

smelled her delicate scent, he was utterly uninterested in the well-used charms of that female in front of the fire.

Oh, his Chosen…he had never known such grace existed, and moreover, he could not have e’er

surmised that he would be touched so completely by that which was antithetical to him. She was his

opposite, kind and giving when he was brutal and unforgiving, beautiful to his ugliness, ethereal to his filth.

And she had marked him. Sure as if she had struck him and left a scar deep within his flesh, he

was wounded and weakened by her.

There was naught to be done.

Lo, even the memory of the moments he had shared with her, when she had been fully clothed, and

he had been so gravely injured, were enough to stir him at his hips, his sorry sex stiffening for no good reason a’tall: Even if they had not been on different sides of the war for the throne, she would never have let him come to her as a male does when he is enthralled with a female of worth. That

breezy autumn night when they had met under that tree, she had been performing a valid service in her own mind. It had naught to do with him in particular.

But oh, he wanted her nonetheless….

Abruptly, the female before the fire arched under the shifting, orgasming weights atop her, and he

refocused on her. As if she sensed his sexual arousal, her blissed-out, fuzzy stare drifted over in his direction, and brief surprise flickered across her face—or what little he could see of it around the thick forearm offering her nourishment.

Shock widened her eyes. She evidently had failed to notice his presence—but now that she had,

fear, not passion, clearly flared within her.

Unwilling to disrupt the action, he shook his head and flashed her his palm in a stop motion to

reassure her that she was not going to have to bear his bite—or worse, his sex.

The messaging apparently worked, because the dread left her expression, and as one of his

soldiers presented his cock for attention, she reached out and began stroking it over her head.

Xcor smiled to himself in a nasty way. This whore wouldn’t have him, and yet his body, in all its

biological stupidity, insisted on responding to that Chosen as if the sacred female would e’er look twice at him.

So silly.

Checking his watch, he was surprised to find that the feeding had been going on for an hour

already. So be it. Provided his males complied with his two basic rules, he was content to let this continue: They had to remain substantially clothed, and their weapons had to be holstered with the

safeties off.

That way, if the tenor changed, they could defend themselves quickly.

He was more than willing to give them the time.

After this interlude? The lot of them were going to be at their full strength—and with the way

things were going with the Brotherhood…they were going to need to be.

EIGHTEEN

“No. Fucking no way.”

Qhuinn had to agree with Z’s read on Rhage’s bright idea.

The bunch of them had struggled through the woods, with Rhage bearing most of Z’s weight while

everyone else circled the pair, ready to pick off anything or anyone who threatened from the fringes.

They were now back at the airplane hangar, and Hollywood’s solution to their mobility problem

seemed like a complication with mortal implications, not anything that was actually going to help.

“How hard can it be to fly a plane?” As everyone, including Z, just looked at him, Rhage

shrugged. “What. Humans do it all the time.”

Z rubbed his chest and slowly sank to the ground. After gathering his short breath, he shook his

head. “First of all, you don’t know if…the damn thing…can even get airborne. It probably has no

gas…and you’ve never flown before.”

“You wanna tell me what our other option is? We’re still miles from any plausible pickup

location, you’re not improving, and we could get ambushed. Let me at least get in there and see if I can get the engine to turn over.”

“This is a bad call.”

In the quiet that followed, Qhuinn did the math himself, and glanced over at the hangar. After a

moment, he said, “I’ll cover you. Let’s do this.”

Bottom line, Rhage was right. This foot-race of an evac was taking too long, and that
lesser
had disappeared before they’d stabbed him, not the other way around.

Had the Omega given his boys some special powers?

Whatever—a smart fighter never underestimated the enemy—especially when one of his own was

down. They needed to get Z to safety, and if that meant an airlift, so the fuck be it.

He and Rhage filed into the hangar and flicked on their flashlights. The airplane was right where

they’d left it in the back corner, looking like it was the ugly stepchild of some much prettier mode of transportation that had long since fled the scene. Closing in, Qhuinn saw that the propeller appeared to be sound, and, although the wings were dusty, he could hang his weight off of them.

The fact that the door hatch squeaked like a bitch when Rhage opened the way in was less than

good news.

“Whew,” Rhage muttered as he recoiled. “Smells like something died in there.”

Man, must have been one hell of a stinky if the Brother could differentiate it from the rest of the smell inside the hangar.

Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.

Before Qhuinn could offer a second read on the stench, Rhage turned himself into a pretzel and

squeezed through the oval hole. “Holy shit—keys. There are keys—can you believe it?”

“How about gas?” Qhuinn muttered, as he swept his flashlight beam around in a wide circle.

Nothing but that dirty-ass floor.

“You might want to step back there, son,” Rhage hollered out of the cockpit. “I’ma try and fire this old lady up.”

Qhuinn eased away, but come on. If the thing was going to go up in flames, like fifteen feet was

going to make much of a difference—

The explosion was loud, the smoke was thick, and the engine sounded like it was suffering from a

mechanical strain of whooping cough. But shit evened out. The longer they let it run, the more even the rhythm became.

“We gotta get out of here before we asphyxiate,” Qhuinn yelled into the plane.

Right on cue, Rhage must have put the thing in drive or something, because the airplane eased

forward with a groan like every nut and bolt in its body hurt.

And this thing was going to get airborne?

Qhuinn jogged in front and hit the double bay’s seam. Gripping one side, he threw all the power

in his body into the pull and ripped the thing apart, various latches and locks popping free and going flying.

He hoped the airplane didn’t take inspiration from those fragments.

In the moonlight, the expressions on John’s and Blay’s faces were pretty fucking priceless as they

got a good look at the escape plan—and he knew where they were coming from.

Rhage hit the brakes and squeezed out again. “Let’s load him up.”

Silence. Well, except for the wheezing plane behind them.

“You’re not taking it up,” Qhuinn said, almost to himself.

Rhage frowned in his direction. “Excuse me.”

“You’re too valuable. If that thing goes down, we can’t lose two Brothers. Not going to happen.

I’m expendable, you are not.”

Rhage opened his mouth like he was going to argue. But then he shut it, a strange expression

settling onto his beautiful face.

“He’s right,” Z said grimly. “I can’t put you in jeopardy, Hollywood.”

“Fuck that, I can dematerialize out of the cockpit if—”

“And you think you’re going to be able to do that when we’re in a spiral? Bullshit—”

A smattering of gunshots came from the tree line, piffing into the snow, whizzing by the ear.

Everyone snapped into action. Qhuinn dived into the plane, pulled himself into the pilot’s seat,

and tried to make sense of all the…fucking hell, there were a lot of dials. The only saving grace he had was that he’d—

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

—watched enough movies to know that the lever with the grip was the gas and the bow tie–

shaped wheel was the thing you pulled up to go up, and pushed down to go down.

“
Fuck
,” he muttered as he stayed in a tuck position as much as he could.

Given the popping sounds that followed, John and Blay were shooting back, so Qhuinn sat up a

little higher and glanced at the rows of instruments. He figured the one with the little gas tank was what he was looking for.

Quarter of the tanks left. And the shit in there was probably half condensation.

This was a really bad idea.

“Get him in here!” Qhuinn yelled, sizing up the empty, flat field to the left.

Rhage was on it, throwing Zsadist into the airplane with all the gentleness of a longshoreman. The