{"product_id":"lover-mine-isbn-9780451231550","title":"Lover Mine","description":"\u003cb\u003eReturn to the seductive—and dangerous—world of J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood as the fever rises in the war between the vampires and slayers…\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJohn Matthew has come a long way since he was found living among humans, his vampire nature unknown to himself and to those around him. After he was taken in by the Brotherhood, no one could guess what his true history was—or his true identity. Indeed, the fallen Brother Darius has returned, but with a different face and a very different destiny. As a vicious personal vendetta takes John into the heart of the war, he will need to call up on both who he is now and who he once was in order to face off against evil incarnate...and rescue his one true love. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for the Novels of the Black Dagger Brotherhood\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Delicious, erotic, and thrilling.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author Nicole Jordan\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Dark fantasy lovers, you just got served.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author Lynn Viehl\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “To die for. I love this series!”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“J. R. Ward’s urban fantasy romance series is so popular I don’t think there’s a reader today who hasn’t at least heard of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.”—\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Hold on tight for an intriguing, adrenaline-pumping ride.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eJ. R. Ward \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of more than thirty novels, including those in her #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. She is also the author of the Black Dagger Legacy series and the Bourbon Kings series. There are more than fifteen million copies of her novels in print worldwide, and they have been published in twenty-six different countries around the world. She lives in the South with her family.\u003cb\u003eChapter One\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother fucking butterfly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs R.I.P. looked at what was coming through the door of his tat shop, he knew he going to end up doing another fucking butterfly.   Or two.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGiven the pair of long, blond and bubbly that were jiggling their giggly way up to his receptionist, he was not going to be marking any skull and bones shit.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese Paris Hiltons and their we’re—so—bad excitement had him looking at the clock… and wishing he closed now, instead of one a.m.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMan... the shit he did for money.  Most of the time he could be all \u003ci\u003eyeah, whatever\u003c\/i\u003e about the lightweights who came in to get marked up, but tonight the bright ideas of cutie pies annoyed him.  Hard to get enthused about the Miss Kitty set when he’d just spent three hours doing a memorial portrait for a biker who’d lost his best friend on the road.  One was real life; the other a cartoon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMar, his receptionist, came over to him.  “You got time to do a quickie?”  Her pierced eyebrows went up as her eyes rolled.  “Shouldn’t take long.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Yeah.”  He nodded to his padded chair.  “Get the first one over here.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“They want to be done together.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOf course they did.  “Fine.  Get the rolling stool from the back.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs Mar disappeared behind a curtain, the two by the cash register held each others’ hands and twittered together.  From time to time, both of them shot him wide looks, like with all his tats and his metal, he was an exotic tiger they’d come to admire at a zoo... and totally approved of.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUh-huh.  Right.  He would cut his own balls off before he threw them as much as a pity fuck.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter Mar took their money, she brought them over and introduced them as Keri and Sarah.  Which was more than he’d expected.  He’d been bracing himself for Tiffany and Brittney.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I want a rainbow carp,” Keri said as she got into his chair with what she clearly intended to be an enticing arch.  “Right here.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe pulled up her tight little shirt, undid the zipper on her jeans and pushed down the top of her pink thong.  Her belly button had a hoop with a pink rhinestone heart dangling off of it and it was clear she into electrolysis.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Fine,” R.I.P. said.  “How big.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKeri the Seductress seemed to deflate a little— as if her no doubt one hundred percent success rate with college football players had led her to assume he would pant all over the real estate she was showing him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Um... not too big.  My parents would kill me if they knew I was doing this... so it can’t show over a bikini bottom.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOf course not.  “Two inches?”  He held up his tatted hand and gave her a sense of dimension.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Maybe... a little smaller.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith a black pen, he made a sketch on her, and after she asked him to stay on the inside of the lines, he snapped on his black gloves, got out a fresh needle, and tuned up his gun.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt took Keri about a second and a half to sport tears and hang onto Sarah’s hand as if she were giving birth without an epidural.  And that was the difference, wasn’t it.  There was a huge divide between the hardcore and the wannabe.  Butterflies and carps and pretty little hearts were not—\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe shop’s door opened wide… and R.I.P. sat up a little straighter on his rolling stool.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe three men who walked in were not in military uniforms, but they were definitely not civilians.  Dressed in black leather from their jackets to their pants to their shitkickers, they were huge men that sucked the walls of the shop in closer and shrunk the ceiling down tight.  Lot of bulges hidden underneath that leather.  The kinds made by guns and maybe knives.     \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith a subtle shift, R.I.P. moved in direction of his counter, where the emergency alarm button was.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe one on the left had mismatched eyes and gunmetal piercings and a killer’s cool stare.  The one on the right seemed a little closer to mainstream with his pretty-boy puss and the red hair— except for the fact that he carried himself like someone who’d been to war and back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe one in the middle, however, was trouble.  Slightly larger than his buddies, he had dark brown hair that was cut short and a classically handsome face— but his blue eyes were lifeless, with about as much reflection as old asphalt.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA dead man walking.  With nothing to lose. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Hey,” R.I.P. called out to greet them.  “You guys need some ink?”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“He does.”  The one with the piercings nodded at his blue—eyed buddy.  “And he’s got the design.  It’s a shoulder spread.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eR.I.P. gave his instincts a chance to weigh in on the project.  The men didn’t eye Mar inappropriately.  There was no casing of the cash register and no one went for their metal.  They waited politely— but with expectation.  Like either he did what they wanted, or they’d find someone else who would.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe eased back into position, thinking they were his peeps.  “Cool.  I’ll be finished in no time here.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMar spoke up from behind the counter.  “We were supposed to be closing in less than an hour—”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“But I’ll do you,” R.I.P. told the one in the center.  “You don’t worry about the time.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I think I’ll stay,” Mar said, eyeing the one with the piercings.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe blue—eyed guy’s hands came up and moved with distinct gestures.  After he was finished, the pierced one translated, “He says thanks.  And he’s brought his own ink if that’s okay.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot exactly the norm, but R.I.P. had no trouble being flexible for the right customer.  “No, prob, my man.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe got back to work with the carp and Keri resumed her bitten lip and little girl moaning routine.  When he was finished, he was not at all surprised that Sarah, after having watched her friend go through “agony,” decided that she wanted a refund instead of some pretty, rainbow colored ink of her own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhich was good news.  It meant that he could get to work on the guy with the dead eyes right away.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs he snapped off his black gloves and cleaned up, he wondered what in the hell the design was going to look like.  And exactly how long it was going to take Mar to get inside the pierced guy’s pants.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFormer was likely to be fairly good.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd the latter… he’d give that about ten minutes because she’d caught the guy’s mismatched stare and Mar was a fast worker.  Not just behind the counter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e################################\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAcross town, away from the bars and tat shops on Trade Street, in an enclave of brownstones and cobbled lanes, Xhex stood in a bay window and stared out of wavy antique glass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe was naked and cold and bruised.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut she was not weak.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDown below, on the sidewalk, a human female strolled along with a little yappy dog on a string and on a cell phone up to her ear.  Across the lane, people in other elegant walk-ups were drinking and eating and reading.  Cars went by slowly both out of respect for the neighbors and fear for their suspension systems on the uneven street.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe human peanut gallery couldn’t see or hear her.  And not just because the capacities of that other race were so diminished in comparison to those of vampires.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOr in her case, half-\u003ci\u003esymphath\u003c\/i\u003e vampires.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEven if she turned the ceiling light on and screamed until her voice box gave out, even if she waved her arms until they fell out of their sockets, the men and women who were all around would just keep up whatever they were doing, unaware that she was trapped in this bedroom, thick in their midst.  And it wasn’t as if she could pick up the bureau or the bedside table and break the glass.  Same with kicking down the door or crawling through the bathroom vent.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe’d tried all that.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe assassin in her had to be impressed by the pervasive nature of her invisible cell: there was, quite literally, no way to get around, through or out of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTurning away from the window, she paced around the king size bed with its silk sheets and horrible memories... and went by the marble bathroom... and kept going by the door that led out into the hall.  Given the way things went with her captor, it wasn’t as if she needed more exercise, but she couldn’t keep still, her body twitchy and humming.   \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe’d done this against—her—will once before.  Knew how the mind, like a starved body, could cannibalize itself after too long if you didn’t feed it something to churn over.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer favorite distraction?  Mixed drinks.  After having worked in clubs for years, she knew legions of cocktails and concoctions and she ran through them, picturing the bottles and and the glasses and the pouring and the ice and the spice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat Bartender-pedia thing had kept her sane.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUp until now, she had banked on a mistake, a slip up, an opportunity for escape.  None had come and that hope was starting to fade, exposing a huge black hole that was ready to eat her.  So she just kept making drinks in her head and searching for her opening.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer past experience helped in a strange way.  Whatever happened here, however bad it got, however much it hurt physically, it was nothing compared to what she’d been through before.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis was the minor leagues.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOr... at least she told herself that.  Sometimes it felt worse.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore with the pacing, past the two bay windows in front, by the bureau and then around the bed again.  This time she went into the bathroom.  There were no razors or brushes or combs, just some towels that were slightly damp and a bar of soap or two.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen Lash had abducted her, using the same kind of magic that was keeping her in this suite of rooms, he had brought her to this elegant crib of his and their first night and day together had been indicative of how it was going to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the mirror over the double sinks, she saw herself and performed a dispassionate review of her body.  There were bruises all over her... cuts and scrapes, too.  He was brutal in what he did, but she fought back because it was her nature— so it was hard to tell what marks had been made by him and what had been incidental to what she’d done to the bastard.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGet his ass naked in front of some glass, and she’d bet her last breath he didn’t look any better than she did.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEye for an eye.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe unfortunately corollary was that he liked that she met fire with fire.  The more they fought, the more he got turned on, and she sensed he was surprised at his own emotions.  For the first couple of days, he’d been in punishment mode, trying to take out of her what she’d done to his last girlfriend— those bullets she’d put in that bitch’s chest had really ticked his shit off.  But then things had changed.  He’d started to talk less about his ex and more about body parts and fantasies involving blood and a future that include her bearing his spawn.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePillow talk for the sociopath.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow his eyes glowed for another reason when he came to her, and if he knocked her out, she usually came around with him wrapped around her body.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eXhex turned to the door, and froze before taking another step.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSomeone was downstairs.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeaving the bathroom, she went to the door that led out into the hall and inhaled slow and deep.  As the scent of sweaty road kill wafted into her sinuses, it was clear whatever was hoofing around down below was a \u003ci\u003elesser\u003c\/i\u003e— but it wasn’t Lash.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNope, this was his minion, who came every night before he arrived to make him something to eat.  Which meant Lash was on the way to the brownstone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMan, wasn’t it just her luck:  She gets snatched by the only member of the Lessening Society who ate and fucked.  The rest of them were impotent as a ninety year old and existed on an air diet, but Lash?  Fucker was fully functional.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGoing back over to the window, she put her hand out toward the glass.  The boundary that marked her prison was an energy field that felt like a prickling heat as she came into contact with it.  The damn thing was like an Invisi-fence for things bigger than dogs— with the added bene of no collar being required.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere was a little give in it... as she pressed forward, there was a hint of flexibility, but only up to a point.  Then the molecules that were agitated pulled together and the burning sensation got so acute she had to shake her hand out and walk off the pain.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs she so often did, in the time before Lash came back to her, her mind drifted to the male she tried never to think of.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEspecially if Lash was around.  It was unclear how much her captor could get into her head, but she didn’t want to take chances.  If the bastard got an itch that that mute solider was her well-of-soul, as her people it, he would use that against her... and John.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn image of the male came to her mind, his blue eyes resonating in her mind so clearly, she could see the flecks of navy in them.  God, those beautiful blue eyes.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe could remember when she first met him, back when he was a pretrans.  He had looked at her with such awe and wonder, as if she were larger-than-life, a revelation.  Of course, at that point, all she knew was that he was packing heat in ZeroSum, and as head of security for the club, she’d been hell bent on disarming him and throwing him out into the street.  But then she’d learned the Blind King was his \u003ci\u003ewhard\u003c\/i\u003e and that had changed everything.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFollowing the happy little newsflash about who he was rooming with, John was not just welcomed to be armed, he was a special guest along with his two boys.  After that, he’d come in regularly and had always watched her, those blue eyes on her wherever she was.  And then he’d transitioned.  Holy hell, had he turned into a big one and abruptly that stare had something hot added to the gentle shyness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt had taken a lot to kill that kindness.  But true to her assassin’s nature, she’d managed to do the warmth in. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFocusing on the street below, she thought of that time they had been together at her basement place.  After the sex, when he’d tried to kiss her, when his blue eyes had glowed with the trademark vulnerability and compassion and warmth she’d come to associate with him, she’d pulled away and shut him down.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was a case of lost nerve.  She just couldn’t handle the pressure of all that hearts-and-flowers stuff... or the responsibility that came with being around someone who felt like that about her... or the reality that she had the capacity to love him back. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe payback had been the death of that special look.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe solace she took was that among the males who were likely to try and come after her... Rehvenge, iAm and Trez, the Brotherhood... John Matthew was not on a crusade.  If he was searching for her, it was because he had to as a solider, not because he was compelled to as part of a personal, suicide mission.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e No, John Matthew wouldn’t be on the warpath because of how he felt about her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd having already watched a male of worth destroy himself trying to rescue her, at least she didn’t have to do that again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the smell of fresh grilling steak permeated the brownstone, she shut off her thoughts and gathered her will around her like a suit of armor.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer “lover” was coming home soon so she needed to batten down her mental hatches and get ready for tonight’s battle.  Pervasive exhaustion dragged at her, but her will ushered that deadweight out on its ass.  She needed to feed, even more than she needed a proper sleep, but neither of those were happening anytime soon.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt was a question of putting one foot in front of the other until something broke.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat and taking hunks of flesh out of the male who dared to hold her against her will.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Berkley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300356640997,"sku":"NP9780451231550","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780451231550.jpg?v=1767731923","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/lover-mine-isbn-9780451231550","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}