“Fuck…”
He groaned as he entered her, feeling her tight hold on him and reveling in that warm, slick pressure. “Sorry…I don‟t mean…to curse…”
Oh, the moving, the glorious moving.
Oh, the glorious future.
He was free at last. And thanks to her, he was in out of the rain, literally.
“I love you, Isaac,” she breathed against his throat. “But harder…I need you to go harder…”
“Yes, ma‟am,” he growled. “Anything the lady wants.”
And then he proceeded to give her everything he had…and everything he was and ever would be.
284
Read on for a sneak peek of
LOVER UNLEASHED,
J. R. Ward‟s next hardcover novel
in the #1
New York Times
bestselling
Black Dagger Brotherhood series,
coming from New American Library
in March 2011!
M
anny Manello didn‟t like other people driving his Porsche. In fact, short of his mechanic, no one else ever did.
Tonight, however, Jane Whitcomb was behind the wheel because: One, she was competent and could shift without grinding his transmission into a stump; two, she‟d maintained the only way she could take him where they were going was if she were doing the ten-and-two routine; and three, he was still reeling from seeing someone he‟d buried pop out of the bushes to hi-how‟re-ya him.
So many questions. Lot of pissed off, too. And yeah, sure, he was hoping to get to a place of peace and light and sunshine and all that namby-pamby bullshit, but he wasn‟t holding his breath for it. Which was kind of ironic. How many times had he stared up at his ceiling at night, all nestled in his beddy-bye with some Lagavulin, praying that his former chief of Trauma would come back to him?
Manny glanced over at her profile. Illuminated in the glow of the dash, she was still smart.
Still strong.
Still his kind of woman.
But that was never happening now. Aside from the whole liar-liar-pants-on-fire about her death, there was a gunmetal gray ring on her left hand.
“You got married,” he said.
She didn‟t look at him, just kept driving. “Yes. I did.”
The headache that had sprouted the instant she‟d stepped out from behind her grave instantly went from grouchy to gruesome, and shadowy memories Loch Ness‟d below the surface of his conscious mind, tantalizing him, making him want to work for the full reveal.
He had to cut that cognitive search and rescue off, though, before he popped an aneurism from the strain: As maddening as being lost in his own mind was, he had the sense that he could do permanent damage to himself if he kept struggling.
As he looked out the car window, fluffy pine trees and budding oaks stood tall in the moonlight, the forest that ran around Caldwell‟s edges growing thicker as they headed north from the city proper and the twin bridges of downtown.
“You died out here,” he said grimly. “Or at least pretended you did.”
They‟d found her Audi in and among the trees on a stretch of road not far from here, the car having careened off the shoulder. No body, though, because of the fire.
Jane cleared her throat. “I feel like all I‟ve got is „I‟m sorry.‟ And that just sucks.”
“Not a party on my end, either.”
Silence. Lot of silence. But he wasn‟t one to keep asking when all he got in return was
I’m
sorry
. Besides, he wasn‟t totally in the dark. He knew she had a patient she wanted him to treat and he knew…Well, that was about it, wasn‟t it.
Eventually, she took a right hand turn off onto…a dirt road?
“FYI,” he muttered, “this car was built for racetracks, not roughing it.”
“This is the only way in.”
To where, he wondered. “You‟re going to owe me for this.”
“You‟re the only one who can save her.”
Manny flashed his eyes over. “You didn‟t say it was a „her.‟ ”
“Should it matter?”
“Given how much I don‟t get about all of this,
everything
matters.”
A mere ten yards in and they went through the first of countless puddles that were as deep as frickin‟ lakes, and as the Porsche splashed through, he gritted, “And screw this patient. I want payback for what you‟re doing to my under carriage.”
Jane let out a little laugh, and for some reason, that made the center of his chest ache—but nothing good was going to come from dwelling on the emotional crap. It wasn‟t like the pair of them had ever been together—yeah, there had been attraction on his part. Big attraction. And, like, one kiss. That was it, however.
And now she was Mrs. Someone Else.
About five minutes later, they came up to a gate that looked like it had been erected during the Punic Wars. The thing was hanging at Alice in Wonderland angles, the chain link rusted to shit and broken in places, the fence that it bisected nothing more than six feet of barbed cattle wire that had seen better days.
Yet the thing opened smoothly. And as they went past it, he saw the first of the video cameras.
While they progressed at a snail‟s pace, a strange fog rolled in from nowhere in particular, the landscape blurring until he couldn‟t see more than twelve inches ahead of the car‟s grille.
Christ, it was like they were in a
ScoobyDoo
episode out here.
The next gate was in slightly better condition, and the one after that was even newer, and so was the one after that.
The last gate they came to was spit-and-shine sparkling, and all about the Alcatraz: Fucker reached twenty-five feet off the ground and had High Voltage warnings all over it. And as for the wall it cut into? That shit was nothing for cattle, more like velociraptors, and what do you want to bet that concrete face fronted a solid twelve or twenty-four inches of solid horizontal stone.
Manny swiveled his head around at her as they passed through and began a descent underground into a tunnel that could have had a “Holland” or “Lincoln” sign tacked on it for all its sturdiness and lighting. The farther down they went, the more that big question that had been plaguing him since he‟d first seen her loomed: Why fake her death? Why cause the kind of chaos she had in his life and the lives of the other people she‟d worked with at St. Francis? She‟d never been cruel, never been a liar, and had no financial problems and nothing to run from.
Now he knew without her saying a word:
U.S. government.
This kind of setup, with this sort of security…hidden on the outskirts of what was a big-enough city, but nothing so huge as New York, L.A. or Chicago? Had to be the government.
Who else could afford this?
And who the hell was this women he was treating?
The tunnel terminated in a parking garage that was standard issue with its pylons and little yellow painted spots, and yet as large as it appeared to be, there were just a couple of nondescript vans with darkened windows and a small bus that also had blackouts for glass.
Before she even had his Porsche in park, a steel door was thrown open and—
One look at the huge guy who stepped out and Manny‟s head exploded, the pain behind his eyes going so intense, he went limp in the bucket seat, his arms falling to the sides, his face twitching from the agony.
Jane said something to him. A door was opened. Then his own was cracked.
The air that hit him smelled dry and vaguely like earth…but there was something else.
Cologne. A very woody spice that was at once expensive and pleasing, but also something he had a curious urge to get away from.
Manny forced his lids to open. His vision was wonky as hell, but it was amazing what you could pull out of your ass if you had to, and as the face in front of him came into focus, he found himself staring up at the goateed motherfucker who had…
On a wave of pain, his eyes rolled back into his head and he nearly threw up.
“You‟ve got to release the memories,” he heard Jane said.
There was some conversating at that point, his former colleague‟s voice mixing with the deep tones of that guy with the tattoos at his temple.
“It‟s killing him—”
“There‟s too much risk—”
“How the hell is he going to operate like this?”
There was a long silence. And then all of a sudden, the pain lifted as if it were a veil drawn back, and memories flooded his mind.
Jane’s patient. From back at St. Francis. The man with the goatee and…the six-chambered
heart.
Manny popped open his eyes and lasered in on that cruel face. “I know you.”
The guy had shown up in his office and taken the files on that heart of his.
“You get him out of the car,” was the only response from Goatee. “I don‟t trust myself to touch him.”
Hell of a welcome wagon.
As Manny‟s brain struggled to catch up with everything, at least his feet and legs seemed to work just fine. And after Jane helped him to the vertical, he followed her and the goateed hater into a facility that was as nondescript and clean as any hospital: Corridors were uncluttered, lights were paneled fluorescents on the ceiling, everything smelled like Lysol.
There were also the bubbled fixtures of security cameras at regular intervals, like the building was a monster with many eyes.
While they walked along, Manny knew better than to ask any questions. Well, that and he was so screwed in the membrane, he was pretty fucking sure ambulation was the extent of his capabilities at this point.
Doors. They passed many doors. All of which were closed and no doubt locked.
Yeah, this sure as hell put the “undisclosed location” in “National Security,” didn‟t it.
Jane eventually stopped outside a pair of double flappers. She was nervous, and didn‟t that make him feel like he had a gun to his head: In the OR, in countless trauma messes, she‟d always kept her cool. That had been her trademark.
This was personal, he thought. Somehow, whatever was on the other side hit close to home for her.
“I‟ve got good facilities here,” she said, “but not everything. No MRI. Just CAT scans. But the OR should be adequate, and not only can I assist, but I‟ve got an excellent nurse.”
Manny took a deep breath, reaching down deep, pulling himself together. Whether it was his years of training and experience, or who he was as a man, he ditched all the baggage and the lingering ow-ow-ow in his head and the strangeness of this descent into 007 land, and got with the program.
First thing on the list? Ditch the pissed-off peanut gallery.
He glanced over his shoulder at Goatee. “You need to back off, my man. I want you out in the hall.”
The response he got to that news flash was…just fang-tastic. The bastard bared a pair of shockingly long canines and growled, natch, like a dog.
“Fine,” Jane said, getting in between them. “That‟s fine. Vishous will wait out here.”
Vishous?
Had he heard that right?
Then again this boy‟s mama sure hit the nail on the head, assuming the little dental show Manny was getting wasn‟t just a figment of this situation, but the motherfucker‟s personality.
But whatever. He had a job to do, and maybe the bastard could go chew on a rawhide or something.
Manny pushed into the examination room—
Oh…dear God.
Oh…Lord above.
The patient on the table was lying still as water and…she was probably the most beautiful anything he‟d ever seen. Hair was jet-black and braided into a thick rope that hung free next to her head. Skin was a golden brown, as if she were of Italian descent and had recently been in the sun. Eyes…Her eyes were like diamonds, which was to say both colorless and brilliant, with nothing but a dark rim around the iris.
“Manny?”
Jane‟s voice was right behind him, and yet he felt as if she were miles away. In fact, the whole world was somewhere else, nothing existing except for the stare of his patient as she looked up at him from the table.
It finally happened, he thought. All his life he‟d wondered why he‟d never fallen in love and now he knew the answer to that. He‟d been waiting for this moment, this woman, this time.
This female is mine,
he thought.
“Are you the healer?” she said in a low voice that stopped his heart, her words gorgeously accented, and also a little surprised.
“Yeah.” He wrenched off his sport coat and threw it into a corner, not giving a shit where the thing landed. “That‟s what I‟m here to do.”
As he approached her, those stunning icy eyes slicked with tears. “My legs…They feel as though they are moving, but they do not.”
Phantom pain. Not a surprise if she were paralyzed.
Manny stopped next to her and glanced at her body, which was covered with a sheet. She was tall. Had to be at least six feet. And she was built with sleek power.
This was a soldier, he thought, staring at the strength in her upper arms. This was a fighter.
God, the loss of mobility to someone like her took his breath away. Then again, even if you were a couch potato, life in a wheelchair was a bitch and a half.
He reached out and took her hand, and the instant he made contact, his whole body went wakie-wakie on him, as if she were the socket to his inner plug.
“I‟m going to take care of you,” he told her as he looked her right in the eye. “I want you to trust me.”
She swallowed hard as one crystal tear slipped out to trail down her temple. On instinct, he reached forward with his free hand and caught it—
The growl that percolated up from the doorway broke the spell that had bound him and turned him into a kind of prey. And as he glanced over at Goatee, he felt like snarling right back at the sonofabitch. Which of course made no sense.
Still holding his patient‟s hand, he barked at Jane, “Get that miserable bastard out of my operating room. And I want to see the goddamn scans.
Now.
”