“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.

Teaser chapter

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!

Manny 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.