Covet - Softcover

Praise for the Novels of J. R. Ward

“Now here’s a band of brothers who knows how to show a girl a good time.”

—Lisa Gardner

Lover Enshrined

“Terrific...explosive...exciting.... Ward has outdone herself.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Lover Unbound

“The newest in Ward’s ferociously popular Black Dagger Brotherhood series bears all the marks of a polished storyteller completely at home in her world.... This fix will give Brother addicts a powerful rush.”

—Publishers Weekly

Lover Revealed

“These erotic paranormals are well worth it, and frighteningly addictive.... It all works to great, page-turning effect.... In just two years, the...series [has] earned Ward an Anne Rice–style following, deservedly so.”

—Publishers Weekly

Lover Awakened

“Best new series I’ve read in years! Tautly written, wickedly sexy, and just plain fun.”

—Lisa Gardner, New York Times bestselling author of Hide

“Utterly absorbing and deliciously erotic. I found myself turning pages faster and faster—and then I wished I hadn’t, because there was no more to read.... The hottest collection of studs in romance, and I can’t wait for the next one!”

—Angela Knight, USA Today bestselling author of Master of Dragons

Lover Eternal

“Ward wields a commanding voice perfect for the genre...hold on tight for an intriguing, adrenaline-pumping ride...leaves readers begging for more. Fans of L. A. Banks, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Sherrilyn Kenyon will add Ward to their must-read list.”

—Booklist

“[An] extremely intense and emotionally powerful tale.... Ward’s paranormal world is, among other things, colorful, dangerous, and richly conceived...intricate plots and believable characters.”

—Romantic Times (top pick)

Dark Lover

“It’s not easy to find a new twist on the vampire myth, but Ward succeeds beautifully. This dark and compelling world is filled with enticing romance as well as perilous adventure. With myriad possibilities to choose from, the Black Dagger Brotherhood series promises tons of thrills and chills.”

—Romantic Times (top pick)

“A dynamite new vampire series—delicious, erotic, and thrilling! J. R. Ward has created a wonderful cast of characters, with a sexy, tormented, to-die-for hero...a fabulous treat for romance readers!”

—Nicole Jordan, New York Times bestselling author of Touch Me with Fire

“J. R. Ward has a great style of writing and she shines.... You will lose yourself in this world; it is different, creative, dark, violent, and flat-out amazing.”

—All About Romance

“An awesome, instantly addictive debut novel. It’s a midnight whirlwind of dangerous characters and mesmerizing erotic romance. The Black Dagger Brotherhood owns me now. Dark fantasy lovers, you just got served.”

—Lynn Viehl, New York Times bestselling author of Shadowlight

BY J. R. WARD

The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider’s Guide

NOVELS IN THE BLACK DAGGER BROTHERHOOD SERIES

Dark Lover

Lover Eternal

Lover Awakened

Lover Revealed

Lover Unbound

Lover Enshrined

Lover Avenged

COVET

A Novel of the Fallen Angels

J. R. Ward

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With thanks to:
Kara Cesare, Claire Zion, Kara Welsh, Leslie Gelbman, and everyone at NAL. As always.

Thank you also to Steven Axelrod, my voice of reason.

With love to Team Waud: Dee, LeElla, K, and Nath—without whom none of this would be possible. Thank you also to Jen and Lu and all our Mods and Hall Monitors.

And with total gratitude to Doc Jess (aka Jessica Andersen), Sue Grafton, Suz Brockmann, Christine Feehan and her wonderful family, Lisa Gardner, and Linda Francis Lee.

And with all love to my husband, my mother, the better half of WriterDog, and my whole family.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

EXCERPT FROM RAPTURE

Prologue

Demon was such a nasty word.

And so damned old-school. People heard demon and they conjured up all kinds of Hieronymus Bosch helter-skelter—or worse, Dante’s stupid-ass Inferno crap. Honestly. Flames and tortured souls and everyone wailing.

Okay, maybe Hell was a little toasty. And if the place had had a court painter, Bosch would have been at the head of the pack.

But that wasn’t the point. The Demon actually saw itself as more of a Free-Will Coach. Much better, more modern. The anti-Oprah, as it were.

It was all about influence.

The thing was, the qualities of the soul were not dissimilar to the components of the human body. The corporeal form had a number of vestigial parts, like the appendix, the wisdom teeth, and the coccyx—all of which were at best unnecessary, and at worst capable of compromising the functioning of the whole.

Souls were the same. They, too, had useless baggage that impeded their proper performance, these annoying, holier-than-thou bits dangling like an appendix waiting for infection. Faith and hope and love...prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude...all this useless clutter just packed too much damn morality into the heart, getting in the way of the soul’s innate desire for malignancy.

A demon’s role was to help people see and express their inner truth without their being clouded by all that bullshit, diverting humanity. As long as people stayed true to their core, things were going in the right direction.

And lately, that had been relatively true. Between all the wars on the planet, and the crime, and the disregard for the environment, and that cesspool of finance known as Wall Street, as well as the inequalities far and wide, things were okay.

But it wasn’t enough and time was running out.

To go with a sports analogy, Earth was the playing field and the game had been going on since the stadium had been built. The Demons were the Home Team. Away was made up of Angels pimping that chimera of happiness, Heaven.

Where the court painter was Thomas Kincaid, for fuck’s sake.

Each soul was a quarterback on the field, a participant in the universal struggle of good against evil, and the scoreboard reflected the relative moral value of his or her deeds on earth. Birth was kickoff and death was game-over—whereupon the score would be added to the larger tally. Coaches had to stay on the sidelines, but they could put different complements of players on the field with the human to influence things—and also call time-outs for pep talks.

Commonly known as the “near-death experience.”

Here was the problem: Like a spectator who had been watching a postseason game in a cold seat with one too many hot dogs in his belly and a screamer sitting right behind his ear, the Creator was eyeing the exit.

Too many fumbles. Too many time-outs. Too many ties that had led to too many unresolved overtimes. What had started out as a gripping contest had evidently lost its appeal, and the teams had been given their notice: Wrap up the play, boys.

So both sides had to agree on one particular quarterback. One quarterback and seven plays.

Instead of an endless parade of humans, they were down to seven souls in the balance between good and evil...seven chances to determine whether humanity was good or bad. A tie was not possible and the stakes were...everything. If Team Demon won, it got to keep the facility and all the players that had ever been or ever would be. And the Angels became slaves for eternity.

Which made torturing human sinners seem like nothing but a bore.

If the Angels won, the entire Earth would be nothing but one giant Christmas frickin’ morning, a choking wave of happiness and warmth and caring and sharing taking over everything. Under that hideous scenario, the Demons would cease to exist not just in the universe, but in the hearts and minds of all of humanity.

Although considering all the happy-happy, joy-joy, that was the best outcome in that scenario. Short of getting stabbed repeatedly in the eye with a pole.

The Demons couldn’t bear losing. It just wasn’t an option. Seven chances were not a lot, and the Away Team had won the metaphysical coin toss—so they got to approach the quarterback who was going to drive the seven “balls,” as it were.

Ah, yes...the quarterback. Not surprisingly the choice of that key position had led to a lot of heated discussion. Eventually, though, one had been selected, one who both sides found acceptable...one who both coaches expected to rock the plays according to their values and goals.

Poor fool didn’t know what he was in for.

The thing was, though, the Demons weren’t prepared to leave such a momentous responsibility on the shoulders of a human. Free will was malleable, after all—which was the basis of the whole game.

So they were sending someone onto the field as a player. It was against the rules, of course, but true to their nature—and also something the opponent was incapable of doing.

This was the edge the Home Team had: The one good thing about the Angels was they always colored within the lines.

They had to.

Suckers.

CHAPTER
1

“She wants you.”

Jim Heron lifted his eyes from his Budweiser. Across the crowded, dim club, past bodies that were clad in black and hung with chains, through the thick air of sex and desperation, he saw the “she” in question.

A woman in a blue dress stood beneath one of the few ceiling lights in the Iron Mask, the golden glow floating down over her Brooke Shields brown hair and her ivory skin and her banging body. She was a revelation, a standout slice of color among all the gloomy, neo-Victorian Prozac candidates, as beautiful as a model, as resplendent as a saint.

And she was staring at him, though he questioned the wanting part: Her eyes were set deep, which meant as she looked over, the yearning that stalled out his lungs could just be a product of the way her skull was built.

Hell, maybe she was simply wondering what he was doing in the club. Which made two of them.

“I’m telling you, that woman wants you, buddy.”

Jim glanced over at Mr. Matchmaker. Adrian Vogel was the reason he’d ended up here, and the Iron Mask was definitely the guy’s scene: Ad was dressed in black from head to toe and had piercings in places most people didn’t want needles anywhere around.

“Nah.” Jim took another swig of his Bud. “Not her type.”

“You sure about that.”

“Yup.”

“You’re a fool.” Adrian dragged a hand through the black waves on his head and the stuff eased back into place like it had been trained well. Christ, if it weren’t for the fact that he worked construction and had a mouth like a sailor, you’d wonder whether he trolled the women’s mousse and spray aisles.

Eddie Blackhawk, the other guy with them, shook his head. “If he’s not interested, that doesn’t make him foolish.”

“Says you.”

“Live and let live, Adrian. It’s better for everyone.”

As the guy eased back on the velvet couch, Eddie was more Biker than Goth in his jeans and shitkickers, so he looked as out of place as Jim did—although given the hulking size of the guy and those weird-ass red-brown eyes of his, it was hard to imagine him fitting in with anyone but a bunch of pro wrestlers: even with his hair in that long braid, nobody razzed him at the construction site—not even the meathead roofers who gave the biggest lip.

“So, Jim, you don’t talk much.” Adrian scanned the crowd, no doubt looking for a Blue Dress of his own. After focusing on the dancers who writhed in iron cages, he flagged their waitress. “And after working with you for a month, I know it’s not because you’re stupid.”

“Don’t have a lot to say.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Eddie murmured.

This was probably why Jim liked Eddie better. The SOB was another member of the Spare Club for Men, a guy who never used a word when a nod or a shake of the head could get his point across. How he’d gotten so tight with Adrian, whose mouth had no neutral on its stick shift, was a mystery.

How he roomed with the fucker was inexplicable.

Whatever. Jim had no intention of going into all their hows, whys and wheres. It was nothing personal. They were actually the kind of hardheaded smart-asses he would have been friends with in another time, on another planet, but here and now, their shit was none of his business—and he’d only gone out with them because Adrian had threatened to keep asking until he did.

Bottom line, Jim lived life by the code of the disconnected and expected other people to leave him to his I-am-an-island routine. Since getting out of the military, he’d been vagabonding it, ending up in Caldwell only because it was where he’d stopped driving—and he was going to hit the road after the project they were all working on was finished.

The thing was, given his old boss, it was better to stay a moving target. No telling how long it was going to be before a “special assignment” popped up and Jim got tagged again.

Finishing off his beer, he figured it was a good thing he owned only his clothes, his truck, and that broken-down Harley. Sure, he didn’t have much to show for being thirty-nine—

Oh, man...the date.

He was forty. Tonight was his birthday.

“So I gotta know,” Adrian said, leaning in. “You have a woman, Jim? That why you’re not picking up Blue Dress? I mean, come on, she’s smokin’ hot.”

“Looks aren’t everything.”

“Yeah, well, they sure as hell don’t hurt.”

The waitress came over, and while the others ordered another round, Jim shot a glance at the woman they were jawing about.

She didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch. Just slowly licked her red lips like she’d been waiting for him to make eye contact again.

Jim refocused on his empty Bud and shifted in the booth, feeling like someone had slipped lit coals into his...