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“Pretty, aren’t I?” His cold stare was the stuff of nightmares, of dark places where no hope could be found, of hell itself.

Forget the scar, she thought. Those eyes were the scariest thing about him.

And they were fixated on her as if he were sizing her up for a shroud. Or for some sex.

She moved her body away from him. Started looking around for something she could use as a weapon.

“What, you don’t like me?”

Beth eyed the door, and he laughed.

“Think you can run fast enough?” he said, pulling the bottom of his shirt free from the leather pants he had on. His hands moved to his fly. “I’m damn sure you can’t.”

—DARK LOVER, p. 226-227

Yeah, okay, so not a hero. The thing was, though, the voices in my head were shouting that he was getting his own book and he was going to end up with an HEA.

Oh, great. Fantastic. And not the last time in the course of writing this series when I’ve been like, You have GOT to be kidding me—I can’t pull that off.

By the end of Dark Lover, however, I was seduced . . . and totally driven to write Z’s story. The turning points for me were two scenes in that book. One is of Beth meeting up with Zsadist in the pantry as they get the food ready for her mating ceremony (p. 318). In this exchange, Z reveals that he has no intention of hurting Beth and that he doesn’t like to be touched. The other scene is just after the ceremony. The vows have been spoken and the carving done and the Brotherhood is serenading the couple:

But then, in a high, keening call, one voice broke out, lifting above the others, shooting higher and higher. The sound of the tenor was so clear, so pure, it brought shivers to the skin, a yearning warmth to the chest. The sweet notes blew the ceiling off with their glory, turning the chamber into a cathedral, the Brothers into a tabernacle. . . .

The scarred one, the soulless one, had the voice of an angel.

—DARK LOVER, p. 334

By the end of DL, I needed to write Z so badly that for the only time yet, I dictated book order against what I saw in my head. Z was supposed to be the last in the series, the end cap of the ten books (which included Wrath, Rhage, Butch, V, Phury, Rehvenge, Payne, John Matthew, and Tohrment). But the thing was, when I sold the Brotherhood series, the first contract was for three books. At the time the deal was made, paranormals were hot, but people were already beginning to speculate when the market would hit its crest and begin to fall off in terms of popularity. I wasn’t sure I’d get to write all of them.

Call me an optimist, huh.

It was with that mindset that I approached the future, and as I finished Dark Lover and started to outline Lover Eternal, I knew if I didn’t put Zsadist on the page I would never get past it. So I bumped him forward.

Writing him was gut-wrenching, and there were times when I had to stand up and walk away from my computer. But he came out as I saw him in my head, and I love him more than any hero I’ve ever written. He was tricky, though. Z was an honest-to-God sociopath. The difficulty was presenting him in a way that was at once true to his pathology and yet sympathetic enough for readers to see what I saw in him and understand why Bella fell for him.

There were two keys. One was his reaction to Bella’s abduction, and the other was his past as a blood slave and its sexual repercussions. Gaining sympathy for Z with readers was a classic show-not-tell situation. The book opens with Z on a single-minded mission to get Bella back. Very heroic, and the altruism is justified in spite of its being contrary to his nature because it’s obvious that he sees her situation through the lens of his own captivity and abuse: He couldn’t help himself, but he sure as hell can help her. And after he gets her out, he treats her with great gentleness. Bella becomes the catalyst to his expressing something warm and protective, and his interactions with her balance out his more sadistic and masochistic scenes.

And then there is the sexual side of things. By showing Z under the Mistress’s ownership through