by Meg Ripley
Summoning as much of last night’s courage as she could muster, she left the room, taking a step out into the hallway. But which way did she go now? The hallway continued to both the left and right of her, and she could see that a few doorways up on the left, there was another hallway as well.
Eenie meenie miney mo…she turned to the right. Please let this be the right direction, she thought, and took a few tentative steps down the hall. Fortunately, not five seconds later, she spied the man standing alone in front of an enormous hearth in a grand living room at the end of the short hall.
“I see you made your way just fine,” he said without turning around, though there was a note of irritation in his tone. When he finally faced her, however, it seemed to dissipate. His eyes blazed hot with desire, and her own body responded, making her wonder if there was really any need to leave so quickly.
But yes, there was. Though she’d escaped unscathed—thanks to Grant—her mind was reeling with questions. Who were those men? Why had they wanted to hurt her? How had she fought the way she did? And how had Grant, for that matter? Looking at him, she had no doubt he was strong, but he’d appeared to exude the same inhuman strength that had pulsed through her own veins last night.
“You’re ready then?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts and drawing her back to the present.
“Yes.”
He nodded toward another hallway at the same time he started toward it. She followed Grant to a door at the end of the hall that led to a garage—a garage filled with more cars than she’d seen in some sales lots. Certainly, none of the cars in front of her—Lamborghinis, a Porsche, several Aston Martins and a dozen other cars she didn’t recognize—had ever graced an ordinary lot.
He pressed a button on the remote in his hand, and the passenger door of the car nearest to her opened. She slid in and Grant came around to the driver’s side, and though the car was relatively spacious, his large frame seemed to fill up the space, making Freya even more aware of the potent male figure next to her.
Without looking at her, he revved the car engine, a smooth purr that acted like a balm for her jagged nerves. With another press of a button, the wide garage door slid open without a sound. He shifted the car into gear and drove out, easing down the long, winding driveway and along the near-empty street that would lead back to the highway. She remembered the route from days before and managed to relax another degree. It was as if the drive back could somehow undo all that had happened; it was a foolish thought, of course, but soothing, nonetheless.
Grant then turned onto the highway, and her heart nearly leapt into her throat. Every bit of calm she’d managed to call forth vanished in an instant. Sixty miles per hour…one hundred miles per hour; the speed increased exponentially with every second. One hundred and twenty miles per hour…
Though the car glided down the highway smoothly, she gripped the sides of her seat, praying they’d make it off the highway before he spun out of control and she wound up wrapped around a tree.
Fortunately, at that speed, it didn’t take long to reach the city. He veered onto the exit ramp, slowing to something that approached the speed limit, and she released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Out the corner of her eye, she could see that he was smiling to himself, and she glared out the windshield. Did he do that on purpose? she wondered with annoyance.
Caught up in her irritation, it took her a moment to realize he’d taken the exit that led to her apartment, and was even now making the turn onto her street.
“How do you know where I live?” she asked, panic rising in her chest anew.
“Your wallet,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“You went through my purse?”
Her nerves were overstrung, no doubt, but finding out he’d gone snooping through her purse was the final straw in the long list of things that had happened in the past twenty-four hours that were definitely not okay.
She’d found a woman dead and probably stumbled upon the escaping assailant; her apartment had been broken into; she’d been attacked by a mob of strangers and had somehow transformed into a woman with superhuman strength and speed she didn’t know she possessed; and she’d been rescued—or kidnapped?—by a man who seemed to have the same freakish strength she had called up out of thin air. And, oh right, he also happened to have an unhealthy need for speed that could have landed her dead in a ditch on the side of the highway.
The fact that he was sexy as hell and part of her wanted to forget about everything else and climb over the gearshift onto his lap just went to show how crazy the past twenty-four hours had made her.
“Forgive me, but you weren’t offering up too many answers at the time.” His reply did nothing to placate her.
“Of course, I wasn’t. I was unconscious!”
“Precisely,” he answered, as if that cleared up the issue succinctly.
“Do you go through every woman’s purse when she’s not conscious?”
“No, of course not—just the sexy, unconscious ones.”
“Oh? And do you come by those often?”
He chuckled, but didn’t reply, and that was probably for the best. “Is there somewhere else you can stay?” he asked instead, changing the subject abruptly.
Yeah, sure, she lived in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment but secretly had a mansion stashed away in another city. Who didn’t? “No…I only have one apartment. Not all of us have a house the size of a shopping mall.”
“Yes, I appreciate your…modifications—much easier to navigate now.”
“Modifications? What are you talking about?”
He eyed her suspiciously once again, but then turned his attention back to the road in front of them and abandoned the subject without answering her. “Freya, I suggest you pack a bag and find someplace else to stay for a while.”
“Thanks, I appreciate the advice and all, but I must have left my money bags in my last life.”
He cocked his eyebrow, but didn’t respond, and immediately she felt chagrined. He’d helped her—probably saved her life—and even driven her home, and here she was giving him attitude. “I’m sorry, I really do appreciate what you’ve done for me. Thank you. But I’m sure those men were just random troublemakers—it isn’t exactly unheard of in Las Vegas. I’ll be fine—thanks to you.”
Obviously, that wasn’t entirely true. She had no idea who those men were, or why they’d attacked her, but until she could make any sense of all that had happened, she had no idea what to do next.
So, it was time to try to make sense of it. She thanked him again after he pulled up at the curb in front of her building and slid out in a hurry, anxious to put some space between herself and the man who was doing nothing but adding to the confusion in her head at the moment.
She raced up the four flights of stairs to her apartment and closed the door behind her, but it was as if the click of the handle unlocked the floodgates and all that she’d been keeping at bay, all that had happened in the past day, burst forth.
She sank to the floor and waited for the well of emotions to overwhelm her, but like the other day when she’d happened upon the poor woman who’d been murdered, they didn’t come—at least most of them didn’t. What she felt more than anything was a tidal wave of confusion. It seemed all so familiar, the way her body had handled those men. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact she would have lost if Grant hadn’t shown up, but she should never have made it as far as she did. It seemed so long as her mind stayed clear, she’d been unstoppable.
Maybe it was a fluke, she thought; the result of a surge of adrenaline. She stood up, looking for something on which to test her theory. She kicked out at the wall in front of her, and her shoe-covered foot went right through it as if it were paper. But did that mean anything?
She moved to the sofa and tried giving it one-handed shove. It slid several feet and slammed into the end table next to it, sending the damaged lamp crashing to the floor. That seemed a bit more than the average person could do, di
dn’t it?
She ran to her bedroom, thinking of the heavy wooden bed frame, and she bent down to lift it up from one corner. She raised it up to her waist, barely engaging any of her muscles. Okay, that’s definitely not normal, she acknowledged.
Moving throughout the apartment, she looked for one test after another, but there was nothing she couldn’t lift or break with one hand, and all the while, it felt like she couldn’t quite tap into the source of it, a source that would have made her infinitely stronger.
The wall that separated the living room from the kitchen! Certainly, she couldn’t break that—it was a solid wood structure, she’d been told. But she punched, and her hand went right through it.
She pulled her fist back, inspecting the bloodied scrapes on her knuckles, as if they could somehow explain what was going on. But as she watched, the scrapes and the long, thin gash grew smaller. And smaller. No more drops of blood welled up from the broken skin. Smaller still, and then they healed up completely right in front of her eyes. Only the specks of dried blood on her smooth flesh belied the fact there had ever been an injury there.
How was that possible? Her head swirled with yet another baffling discovery.
It was a bad dream. It had to be. That was the only rational conclusion. No human could fight like she had, and it wasn’t possible to heal miraculously from injuries. But if she was trapped in some bizarre nightmare, why couldn’t she wake up?
Chapter 8
Grant drove away, making a left at the first intersection, and then another left…and another. And one more. He listened and he watched as he drove in idle circles, waiting for any sign of the dragon who’d attacked her. He would return for her; it was only a matter of time. Whoever he was, the dragon had gone to an awful lot of trouble trying to acquire her.
He drove past her apartment again and again, but it was as if a heavy band connected them and it was drawn taut the further he drove.
Eventually, he gave in. Wise or not, he didn’t want to fight it. And so, he pulled into an empty space a few yards from her building, trying—and failing—yet again to figure out what Freya Cullen really was.
It was possible she was playing him for a fool, but he was damn good at recognizing a lie when he heard one, and everything about her gave him the impression she really didn’t know. The way she’d clutched the seat on the highway as if a car crash could actually kill her—she genuinely seemed to think she was human. How the hell that was possible, he didn’t know, but there it was.
And that also meant she had no idea why those men had been after her, nor did she realize the dragon wasn’t going to give up so easily. Whatever she was, the dragon wanted her badly—and he wanted her alive, which in his experience, was worse than being wanted dead.
He slammed his head against the back of the seat, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. When he’d swooped in to help her, they’d recognized him, and when he’d flown her back to his home instead of pursuing the dragon, he’d known it wouldn’t be long before they were after him, too.
What he didn’t know was why the hell he’d done it. In his three millennia, he had seen countless atrocities; it shouldn’t have fazed him in the slightest. But seeing her lying there, battered and bruised—the woman who’d been warm and alive in his arms the night before—it affected him more than he could have imagined possible.
And whatever her allure was, it was even more powerful than it had been the first moment he’d seen her. Relenting, he slid out of the car and crossed the few yards to her building, ran up the four flights of stairs to her apartment and knocked on the door.
She opened it a moment later and a surge of arousal jolted through him from the sight of her. She hovered at the door without saying a word, seemingly trying to decide whether to let him in. Finally, she stepped back and motioned for him to enter.
“I don’t understand,” she said, pacing. She looked adorable—the kind of adorable that was hot as hell. Her long, dark hair was pulled up at the crown of her head, and her agitation had stained her cheeks a rosy pink against her otherwise milky white skin.
“What is it you don’t understand?” he asked, figuring it was safer than guessing at the answer.
“I broke that,” she said, pointing to the coffee table that had been splintered down the center.
He nodded, somewhat perplexed over what it was she was trying to tell him.
“And I broke that, too…” she said, pointing to the small end table that looked like it had also been split in half. “I broke it with my fucking finger!” she exclaimed, holding up the slim digit on her right hand. “And look,” she said, holding up her right hand. “I hit the wall with this hand—a solid wood wall—and not only did it go right through, but the cuts and scratches it left disappeared right in front of me!”
If there’d been any doubt remaining whether she’d been putting on an act, it fled. She genuinely had no idea.
“Why don’t you look the least bit surprised?” she asked, dropping her hand to her side. “It’s because you’re just like me, right?” she persisted when he didn’t answer.
While it had been fairly well-established in his mind that she was anything but an ordinary human, he wasn’t certain how much to reveal. She wasn’t a dragon, and he’d already ruled out witch, Venefica Eis, púca, lycanthrope and siren. But how much could he tell her when he didn’t know what she was? And why he needed to tell her at all still baffled him. How could she not know?
What was worse than the questions that swirled in his head was the heady scent of her that wafted across the short distance between them, and the way her teeth worried her tantalizingly plush bottom lip. His gaze was drawn downward as the accelerated inhale and exhale of her breathing pushed her breasts against the thin fabric of the shirt she wore.
He didn’t want to think about what she was. He didn’t want to think at all. He wanted her, right then and right there. Desire ran rampant in his veins, surging inward to the heated core and drawing the fire there outward. He breathed, trying to call up a calm that felt a thousand miles away, while trying not to focus on the scent of her that filled his nostrils as he inhaled.
“You can do it too, right?” she persisted, though by the way her pupils had begun to dilate and the pulse in her neck beat faster, he knew she was suddenly as aware of him as he was of her.
“Yes, Freya, I can,” he confessed, resisting the urge to pull her close and show her what else he could do.
“But how? I don’t understand,” she said, meeting his eyes as her heartbeat sped up even more.
“I don’t know how you can do…what you do,” he admitted.
“But then, how can you?” She took a step forward as she spoke, though he wasn’t sure if she was even aware that she’d done it.
“All I can tell you is it’s different. We’re not the same.”
“Then what are you? What am I?” Her voice was little more than a whisper, and he wondered wildly how this had happened. She was standing just inches away, so close he could feel the heat radiating from her body.
She looked more confused than when she’d opened the door, but her scent was driving him crazy. It had increased in intensity every second, and he knew why; she was aroused, and it seemed her awareness of him grew by the minute despite the chaos in her head.
“I don’t know what I am, Grant,” she admitted, “And I’m incredibly confused about a lot of things. But there’s one thing that doesn’t confuse me,” she said, and the look in her eyes conveyed exactly what she meant.
He couldn’t have walked away if his life depended on it. He reached for her, and pulled her hard against him. He captured her lips roughly—he couldn’t help it. But the moment he felt her soft frame mold to his body, the fire in his core grew hotter. It wanted out, but there was no way in hell he could let that happen.
He pulled away, trying to put an end to it, but she followed him, lunging upward for his lips at the same time her arms wrapped around him, her fingers twining i
n the hair at the back of his neck.
God damn it, this was a bad idea. But a low growl rose in his throat and he couldn’t stop himself from pulling her against him once more. He wanted her like he’d never wanted anything in his life. He wanted to taste every inch of her; to lay her down and watch his fingers disappear inside her as she moaned out. And the thought of her lips wrapped around his rock-hard length had him fighting against the urge to lower her to the ground in front of him.
Her breasts were pressed against his chest, and he could feel her hard nipples through her top. He needed her naked, every part of her exposed and his for the taking.
He pushed her away, harder than he’d intended, and she bumped back against the wall, but it didn’t seem to faze her. He cringed, knowing he was in trouble, but unable to stop himself as he grabbed hold of her shirt and tore it down the center. She gasped at the unexpected move, but then yanked the ripped fabric off her arms, and it fell to the floor at her feet.
His desire to see her bare was so overwhelming that he didn’t have time to play with the clasp on her bra; he pulled at the fabric gathered between her breasts, and her breasts sprung free as the bra gave way. His hands were there before the bra hit the floor, cupping her mounds in his hands and kneading the firm flesh while he rolled her hard nipples back and forth between his fingers.
She reached between them and grabbed hold of the hem of his shirt. Not thinking, he let her yank it off over his head, but the second her hands returned, he realized his mistake. Her slim fingers grazed across his chest, and the fire grew hotter, blazing outward too far. Her nails scraped deliberately across his nipples and he shook with his restraint.
It was too much; trying to control the fire escaping his core while attempting to keep himself from bending her over and fucking her like an animal. All the while, her touch drove him wild, and the scent of her arousal was threatening to send him into a mindless frenzy.
He grabbed for her wrists and yanked them high above her head. But the action pressed her breasts out further, making his mouth water, and he swooped down to suck a nipple into his mouth.