by Petra Landon
Tasia tried to form the words to warn him of the peril they stood in — prisoners, caged in a darkened room, by unknown assailants while he engaged in the mightiest of all Wyr struggles. But before she could say anything, she was flipped over onto her back. Over her, blazing gold eyes blocked the view of the bars, the fierce glitter cutting through the near darkness. How he’d managed to maneuver them both in the constricted space was a mystery, one Tasia had little time to ponder as his face descended over her.
“Wha ..?”
That was all she had time to squeak before his lips sealed hers. She felt them capture hers — impatient and demanding. There was no finesse, just primal need. Thrown off kilter, Tasia attempted to remonstrate with him. Taking advantage, his tongue slipped in adroitly, gentling almost immediately to taste her. Now, he sipped from her delicately, when before he’d been frenzied. Heat and pleasure mingled together in an intoxicating brew to awaken a bud of heady desire in her. Her eyes closed of their own volition in unconscious surrender. All threats forgotten, her head swam as she felt him in an intimate dance of tongue and lips. He was silent, his entire being focused on her. The hand at her nape moved to cradle her head from the hard floor, adjusting infinitesimally without disentangling their lips. The muscled body loomed over her, cocooning them in their own private space, separate from the reality of the cage. Dizzy, her head swimming, Tasia reached blindly for an anchor, something to hold on to as the very ground shifted from under her. Her hands reached above, instinctively grasping the bars behind her head. They were the only solid anchors in the cage and the sensation of being swept away in an uncontrollable tide demanded she hold on for dear life. With her spread-eagled under him, his hand slid down to her hip to plaster them together.
Dimly, as if from a great distance, Tasia could feel his heart pounding wildly. Later, when she was to think back on the interlude, she’d recognize an almost frantic quality to his kiss, despite the gentling after the initial frenzy. But right then, she had neither the will nor the inclination to analyze anything. The sound of her own heart deafened her, its beat reciprocating to the call of his.
He suckled on her lower lip, his mouth hot and demanding. Her tongue brushed against his. That was all the encouragement he’d been waiting for. He made an inarticulate sound that she felt rather than heard since their bodies were entwined so closely together. The hand on her head angled it to deepen the kiss, his tongue surging boldly in, while the hand on her hip brought her more tightly under him. Passion, blind and unheeding, flared in the dimly lit room between the woman and the man held captive. A dazed Tasia could feel him all over — his hand in her hair, his mouth on her, his stubble like sandpaper on her skin, his heart pounding in tandem with her and the hard, warm body against her.
A powerful forearm braced against the floor kept his weight from crushing her. Entwined as they were, with every slight adjustment he made, she was swept along in his wake. While her dress protected her, the rough floor below scraped the bare skin on her legs with every slide. Tasia squirmed at a particularly rough abrasion and he seemed to sense her discomfort. Wrenching himself away abruptly, he reared up to stare down at her. Tasia opened slumberous eyes, laden with passion, to meet his. In the darkness, the gold eyes blazed, the fire untamed.
“Hang on.” The deep voice was raspy.
Had she ever thought his eyes cold, Tasia wondered dazedly. They blazed with gold fire now, their brightness almost hypnotizing. Bracing more firmly against the floor, he moved to adjust her legs. Muscles rippled as he shifted to swing her legs over his. Now, it was his leg that lay braced against the cage floor.
“Alright now?” he asked, his breathing ragged.
Tasia’s eyes closed again, her lips angled towards him in silent invitation. He lost no time in reaching for her, to claim her lips again, and her clasp of the bars tightened convulsively. The headiness of the unfamiliar, blazing and all-consuming passion caused everything to recede from Tasia’s mind, their circumstances, his control over his beast, and the threat they faced. Instead, with her heart hammering and her head swimming, she surrendered mindlessly. Muscles flexed in the powerful arms and shoulders as he worked to keep his weight off her, without touching the bars. In the jostling for purchase, a button from his shirt pressed into the soft skin of her décolletage. Swept away and mindless, Tasia ignored it, but he seemed to sense her discomfort almost immediately, like he had before. Rearing up in the tight space, he braced himself to tear at his shirt impatiently. Buttons tore, to scatter in haste. He parted the shirt haphazardly to swoop down on her again. Now, it was his bare chest that rubbed against the low-cut neckline of the simple dress she wore.
As the hot, wet mouth trailed down to her collar bone, Tasia unclasped one hand from its deathly grip on the bar to slip it under his gaping shirt at the shoulder. His response was immediate. He gave a guttural groan, tearing his lips from her to go rigid. She opened her eyes just a smidgeon to watch him. The muscles under her hand flexed and bunched, and the gold eyes closed, an expression of exquisite agony on his face. The hand cradling her head fisted softly in her hair. When the hand stroking his back paused, the gold eyes opened abruptly to zero in on her.
“Don’t stop” he encouraged hoarsely.
Her hand slid down his shoulder in a caress. An expression of fierce satisfaction flitted across his face. His lips swooped down to press open-mouthed kisses under her collar bone. With a soft gasp, Tasia’s eyes fluttered shut, on the brink of surrender again, when something incongruous pricked at her. Her eyes opened wider. A pinprick of light moved lazily over his back where her hand caressed him under his shirt. What is that, she wondered dreamily, perplexed by it. She didn’t remember seeing it before. Something, a sixth sense perhaps, compelled her to trace the beam of light to its origin. In a corner of the room, a vague outline of something rectangular and dark mounted on a rack that swayed slowly from side to side, met her eyes.
Oh my God.
Her hand slid up to push at his shoulder, trying to get his attention.
He protested wordlessly, his lips skimming over her skin to capture her lips again.
“Stay still” he directed huskily to place a soft kiss at the edge of her lips. “Please” he added, his voice gentling immediately.
Tasia tore her lips away with an effort. “There’s a camera pointed at us” she gasped out.
Her warning seemed to seep through immediately. He stilled, lifting his head to meet her eyes.
“Hold on.” The gold eyes blazed down at her, remnants of passion still visible.
Clasping her more firmly to him, one hand on her head and a large one splayed over her hip, he rolled them over carefully, maneuvering them until he was on his back again with Tasia sprawled over him. Pressing her head gently into the hollow between his neck and collar bone, he glanced over her shoulder.
Now, he could see the beam of light on her back. His night eyes switched on to locate the camera mounted on a gyrating stand. The fog of desire and mindless need receded abruptly as an awareness of danger sprang into life. With it came a blinding burst of rage. His mind clear, Raoul shoved his rage away to deal with later. The cage had clearly been placed at just the right angle for the video to record the captives. He cursed under his breath. He was done providing entertainment for them, whomever they were.
His lips brushed by Tasia’s ear. “I need your shoe to take out the camera. I can’t reach mine.”
Tasia consented, her hair tickling his face when she nodded vigorously. She couldn’t touch her feet either, not while she was plastered over him. But he was welcome to it, if he could reach it. Acutely aware of their precarious circumstances now, Tasia tried to assist him by sliding her leg up. Her knee bumped into him.
“Umff” he grunted. “Let’s not demolish all chances of the Merceau line yet, witchling.”
“Sorry” Tasia muttered, heartily embarrassed.
“No harm done.” There was a hint of a chuckle in the soft tones.
His p
alm slid from its clasp near her hip, sliding down her bare leg all the way to her ankle, the touch feather-soft on the smooth skin.
Tasia twitched in his embrace, her hands grasping the open lapels of his shirt, hyper-sensitized from the remnants of the passion that had flared so abruptly between them. He said nothing, removing the plain black pump to bring it up to his eye. The gold eyes narrowed at the camera through the bars, lining up his aim. Then, he threw the shoe with deadly accuracy at its intended target. The shoe sailed precisely between the bars to hit the mounted rack where it connected to the camera. The thin rod connecting it to the stand snapped at the base and the camera toppled to the floor with a crash.
“The camera’s taken care of” he informed her. “Now, we get out of here.”
“How?” She tried to raise her head, but his hand still cradled it.
He glanced around him carefully, his eyes searching for an opening, any weakness that he could exploit.
“I’m going to bend the bars” he said finally. There was no other way to free them.
With memories still vivid of his unrelenting and unsuccessful lashing out at the bars before, Tasia knew what a tall order it was. He must have sensed her skepticism, for he reassured her.
“All we need is a gap wide enough for you to slip through” he reminded her, his confident manner restored. “You’re tiny. There.” He pointed to where her shoe had sailed through the bars towards the mounted camera. One of the bars was set a little wider from its neighbor than the others, Tasia noted.
There commenced a delicate and infinitely difficult operation as the two attempted to turn themselves around in the cage to face the bar the Alpha intended to target. An excruciating and embarrassing ten minutes later, Tasia half sat and half lay on the floor to one side of the target bar, while the Alpha lay on his belly facing it.
He reached out to test the bar. It seemed to buckle in his grip, until he withdrew with a hiss. She frowned as he took a deep breath to reach for the bar again. But this time, Tasia snagged his palm before he could touch the cage. Something, a memory of him hissing with pain as his arm pounded the cage repeatedly, made her stop him. He turned his head to watch her, silent as she brought his palm closer to inspect it.
She could still see the silhouette of a thick welt across his palm where he’d grasped the bar. Under her gaze, the welt grew fainter until it winked out altogether to leave his palm unmarked as before. A Shifter’s superhuman capacity to heal, she realized. But he could still feel the excruciating pain every time he touched the bar.
She glanced into the watchful gold eyes.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“Silver.”
“The bars are made of silver?” she repeated incredulously.
“The entire cage is reinforced with silver, enough metal to burn a Shifter’s skin.” His voice was even.
Silver … But silver is a Shifter’s kryptonite.
Suddenly, the truth hit her in a blinding burst of realization.
“This cage was built to hold a Shifter” she whispered. Much like the one she’d freed Hawk from on a dark night months ago; a night that had changed her life, encouraging her on a path to another cage designed to hold a Shifter.
“Yes, and I’d better get us out before whoever put us in here comes back.”
He reached for the bar again, but Tasia refused to let go of his palm.
“I’m immune to silver” she said.
His eyes flashed to her. “You don’t have the strength to bend the bars.”
“There are other ways” she said confidently.
He shook his head, his response unequivocal. “No.”
Tasia didn’t protest, but when he tried to free his palm from her clasp, she resisted.
“Witchling” he warned. “The clock’s ticking.”
“Let me protect you” she beseeched him.
“No.” He shook his head again. “No magic.”
“I only sense a few Wizards here. No other Chosen anywhere near us.”
“Wizards?” he repeated, clearly surprised.
“Yes.”
“No, it’s too risky.”
“If whoever put us in here comes back, while you’re injured …” She trailed off. “I can’t use my magic then. Let me do this. No one will know, Alpha” she insisted, not giving up.
Her words made him rethink. The gold eyes searched her face. Then, he nodded.
Tasia cradled the large palm in one hand while the fingers of the other skimmed over it as she called forth her magic, mind chanting to coat his hand with a thin film of powerful and impenetrable magic. When it was done, she placed it on the floor between them before glancing at him again.
“The other hand.” She held out her hand to him.
He adjusted his position with some effort to extend his other hand to her.
“It’s like a film of localized magic armor.” She used a term he would understand. “It’ll protect your hand from the silver. Everything actually, since your hand’s encased in a layer of magic. But you won’t be able to grip the bar.”
“I don’t need to grip the bar.”
Tasia watched as he placed his hands, palms facing out, carefully through the gap between the slightly bent bar and its neighbor, to rest against the bars. Elbows braced on the floor, the powerful shoulders flexed as he used his Wyr strength to bend the bars, inch by slow inch. Soon, he had a good-sized gap, enough for Tasia to crawl through. Whoever had built the cage had been confident that no Shifter would ever tackle the silver frame long enough to break out, so the bars themselves were no match for the Alpha. Tasia squeezed herself through the buckled bars, with some difficulty. Once through, she collapsed on the floor outside, winded by the effort. She waited, peering into the cage, expecting him to exert his strength on the bars again, to widen the gap enough to get through.
“Look for the door to the cage” he directed. “And let me out.”
Tasia felt her way around the bars in the poor light, searching for a door. The cage came to her chest when she stood up. As she caught a glimpse of the man in the cage, his body contorted to fit in the tiny space without touching the silver in the frame, a spurt of fury began to weave itself within Tasia. Since she’d awakened to find herself in the cage, she had run the gamut of emotions — fear and alarm at her situation and later, terror and panic at the Alpha’s condition. For the first time, she felt rage. An anger that burned brightly, simmering through her like a living entity. How dare anyone cage two sentient beings like animals, she thought fiercely. Who had dared to do this to him, the formidable Alpha Protector of the Northern California Pack, he of the fearsome reputation? Even through the rage, Tasia understood that she was mere collateral damage. This cage had been built to hold a Shifter, and if she’d not been imprisoned with him, thrown in as an afterthought, he’d have a harder time breaking out. The silver would debilitate him, making an escape unlikely. Just like the night when she’d found an injured Hawk in a cage the mercenaries had imprisoned him in. In a strange twist of fate, that one decision to free Hawk had set into motion a chain of events that had led to this predicament with the Alpha tonight.
“I can’t find it” she announced, a note of rising panic in her voice.
The gold eyes remained steady. “Have you checked the roof?” he asked calmly.
“Yes.”
“Then, it’s under me.”
“How do we get to it?”
“Stand clear” he directed. “I’m going to roll the cage. When the floor faces you, look for the door and let me out.”
“The silver will burn you” she cried. She had finally understood what he was planning to do. The floor was the only surface without silver. The bars would all burn him.
“I’ll be fine. It will only take you a minute or two to let me out.”
“What if it’s locked?”
“Then, you …”
“No.” She said fiercely, forestalling him. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
The gold eyes searched her face.
“I’ve developed some resistance to silver” he assured her softly. “Don’t worry, I can handle a few seconds of it. And, if the door is locked, I’ll break it down.”
He shifted his position to brace against the cage floor, before directing another glance at her. “Ready?”
Tasia moved back, away from the cage, unconvinced by his assurances, but she knew they had few good options.
He rocked the cage with a mighty heave. It rocketed away from her to come to rest on its bars while its solid floor swung to face her. Tasia scrambled to it, to peer at it urgently, aware of the soft rasps of pain from the man whose skin burned as the silver scorched him.
“I see it” she announced triumphantly. “But it’s locked.”
“Show me where the door is” he said through gritted teeth. “Pound on it.”
Tasia pounded hard on the door, by the lock.
“Step away” he directed, his face contorted with pain.
Tasia moved away hurriedly. “Use your hands” she reminded him. “They’re still protected.”
Raoul placed his palms on the bars to brace one leg against it, using his right foot to swing at the solid cage floor. Three good swings and the lock broke with a soft clang. The door swung drunkenly open.
Tasia leapt forward to hold the door as he swung himself through it. For a moment, he rested on his knees, catching his breath. She could see the dark welts on his chest from the silver as the torn edges of his shirt flapped around his bare torso.
“Grab your shoe.” He gestured to where the camera lay toppled. “You’ll need it.”
“Be careful” he called softly, as Tasia limped away on one pump towards the vague silhouette of the camera on the ground.
A few moments of frantic searching helped her find the shoe. As she reached for it, something crumpled by it caught her attention. It was her purse, she realized joyfully. A small black evening purse, it held her ID, a credit card, the key to her room at the Lair, and her cellphone. The purse had been dumped here like so much garbage, after throwing her into the cage with him.