by Larissa Ione
“It’s mainly to watch movies,” he explained, as he moved toward the rear of the room. “I don’t get cable here, so I’ve got a helluva DVD collection.”
Yeah, she had noticed that. One entire wall had been carved into shelves that held more DVDs than a video store. And for God’s sake, could he get dressed? The way the muscles in his back rippled, the globes of his ass flexed as he walked … she couldn’t help but stare, and he definitely didn’t need that kind of ego boost.
He disappeared through a doorway, and she followed him. Tiny pinpoint lights had been set into the walls of the short hallway, which opened up into a kitchen of sorts. Again, natural cave features had been used, brilliantly, to define the room. The table, which could seat eight on two long benches, had been carved from stone. So had the counters and double sink. Stainless steel appliances, while compact, were state-of-the-art, and had been set into the walls for minimal profile.
“This is so cool.” She’d been impressed by his New York apartment, with its modern, masculine decor, but this … wow. “Why would you live in the city when you could come home to this every day?”
“How do you know I don’t live here?” He gestured for her to enter a narrow opening that jagged to the right, concealing whatever lay beyond the kitchen.
“There’s not enough here to keep you busy,” she said, and stepped into … oh, God. She clapped a hand over her mouth to contain a startled yelp.
He snorted. “If I come here, I plan to be busy.” She came to a halt, her feet turning to lead. His hands came down on her shoulders, and his mouth dipped to her ear. Her heart skittered in an erratic rhythm. “As you can see.”
Oh, she saw.
They were in some kind of bedroom. Though she could use that term loosely. “This—this is a torture chamber.”
Shade brushed by her, the heat of him practically burning through her clothing. “I prefer to call it a pleasure chamber.” He swung around to her and she expected a smile, but strangely, he looked … sad. “This is where you’ll stay tonight.”
“What?” She backed away from him, bumped into the cave wall behind her. Something rattled. Chains. Holy crap. “You took me from that dungeon only to bring me to another one?”
She scooted away from him, sliding her back along the cold wall, but he tracked her with the predatory intent of the jaguars she’d been afraid of on the walk through the jungle. Fool. Shade was far more dangerous than any jungle cat.
He caught up to her, halting so close she had to crane her neck to look up at him. His voice was a deep, erotic growl as he murmured, “It’s a play room, Runa.”
“One man’s play room is another man’s torture chamber,” she said hoarsely.
“Look around.”
Swallowing her terror, she dragged her gaze away from his dark one.
A massive bed took up the entire back of the room and, like everything else, it had been built into a recess so that it sat in its own little cave. Pulleys, chains, and leather cuffs hung from the ceiling above the bed.
Elsewhere, sturdy wooden structures had been placed randomly, though she had no doubt there was nothing random about the way they were meant to be used.
“Stocks,” he explained. “Spanking benches.” His hand drifted over the lid of a chest in one corner. “Whips, flogs, gags. There’s more, but I doubt you want to see.”
Runa’s mouth went dry. She had no idea how to respond, but she did know that for the first time since meeting Shade and learning he was a demon, she was afraid.
Shade left Runa alone in the bedroom, unable to stomach the scent of her confusion and fear. He hated that room, hated everything in it. Hated that he’d had to bring a woman as gentle and caring as she was into a place where he’d spilled both his semen and the blood of countless females during sex. They’d wanted it, and he’d given it to them because his nature forced him to do it, but he’d hated every minute with those demon females. They always left his cave satisfied, but he would be scrambled on the inside, so rattled that only immersing himself in work would level him out again.
Knowing his brothers would be freaking out, he used the satellite phone to call Wraith’s cell. Wraith answered on the first ring.
“Shade?” Static warped Wraith’s voice so Shade could barely hear, but he didn’t want to step outside for better reception. He’d rather keep tabs on Runa.
“Yeah, man, it’s me.”
“Where are you? Are you okay? E and I have been climbing the fucking walls.”
“I’m good. I’ll head into UG in a few.”
“I’ll come to you. Tell me where you are.”
The concern in Wraith’s voice cut Shade like a scalpel. He and Wraith had always shared a deep connection, almost too deep. Wraith could sometimes read Shade’s thoughts, which would be bad enough even if Shade didn’t have any secrets he was keeping from his younger brother. But he did have secrets, and one of them was this cave. Tortured and caged for years, almost from birth, Wraith had a serious issue with anything resembling bondage or torture. He definitely wouldn’t understand Shade’s extreme sexual needs.
“Bro, I’m okay.” He heard the shower turn on, imagined Runa stripping, pictured water running down her naked body, and his own hardened. “I need some down time, if you catch my meaning.”
“If you aren’t here by midnight,” Wraith growled, “I’m coming after you. If you catch my meaning.”
Shade grinned. When Wraith made a threat about coming after you, he meant that when he caught you, he was going to kick your ass.
“Chill, ’kay? I’ll fill you and Eidolon in on everything when I get there.” He hung up before Wraith could argue and slipped out the hidden side entrance between the living room and kitchen. Immediately, a warm breeze wrapped around him like a lover’s embrace—the only kind he’d ever truly allowed.
The exit took him to a flat, well-concealed stone platform behind the waterfall. He’d never brought any of his sex partners out here, but he wanted Runa to see his favorite spot in the world. Runa, who was naked in his shower. Shade’s skin grew hot, so hot that the fine, cooling mist from the pounding water did nothing to ease the burn.
Sucking in a breath and a curse, he stepped fully into the waterfall. Water crashed over him, washing away the grime from the dungeon, but it couldn’t scour away the darkness in his soul or the pain of losing Skulk.
His little sister had been the one beacon of light in his life, the soft to his hard. She’d been gifted with the Umber ability to see darkness inside anyone, had possessed the power to lessen or even remove it with a touch. That she couldn’t heal Shade, couldn’t come close to removing the darkness inside him had been a constant source of worry for her, but she’d been convinced that both his curse and the regret surrounding it could eventually be banished.
She’d been wrong about Shade, but right about Roag.
“There’s so much evil in him, Paleshadow,” she’d told Shade once, using the nickname he’d never hear again. With his tan skin, he’d stood out among his twenty sisters, all of whom were purebred Umbers, with cement-gray coloring, charcoal hair, and gunmetal eyes. He’d been the firstborn—a product of his father’s rape of his mother when she was barely out of puberty—and ten years older than the oldest sister. Umbers were extremely gentle and maternal, so he’d been treated as well as his sisters. As the eldest, it had been Shade’s responsibility to care for them. To keep them safe.
He’d failed miserably.
His mother had left him in charge while she went hunting, something that often took days. While she was gone, he’d been struck by his first maturation cycle, had left his sisters alone to satisfy his sexual urges, and when he’d returned to the cave, he’d come upon a slaughter. Khilesh devils in search of a meal had targeted the unprotected den, and it had been clear that even after they’d filled their bellies, they’d continued to kill. Skulk had been the only survivor, had escaped death by hiding inside a narrow cave shaft that was her favorite spot during their ga
mes of hide-and-seek.
Shade closed his eyes and turned his face up, hoped the water would pound him until he was numb, but he knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing helped. He’d hunted down the Khileshis, but even their deaths hadn’t helped. His remorse over what had happened was something that ate at him like acid, and it didn’t matter that he’d left his siblings during a period of madness. Hell, he barely remembered leaving the cave. Barely remembered the days of nonstop sex that followed.
And yet, neither Skulk nor his mother had blamed him. It had been their love and comfort that made him want a family of his own, sons he could raise with a mate he loved.
Thanks to his curse, that wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen.
Shaking off the thoughts that were taking him down a well-worn path he didn’t want to walk today, he stepped out of the water and strode into the cave. Runa was in the kitchen, wearing one of his T-shirts and a pair of drawstring boxer shorts she must have cinched to the limit at the waist. The shirt dwarfed her, fell to midthigh but didn’t cover nearly enough.
“I found some soda in the fridge,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Help yourself to whatever you want.” He slipped past her to get to the bedroom, where he changed into leather pants, a tank top, and boots. When he finished, he was surprised to find Runa standing in the doorway.
“I want to know what all this is,” she demanded, her eyes full of that new stubbornness he wanted to hate, but admired no matter how hard he tried not to.
“I’d think it would be obvious.”
“You never … you never used anything like this with me.”
An image of Runa spread-eagled on his St. Andrews Cross and at his mercy licked at him, and his pulse pumped in an erratic rhythm. He might hate the room and everything in it, but only because he had to use it. Wanting to use it was a different thing entirely.
“No, but I wasn’t the gentlest lover, was I?”
“I don’t know.” Her gaze dropped to her bare feet. “I don’t have much basis for comparison. There was just that one guy before you …”
Something caught tight in his chest. He forced himself to inhale and exhale because he really needed to stay upright and a sudden lack of oxygen, combined with what she’d just said, would put him on his lid right now.
“You haven’t been with anyone since me?”
Her brows framed a fierce glare. “I’ve been a little busy, what with being a werewolf and all.”
A fierce, possessive instinct surged through him, swelling him with pride, swelling other parts with arousal. Mine. Only mine.
He ground his molars. Good gods, they’d been mated for all of a day and already he was growing close to her. Wanting her.
It could not happen.
Anger replaced the anxiety, summoned from that dark place inside that was a bottomless well. He grabbed her wrist, dragged her into the room. “Time for a little lockdown,” he growled.
“Shade! What are you doing?” She struggled in his grasp, but the additional strength her lycanthropy had given her didn’t come close to matching his. At least, not while she was in human form.
As gently as he could, he took her down to her hands and knees, held her immobile with one hand on the back of her neck as he reached for the morphestus chain that had been secured deeply in the rock. The links, reinforced with demon magic, had been designed to hold even the strongest beings, and the cuff he snapped around her ankle would adjust to the correct size automatically, so when she shifted, it would expand to accommodate her larger frame.
“Nightfall is coming.”
“Yeah,” she snapped, “in what, a couple of hours?” Her foot struck out, nearly catching him in the thigh.
“Something like that.”
His gaze drifted over her, the way her head was down so her hair formed a curtain around her face, hiding what was no doubt an expression of fury. Her perky ass was raised up, rubbing against his hip with every angry motion. He could take her like that, right here, right now. A flick of his wrist would tear the flimsy boxers away. A twist of his fingers would free his throbbing shaft.
His instincts fired even as his mind screamed at him to resist his urges. Cursing, he released her and leaped away. She let out a furious, base curse of her own and lunged, grabbing for his leg. She missed, but barely. “Don’t do this!”
“You’ve given me no choice!” he thundered, knowing it wasn’t fair to punish her for his lack of self-control, but fair wasn’t something he was concerned about at the moment. “You make me want you, and that can’t fucking happen.”
She recoiled, her mouth falling open. “Well, excuse me for being in your brother’s dungeon and having absolutely nothing to do with any of this.”
Now he felt like an ass. He stared down at her, the way she sat back on her haunches, the huge T-shirt hiked up enough to reveal the cotton boxers stretched tight over the hills and valley of her sex between her spread thighs. She looked vulnerable and sexy at the same time, but mostly vulnerable. This had to be terrifying for her, mated to a demon without her consent, chained up in a strange place, and on the verge of changing into a werewolf.
Oh, hell. He squeezed his eyes shut, willed himself to come down a little. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do. But I’ve got to head to the hospital. I’ll bring you back some steaks or something. Before morning.”
He knew, thanks to Luc, their werewolf paramedic, that if wargs didn’t feed in beast form, didn’t feel the tear of flesh and crunch of bone between powerful jaws, they woke up in their human bodies feeling ravenous, grumpy, and still craving the taste of raw meat. An unsatisfied were-beast would rampage in human form even after changing back at sunrise.
Runa looked away from him. “I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“Like what? A warg? You think I’ve never seen one? Honey, I’m a hundred years old. I’ve seen them, treated them, screwed … ah, yeah, I’ve been around a warg or two.” She said nothing, and since he still felt like he’d just kicked a dog, he sighed. “I’ll toss the food through the door and I won’t look. Okay?”
“Whatever,” she muttered. She tugged on the chain. “This is going to hurt when I shift.”
“The cuff will expand.”
“Of course. One size fits all is probably a necessity for you, isn’t it?”
Feeling her angry gaze on his back, he stalked to the kitchen, grabbed a pack of gum from the cupboard, and wondered what he was going to do now. Wondered how he was going to tell his brothers that he was bonded, that Skulk was dead, and that their deceased brother was not only alive, but behind the organ-harvesting ring that had recently been plaguing their people. E would probably go all stiff and silent. Wraith would hit the ceiling. They’d react differently, but he had no doubt they’d agree on one thing.
In order for Shade to live, Runa would have to die.
Kynan stood in the staff break room, listening to Wraith and Reaver, a fallen angel and damned good healer, poke fun at the slasher movie playing on the large-screen TV. It wasn’t Kynan’s first choice of brain-drain programming, but he wasn’t going to complain, since this was the first time in days that Wraith had done more than pace and snarl. He was just happy Shade had called and was okay.
He glanced up from grabbing a sandwich from the fridge in time to see one onscreen couple go at it, which pretty much guaranteed they were going to get slaughtered at any moment.
Wraith shot Reaver a grin. “Bet that’s one of the bennies of falling, huh? Pleasures of the flesh?”
The ex-angel shrugged. “It doesn’t suck.”
Wraith cocked an eyebrow at the action on the screen. “She does.”
Reaver’s mouth turned up in the smile that made every female in the hospital think thoughts the poor ex-angel couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “That’s the best.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Wraith said.
Kynan nearly choked on his peanut butter and jelly. “You’re almost a hundred yea
rs old and you get laid a dozen times a day. The math doesn’t add up.”
Wraith rolled his eyes. “A, a twelve-pack is a slow day. And B, most of the females I hang with have teeth like razors. If you think their mouths are getting anywhere near my di—”
“Code silver, ER.” The female voice crackled over the intercom.
“Cool.” Wraith grinned, and Kynan shook his head. Only Wraith would get excited about some sort of creature going apeshit and wreaking havoc in the hospital.
The Haven spell discouraged violence by causing extreme pain if anyone tried to hurt another intentionally, but an angry, hurt demon on the rampage could tear the hospital apart and cause a shitload of collateral damage.
Kynan shot out of the break room with Wraith and Reaver on his heels. They rounded the corner to the ER and, as a group, skidded to a halt. A massive, black-furred werewolf stood in the center of the room, holding his head and howling. A male nurse stood nearby, hand pressed against a bleeding wound near his occipital horn.
“The warg tried to attack me,” he said.
The were, still cradling his head and making so much noise that Kynan’s own head was starting to hurt, was definitely paying for his mistake. “What’s taking so long with the trank?” he shouted at Ciska, the triage nurse, who was fumbling with the emergency med box at her desk, kept stocked with tranquilizers for exactly this type of situation.
Reaver ran a hand through his mane of golden hair. “That’s a big-ass wolf.”
“Bigger than Luc,” Wraith muttered, which was saying something, because Luc was a tank on legs.
The warg finally brought his claw-tipped paws away from his head. Saliva dripped from his jaws and rage burned in his eyes. Kynan had battled dozens of unusually large werewolves in his Aegis career, but this one would have been considered a trophy kill.
Not anymore, thanks to Tayla. At least, not in the New York City Aegis cell.
Ciska slammed the drug box closed, the noise drawing the beast’s attention. It leaped, knocking over equipment and chairs.
“Shit!” Wraith dived for the werewolf’s leg, catching it near the shin. “Shoot him!”