Rogue Huntress: a new adult urban fantasy novel (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 1)

by Thea Atkinson

  I nodded, mute. Somehow I found the wherewithal to push onto my bottom. The pain in my shoulder was biting into my tissues and making me dizzy. Colloidal silver and salt shot my ass. It hurt like hell. Caleb's rakish blond features swam in front of me.

  "Just to be clear," he said. "You will submit to me this day, within this very hour. And if you don't, your brothers will be dead."

  I tried to get to my feet, but he put his boot on the back of my shoulders and pressed down hard enough that I lay splayed again on the tiles. I murmured my agreement into the floor. Not all was lost, after all. Jeb still had them in his thrall. I could use that.

  "Good," he said. "The council meets as it usually does, at full moon. Harold, you and the boys will wait here with Jeb. See that he is made comfortable until I phone you otherwise."

  "No," Jeb said. "I want to be taken to her. No one will kill her while I wait here like a Jehovah's witness with my foot in the door."

  Caleb sighed. "Fine." He waved at his henchmen and turned his attention to me as they herded Jeb from the foyer.

  From my spot on the floor, I could see his boot tip push itself into my line of vision. I heard his knee caps crack as he crouched down in front of me.

  "I left your room exactly as it was. The camera is all ready. The bed is all ready. All that remains is to see if you are."

  I craned my neck to look up at him. "I am," I said. I held his gaze with all the frankness I was capable of knowing that he would be dead within that same hour. It wasn't a lie, after all. I was ready.

  "Let me up," I said through gritted teeth. "Take your boot off me and let's get this show on the road."

  He grunted in satisfaction and withdrew his foot. He watched me as I pushed myself to my feet. I winced several times as the silver shot bit into my flesh. It hit more than one small pellet, it seemed. Sprayed out into the muscle rather than concentrated. I could have beaten Jeb to a pulp as I got to my feet and felt every wince of it move through my tissues.

  I swayed on my feet as I stared at Caleb. There was no way I was going back up into that panic room. Pain or no pain, wolf or not, I would take out these men if I could, and tear the throat from the man who stood before me.

  "I'm little woozy," I said, swaying in front of him. It wasn't an act. Sheer effort of remaining on my feet with the silver twisting away in my tissues made me dizzy.

  "So maybe you need a little help up the stairs," Caleb said, stepping toward me.

  I backed away. Shook my head. "No," I said, panic blooming. "I'll go on my own steam."

  He nodded curtly at one of the men standing by. Probably too young to go out to collect me, but not too young to point a gun at his lead assassin. I smirked.

  "You planning to use that, little boy?" I said. "You better make sure it goes into my heart."

  I didn't wait for him to answer. I sucked in all the energy I could and launched myself at him. I had scooped his feet from beneath him and was digging into his belly with my human teeth when both my arms got yanked behind me. Someone twisted my hand up into the spot between my shoulder blades and I heard a telltale snap as the ligaments in the shoulder released the strain too fast. I screamed the curse with a back bent head, howling at the ceiling in agony.

  "I'll kill you all," I shouted. "I'll get this silver out of me, and you're all dead."

  Caleb's voice in my ear, hissing at me to keep quiet. So he'd been the one to pull me off the stupid shifter.

  "You can die," he said. "Or you can hold your bargain and save their pitiful lives."

  Time dragged its way through space like a dog's ass across a carpet as I considered my odds. How many moments had passed? Five? Ten? And I was already being marshaled up the stairs, stumbling as I went, pushed from behind by the stupid shifter. Caleb strode up them beside me with a sense of purpose and overtook me halfway up the stairs. He looked back toward me. "Jeb called me a hillbilly earlier," he said with a smile. "Do you like your shotgun wedding?"

  "I'm not marrying you," I gritted out.

  He shrugged. "Ever the romantic," he said. And he waited for me to catch up to him before taking before hooking his arm through mine. I paused on the stair, leaning over as though I needed to catch my breath. I'd fling him down it. Wait for my moment--

  "Don't even think it, Shana," he said.

  "Sorry," I said trying to inflect a note of authentic a apology in my voice. "I'm just so winded. It's been a hard night."

  Some badass assassin I was. How had I ever let myself get talked into this ridiculous scenario. Trusting a human man while I went meekly to my doom, tricked into taking silver into my shoulder so I couldn't transform. I'd been a fool.

  "I just need a second," I said, wheezing now.

  Without a word, Caleb's arms slipped beneath my knees and he scooped me into his arms. The stink of his cologne wove a blanket around me. I heard myself swear.

  "Yes," he said with a note of humour in his voice. "That's exactly what were going to do."

  Every time I tried to twist out of his arms, with every step he took, I failed miserably. I truly was losing my strength. All those years of training by my mother, pressing silver against my skin, making me swallow solutions of silver and ionic water, forcing me to gag and retch and pass out repeatedly, they did nothing to aid me now. I had to fuel my strength with thoughts of vengeance as he carried me up the stairs. By the time we reached the panic room and the bars, I was indeed in a state of panic. I couldn't change. And I couldn't stall any longer.

  I finally managed to twist myself free of his arms and when he let go of me, I collapsed onto the floor in a heap. I decided to just lay there.

  Despite my best intentions to remain dead weight on the floor, Caleb and his man picked me up and heaved me into the bedroom. Pulling the door closed behind them. Caleb stepped up close to the bars.

  "No funny stuff this time," he said. "You can scour this room top to bottom and you won't find a weapon anywhere. If you're hungry, you can chew on your own rage."

  I staggered to my feet and leaned into the bars, telling myself that the pain of the silver coating was nothing to the agony that was already slicing through my muscles. "Bring it," I said.

  Seconds later, I collapsed.

  I Want You to Struggle

  I came to awareness with a shriek sounding in my ear. It was a heartbeat before I realized it was my own, another before I understood it was because Caleb was ramming his finger into my wound and digging around in the tissues. Obviously, he didn't believe I'd been shot and wanted to feel it for himself. He must have made contact with the pellet because he withdrew his fingers with a curse.

  "So what are you waiting for?" I ground out. I wanted to get the show on the road. Get it over with and get free and rip his throat out. I reached for that throat as he hovered over me, and heard the jangling noise of chain links. Cuffed. Great.

  With a grunt, he gripped the chain between the handcuffs and dragged me up the mattress to the headboard. A wave of pain crested in my shoulder and rolled mercilessly toward my collarbone. It nearly took my consciousness again as it swept over me, and only with concentrated determination was I able to fight back the blackness that swam behind my eyes.

  I couldn't see what he fiddled with as my arms were stretched beyond my head, but I understood when I heard the metallic clicking of something into place that he had chained me to the headboard by my wrists.

  "Bastard," I said. I tried my best to drag in oxygen to my constricted lungs as my diaphragm was stretched taut.

  "That's it, Shana," he said. "Get good and angry. Let's not let this become something sweet and gentle. It wouldn't suit either of us."

  At that, he let the back of his fingertips whisper across my cheek and trail to my collarbone, where he traced the outline of the wound in my shoulder. I tried not to wince at his touch or the stinging of my flesh as he prodded the vulnerable skin. He watched my face with his shuttered green gaze, his own expression an implacable visage of control. I willed him to take a step,
just one more step to the left. My hands might be pinned, but my legs were left free, and one more step would put that bastard right in reach of a wrenching twist of his neck between my calves. Pain be damned.

  "It didn't hit bone," he said ever so clinically. "Just lodged in the meat. Any other shooter than Jeb, and I'd call it a miracle it didn't go straight through."

  "What's a miracle," I hissed, "is that he's here at all."

  He pursed his lips, thoughtfully. "We go way back, Jeb and I."

  A shiver coursed through me. I imagined the little bugger of silver stuck in the meat of my shoulder and I wanted to faint.

  A rap on the door that made him curse and swing his attention away from me. "I told you no interruptions," he shouted at the door.

  A moment of silence rang from the other side and then a rather tinny male voice, tentative and afraid came back.

  "But you should know –"

  "There's nothing I should know right now that doesn't involve what I'm doing at the moment."

  "You say that, but.."

  Caleb sighed, running a hand through his sandy hair. He leaned over to kiss me on the forehead as though he were indulging a lover.

  "I'll be right back."

  In a moment, he was gone. I could hear shouting through the door. Something had gone awry. Something he hadn't counted on and that made him furious. I didn't dare hope it was Jeb, and it didn't matter anyway. Once Caleb lost himself to his lust, I fully planned to offer him more than just the little death.

  I was just starting to think that he would leave and forget that I was shackled to the headboard when he came back in and stood at the foot of the bed.

  "Pack politics?" I asked sweetly. "They can be a real bitch."

  "An interruption, no more," he said as he peeled away the plaid shirt from his shoulders and dropped it to the floor.

  "Don't they need you?"

  "Priorities, Shana." His fingers went to the button of his jeans and I heard the zipper sound. "We're all ready; it wouldn't make sense to wait."

  When his pants went the way of his shirt and he stepped toward me, clearly intending to climb onto the bed, I couldn't stop the panic that overtook me. My legs went every which way, twisting, kicking, bucking me upwards at the hips. Even if my mind had already decided to let him think I planned to go through with the charade, my body had had other intentions that involved making it as difficult for him to achieve the event as possible, no matter how much pain struggling caused me.

  I felt his steely grip as he caught hold of my ankles in midair. I'd forgotten how strong he was. All the times we sparred as young werewolves, testing each other, testing our skills, it all came flooding back. I'd been the lead assassin for the pack for so long, I'd gained too much confidence in my abilities. The truth was, he was stronger than me. He pressed my legs down onto the mattress as easily as if the muscles in my thighs were nothing but warm butter to his touch.

  "It's going to happen, Shana," he said, pinning my legs with his knees and climbing onto my twisting and writhing form. His skin was hot where it touched mine, and I only then realized I might truly be going into shock as he'd said.

  "It's going to happen, but that doesn't mean I don't want you to struggle."

  Liberation and Permission

  I thought at first he would just take me without care or concern. I hoped for it even, so I could hate him all the more. I bit my lip as he stretched along my form, effectively pinning me. I felt his erection against my thigh but as hard and ready as he was, he merely lay atop me passively.

  When he whispered in my ear, I realized the full extent of his planned assault.

  "I'm going to take my time," he said. "I won't touch you where you don't want it. I won't force anything from you."

  He nuzzled behind my ear, murmuring all the ways I would beg for his touch.

  "You wanted it to be rape, didn't you," he said. "Nasty word. An even nastier act."

  "This isn't rape?" I demanded. "This isn't forcing something from me against my will?" it galled me, the semantics he clung to.

  "You agreed," he said. "It's a bargain between two very intelligent people who understand the value of a deal. Nothing more."

  "You can lie to yourself if you like."

  "What lie?"

  "I would never have--"

  "You would have," he said. "We both know it. We've known it since our teens all those decades ago." His thumb rode the crest of my collarbone so lightly it might have been a moth touching down.

  Even the tiny hairs on my skin, strained for touch. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to focus. The man had killed my father. He had imprisoned my brothers. Rather than bring the revulsion my human half wanted, the beast rose to the thought.

  His cologne enveloped me and I thought of the hundreds of times I'd believed him to be the most perfectly put-together werewolf I'd known. He always took such pains to look perfect, to smell perfect. It had been a lie; all of it. Nothing but a mask of carefully presented demeanour. Just like my mother's affected and totally contrived addictions. He needed to deflect his true self from the astute gazes of those around him. I ran each atrocity thorough my mind to keep the beast at bay: murdered my father, chained my brothers, murdered my step-mother, Galen, house guards, imprisoned me.

  "Shana?"

  I opened my eyes and caught his green-eyed gaze as it hovered just inches above mine.

  "Admit it," he said. "You know your body wants mine. You know it as well as I do."

  "I agreed under duress."

  His mouth twitched and I had the sense he believed duress was too strong a word. I didn't care what he thought. I ran the list again.

  "You're still shivering, Shana. Don't you want the bullet out, the cuffs off? You can transform and heal all that pain."

  "I'm not stopping you," I said. "What's the hold up?"

  "I want you to admit you want me," he said.

  "Then I'll be dead from shock by the time this deed gets done."

  "You're a stubborn wolf, Shana," he said.

  I shifted beneath him, trying to wriggle some space for my legs to move. I thought if I could wrap one of them around his hips he'd make a move finally and we could get this over with while the camera was still off. I'd have done my part and he'd have to hold to his agreement.

  He let me lay a quivering calf behind his knees, pinning him in what should be a passionate knot. My heart beat fast enough that I thought I might faint if I waited much longer.

  "That's it," he murmured, letting the thumb become partnered by several other fingers, all trailing along my collarbone to my throat until they cupped behind my nape as I lay there, barely breathing. "Tell me you want me."

  I closed my eyes at the command, trying to squash down the response my beast felt to the order, the sense of strength and power that emanated from the core of the command. I wouldn't say it. I told myself I would never admit to that baser desire to be overcome, to pant in the face of greater strength. The human woman in me knew better. She wanted to feel equal to this challenge, to be partnered, not overcome. My beast was far more fickle, giving in to nature with abandon. I had to tame that beast. Take the command.

  "Say it, Shana. Let it go."

  I shook my head, eyes closed, concentrating on moving my limbs to match the orders from my brain even though they rebelled. His fingers brushed against the fine hairs of my nape just enough that the muscles around my occipital bone sent a shiver down my spine. I'd always liked that kind of touch. Without wanting it, my body responded, sensing in its tissues the desire for fulfillment.

  "Delicious, isn't it? That sense of pleasure on the verge of panic. You want to submit."

  "Just get on with it," I ground out. I couldn't hold off the beast much longer.

  "I don't think you know what true submission means," he said, but he sent those fingers leisurely down my throat to the middle of my chest even so.

  Instead of cupping my breast, he blew on the nipple until it went erect, and then thumbed the
other nipple into a similar nub of raised flesh. I wasn't sure by then if it was the shock goosefleshing my skin it, but I was shivering all over.

  "I know you don't want to want me, Shana," he said. "But skin doesn't lie."

  "It's cold."

  He chuckled. "It's shock, really, but there's heat beneath the skin. That's the telltale thing that speaks to my beast. Your wolf half wants to be ruled."

  "My wolf half wants you dead just like the human half."

  He pinched my inner thigh. "Now who's lying?"

  "You can't be that narcissistic." I said.

  "OK," he said. "Let's pretend I'm someone you chose." His palm finally cupped my left breast, squeezing it.

  "Let's say he touched you this way. Would your beast like it?"

  I wanted to flog my body for responding. It had no right when my mind was so set against it. I wanted the deed to be clinical, a task to complete like cleaning my weapons after a hard fight, bringing a sense of accomplishment, not this quasi-response that was the remnants of some primitive mechanism that kept our species on the map. I swore at him and he chuckled, running his palm lightly down my ribcage.

  "Stop trying to seduce me," I growled. "I just want it over."

  "Over," he said. "As though we couldn't both enjoy it."

  "Damn right," I said. "It's not about seduction. Stop pretending it is. It's about submission. And I already agreed to submit, so get the hell on with it."

  I knew he could hear the begging in my voice, the same as I did, and I couldn't look him in the eye. I wouldn't touch him. I'd bear it, and that would be all.

  It took a long time for him to answer, and when he did, it was with resignation.

  "OK, Shana." His fingers squeezed the nipple cruelly. "Let's not go with pleasure. Let's try pain."

  I gasped as he rammed his hand between my legs and pulled them apart with such ease, I told myself I'd already begun to succumb to the stress my body was under. He leveraged himself against me, propping himself with his elbows on either side of me as his member prodded against my sex.

  I closed my eyes, partly because I didn't want to to see his face when he plunged inside and partly because the beast inside had begun to pace wildly. She wanted his touch. She demanded it.