Storm's Fury

by Nya Rayne

  He didn’t flinch.

  She pressed the lever again and again, but to no effect.

  Fury yanked the stun gun away from her. Without an ounce of censure, and even less interest, he told her, “There’s a bathroom off the loft.” He rolled the stun gun through his large fingers as he inspected it. “I’ll assume you forgot to charge this. Lucky me.”

  His tone only served to set Stormy’s teeth on edge. She wanted to strike him down and then beat him into the ground, but he was a large man. Not in a Goldberg-the-Wrestler kind of way, but in a tall, strapping, otherworldly, Jaime Durie, steal-my-breath-and-make-me-yours kind of way.

  His looks were lethal.

  His chest was as clean and smooth as a baby’s bottom. Stormy could see that without first touching, which she had to admit she wanted to do. The tattoos she’d spied the night before definitely stopped mid-bicep on both his arms. Each one disappeared up over his rounded, muscular shoulders. The blackness of the ink was unnatural against his sun-kissed skin. It glistened where most tattoos that she’d seen had become dull with age, but this tattoo definitely wasn’t new. The jagged lines that were visible told her that the rest of the tattoo would be tribal in nature.

  “See something you like?”

  Stormy shook her head, her fists clenched at her sides. She wanted to slap that arrogant smirk off his face. “You can’t keep me here against my will.” He stared down at her for a long moment. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her and shove her back in the room. Instead, he shifted to the side and offered her one hand in an old-world gentleman’s gesture of concession.

  “I’m not in the habit of keeping anyone who doesn’t want to be kept.”

  Stormy couldn’t believe he was giving in so easily. Hadn’t he told her the night before that he couldn’t let her leave? Was this some kind of trick? She took a tentative step forward.

  “Last night you said I couldn’t leave.”

  “I said I can’t allow you to leave. I didn’t say you were a prisoner.”

  “Semantics,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits. “You had the door locked.”

  “I did not,” Fury protested as he turned and stalked up the hallway. “Did you try the knob before you started screaming to the heavens? The door locks from the inside, Ambrosia.”

  “Stop calling me that.” Stormy exited the room behind him, her hand lying possessively over her purse, as if at any moment she expected him to snatch it from her.

  She watched him walk. No, glide. No, he prowled, like a wolf or a panther. His muscles bunched and released in a timeless dance of strength and power.

  The tattoo stretched over the whole of his back and dipped down, disappearing just beyond the waist of his jeans. It was definitely the largest tribal tattoo she’d seen, and there was something mysterious about it. The lines, the directions in which they pointed. It was odd the way they sat upon his skin as if he had been born with them there. The tattoo rose and fell with each rise and fall of his muscles. It was almost as if she was watching it in 3D. Or maybe it was watching her. But that was silly, right?

  “What should I call you if not by your name?” The arrogance in his tone and his swagger grated on her nerves.

  “Your executioner works just fine.” The scent of waffles, sausage, and eggs caught her attention and her stomach growled in elation. She hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast the day before.

  At least, she hoped it was the day before. The way things had been going, who knew how long it had actually been?

  “I could pretend to call you a cab, but one wouldn’t come this far out of town. And besides, I don’t have a phone.”

  Stormy could see it all so clearly in her head—a Louisville Slugger clasped tightly in her hands, the wind up, and then the swing straight against the back of his head. She flexed her fingers and smirked, relishing the vision, even if it was something that would never come to fruition.

  Fury regarded her with one eyebrow arched higher than the other, as if he were aware of her thoughts, which he certainly couldn’t be. Right?

  “So,” she said quickly, “no phone, huh? That doesn’t surprise me.”

  He snorted and continued down the hallway.

  Her stomach rumbled as Fury veered away from her and into a large foyer with glass skylights. She slowed her gait, squinted up, and was met with a beautiful blue sky. She peered to her left and smiled at the etched glass of the front door.

  She bolted through it without a second thought.

  Cool air rushed past her as she raced down the porch and into the front yard. Pausing momentarily, she looked around for a walkway or path that would lead her away from the house, but found none. It was like someone had plucked the house up and set it down in the center of a dense forest.

  She spun in a tight circle. If he brought her here, there had to be a way out. She took a step forward, not caring where she ended up, and then spotted it. It had to be an it, because it damn sure wasn’t a dog. Stormy stumbled backward from the monstrosity, its mouth salivating, looking hungry for a chunk of her flesh. She scanned the ground, saw a small broken tree limb, and dived for it as the beast lifted one of its grotesquely large paws and took a threatening step in her direction.

  She jumped back to her feet, lifted the limb high over her head to throw it if the thing charged at her, and inched back from the animal. “Ni…nice doggie,” she cooed, her voice trembling. “You don’t want to eat me. I don’t taste all that great.” Another tentative step back and a quick check of her surroundings and Stormy tried again. “I promise I taste like liver pie or something really, really nasty. I’d probably give you indigestion.”

  The “dog” gnashed its teeth at her and dipped its head as a low growl rumbled up from the back of its throat.

  Stormy flinched, changed her stance, and channeled Sammy Sosa at the height of his career. Tightening her hold on the stick, she watched the monstrosity take another gut-wrenching step closer. She closed her eyes and tried to make a deal with whatever saint was in charge of saving one’s ass. “If I make it out of this with all of my extremities intact, I promise I’ll go to church once a week. Okay, maybe not once a week, but as often as possible.”

  Chapter Five

  The slam of the door behind her was a welcomed sound.

  She was gone.

  This was good.

  It was for the best.

  For a moment Fury pretended he could go back to his life, to his search for Terroar. But that was pretense, and he knew it.

  Letting Stormy go was no more possible than turning back the hands of time. She had bound him to her in a way that went far beyond “till death do us part.” For them it was no mere cliché. She was his lungs, the very beat of his heart. He could not live without her.

  Hand over his chest, he relished the thump-thump of his heart. Now that he’d tasted life, he wasn’t willing to give it up. He was almost to the door when Stormy’s scream seared his soul.

  A second later he was standing behind her, staring down at the snarling, drooling female of his canine pack. “Sodona, you know better than that,” he chided. And via his mental link to her: Good girl. You’ve earned yourself a special hunting trip, tonight.

  Stormy turned to him, her beautiful eyes wide with fear. “It tried to eat me!” She dodged to his right, disappeared behind him, and pushed him at Sodona.

  “I’m sure she did not.” He squatted down in front of Sodona and allowed her to lick the side of his face as he scratched her behind the ear.

  Sodona, like her mate, was an Italian Cane Corso Mastiff. They were dogs bred for the express purpose of being guard dogs. That, along with their unshakeable loyalty, made them more than pets to Fury. They were family. The average Italian Cane Corso wasn’t supposed to live longer than eleven years, but his dogs—having been fed his blood a few decades ago—had been with him for nearly fifty years. They had been, up until he found Stormy, his one responsibility outside of carrying out the edict of Anubis…and mai
ming Terroar.

  “She was protecting what’s mine. Weren’t you, girl?” Had he laid claim to her?

  Stormy’s physical and mental retreat at his words didn’t go unnoticed, and he couldn’t honestly blame her. He had, after all, kidnapped her and then insulted her as no man should ever insult a woman. If he weren’t torn between wanting her there and wanting her gone, it probably would’ve hurt that the woman he was promised seemed to want nothing to do with him.

  As it was, he was too conflicted to settle on any single emotion.

  Fury had been living in her mind all morning, which was something he told himself he was not going to do. It was, with a lover, an intimate act. It allowed him to learn her deepest, darkest secrets—things she would never openly tell him. But with a bonded mate, especially one who was fighting that bond as hard as she was, it felt more intrusive than intimate. He never would have done it if he thought he could understand her any other way.

  Stormy took a small step to the right, and then another, and then turned and bolted for the nearest line of trees. Before she got five paces away Fury called out, “I wouldn’t do that.” He rose, dusted his hands together, and turned to her. “Sodona here has a mate that’s twice her size and three full-grown pups out there. They’re not nearly as nice as she is,” he warned, covering the distance to her.

  He wasn’t lying. They were definitely out there somewhere. Of course, they’d never hurt his mate, but she didn’t need to know that at this exact moment.

  Hands on her hips, Stormy glared at him. “You can’t keep me here.”

  “We’ve already gone over this, Ambrosia.” Fury instinctively reached for her.

  “We haven’t gone over anything. I’m no one’s prisoner. Either you let me go or…” She inched back out of his range of reach. Her heel caught on a small branch and down she went with a squeal.

  He was at her side, the metallic scent of her blood filling his nostrils. “Let me see.” Fury took her hand in his and pulled her to her feet. There was a deep half-moon gash running from her thumb to the middle of her right palm from where she’d cut it on a jagged piece of rock.

  Son of Anubis, what the hell was I thinking—reaching for her like that? She’s already afraid of me, and she’s human for the most part. The lot of them are damn clumsy and prone to infections, he cursed.

  Fury scooped her up and moved with lightning speed, carrying her back to the house.

  Stormy gasped, her stomach twisting in on itself as she stared down at the hardwood floor beneath her feet, not quite sure how it got there. She had just been outside.

  Fury was at the sink, wetting a towel, and then he was back before her chair on his knees, gently cleaning her wound.

  “What the hell just happened? I blinked—that’s it—and now I’m inside.” She shook her head, not willing to believe what she was seeing. It went against nature and everything she knew about the laws of physics.

  She remembered the night before. Glass shattering. A man falling to his death. Fury dropping from the sky, and then lifting the man high above his head with one hand. Stormy gasped and pulled her injured hand to her chest. “Who are you? What did you just do? Wh-What are you?”

  Taking her hand back in his, he tilted his head forward and ran his tongue along the length of the wound before wrapping a white terry cloth towel around it with such tenderness, it almost shocked her right out of her fear.

  Being licked should have been revolting, but instead it ignited tingles all over her body. Stormy looked from her hand to Fury’s face and back, her breath hitching in her throat. Sudden, molten heat boiled within her, desire rich and frothy, making her want to forget the unnatural and inhuman things she’d witnessed.

  “Fury, what are you?”

  His head cocked to one side as a conflicted expression danced across his masculine features. He closed his eyes for a moment before gently squeezing her towel-wrapped injury.

  “Your hand will be fine. It wasn’t as bad as I first believed.”

  “You’re not answering my questions.”

  “You’re not ready for the answers.” His turbulent gray eyes pleaded with her to leave this alone.

  Stormy yanked her hand out of his grasp again and pushed away from him, her chair skidding backward across the hardwood floors before bumping into the edge of the table.

  “Don’t tell me what I’m ready for. I’m not a child. You kidnapped me and brought me here to—to wherever here is. You tell me I’m not a prisoner, but you won’t let me leave. You move like no human ever could, and last night it looked like you fell out the damn sky without getting injured. How do you explain that?”

  Fury reached out a hand to touch her, but pulled it back quickly when she jerked further away. He closed his eyes. “Let it be, Ambrosia.” He sounded like a man whose patience was sorely tested.

  Stormy stood, her arms crossed over her chest. For reasons she didn’t want to entertain, she couldn’t think when he was this close to her. She crossed the room, putting the large table between them.

  “No one calls me by that name, and I know for damn sure that I never told you it.” Her tone was clipped. “So how do you know my name, Fury?”

  He sighed as he got to his feet, his hands disappearing into the pockets of his jeans. “Your questions are accumulating.”

  “Because you’re not answering any of them,” she grumbled. He was making her crazy, when she prided herself on her ability to stay calm under the direst of circumstances. “You’re infuriating.”

  “And you’re a mere dance with the Pharaohs?” Fury stared at her for the longest time, as if trying to see straight through her. His thinned lips and drawn brows told her he was thinking about something—weighing his options. But instead of speaking, he turned his back to her and filled a glass with water from the tap. He set the glass on the table and held out his hand, indicating her chair. “Come, sit, and eat. Your body is in desperate need of nourishment.”

  Stormy backed up until she was pressed so close to the wall that at any moment she was going to merge with it. “Don’t tell me what I need! Just answer my damn questions!” Her wretched, traitorous stomach growled. Was everyone and everything against her today?

  He shot her a telling look and motioned to the chair again in that unhurried, obnoxious way he seemed to favor. “You need to eat. We’ll have lots of time to answer these questions of yours.” He finished the last part low and with a deliberateness that seared the miniscule remnants of her last nerve.

  Her stomach rumbled again, and Stormy edged closer to the table as she mumbled under her breath about stupid evasive men and dogs that needed to be euthanized. She threw herself into the chair farthest from Fury and glared at him.

  “Are you twenty-seven or seventeen?” Fury loaded the plate before her with one of everything and sat down across from her.

  Stormy glared at him, but remained silent. If she answered, then she would be playing into his twenty-seven or seventeen comment, and she was already humiliated that she actually needed the food he offered.

  She took a bite. It’s poison, you dolt. With a shake of her head, she pushed the thought away. Her heart, for reasons unknown, knew better. I’ve slept in his bed for freak’s sake, and he didn’t lay a finger on me. Had he wanted to, he could’ve taken full advantage of me while I was out of it. But if the food isn’t poisoned, why the hell isn’t he eating? The fork she was holding clanged against her plate.

  “Why aren’t you eating?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up enough that his inviting lips looked just as cruel as they were tantalizing. “I’ve already eaten, but I find it heartwarming that you’re so concerned about my well-being.”

  “Whatever. What do you eat?” she asked, half wanting to know and half not wanting to know.

  “Let’s say I’m the opposite of a vegetarian.” One eyebrow rose higher than the other. “What did you think I ate?”

  Stormy leaned away from the table. She remembered watching a movie o
n a flight from Miami to Las Vegas. She couldn’t recall the name of the flick, but it involved a coven of vampires. In the movie, the vampires could vanish and reappear at a whim. They could also glide through the skies and take on the form of bats and wolves. And a few of them had the ability to force humans and animals alike to do their bidding by touching their minds.

  “I was under the impression that maybe you were a…” She stumbled over the word, then decided to hell with it. “…vampire. Are you a vampire? You move like a vampire.”

  “That’s quite a leap.” He leaned forward, his chin coming to rest on his fist. “Exactly how many vampires have you met in your short little lifetime?”

  “Don’t be a jackass. The world is filled with books about them. Are you one of them? Did you bring me here as a treat, because you’re too lazy to go out every night and feed? Are you planning to convert me to one of your kind?” The minute the questions slipped out, she regretted them.

  Not only was such a thing asinine to even consider, but did it mean she believed such fictitious creatures existed? Vampires, gargoyles, faeries and the like were the creations of a twisted, over-active imagination, right?

  But if that’s true, then how can he move the way he does? This—none of this—is making any sense. Stormy heard her grandmother’s voice from far too many years ago. “Stormy-weather, all fairytales have an ounce of truth to them. Even the ones about the monsters beneath our beds. Most people would just rather believe that all of this began with humans and will one day end with only them. But you and I, we know it’s not true, don’t we?”

  “Okay, I’ll play.” Fury glanced over his shoulder at the curtainless window above the kitchen sink. “Don’t the stories say vampires burn in sunlight?” He looked down at his forearm. The fine hairs layering his tanned skin were shimmering as if they had been brushed with pixie dust. “I don’t seem to be bursting into flames.”