by Zahra Stone
“What’s going to happen to me?” I whispered, blinking to keep the moisture that was welling up in my eyes from overflowing.
“You’ll be taken to SIA HQ in Redmeadows, where you’ll be held until sentencing.”
My heart stopped. I was sure of it. My breathing stopped, too, at least until my lungs were screaming for oxygen, and only then did I suck in a breath. This couldn’t be happening. Panic swept through me. How had I gotten this so wrong? I’d been so sure, so full of pride and confidence at my actions. There had to be another way; I had to be able to get out of this. I just had to think—which was near impossible with my shoulders about to pop out of my sockets at any moment.
I couldn’t let him arrest me. I was panicked and grasping at straws when it hit me. A deal! I’d offer him a deal.
“How about this…” I cleared my throat, pushed down the quiver, and straightened my spine. “We fight for it. Winner takes all.”
“Fight?” he queried.
“Yes. You and me. Hand-to-hand combat.”
“Winner takes all?” That had gotten his interest; his head tilted to one side as if he were actually considering it. I nodded enthusiastically, my plan solidifying in my mind.
“Yes. If you win, you arrest me, lock me away.” I shuddered at the thought.
“And if you win?” He walked around the pole, disappearing from view.
“If I win…you let me go. With no record of this.”
“I think you’re very clever and are trying to trick me,” he drawled right by my ear, making me jump. “Winner takes all means a fight to the death. If you win, that means I’m dead. And vice versa.”
Damn it. He had me. But I was sure I could take him if I weren’t chained to this damn pole.
“However, I accept your terms. Winner takes all, it is.” The chains dropped, and I fell to the floor on my hands and knees. He’d been behind me, but when I glanced over my shoulder, he wasn’t there. Calling forth my power, I balanced a fireball in one hand to illuminate the warehouse. Damn it, where was he?
I spotted him across the warehouse, cracking his knuckles and rolling his head around his shoulders in preparation. His eyes flashed, and I threw my first fireball. He moved so fast I couldn’t track him, and the fireball hit the wall, entirely missing its target. Okay. Regrouping, I forced myself to focus. No more fireballs. I’d burn the warehouse down at this rate. Lasso it was. Conjuring my lasso in one hand and a dagger in the other, I bent my knees and swiveled, searching for him once more.
A whisper of air to my left had me swinging blindly, but I failed to connect. He stopped a few feet away and grinned at me, his fingers beckoning. I charged, lasso swinging, dagger gripped tight, ready to slash at him. This time he didn’t move away, and I let out a roar. My lasso was almost to him when he grabbed hold of it and ripped it out of my grip. As soon as my connection with it was lost, it fizzled into nothing. Damn it, how had he done that? I could easily conjure another one, but if he could deal with it so quickly, I needed to rethink my approach. Instead, I summoned a sword and swung. He raised an arm to block, and I swiped low with my dagger, dragging it across his thigh. In return, he delivered a hard and painful kick to my stomach. I flew through the air, landed with a crash, and slid along the floor until I hit the far wall of the warehouse. Ouch.
Scrambling to my feet, breathing slowly, and trying to ignore the pain in my stomach, I approached again. He met me head-on. Each attempt to slice him with my dagger or sword resulted in a punch to the head, shoulder, stomach, wherever he could reach. I was reeling, seeing stars, for his blows rained on me, heavily and rapidly. I spat out blood from his latest blow, dragged myself onto my hands and knees. I was outclassed in hand-to-hand combat with him, but pride would not let me admit defeat. And the prospect of being arrested, the shame I’d bring to my family, was too much to bear. I had to win this or die trying.
I sprang to my feet and charged. There was another blur of motion, and then he was on me. I blocked blow after blow and tried to get in some of my own—hitting the mark occasionally but never finding his heart.
I was dripping sweat, spitting blood, and shaking uncontrollably. I was pretty sure I was dying but determined to give it one last shot, I lunged, sword aimed at his chest. He deflected and punched me again, a devastating blow that threw me high into the air and had me crashing to the floor with a loud crack. Pretty sure he’d just broken my spine. I was a ball of pain, blood was pooling in my throat, making it hard to breathe, and I turned my head to spit it out, but it merely trickled from my lips. I watched him approach dully, my eyes swollen and everything tinted red. I was dying. This wasn’t how I thought I’d go out.
He stood over me, a booted foot on each side of my hips, looking at me dispassionately. Just do it! I screamed in my head because I couldn’t speak, couldn’t nod, couldn’t move. End it. End me. End this.
Then I passed out.
I awoke with a start, shooting upwards so fast my head spun. One thing was blatantly obvious—I was no longer in the warehouse. In fact, I was in bed. A big, luxurious bed. One I’d never seen before, and I was stark naked. Snatching the sheet to my chest, I looked around, my heart hammering in my chest. Where was I, and what the hell was going on?
“You’re awake.” Rotating my head, I saw the vampire I’d just been given an absolute hiding by, heading my way, naked except for a towel slung around his hips. His hair was wet, and the door he’d just come through stood open behind him, steam wafting out, indicating a bathroom.
I slid off the far side of the bed, dragging the sheet with me, putting as much distance between us as I could.
“What? Now you’re afraid?” he said, stopping to study me. I couldn’t drag my eyes from him, again taken aback by the physical perfection, the taut abs, the expanse of flesh that made me want to run my fingers over it. A tribal tattoo curved over one shoulder and around the bicep of his arm. His skin wasn’t the pasty white of other vampires; he had a tanned, olive complexion with a smattering of hair leading from his belly button to below the towel. I quickly dragged my eyes back up to his, which were now dark.
“You’re going to want to stop looking at me like that,” he warned. “You might not like the consequences.”
“Consequences?” I squeaked; my brain flooded with my unexpected arousal. I hadn’t stopped to examine the fact that I wasn’t in pain, that my spine wasn’t broken, that I was still alive.
“You want me to fuck you?” It was crude, but my stomach quivered at the thought. I couldn’t seriously believe I was contemplating it. Sleep with a vampire? Never. Over my dead body. Which brought us back to me not being dead.
“Why aren’t I dead?” I turned my back, focused on tucking the sheet more firmly around myself, anything to keep my mind—and eyes—off of him.
“I healed you.” His response was bland. Offhand. As if he couldn’t care less that I was standing mere feet away, naked, a confused bundle of emotions and hormones.
“How?” Why did I bother asking? I already knew what the answer was. My fingers crept up to my neck and pressed. I blew out a breath of relief when I found a pulse. He hadn’t turned me.
“You know about our blood?” He’d been watching me, saw me check my pulse. I shrugged. I’d learned a few things from the vampires I’d interrogated. One of them was that their blood could heal humans. That was how they kept blood slaves alive. It couldn’t, however, resurrect a human if a vampire accidentally killed one, but it could bring you back from the brink of death.
“You didn’t intend to kill me at all, did you?” If he had wanted me dead, he wouldn’t have toyed with me like he did, dragging our fight out, hurting me. Oh no, if it was death he wanted, he would have been sure, fast, effective, of that I was positive.
His shrug told me all I needed to know.
“Why?”
“I wanted to see what you could do.” I watched as he crossed to where a suitcase sat open. He rummaged inside and tossed some black fabric at me without turni
ng. Automatically I caught it, one hand clutching the slipping sheet to my neck.
“Put that on.” Paying zero attention to me, he dropped his towel, and I squeezed my eyes shut to block out the view of his tight, naked ass.
“You have about three seconds before I turn around,” he warned. “You may want to put that shirt on before that happens.”
Right. I quickly pulled the T-shirt over my head. It was way too big, of course, but it covered more than some of my dresses did. Once clothed, I shimmied the sheet out from under the shirt and tossed it on the bed.
In the time it had taken me to pull on one single T-shirt, he was fully dressed in jeans, a shirt, and leather jacket, all black. On his belt was clipped a red shield. SIA.
“Aren’t you hot?” I asked, indicating the jacket. Although the hotel room we were in was air-conditioned, it was far from cold enough to need a coat.
“Vampires don’t feel the heat. Or cold.”
“Oh.” Smoothing my palms down the hem of the borrowed shirt that reached just above my knees, I asked the question I didn’t want to ask but had to know the answer, regardless.
“What now?”
He cocked his head, studying me. I couldn’t read his expression at all, and I swallowed the uncomfortable lump in my throat. Was he going to arrest me? Lock me away in the SIA cells in Redmeadows with my Uncle Frank? According to him, I deserved it, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret my actions. Vampires were evil. Point me at a vampire, and I’ll try to kill it, for, at one time or another, they’d done something to deserve it. I didn’t buy for one second that those that I had killed were innocent.
“You mean our little wager?” He smirked, his eyes running from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and back again. “It means I own you now.”
“What?” And just like that, my temper went from zero to one hundred in a split second. “Listen here, asshole, no one owns me. No one. I’d rather rot in jail than be your property.” Later I’d probably regret my rash words, but in the heat of the moment, they fell out of my mouth unheeded.
“You’re reneging on our agreement?” His voice was cold, his eyes hard. I swallowed. “It was you, was it not, who challenged me? Hand-to-hand combat, winner take all?”
“It was,” I admitted, my anger fleeing as quickly as it had arrived.
“Would you prefer I let you die?” he persisted. I hesitated. Did I wish I were dead rather than be indebted to him? It seemed he took my silence as a yes, for before I could blink, his fingers wrapped around my throat, and I was propelled back against the wall with my feet dangling in the air once more.
“I can remedy that, Spitfire,” he said, uncaring that I couldn’t breathe, that I dangled helplessly in his grip. How could he be so cold? Oh right. He was a vampire. Clearly, my brain wasn’t functioning at its normal level after all the lack of oxygen it had experienced since meeting him. “But you have too much spirit to want to die.” He lowered me to the floor and loosened his hold slightly, enough to let a thin stream of oxygen into my lungs. I clutched at his wrist with both hands but couldn’t break his grip entirely.
“I won—winner takes all. Agreed?”
I nodded. He had me fair and square. I’d challenged him and lost, and as much as it pained me to admit it, he was right. Now I was wishing that I hadn’t been so rash with my words, that I’d put some stipulations around the definition of winner takes all, for the images dancing through my head had me trembling. Would he turn me into his blood slave, drink from me until I was on the verge of death, only to heal me and do the whole thing over and over again? Or maybe it was sex he was after. Or both. I shuddered at the thought.
He laughed, and I stiffened at the unexpected sound. “You are as transparent as a sheet of glass, Spitfire.” He rubbed his thumb along my jaw, and I ignored the shiver that followed. I would not enjoy a caress from a vampire, I told myself.
“What do you want?” I ground out, trying to jerk my head back.
“Not what you think.” He released me, and I almost sagged to the floor in relief. “I never force myself on a woman, ever. You want me, then all you have to do is ask. It would be my pleasure.”
Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I dragged my eyes from him to the window, seeing nothing as the heavy curtains blocked the light. I didn’t even know if it was day or night, how long I’d been here, or just exactly what had gone on before I woke.
“I won’t be asking.” I bristled and then froze when he lowered his head, his lips hovering mere millimeters from mine.
“Oh, you will. You can bet on it,” he whispered. Then he was gone, nothing but a blur, until he stopped on the other side of the room.
“I won’t kill you or arrest you, provided you help me,” he said.
“Help you? How?” I was curious. How could I possibly help a vampire?
“All in good time. If you want to leave this room a free woman, I need your agreement. If not”—he touched his fingers to the badge on his belt—“then I’m more than happy to arrange accommodations at the SIA for you.”
He had me. Help him or go to jail.
“Fine. I’ll help,” I grumbled. I was between a rock and a hard place, and he knew it, the bastard.
“Good.” He strode toward me, steps purposeful, and it was all I could do to hold my ground and not step backward, away from his commanding presence. He held out a hand. I looked at it and slowly placed my palm against his—a handshake to seal the deal. I had a sinking feeling I was going to regret this.
“What’s the plan?” I asked, pulling my hand from his and absently wiping my palm against my outer thigh.
“You need to trust me,” he said, his eyes not missing a thing.
“It’s not that easy!” I cried, throwing both hands in the air. “You can’t just shake on a deal and say trust me and expect me to trust you!”
“Fair enough, Spitfire.” He inclined his head. “We both have to learn to trust each other. I have to trust that you will not plunge a flaming sword through my heart at the first opportunity that presents itself, and you will have to trust that I will not go back on my word.”
Hugging my arms around myself, I began pacing. I was in over my head but confident I could find my way out of this. A loophole. Something. I would not be indebted to a vampire, not if I could help it. And whatever it was he wanted my help with, he was very cagey about it. Was it illegal? Something that would get him in trouble with his precious SIA? Wait! Hadn’t he said he was the director of the SIA? What was the director doing here in Maxxan? Shouldn’t this be something for one of his agents?
“It’s exhausting watching you think, Spitfire,” he grumbled. Stalking to the bed, he shook a pillow loose from its case and disappeared into the bathroom, returning moments later and holding the pillowcase out to me.
“What’s this?” I eyed it suspiciously, for it was now bulging.
“Your clothes. I’m not sure if they are salvageable.” I took the pillowcase from him and peeked inside to see my leather pants, top, and shoes. All reeked of blood. Mine. I mourned the loss of the clothes and shoes. They had been expensive, and I’d have to save up to replace them.
“I doubt it.” Flashes of the beating I’d taken at his hand played through my mind, the pain, the utter feeling of helplessness at the end when I was dying. I vowed he would never make me feel that way again.
As I held the pillowcase, the blood started to leak through, red stains appearing on the white fabric. I wrinkled my nose in distaste, then, hearing his sudden intake of breath, I focused my attention on him. He could smell my blood, and judging by the darkening of his eyes and descending fangs, he liked what he smelled.
“I am not your food.” Stalking to the wastebasket, I dropped the bundle inside.
“You are whatever I need you to be. Remember?” His drawl was infuriating, but when he grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward him, I was taken aback by the coldness in his eyes. “I won. We have a deal. I have already told you I will not force myself upo
n you—in any way—but heed my words, Spitfire—you will do as I say.”
“Or what?” I challenged.
“Or face the consequences.”
“Which are?” Oh my God, why couldn’t I shut up? His eyes flashed, showing his anger, and I knew I was pushing him, but I couldn’t stop myself.
“Let’s hope you don’t find out,” was his response before he dropped my wrist and strode to the door, flinging it open. It was dark out.
“How long have I been here?”
“A day.” He gestured for me to follow, and barefoot, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, I did.
“People will be looking for me.” I followed him to my car. He’d obviously used it to transport us both back to the hotel last night. If anyone recognized it, they could only assume I’d spent the night with a man at a seedy hotel. Great. Not that I had a pure virgin reputation in Maxxan, but no need to add fuel to the fire.
“No one is looking for you,” he assured me. “I have your phone.” He held it up—I hadn’t even seen him remove it from his jacket.
“What the hell? Give that back.” I tried to snatch it from him, but he held it out of reach, grinning at my attempts to jump up and retrieve it.
“Asshole,” I said under my breath, knowing he’d hear me.
“Drive,” was his only response, tossing me the keys.
“You trust me to drive?” I asked, surprised.
“Better to keep you occupied and behind the wheel than a passenger planning on running me through with one of your flaming weapons,” he replied drolly. It was infuriating that he had me pegged, damn it.
I slid behind the wheel and slammed the door, jumping when he appeared in the passenger seat next to me. Man, he was fast.
“Where to?” I asked, starting the car and automatically putting it into reverse.
“Your place.”
