Series Firsts Box Set

by Laken Cane

  “What?” I held the sheathed blade up and examined it. “What in the world are you?”

  It was like a shifter. A sword shifter. And that was something I’d never heard of.

  Objects didn’t shift. Swords didn’t shift.

  Yet Silverlight had.

  “What are you?” I asked, again, but the sword—the knife—remained silent and innocuous in its tiny leather bed. The blade was hidden but the hilt remained outside the case, and I caressed it, fascinated. It looked the same, only miniaturized.

  The sheath’s loop would slide over my belt, and I could wear it at my side without raising any eyebrows. I squeezed it gently, then slipped it into the pocket of my robe.

  A knock sounded on the door. A quiet, furtive knock. Miriam had arrived.

  Perfect.

  I sighed and padded to the door, miffed that Clayton had called her. She had no business there. I was not going to let her touch my sword. I was like a little kid who’d never been forced to share.

  I opened the door, and barely had a second to realize it was not Miriam before a slight, hooded stranger shoved himself into the room and plunged his wet fingers inside my robe.

  He fumbled my breast like a teenage virgin getting his first taste of love, smearing something thick and sticky and clingy on my sore flesh.

  Maybe he was shocked at my injury because he paused when his rough fingertips snagged on the torn edges of my wound. He pushed me deeper into the room, his hood falling back, and I got a glimpse of a deathly pale face shaped with starved valleys and sharp edges, and a slash of lips so red they appeared to be bleeding.

  I opened my mouth to yell and when I did, he parted those lips, grabbed the back of my head, and slammed his mouth against mine.

  Seconds. Since I’d opened the door to his attack, mere seconds had passed. He was fast like a vampire, but something about him was different. He wasn’t a vampire.

  I felt the beginnings of something…awful. But before it could take hold, his mouth was ripped from mine, and Clayton was there. As I reeled back, my hand to my tingling mouth, Clayton threw the attacker into a wall so hard my entire apartment shook.

  Despite his bone-crunching encounter with the wall, the attacker didn’t stay down. Clayton lunged, but the stranger rolled, jumped to his feet, and raced to the door with a dizzying speed.

  Clayton started after him, but he made the mistake of turning to see to me first.

  I threw myself at him.

  My entire body shook with a desire so extreme it edged into pain. Even my wound screamed with pleasure. I had to be touched. I had to be. I had to have sex. I would have sex or I’d die.

  I gasped as that pleasure shot through me. My stomach tightened, and I clenched my thighs against the immediate response between my legs.

  My robe was in the way, so I ripped it off. I reached up to touch his face, rubbing my breasts against the fabric of his shirt. “Please,” I whispered. “Clayton.”

  A button from his shirt caught on my gaping wound and I lost my breath, whether from ecstasy or agony I couldn’t tell.

  I wanted him to press his lips against the wound and lick, suck, and kiss it, to take a nipple into his mouth, to swirl his tongue around it, to throw me to the floor and shove himself into me, hard.

  I wanted it more than I’d ever imagined wanting anything in my life.

  Shock flared in his eyes as he stood there before me, his body stiff and unmoving as I grasped his face and pulled him to me.

  “Clayton,” I whispered. “What’s happening?”

  I had no idea why my body was reacting so strongly, but it was beyond my power to stop it. Part of me knew I didn’t want to do what I was doing, but it was as though something else—someone else—had control of my body. My desires.

  He shoved himself away from me so violently he slammed into the coffee table, fell over it, and then jumped to his feet, his stare horrified. “What have you done?”

  My entire body throbbing with lust, I stalked him. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “I don’t know.”

  He held his palms up to ward me off. “Stop.”

  “I can’t,” I said, matter-of-factly, but my voice was thick with horror. “Clayton. I can’t.” And I reached for him.

  He glanced down at my chest, at my glistening, slick skin. “The Foam of Aphrodite,” he murmured. “What have you done?”

  “I didn’t do anything. But I need you to…” I gestured at my naked body as the raw, throbbing power of lust rolled through me. “Do something. Please. Please. I can’t stand it.”

  It didn’t lessen, that desire. It grew.

  It devoured me.

  I launched myself at him as part of me stood back and watched in humiliated horror. He caught me, his arms reflexively closing around my squirming body, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him with a strength I shouldn’t have had.

  I humped him like a misbehaving dog, trying to relieve some of the horrendous pressure throbbing and building and screaming between my thighs. I could not help it.

  I could not.

  I inhaled his scent and caught nothing but man, nothing but heat, and pulled it deep into my lungs. Then I shoved my mouth against the side of his neck and bit him. I needed to devour him. To smell him, taste him, feel him.

  I saw my control like a tiny bright star in the dark of my mind, and I could have reached out to grab it, I could have. But at the last minute, I turned away. I didn’t want the control. I wanted Clayton.

  There was nothing but raw, throbbing need.

  “I can’t,” he murmured, his voice hoarse, strained, and raw. “She won’t allow it, Trinity.”

  That was the first time he’d said my name. I hadn’t felt like he really saw me until he said my name. I pulled my mouth away from his neck. “I don’t care,” I murmured, and slid my lips across his.

  Lust surged and jumped from my mouth to his—I could feel it sparking between us like electricity, like fire.

  He groaned into my mouth. He tightened his fingers on my thighs, pulling me suddenly and violently closer, and I climaxed right then and there, squirming against his abdomen, crying out, lost.

  I was aware, vaguely, when my door crashed against the wall and someone sped into the room. I was aware, but I was too consumed by my need to care.

  But when my unwelcome visitor grabbed me by the back of my neck and tore me from Clayton’s arms, I suddenly cared very, very much.

  I landed on the floor almost hard enough to shake the overwhelming lust from my body, and Clayton and the intruder collided.

  Angus.

  Son of a bitch.

  I stared up at them, a little more lucid, and then scooted back in a hurry when they began to fight. I was warped. I knew I was depraved, because the sounds of grunts and pain and hard fists slamming against flesh, of bones crunching and furniture breaking…it was like music, beautiful and exciting, and the sharp, acrid scent of blood mixing with the unmistakable scent of sex made me want to lie back, open my legs, and beg both men to end my suffering.

  But then I caught a quick movement from my peripheral vision and glanced toward the doorway, and I saw Mrs. Watson peering around the doorframe, her eyes wide and a broom in her white-knuckled grip.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

  And even as she darted a quick look my way and then disappeared—to call the police again, I had no doubt—I knew Clayton was right.

  I was most definitely going to have to move.

  And I was going to need a sturdier door.

  Chapter Eleven

  I regained some control, finally, and scrambled for my robe. I put it on and tied the belt a little too tightly, and in seconds, the cloth was bright with fresh blood. I wasn’t sure, truthfully, that I’d survive the night. I kept losing blood and I didn’t have an endless supply.

  Still, a bleeding wound was preferable to the screaming lust that had consumed me. I wasn’t embarrassed, not yet. That would come later.

  Miriam arrived. She s
wept past me, her face tight with cold anger, and strode to the fighting men.

  “Stop,” she said, her voice ringing with command.

  Clayton stopped immediately. His fists fell to his sides and he stiffened, unable to even defend himself.

  But Angus was not controlled by any magical compulsion to obey Miriam, and he took advantage of Clayton’s vulnerability by delivering a punch to the other man’s chin, followed by a devastating blow to his temple.

  Clayton dropped like a stone and Angus backed up, wiped blood from his own gushing nose, and glared down at Miriam. “I should fucking kill him!”

  Miriam ignored him. All her concentration was on Clayton. She kicked him in the face, hard.

  “Get up,” she told him.

  “He’s unconscious,” I said, aghast. “Angus sucker punched him.” I sank down to the floor beside him and stared up at her. “He may be dying!”

  She curled her lip. “He’s not dying, you silly girl. He can’t die. He just needs me to command him to rise.” She grinned, but it was the scariest grin I’d ever seen. “Clayton,” she sang, causing me to jump. “Get up. Get up!”

  His body twitched.

  Miriam leaned forward. “Get up!” She pulled back her foot, clad in a black, pointed toe stiletto, and began kicking him in the ribs.

  Kicking him. In the ribs.

  I gaped at her. “Stop it, Miriam. Stop!”

  But it was like she didn’t even hear me. She continued kicking him, and I heard his ribs crack.

  I wasn’t putting up with that shit.

  I grabbed her foot mid-kick and twisted, and when she hit the floor I pulled back my fist and punched her in the mouth. Hard.

  “Here,” Angus roared and grabbed me by the back of my robe. He yanked me to my feet, then jerked me back a few steps, away from Miriam. “What are you doing?” Then he focused on my bloody robe. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  Before I could answer, he turned to Miriam, who was wiping blood from her rapidly swelling lip.

  “You said Clay could protect her!” Angus yelled. “He had her naked in his arms and she’s covered with blood. What the fuck, Miriam!”

  “Is that all you can do is yell?” I yelled.

  They both looked at me, then turned back to each other.

  “I was trying to rouse him so he could explain, but Trinity took offense and punched me in the mouth. You saw her.”

  “You were kicking him.” I enunciated each word slowly, carefully. “You made him stand still so Angus could hit him, and you were kicking him.” As though she didn’t know. I grew angry all over again and clenched my fists.

  “Calm down,” Angus told me. “Miriam knows how to handle him.”

  “You’re both assholes.” I knelt once more beside Clayton, unsure. I had no idea what to do for him, but neither Miriam nor Angus seemed overly concerned.

  Not with Clayton, anyway.

  Angus hunkered down beside me. “Are you okay, girl?” He reached out a hand to pull the bloody lapel of my robe away from my skin. “What happened here?”

  I shrugged away his fingers. “It’s a long story—one I’ll tell you after you help Clayton.”

  “Sweetheart,” Miriam said, her voice somewhere between arctic cold and the fires-of-hell hot, “you do not want to fight me for this thing.”

  I jumped to my feet. “Oh my God. You—”

  “I can see you’re beginning to care for him.” She shrugged. “You really don’t want to do that.”

  But then Clayton groaned and sat up, and I was saved from having to reply. Care about him?

  No.

  Definitely not.

  No more than I’d care about any other person being abused.

  Miriam stood, then leaned over and buried her fingers in his hair. “Up you go.” If he hadn’t stood, she’d have ripped out his hair by the roots.

  I wondered why she hated him, but I couldn’t ask. Not then.

  I stood as well. Clayton glanced at me, then away.

  “Are you well?” Miriam asked him.

  He nodded.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Explain.”

  “I went to get a first aid kit to bandage her wound. When I returned, she was being attacked by a strange man. I pulled him off her and threw him against the wall.” He pointed his chin at the wall, and we all three turned to look at the dented plaster.

  “Where is he?” Miriam asked. “Dead?”

  He shook his head. “Escaped. I don’t know what he was.”

  “So.” Miriam walked slowly around him, her heels clicking on the floor.

  He stiffened but didn’t move.

  “How,” she asked, “did you go from fighting off a strange attacker to trying to fuck our little hunter?”

  I recoiled, even as Clayton flinched.

  In her voice was a dark promise of pain that she didn’t even try to hide. She was raging, but in a way I’d never seen from anyone. A deep, soul-crushing, killing rage that meant someone was in trouble.

  It meant Clayton was in trouble.

  “It wasn’t him,” I said quickly, despite my embarrassment. “The intruder rubbed something on me. Some sort of sticky lotion. Clayton, what did you call it?”

  He blinked at my attempts to protect him. “The Foam of Aphrodite,” he murmured.

  Miriam gasped and stepped back, her face paling. It should have been gratifying to see her lose her composure, to show some fear, but it wasn’t. It was just frightening.

  Angus gaped at Clayton. “What did you say?”

  Clayton nodded. “He hit her with a dose large enough for ten people.” He gestured at me without actually looking at me. “Her entire…chest was covered.”

  Miriam walked to me and peered into my face. “How do you feel now? It’s gone, I take it?”

  “Mostly. Except for…” I swallowed, then hurried on. “Some lingering…um…heat.”

  She and Angus traded glances. “I’ve never heard of someone recovering so quickly from even a few drops,” she said.

  Angus shook his head, then shrugged. “She’s strong. She’s different.”

  I pressed a hand to my poor abused chest, then went to sit on the couch. “I don’t feel strong at the moment.”

  Angus frowned down at me. “Come. You’ll see our doctor. You need to be checked out.”

  “I’ll be okay. If I can go for a few nights without being stabbed or bitten or bled, I’ll be okay.”

  “Let us see the wound,” Miriam demanded.

  I sighed and pulled the edge of my robe away from the injury. “It’s healing. I need to rest, that’s all. I’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  It truly did look better. It was swollen and discolored, red and purple and angry, but the ends were closing and it seeped only a little. Mostly, it was sore.

  “The intruder splashed her with the foam and then stabbed her?” Miriam asked, skeptical.

  “No,” Clayton replied. “The intruder didn’t stab her.”

  “Then who gave her the wound?” Angus asked. He clenched his fists and took a threatening step toward the other man.

  When Clayton remained silent, Miriam slid close to him, ran her fingers up his arm, and whispered, “Answer him, you fuck.”

  Clayton answered at once. “Silverlight. Amias gave her the sword. It tasted her.”

  They gaped at him, then me, then him again.

  “You lie,” Angus said.

  “No,” Miriam disagreed. “He can’t lie to me.” She turned on me. “Silverlight, the sword. You have her.”

  I slid my hand down to the pocket of my robe, to where the knife rested, half afraid they’d try to take her from me.

  “It has her,” Clayton said.

  “The blade accepted her?” asked Angus, doubtfully. “A human? Or,” he added, studying me, “whatever she is.”

  “Yes.” Clayton’s voice was steady and deep, but the pallor of his skin remained, and he still looked a little less than steady. “Completely.”

&nbs
p; “You can ask me,” I said. “I’m right here. Amias wants me protected. The sword will do that.”

  The three of them stared at me, but only Angus’s face held something more than curiosity. ”You’re softening toward the fucking vampire,” he accused.

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell any of them what I’d learned—that Amias asserted some sort of terrible control over me, that it caused me enormous physical pain to hurt him, that I’d been turned on by him.

  That he was my master.

  Oh God, no. The shame. The awful shame.

  My face heated and I looked away from Angus’s probing stare. “I hate him,” I muttered. I did hate him. But that rage, that wonderful rage, was dimming.

  Then Miriam took control, and I turned away from the accusation in Angus’s eyes, eagerly grasping onto something a little less disgraceful.

  “I’ll help her pack a few things,” she said, crisply. “She can stay with you, Angus, and soon we’ll get her into her own place in Bay Town.”

  No one asked me a damn thing, but it didn’t matter. I was exhausted, drained. I had to find another place to live. If they wanted to take control and do all the work, I wasn’t going to argue with that.

  “Let me see the sword,” Miriam ordered. She gathered her long, blonde hair in one hand and shoved it over her shoulder, then gestured abruptly at my robe pocket. “Hurry now. We don’t have much time.”

  But I shook my head and backed away. “I’m going to get dressed, then I’ll pack a bag for my stay at Angus’s house.” I began to walk from the living room, but at the doorway into the hall, I turned around.

  “Silverlight is mine,” I said, fiercely. “Mine.”

  Her smile was puzzled. “I only wanted to see it. I wouldn’t take it from you.”

  “That’s good. Because if you tried, I would do more than punch you in the mouth. You shouldn’t forget that.”

  And from the look on her face—from the looks on all their faces—no one was going to forget anything.

  Chapter Twelve

  I rested and slept on and off—mostly on—for three days.

  Angus and his many children—along with their nannies and housekeeper—took care of me while I recovered from the shocks I’d received to not only my body, but my mind. My spirit.