by Donya Lynne
“Yeah.” He didn’t move, either. At least not at first. He stared at her in the darkness, enraptured by the magical hold she had on him. Then he forced himself to stand and moved toward the door, even though it felt like he was dragging his feet through quick-drying cement.
In the hall, he turned and watched her close the door. She was facing away from him as if she was purposely avoiding his eyes. All he wanted was for her to turn around and look at him again. To see her vibrant, blue eyes lock onto his.
The door snicked quietly closed. Cordray hesitated, her shoulders rising and falling heavily as she breathed. She seemed to be waiting for something.
Finally, she turned around.
Their gazes met.
And all the air whooshed out of Trace’s lungs.
In an instant, he had her in his arms and swung her around, pinning her to the opposite wall as he claimed her mouth with the primal hunger of a lion devouring its prey. Heat whipped through his body, fire coursed through his veins. All he could see, hear, smell, feel, and taste was Cordray. Vivacious, untamed, tangy-sweetness-on-his-tongue, storm-in-his-blood Cordray.
And Jesus, she was kissing him back. Kissing him like her life depended on it. Clawing at his back through his shirt, biting his bottom lip, gasping and whimpering as though she had never felt anything so intense, so gratifying.
He certainly hadn’t.
The way her breasts mashed against his chest felt more perfect than anything he’d ever known. The way her silken hair twisted around his fingers as he clutched her closer was a kind of shackling he’d never experienced as a submissive, but it bound him more tightly to her than any chain or thick leather cuff had ever bound him to a bench or cross.
She tethered him to her with her sighs, her rough tugs against his shirt, the on-the-edge-of-painful nips she gave his lips.
More. He needed more of this dazzling female he’d tried to hate but could no longer deny. More of her body. More of her skin.
In a flash of daring, he jerked the hem of her shirt away from her body and drove his hand underneath. She whimpered as his palm swept up her tight abdomen, driving toward her full breast.
God, he needed to feel her, hold her, rip her shirt and bra away and close his mouth over her nipple. He’d never caressed a female like this before. Had never felt a female’s body without being strapped to a table or chair, or tied to a St. Andrew’s Cross. Never of his own free will had he experienced such pleasure, but with Cordray, he reached new territory. He’d found a female who excited him without whipping him. A female who commanded his body simply by her presence. A female he wanted in every way imaginable and more.
His fingers pushed against the underwire of her bra.
But just as he began to cup her breast and feel its fleshy weight against his palm, Cordray jerked away and shoved his hand out from under her shirt.
“No!” She staggered sideways, pushing him away.
Her retreat was so abrupt that Trace fell forward, knocking his head against the wall where her face had been just a moment ago.
Struggling to right himself as intense heat continued coursing through his limbs, making them weak, he turned his head toward her and frowned. “What the—?”
“I don’t want this.” Cordray stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened. As if she no longer knew who he was or even who she was. “I never wanted this. With you. Ever.” She swallowed hard and urgently backed away, fear shining in her eyes.
Trace took a steadying breath, trying to cool the fire blasting through his veins, making his cock a rod of steel. He hadn’t thought he wanted this, either, but now that this had happened, he wanted it back. He wanted more.
“Whether you wanted it or not, it happened. And you can’t tell me you don’t want it as much as I do.” He started toward her, the need to close the distance between them stronger than blood thirst. He couldn’t deny the magnetic pull she had on him, anymore. She belonged to him. She was his. And he would claim her. “You can’t deny—”
“No.” Cordray continued backing away, more quickly now. “Just stop. Don’t you dare touch me again. Don’t you dare . . .” Her pained expression gave away her confusion. Denial warred with desire, twisting her features into conflicted angles. Moisture welled in her eyes, her jaw clenched, her throat worked as if she were trying not to throw up, cry, or both, and she was practically panting as she reached the stairs. “Just stay away from me, Trace. It’s better that way.” With that, she darted down the stairs.
A moment later, the front door opened and slammed shut, and Trace was left standing in the hall, unsure what had just happened and what it meant, with a boner as hard as marble straining inside his jeans.
As he heard the whine of the Ducati tear down the driveway, a dull ache bloomed to life inside his chest, followed quickly by the thought that if anything happened to her out there—if anyone so much as harmed one hair on her beautiful head—he would rain death down like the apocalypse.
Painful, excruciating, bloody death.
Caused by him.
His hand.
His power.
Because, yeah, Cordray was his.
Chapter 17
As Cordray sped away from Asylum, her pulse raced as fast as the Ducati’s engine. Her body still tingled from the explosive sensory overload Trace had awakened inside her, but with every moment she fled his presence, the sensations faded. Within seconds, the luscious feelings were nothing but a memory. Once more, she became a barren wasteland, her sense of touch dormant and absent.
How had she let him kiss her? And not just kiss her, but invade her? She’d told herself giving in to what she was feeling was a bad idea. She’d sworn to protect her heart and the fragile emotions that dwelled within it.
But in those all-too-short moments, she’d never wanted a male more. Never needed to feel touch as desperately as she needed to feel Trace’s. He did things to her. He made her want. And wanting wasn’t something she’d experienced in a long time.
Everything about him was perfection.
His body.
His face.
His powerful hand.
He was the most attractive male she had ever seen.
Even more attractive than—
She blinked and focused on the road as a sorrowful ache speared her heart. Trace had the same angular face as Gideon. The same seductively heavy eyelids and brooding sensuality.
But Trace’s eyes were both kinder and more intense than Gideon’s. And his lips were fuller, more sensuous. Gideon’s mouth had always been set in a hard line, and his eyes had always held an almost palpable coldness, as if both were a shield to throw people off his benevolent nature and warm heart.
But her attraction to Trace went beyond his face. He held himself with an air of power and aloof confidence that beckoned her in the same way sunlight beckoned a flower to turn toward its warmth.
Not since Gideon had she felt such yearning. But as much as she had desired Gideon above all others, she wanted Trace more. And that terrified her.
That was why she needed to get as far away from Asylum as she could.
Good thing her Grudge Match audition was tonight, because if she stayed at the ranch one more second, she would lose the willpower to resist him.
God help her, but she was setting herself up to be hurt all over again. To feel heartache’s traitorous stab.
Which meant Grudge Match was just what she needed. What better way to eradicate her fears than by beating somebody up?
She sped toward Chicago’s South Side and the address she’d been given, ready to channel this heartache into beating the ever-living shit out of the unfortunate souls selected to face her in this thing called the gauntlet.
She had no doubt she would make it through. This was one time when her lack of feeling worked to her advantage. There wasn’t a lot her combatants could do to stop her, and since guns and other piercing weapons weren’t allowed in the gauntlet—according to the rules—she di
dn’t have to worry about being shot or stabbed, which could actually do damage without her knowing it.
She rolled through a part of Chicago that law-abiding humans steered clear of. Human gangs ruled block-by-block here, dealing drugs, shooting up, pimping, and protecting their turf.
Fools. If only they knew how close they were to extinction, because if the drecks ever took over the world, the first thing they would do after eradicating vampires would be to enslave humanity.
Not that all drecks wore a shroud of villainy. Severin was half-dreck, and he was one of the good guys, and his dreck mother was as sweet as they came. But the majority of drecks followed Premier Royce, who had his corrupt hand in every evil undertaking Cordray had ever encountered. She just didn’t have tangible proof, because while Bain knew of her gifts to see the truth inside people’s thoughts, Royce would never honor her word against any member of his race. Which meant that until she found a smoking gun implicating Royce, there was nothing she could give Bain to throw in his face during one of their meetings.
As a CPD patrol car flew through an intersection up ahead, it’s red and blue lights flashing and siren blaring, Cordray sighed at the folly of man.
The only things standing between total dreck domination and the annihilation of human civilization were vampires. Yep, that’s right. A race of beings humans had glorified in their silly Hollywood horror movies—incorrectly, by the way—was what allowed gangbangers all over Chicago the freedom to kill each other over a stretch of turf three city blocks long.
In the heart of the South Side’s warehouse district, she pulled up to the address she’d been given and hopped off her bike.
A hooded male who reminded her of the Grim Reaper approached. She couldn’t see his face, but he was big, broad, and all business.
“Turn around,” he said, swirling his index finger.
She did, and he began patting her down.
“You’ve read the rules?” he asked, his deep voice thickly accented, but she couldn’t place his nationality.
“Yes.”
His hands skimmed down both legs, back up to her hips, then down her arms. “Face me.”
When she turned, she saw that he wore a white mask like the ones worn by the dance crew JabbaWockeeZ. Plain. No markings. Pure white, with holes for the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Under his hood he wore a dark-grey skullcap with a red band around the hem.
Interesting. In only a few days she’d stumbled upon two males wearing masks. What were the odds?
“Nice mask,” she said, as his palms began traveling over the front of her the way a police officer would search a suspect for weapons. At least he wasn’t lewd and crude, stopping to fondle her breasts or grab her crotch. Jabba-man was all business.
He didn’t reply to her compliment. Just finished frisking her. “She’s clean,” he said, speaking into a transmitter as he turned her toward a dark alley ten yards away.
“Then send her in.” The leisurely male voice that came through the speaker was rich and elegant, the words flowing smoothly on a gentle lilt that sounded almost like amusement, yet not quite. More like curiosity.
“Go ahead.” The man in the mask gestured for her to enter the alley.
“Don’t I even get a good luck?” She arched one eyebrow at him.
He didn’t move, not even a flinch. Just stood with his hands clasped in front of him military-style, feet shoulder-width apart. But she had a feeling that behind his mask, he was grinning.
When he didn’t respond, she simply turned, slipped on the brass knuckles she’d brought with her, which were totally allowed in the gauntlet, and headed toward the mouth of the alley.
A few feet from the entrance, she stopped and surveyed the dark narrow gap between buildings, tilting her head as she studied the shadows. This was the gauntlet?
She’d expected it to be more ominous. More threatening. More this-could-end-your-life.
The alley looked more like the backdrop for a B-rated horror flick than a bone-crushing beat-down waiting to happen.
Whatev. If this pansy-assed stroll along the yellow brick road was what she needed to go through to find a connection between Premier Royce and Bishop’s lab experiments, she would play Dorothy. Just as long as she didn’t have to wear that disgustingly quaint powder-blue dress. But the ruby slippers were aces.
She would never turn down such a fine pair of footwear.
Let’s do this.
The dull thud of her rubber soles on the wet concrete broke through the sounds of dripping water from the surrounding buildings as she entered the alley.
Fog turned what dim light there was into a milky haze, and condensation dribbled down the brick walls like alien secretions. Water drip-dripped somewhere in the darkness ahead.
Movement to her left!
She ducked as a thick arm swung at her head, wielding a length of heavy chain. Fast as lightning, she swept her leg out and knocked her attacker on his ass and jumped on him.
Crack! Crack!
Two hits and he was out cold. Probably with a broken jaw.
Easy enough. She drew a checkmark in the air with her finger then rose to her feet, standing over her unconscious assailant.
Then she eyed the chain. That pretty thing could come in handy.
She pried the chain from his muscled fingers and draped it around her neck before venturing farther in. What was once yours is now mine, asshole.
The gauntlet had to get harder than that guy. He’d just been bait, giving her a false sense of security.
Well, fuck that. She didn’t do secure. And she didn’t do false. Despite her sissy-faced footwork with Trace earlier, this Dorothy was a bazooka-toting badass compared to that bitch from Oz. If someone worse awaited her, he—or she—had better be prepared for an ass-whooping.
Her heavy combat boots thunked on the pavement as she marched onward. She didn’t want these assholes to think she was afraid. Because . . . well . . . she wasn’t. Maybe she was scared of her body’s response to Trace, but she’d be damned before she let something as trite as losing a little blood or breaking a bone stop her from doing her job.
Two vampires jumped out from the adjacent alleyway, one holding a bat and the other a whip.
Oh really now? A whip? So cliché. So unimaginative.
The one with the bat took a swing, and she dodged. He swung twice more, wielding the bat like it was a sickle and she was the field of wheat he was trying to cut down.
She heard the crack of the whip and felt a whisper of contact on her arm. Well, she didn’t so much feel it as see her coat sleeve twitch against the bite of leather on leather.
She glanced at her arm to find he’d sliced a tear in her coat. Damn it!
Enough of this shit!
Gripping the length of chain, she swung it over her head, and shot it toward whip boy as she double-dutched over another home-run swing. The chain whirled around her attacker’s neck as she landed back on her feet.
“How do you like my whip, asshole?” She yanked, choking him, and spun around in time to clock bat boy in the nose with the sole of her boot before he could break her arm with another swing for the fences.
Seconds later, she dispatched them both to the wet pavement—alive but unconscious—then collected her chain and continued on. A glance at her forearm showed it was bleeding where the whip had sliced through her coat. What did that guy have on the tip of that thing? Razors?
As she walked, she yanked her sleeve up and licked the cut. Her venom healed it within seconds.
Too bad venom didn’t heal leather coats. She let her torn sleeve fall back down her arm and scowled at the shadows, ready, waiting, torqued to get on with it and make it through to the inner circle. But no one erupted from the shadows to take her on. After another ten yards and no action, it felt like the onslaught was over.
No way. There had to be more to the gauntlet than that.
As if on cue, the alley became eerily quiet. Too quiet. Too dark. The shadowed exit was less t
han ten yards away, but she stopped, anyway. Something wasn’t right. Call it instinct, but Cordray had learned to trust that deathly calm usually signaled a coming storm. Shifty, wary, and ready for anything, she took a cautious step forward. Then another.
The scent of a dreck just beyond the exit touched her senses.
A dreck? It was one more clue to add to her growing list of things she hadn’t expected about Grudge Match.
Was he watching? Waiting?
Despite taking a mental sweep, she got nothing.
Then she heard a low growl come from a dark corridor to her right.
Then a snarl.
She took a defensive step to the left, preparing for whatever was coming for her.
“What are you afraid of, bitch?” A vampire taller and wider than any she had ever seen—even bigger than Bain—stepped out of the shadows.
Finally. An adversary worth fighting.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just waiting for the show to start.”
He took a lumbering step forward, all power and force. “You’ve got balls.”
“You have no idea.” She tightened her grip on the chain, although she doubted it would do much good against Sasquatch.
He cracked his knuckles then his neck with side to side snaps.
“Maybe I’ll just knock you out and fuck you,” he said with another steady step toward her. “Pretty little vampire like you. You’d be a nice fuck, wouldn’t you?” His hands curled into fists.
“Only if you can get it up. But even if you could, you’d actually have to find your pecker to do something with it, and I doubt you’ll be able to find something that small.”
The beast’s brow furrowed as if he didn’t quite understand. Or maybe he hadn’t expected her response and didn’t know how to react now that she’d made it clear she wasn’t going to shrivel up like a nancy and beg him not to hurt her.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Am I talking too fast for you?”
Sasquatch recovered and took an ominous step forward. “Bitch.” Then he lunged and tackled her to the ground.
Since she didn’t have to deal with the nuisance of pain, she throttled him two-fisted, slamming her brass-knuckled fists into either side of his neck right before his elbow crashed into her chest. She didn’t feel it, but the shock to her lungs made her cough and gasp for air, anyway. But he was worse off than she was, clutching his neck as he rolled off her. She leaped behind him and swung the chain around his neck and pulled with everything she had.
