by Donya Lynne
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Does it matter? The result is the same.”
Anger surged through Micah’s blood, and he rose to his full height. Trace’s refusal was unacceptable.
“Are you saying that you are willfully and intentionally keeping me out of your thoughts?”
Trace remained silent, head shamefully bowed, hands on his thighs.
Micah paced to the side and shot a look over his shoulder at Sam. “Turn that off.” He pointed to the burner. “Make sure everything is shut down in here, and then go down to my dungeon and prepare the table.”
He knew he wasn’t Sam’s Dom and that he shouldn’t be bossing her around, but he was through being nice. He was going to deal with this shit with Trace today, and Sam was going to help him. Together, they were going to make Trace open up, even if it took all night, because this shit couldn’t go on like this anymore. Trace had come within seconds of killing them all.
Anyone else would tell Trace to get lost and never come back, but that wasn’t an option for Micah. No way would he lose his best friend when he had vowed to take care of him. And so help him God, he kept his promises.
Since banishing Trace was off the table, that left only one solution. Pry open the gridlock Trace had on his mind by force.
Sam disappeared down the stairs.
He paced back toward Trace and stood in front of him, feet solidly planted shoulder-width apart, arms crossed.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
Trace flinched but kept his head down.
“I said look at me!”
Trace sighed in defeat then lifted his head. The misery and sorrow pulling on Trace’s features nearly shattered Micah’s heart. His friend was in hell. Despair and heartache had Trace fully in their grip.
What could be going on inside Trace’s head to make him so miserable? So hopeless?
“I told you during our first session that you would let me in, Trace. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, Master.”
“And yet you tell me that you still refuse to open up to me. Not that you can’t, but that you won’t. There’s a big difference between the two, slave. Can’t is out of your control. Won’t is within it. And yet you still won’t let me in, knowing that I can’t fully be your master until you do. Knowing I can’t save you from yourself until I can see inside your mind.”
“Master, I—”
“Do you need me, slave?”
Trace’s chest rose and fell heavily. “Yes, Master. I need you.”
“Will you open yourself to me if I service you?”
Silence.
Micah bent forward and grabbed Trace under his chin, cranking his head back so they were nose to nose. “Will you open yourself to me?”
Moisture glistened in Trace’s eyes, but he held Micah’s gaze like a champ.
Trace took a trembling breath. On the exhale, he said, “I’ll try.”
“Not good enough, Trace.”
“Micah—”
Micah released Trace’s chin and slapped him as he straightened. “I am not Micah to you, slave. I am Master. You call me Master until you either safeword out or I decide our session is over. Do you understand?”
“Yes . . . Master.” Trace’s voice was whisper quiet.
Micah hated seeing him so emotionally beaten down, but his instincts told him the only way to break through Trace’s walls was to break him completely. That until Trace’s spirit broke, Micah wouldn’t be able to get inside. And until he got inside, he wouldn’t be able to help him. And helping Trace was his number one priority, especially since Trace had almost suffered a nuclear meltdown in his kitchen less than five minutes ago.
“Get up, slave.” He snapped his fingers and took a step back.
Trace did as commanded.
“We’re going to my dungeon”—Micah clutched the back of Trace’s neck and pulled him close until their foreheads touched—“and we’re not coming back up until you let me in here.” Micah tapped the side of Trace’s head. “If I have to keep you down there for a week, I will, but you will let me in.” He searched Trace’s eyes. “Do you want to know why?”
“Why, Master?”
He squeezed the back of Trace’s neck and drew Trace’s head down to rest on his shoulder. He kissed Trace’s scalp as he wrapped his other arm around him, hugging him hard. “Because I love you too much to let you suffer this alone any longer, Trace.”
He would save Trace now or die trying.
Chapter 25
Cordray swung by her mansion in the city, showered, and then headed back out to feed. She needed blood. Not only had her lip still not healed, but her hangover was lingering longer than it should. She was totally depleted.
With the after-work crowd giving way to the dinner crowd, enough people milled around the Loop to provide plenty of options as she searched for a donor. Anyone in a group was out. No families or couples, either. She needed someone who was alone, which was a lot harder to find than it sounded. Not very many people ventured into downtown Chicago at night by themselves.
Turning into a parking garage, she circled through the levels. Parking garages were excellent places to find donors, especially at this time of day. The nine-to-fivers were already gone, leaving the structures with a lot less foot traffic, but she could usually find a healthy, overachieving CEO who had worked late.
And bingo. There was one now.
Her Ducati’s engine purred as she rolled to a stop and removed her helmet.
“Excuse me,” she said to the buff fortysomething strolling unaware toward her. He had his brown leather briefcase in one hand and his smartphone in the other as he used his thumb to scroll through his messages.
He looked up. The skin around his eyes pinched as he realized she was talking to him. He gave her the once-over and frowned. Without replying, he continued walking, lowering his gaze to his phone’s screen again, pretending he hadn’t heard her.
These hoity-toity types were all the same. They thought they were too good for people who had a little ink in their skin and streaks of blue in their hair.
She hopped off her Ducati, scanned the rest of the parking level to make sure no one was around, and started after him.
“You lookin’ for a good time?” she said.
“No,” he barked over his shoulder.
“Good. Neither am I.” She gripped his arm and swung him into the shadows as her fangs distended.
He began to protest, but she pulled him into compulsion a split second before she sank her fangs into the side of his neck.
Aaaahhhh, blood. Sweet, life-giving blood. As it poured down her throat and broke into her system, she felt her body instantly brighten. The last of her hangover faded, and her energy spiked.
If only she were drinking from Trace.
What would his blood do to her? How would it taste? Like power and sex?
The muscles between her legs clenched greedily at the thought.
Every molecule in her body begged for her to return to the ranch so she could see him, and yet her brain still resisted.
This was what body-numbing heartbreak did to you. It clouded your emotions and instilled fear in your soul. It shattered the mechanism inside you that created hope, plunging you into hopelessness.
She wanted to believe she was tough enough to kick fear in the ass, but her fear was proving to be a powerful foe.
She finished feeding, sealed the bite mark, and wiped the encounter from the man’s memory.
He robotically, if not a little unsteadily, walked away.
The man’s blood had revived her body, but her emotions still felt like a carcass being fought over by two lions. Talk about your bloody games of tug-of-war. Her heart was smack in the middle of a titanic battle between rival gods.
As she settled on the seat of her Ducati and kicked up the kickstand with her left heel, a tremor broke inside her heart. A tiny jolt of fear.
Tra
ce.
Another vibration of panic stirred inside her.
Something was wrong with Trace. He was hurting. He was in trouble.
Frowning, she tried to shake off the fear vibrating inside her. Could this just be an overactive imagination? A side effect of finally quenching her need for blood on the heels of telling Sam she was in love with Trace?
Whatever it was, her instincts told her she needed to get to him. Now.
And strangely enough, she could sense exactly where he was.
Revving the Ducati’s engine, she leaned into the handlebars and lifted her feet off the ground as the motorcycle shot forward.
Back on the street, she blasted off in the direction of Micah’s house.
Chapter 26
Trace lay on a giant, narrow slab of cypress. The wood was strong as stone, which was good, because if Trace lost his shit again—which was a distinct possibility—he needed to know the table wouldn’t break.
The chains securing his wrists and ankles, on the other hand . . .? Yeah, those he would be able to snap as easily as chicken bones.
His chest still ached like a motherfucker, but at least he no longer felt like he was on a final countdown to detonation. The agony that had nearly cost him his dearest friends—and their neighborhood—a few minutes ago still simmered inside his soul, but, at least for the moment, they weren’t in immediate danger.
Warm fingers caressed his palm, and he curled his hand around Sam’s. She stood silently at his side, her gaze filled with concern and compassion as Micah busied himself somewhere out of his periphery.
Micah had made him take off his shirt, but he still wore pants. Not that it would have mattered if he’d been naked. Nudity wasn’t something to be ashamed of in this house. Not with all the exhibitionist three-ways he’d had with them.
His mind flashed to Cordray.
The thought of her name alone made the pounding in his chest intensify.
He groaned, and Sam’s hand tightened around his.
Being around Cordray was like being in the presence of an aphrodisiac. Just the sound of her voice was enough to make his pulse quicken. He longed to smell her dark scent. To touch her black, silky hair. To taste her skin the way he’d tasted her lips last night.
He closed his eyes and saw her face. She was a vision. Her body a temple. He wanted to outline every one of her tattoos with his tongue. Ink covered both of her arms, her hands, her neck. Did she have tattoos elsewhere? Did she have them on her stomach? Her hips? Her legs? Her breasts? He wanted to taste them all.
His breathing deepened. His cock stiffened. The ache in his chest ebbed.
Thinking about Cordray was a good thing. Very good. His body liked it. He liked it.
“Open your eyes.” Micah’s strong, commanding voice bit into his fantasy, and his eyelids flashed open.
Only to come face to face with his greatest fear.
Micah waved a flaming baton in front of him, it’s blue flame deceptively serene. Trace knew the damage fire could do. He knew it all too well. Maybe it looked pretty—benign even—but that shit was just smoke and mirrors hiding the danger lurking in the shadows.
His heart hammered.
His body trembled.
Perspiration broke over his chest and stomach.
Micah wore a glove on his left hand and reached to the side to grab a second baton, but this one wasn’t lit. He tucked it between the third and fourth fingers of the same hand holding the flaming baton, angling each away from the other the way an xylophone player holds a pair of mallets in one hand.
“What happened upstairs—the way you reacted to the flambé— gave me an idea.” Micah eyed Trace’s stomach as he smoothed his gloved hand over his skin.
Trace was practically panting now, his exhales coming in abrupt, urgent puffs. “M-master . . . please . . .”
“You’re afraid of fire, aren’t you, Trace?”
He gulped, and his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, almost making him gag.
“Answer me.” Micah bobbed his head toward Sam, who drew her hand out of Trace’s and took a step back.
“Y-yes, Master.”
As long as the fire was small and contained or he was able to get away, it was all good. But chain him to a table so he had no control and couldn’t flee, and then wave a burning cotton ball in front of him? Forget about it. Even the smallest, most innocuous flame became an inferno. One that made him feel like he was stuck inside a burning building with no way out.
As his agonizing past erupted inside his mind, an almost equally destructive detonation of emotional and sensual overload gripped him. Every sense was heightened. Every nervous response magnified. Things that would have been merely a nuisance a month ago were now either festering sores or cause for cosmic levels of rapture.
Cordray, for example. Less than three weeks ago, she’d been an annoyance. Now she was an addiction. Even now, with terror-inducing flames dancing in front of his face, the thought of her beneath him as he took pleasure from her body rocketed a sense of calm through his blood.
He was a study in extremes. While more fear than he’d ever known threatened to consume him, a pleasant calm more refreshing than anything he’d ever experienced coursed through his blood and maintained balance.
But as Micah brushed the unlit cotton ball over a patch of his bare skin, the scales tipped in favor of fear.
The unlit baton was wet, and it smelled of alcohol. Micah was rubbing alcohol on him. And now he was lowering the flaming ball of cotton toward his skin.
Surely, Micah didn’t intend to light him on fire!
The chains securing his wrists and ankles rattled as he pulled on them, his body straining.
Must get away. Must . . . save . . . myself.
The flame tapped the wet spot on Trace’s stomach, and Trace nearly wet himself as a blood-curdling scream launched out of his throat then went into lockdown as his esophagus constricted. Blue flames danced over his skin like ghostly tendrils. Just as he began to feel the heat, Micah swiped his gloved hand over the patch of skin, extinguishing the flame.
Trace let out a gasp of relief, his muscles briefly relaxing until Micah wiped another patch of skin with the alcohol swab. Before Trace knew what was happening, Micah lit him on fire again.
This time, the scream dislodged from his throat and shredded his vocal chords, his eyes wide with fear as the flames flickered like a fiery Grim Reaper over his abdomen.
But this Reaper was merely a puppet. A marionette controlled by a grand master. It rose to life at Micah’s command, and it perished the same way.
Again, Micah brushed his gloved hand over the flames, putting them out just as the heat reached his skin through the vapor barrier.
Trace braced for the next hit, but Micah hesitated.
“Do you want me to stop?” Micah lifted his chin, his shoulders stiff. The black Under Armour shirt he was wearing stretched over his pecs and revealed the ridges in his abdomen. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead.
“Y-yes, Master.” He wanted more than anything for him to stop.
“Then open your mind to me. Let me in, and I’ll stop. No more fire. No more fear.”
Fear. The great motivator. And yet Trace couldn’t loosen the hold on his thoughts. He still couldn’t let Micah in. His hopes caved as Micah’s back straightened, and he began rubbing the alcohol-soaked ball over his skin again, this time creating a larger patch to burn.
Panic surged through his blood once more. The lit baton lowered. The moment it contacted the vapor, flames erupted over his chest. He could feel its heat on his face. Could smell its acrid odor.
He abruptly cried out, and then his eyes rolled back as he sucked in his breath, seeing his mother in his mind’s eye. The smell of burning skin filled his nose. The image of her tied to a stake, her skin blackened in patches, sprang to life. Memories flooded him. Painful memories of death and destruction.
He was no longer in Micah’s dungeon. He was a young boy, watch
ing from his hiding place in the bushes as the angry townspeople tied his mother to a cross then dragged her across the yard, shouting and chanting that she was a witch. A demon’s mistress. Satan’s spawn. They held torches and waved them at her, lighting her clothes and hair on fire.
Brak and his father were nowhere to be seen. Already dead? Had these people already killed them? His instincts told him he was in danger. That if they saw him, they would kill him, too.
This was all his fault. He’d hurt those kids by the pond when Mason threw his rock into the water. He had lost control of the power dwelling within him, and he’d hurt them all. Mother had warned him not to use his power in public. She had told him bad things would happen if he did.
And now bad things were happening. And it was all his fault. He’d caused this. His lack of discipline had caused the townspeople to kill his family.
And now he would kill them. He would kill them all!
* * *
Cordray pulled into Micah’s driveway to find one of Asylum’s SUVs parked to the side and the garage door open. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized Trace must have driven here this evening. She must have just missed him.
The urgent feeling that he was in trouble still hummed inside her chest, but if he was here, how could he be in trouble? He was with Micah the wonder stud. If Trace’s power was getting the better of him, Micah should have been able to command it back into submission.
Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Trace was in bad shape. It felt like Trace—no, that couldn’t be right. Cordray shook her head as she dismounted the Ducati, pulled off her helmet, and eyed the home’s exterior as she reached out with her senses. Why would Trace need her? He loathed her. But that’s exactly the message her heart was sending to her brain.
Unable to ignore his magnetic pull, she started up the driveway, glancing inside the SUV as she passed it. Trace’s duffel bag sat on the front passenger seat. She opened the door, grabbed it, then entered the garage.
A black and copper custom chopper sat in the bay closest to the door leading into the house. As she passed, she glanced down at the gas tank. Hand of God was written in bold letters.
