Fumbling with my shirt, I tried to focus on the tiny pearl-shaped buttons. I had no goddamned hand-eye coordination whatsoever. And I was pretty sure I had a dagger stashed somewhere between my mattress and box spring. If I couldn’t undo a fucking button, how in the hell was I going to get to the dagger? Kade seemed fascinated with the show I was giving him, watching with a satisfied smirk as I finally made it down to the last button. My hands got tangled up in the sleeves, and I fought with the damn shirt for another couple of minutes until I’d finally shucked it completely. Whew. That was a chore.
“The pants,” Kade said, his voice dark and sensual. Damn, he was a sexy bastard. Sexual energy wafted off of him, buffeting the sobriety my mind sought.
I scooted up farther on the bed and slithered out of my pants until I was clad in nothing but my bra and underwear. Stretching out on the bed, I sighed, my body wound so tight that I thought I’d explode if I didn’t find release. Kade worked the buttons on his own shirt, making a show of undressing himself. My eyes drifted from the hard planes of his bare chest and focused on a blinking red light on my wall next to the elevator. I blinked. The red light blinked back. I blinked again.
I’d forgotten all about Raif’s security system. The light blinked green when it was set, red when it had been tripped. I couldn’t remember disarming it when Kade had brought me up, which meant we’d tripped the silent alarm. By the time my gaze had wandered back to Kade, he’d popped the button and opened the fly on his pants.
Oh fuck. What the hell was I doing? Kade had drained a fair share of my energy, essence, whatever with his kisses and wandering hands. I couldn’t fight him if I wanted to and when he got too close or made physical contact, I didn’t want to fight him. His energy signature brushed against my skin, that flight or fight reflex surging within me. But something was off . . . mutated. Something else fluttered across my senses, so soft I almost couldn’t feel it. Like a mist of warm rain caressing my skin. That feeling—that mutated flash of energy I felt—was my own.
Kade’s gaze drank me in, a look of raw hunger plain in his expression. I stared at his light blue eyes, and noticed that the pupils had elongated slightly, slashing vertically through the iris. Holy Christ, his eyes looked . . . reptilian. I tried to roll away, toward the right side of the bed where I’d stashed the dagger, but I couldn’t muster the energy. “I think I’ll keep you a while, Evelena,” Kade all but purred, as he kicked off his shoes. “Your life essence is even better than Adira’s. She was powerful, but yours is a rush like nothing I’ve ever felt. And after I take you”—those snakelike eyes narrowed menacingly— “we’ll just see what tricks of yours I’ll be able to borrow.”
I tried to move farther up the bed, but something held my ankle. I looked down and my pulse skittered in my veins as a large, slithering tail flicked against my skin. Black scales glistened in the muted evening light as it wound up my leg and spread my thighs. My breath hitched in my chest. What the hell was that? Kade’s tongue darted out to lick his lips, and I could have sworn it was forked, the ends curling before it retreated back into his mouth. I batted at the tail as it skirted the edge of my underwear, up my stomach and over one breast. Oh my god. This was really happening. This wasn’t some drunken illusion or crazy trip. Kade was going to rape me, steal my life essence, and do it all over again until he’d exacted his revenge on me.
And there wasn’t a goddamned thing I could do about it.
Chapter 33
“Who are you?” Kade whispered as his palms passed up my ribs and over my breasts.
“Evelena,” I whispered back, arching into his touch.
“And whom do you belong to?” he asked before his tongue darted out to taste the flesh swelling just above my bra.
“You,” I moaned, writhing beneath him, desperate for the rush that this touch gave me. “I belong to you.”
Every touch, every kiss, every heady breath of Kade’s scent drew me deeper into the fantasy. I’d tell him anything he wanted to hear as long as he kept his hands on me. He took great pleasure in kissing, touching, caressing, until I begged him to take me, only to have him back away and deny me. Tears streamed down my face as he traced the backs of his fingers from my chest to the edge of my underwear and back up. I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew that wanting him was wrong. My body bloomed with a dark rush of sensation that shattered my self-control. And I craved it. I craved that darkness just as I craved his touch. I felt like I’d retch, revulsion welling up inside of me, but then Kade would come at me again, and the moment his mouth made contact with my skin, I found myself pleading with him not to stop.
“I can keep you like this for months,” Kade snarled close to my ear. “Years. You’re going to beg me to kill you before I’m done with you.” That reptilian tail stroked my core over my underwear, and my stomach heaved, threatening to empty its meager contents. “But I’m not going to kill you,” he said in a pleasant, hushed tone. “I’m going to play with you, slowly draining everything you’ve got until there’s nothing left. And then”—his tongue dragged up my cheek—“I’m going to pass you around like the whore you are.”
I choked on a sob, hating myself more with every passing second. Why couldn’t I resist him? How could I possibly want more of his touch? My mind was beginning to fracture—it wouldn’t be long before it broke apart and splintered my psyche. I wouldn’t be able to recover from this, and Kade knew it.
“Open your legs for me,” he commanded.
“No.” I shook my head frantically and Kade grabbed my face, squeezing my cheeks.
“Don’t disobey me, Evelena, or I’ll have to punish you. Open. Your. Legs.”
The sound of my elevator grinding its way to the entrance drew Kade’s attention, and he released his grip on me, pushing himself off the bed. He fastened his pants, looked around and grabbed a short knife from a sheath at his waist and tucked it behind his back. “Behave, Evelena,” he warned. “Or it’ll be worse for you later.”
Already I was experiencing the painful sensation of withdrawal that overcame me when Kade stopped touching or kissing me. I ached without the physical contact, my body trembling, craving his nearness. The sun hadn’t quite set. Or had it? I tried to reach past the ache that seemed to sink right into my bones, to get a clear sense of my surroundings, anything to anchor me to reality. Raif could have come in his shadow form had the sun already set, and the whine of my elevator told me that whoever was on their way up was confined to their corporeal body, or wasn’t a Shaede.
“Kade.” His name burst from my lips in a keening cry as I curled my knees up to my stomach. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted the pain to stop, to feel that electrifying rush that sparked every nerve ending on my body and shot through my blood like fire. My teeth began to chatter and the tremors became more violent. “P-please,” I whispered. “I—I n-need . . .”
The elevator came to a halt at my entrance—empty. That serpentine tail coiled around Kade’s feet, twitching the way a cat’s might when it senses danger. My brain was clouded with both pain and need, and I couldn’t be sure if I was imagining Kade’s snakelike attributes or not. The tail flicked upward, seeming to retreat into Kade’s body and disappeared entirely.
“Kade?”
“Shut up,” he snapped as he padded warily toward the empty elevator.
I pushed myself up on an elbow and tried to steady my careening world. He pulled the knife from behind his back and gripped it tight in his fist as he poked his head inside the elevator’s caged compartment. His gaze locked on the keypad for the alarm system and his lip curled in a snarl as he turned to me. “My mate is a devious bitch. You failed to mention the security system. What’s the disarm code?”
Not that it mattered, but the silent alarm had been tripped for a while. I wasn’t sure if Raif was the only one who’d be notified in the event of a break-in, but since he wasn’t here already, I had to assume that no one had been alerted thus far. I wracked my brain, desperate to remember the disarm co
de, thinking that if I gave it to Kade, he’d reward me for cooperating and take away the pain. “Six . . .” No, not six. “Three . . . nine . . .” Shit. I fell back to the bed, hugging my arms around my body. God, I hurt. “Three, six . . .”
Kade’s eyes flashed with anger as he stalked toward me. “Get up!” he snarled as hauled me to the edge of the bed. “We’re leaving. Now.”
I fell in a heap to the floor, the pain radiating through me, too unbearable for me to stand. I reached out, hoping that Kade would help me, but he simply stared down at me with disdain. Tears blurred my vision and I took a deep breath in an effort to quell my shaking form. With as much strength as I could muster, I pushed myself up until I leaned on the bed. Was this how Adira had felt when Kade had forced himself on her? Had it been this agonizing for Anya when Kade had wanted her? How had they recovered when all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and die?
“Clothes,” I said as Kade scrambled around the room, looking for something. “I need my clothes.”
He smiled to himself though he appeared to not hear me. “You’ll go as you are,” he said as he rifled through drawers and cupboards.
“You’re a bastard.”
“Yes. I am. I need a better weapon than this shitty knife,” he complained as he continued to ransack my apartment. “Don’t you have—”
Before he could finish his sentence, an invisible force knocked him off his feet. The impact of his fall sent the knife across the room, and it skidded to a halt near the foot of my bed.
With amazing speed and dexterity, Kade jumped to his feet. I leaned forward, afraid to move without the support of the bed to hold me up, stretching my arm out as far as I could. I needed to get my hands on that knife before Kade did. He watched me from the corner of his eye, wary of whatever else in my apartment threatened him. A look of concentration flashed across his face, as if he were trying to grasp on to an idea, and in the next moment, he merged with the gray twilight becoming incorporeal just as I had done a thousand times. The shroud of gray light clung to Kade like a hazy mist, deceptive and impossible to penetrate just like the hours of twilight and dawn.
“You’re certainly not an ordinary Shaede,” Kade said triumphantly as he regained his corporeal form and scooped the knife up into his hand. “Not like Anya at all.” His smile grew sinister as his gaze raked down my body. “I’m going to like having you around.”
If the sun was yet to set, it couldn’t be another Shaede in the apartment with us. But who or what in the hell was it? All I could feel was the echo of my own stolen power as Kade’s mutated energy washed up against me like a mist of water blowing off the sea. Whereas my mind was getting clearer—I didn’t feel quite as drunk—I still didn’t think I had the strength to stand. Kade’s prolonged physical contact had drained me.
Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention, too fast and fleeting for me to focus or identify. Kade worked the knife in his palm, twirling it like a mini baton. He spun quickly around as if an attacker was at his back, and then another quarter turn to the side. “Are you a fucking coward?” he shouted at nothing. “Why not show yourself and fight me?”
Just as his physical contact affected me like a drug, the life-sustaining energy he stole from his victims obviously gave him a similar rush. And after an hour or so of unrelenting torture, he was flying high on whatever part of my essence he’d ripped from me. Eyes wide, his once elongated pupils had shrunk to tiny black pinpoints. But whereas I was physically spent and wracked with pain, he was strong, confident, and fucking wired.
Something shifted in the air, and through the second skin of Pamela’s glamour, I perceived the faintest change in the atmosphere. Night had fallen, the dusky gray outside my window darkening to navy. The pressure in the air changed, becoming dense as if an invisible force pressed upon me. Kade backed up a step and then another, having clearly inherited my ability to sense the presence of other supernatural creatures nearby. He shoved me behind him and said through gritted teeth, “Don’t utter even a single syllable, Evelena. If you do, I’ll make sure that your pain is never ending, do you understand me?”
I nodded, afraid that simply voicing my acquiescence would prompt him to punish me. My mind was clearer, and logically, I knew that what Kade had done to me was perverse and wrong and I didn’t need anything from him. Problem was, my body wasn’t buying it. The withdrawal raged through me, my body fighting for control over my mind as it tried to convince me that the only thing I needed was more of Kade’s touch. And so, I kept my fucking mouth shut.
Shadows formed at the far end of the apartment, seeming to drift from the elevator shaft to every dark corner of the vast studio space. One by one the shadows became solid as Raif, Julian, and Myles stepped from the darkness into their solid forms. Weapons at the ready, the three Shaedes spread out in the apartment forming a semicircle around me and Kade.
Raif. Jesus Christ, if there was one single soul on this earth that I could always count on it was him. And unfortunately, it was that same reliability that worried me now. What if he managed to take Kade out? My insides were on fire, my gut knotting and cramping terribly. Kade could make the pain go away, and if Raif killed him . . .
“I’ll give you the opportunity to surrender,” Raif said, his voice calm and ice cold. His eyes blazed with battle lust, and his expression promised violence. “But honestly, I’d prefer it if you put up a fight.”
Kade’s mouth curved in a charming, angelic smile. “I think I’ll start collecting trophies of Shaede kills,” he mused, twirling the throwing knife in his hand. “An ear or a finger. I wonder . . . what would happen to a severed ear after the sun sets? Do you have an opinion on that, Evelena?”
I tried to make my body small and unnoticeable as I shrunk behind him. My muscles cramped violently and I doubled over, biting back a sob. This was a test to see if I’d answer. I refused to speak. Couldn’t risk the consequences. All I wanted was for the pain to stop.
“Who’s the female?” Raif demanded.
“My mate,” Kade said and turned to stroke my cheek. That musky scent filled my lungs and I swayed on my feet. The pain drifted to the back of my mind, and I leaned into his touch only to have him pull away. “Let us leave in peace, and I’ll consider Anya’s debt to me paid. She and her unborn child will be safe.”
Raif’s eyes narrowed dangerously, and Myles and Julian exchanged a dubious glance. No doubt Kade thought to buy our freedom with Anya’s safety, and I half wished that Raif would take him up on his offer. No such luck. My mentor was more of a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type of guy. Well, make that stab-first. A glint of cold determination shone in his sapphire blue eyes and I knew that we weren’t going to get out of this alive.
We, because if Raif managed to kill Kade, I didn’t think I’d live through the effects of the withdrawal. Raif took a step forward, his sword drawn and ready. Kade gave an exaggerated sigh. “Don’t be stupid, friend. You don’t have a clue what you’re up against.”
The muscle in Raif’s jaw ticked. “You killed my friend. Mind the words that leave your mouth, Cambion, or I’ll cut out your tongue and feed it to you right before I disembowel you.”
Kade simply laughed. He held up his hands as if in surrender, and Raif took another step forward. Shadows slithered over Kade’s skin as he left his physical body behind and then regained his solid form. Raif stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth hanging slightly agape. A fleeting look of panic crossed his face and he asked Kade, “Where is Darian?”
“Darian?” Kade asked as if he hadn’t a clue who Raif was talking about. Then again, I wasn’t sure if he actually knew my name. He’d always just called me Trouble. And now, Evelena. “I don’t think I know the name. Evelena?” Kade asked without breaking eye contact with Raif. “Do you know anyone named Darian?”
My brain screamed at me to answer, to get Raif’s attention, and make him notice me. But I couldn’t force myself to speak. I was still too afraid of the pain and knew that only Kade
could make it stop. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Adira lent this apartment to my mate. We haven’t seen each other in a while. Sort of a honeymoon gift. Maybe she knows where this Darian is.”
Bastard! He’d thrown my own lies back in my face, taunting me openly. He was clearly enjoying himself, playing with Raif just to push his buttons. It would be hard for Raif to kill him now that he could leave his corporeal body behind. He didn’t have to play arrogant, Kade knew he had the upper hand. The brief physical contact we’d had was beginning to wear off, and another wave of painful cramps ripped through me. I opened my mouth to speak, to beg Raif to just let us go—
“You’re a lying sack of shit, Kade.” Another body joined the others in my apartment, shimmering into existence near the kitchen bar. “Adira didn’t lend you this apartment.” Tyler’s expression boiled with unchecked rage as he came to stand beside Raif.
“He can join with the shadows,” Raif said with obvious concern. “Tyler, she’s not here.”
It didn’t take a conversational wizard to know that Raif feared I was already dead. Or worse. He knew that Kade could borrow the abilities of any supernatural creature if he stole their life essence. Shame welled up within me, squeezing all of the air from my lungs. Raif knew just how Kade went about taking that energy from his victims, too. How would I ever be able to look him in the eye again?
Ty’s expression darkened as well, and the temperature in my apartment plummeted. “You son of a bitch,” he choked out. “Where is she?”
Crave the Darkness: A Shaede Assassin Novel Page 31
