Captive Heart

by Anna Windsor

  “You’re mine.” His voice sounded like a harsh rumble to his own ears, but he didn’t care. “I want you now. I want you always. This almost-getting-killed shit, it has to stop.”

  Andy didn’t argue with him.

  Jack’s senses stayed on high, his arousal like a force of nature. When she looked him in the eyes, he could see it. Yes. She’d be his. She’d give herself up, keep giving herself up, open herself to him in every way he demanded, every way he dreamed—

  Don’t screw this up.

  Jack pinched her nipples again and she lost her mind, arching her hips and rubbing her sex against him. Too much. He almost lost it, but bit his lip hard to keep himself under control. Each brush of her heat against his cock sent shocks through his body. Each moan drove him that much closer to the edge.

  His.

  This was how life was supposed to turn out. This was his future now: her body, her essence, her pleasure fueling his. No lines, no boundaries. No point where he stopped and she began.

  Andy raised her hands to his hips and dug her nails into his waist. Then, fast as a flash, she slipped those fingers forward and caught him in a tight grip, pressing him down against her soft hairs and belly. Before Jack could form a rational thought, she stroked him from tip to balls and back again, and then he didn’t have a rational thought to form.

  He groaned. “You drive me out of my mind.”

  Gazing up at him, keeping her eyes locked on his, Andy caressed him another time, then another. Jack’s head snapped back, and he heard himself say her name.

  “You’re mine, too, Jack.” The squeeze she gave his hard shaft melted what was left of his brain. “Don’t forget that.”

  She felt like silky heat beneath him. So soft. So good. She gripped him at the base and pulled her hand along his pulsing length.

  “I want you inside me,” she said. “I don’t want to wait any longer.”

  Jack couldn’t speak. He answered her by moving faster and rougher than he intended. He stretched himself on top of her, holding himself just high enough to spare her his weight. His lips crushed hers as he pushed her legs apart. Too hard. Too strong. She didn’t seem to care. She kissed him back like she was starving, and when the tip of his cock rubbed against her swollen folds, he couldn’t wait.

  So ready. So open for him. She really did make him crazy.

  “I want you, Jack,” Andy whispered. “I want to be yours.”

  Jack drove himself inside her, and she took him deep, wrapping her legs around him like she was staking her own claim.

  “You feel perfect,” he told her, his chest tight, every nerve he possessed waiting to fire as he sank deeper, deeper into her warm depths.

  “More.” She moaned again and he gave her more, moving himself in and out of her tight center, trying to stay slow, but going too fast, then faster as she rose to meet him.

  When he looked at her, her eyes were still open and that doubled the force of his thrusts. Her lips stayed parted as he pumped harder, faster, deeper, wanting her to scream, to go as crazy as he felt. Her nipples scrubbed his chest, and Jack felt their sweat mingle as they slid together. Vanilla and ocean and sex, too, ripe in the air.

  When Jack kissed Andy, she gripped him tighter, drove him harder. When he let her breathe, she moaned until the sound made his body vibrate.

  Hold on. Wait. Give her more.

  “Beautiful.” He pushed her, stretched her, shoving them both toward that just-right mix of pain and ecstasy.

  Andy screamed, just like he wanted to hear. Her channel clenched around his cock, forcing him over the top with her as she drained her feelings, her emotions, her pleasure into the wild sound Jack craved almost as much as he craved her. He couldn’t stop moving and neither could she. Her nails stung his back as she held on, and he rocked her, rocked her, until she went limp in his grip, until he had nothing left and she pulled him down on top of her and held him there.

  Jack didn’t want to fall asleep. He didn’t want to take his eyes off Andy for a second, but as he rolled to his side and held her, her easy breathing took him with her all over again. Seconds later, darkness claimed him, and he slept with only bits and pieces of dreams he couldn’t remember.

  Sunlight nudged Jack’s eyelids, and when he woke, he instantly knew Andy wasn’t with him. He sat up fast, threw off the sheets, and got to his feet, grabbing his jeans and stepping into them before he processed that she was sitting in the leather chair again.

  “Sorry,” she said. She stretched, and he realized she had on nothing but one of his white T-shirts. It fit her like a dress—and she looked too sexy for words. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You … okay?” But he knew she wasn’t. He fished through everything he’d said to her before and during their lovemaking, trying to be sure he hadn’t crossed any lines.

  Andy let out a sigh. “Yes and no. I dreamed about dark water. A quiet place in the sea or some ocean I’ve never been to. Makes no sense, but it felt important. And that’s the story of my life right now. I can’t stop sensing things and I can’t stop thinking and I can’t seem to get anything sorted out.”

  Ah. Jack’s muscles relaxed a little. He knew what that felt like—not the sensing weird stuff, but the rest of it. Which helped him find a clue about what to do next.

  When he got over to the chair, Andy stood. She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him slowly, lingering over his lips and tongue like he tasted better than the coffee and breakfast he’d been about to offer her.

  Jack decided to hold her for a few minutes before he suggested they leave their little sanctuary in his bedroom, and as he rubbed her shoulders and back, she sighed again.

  “Something inside me—I knew we shouldn’t have raided that warehouse, but I didn’t know why.” She pulled back, staring into his face with no accusations or I-told-you-so’s. This wasn’t about who had been right and who had been wrong. “The raid itself didn’t seem like a problem, just—I don’t know. The direction. The peripherals? It worked out okay, but I think that was because luck intervened, or God or the Goddess or whoever takes care of total idiots who don’t know how to use their own instincts, or help other people understand them.”

  “I’m sorry I pushed that plan.” Jack frowned as he smoothed her hair, once more stinging inside from the idea that Andy almost got dead from factors he hadn’t anticipated. “The Coven could have ambushed you. The Host could have cooked you and left you for dead, and it would have been my fault.”

  Her eyes glistened immediately, and her chin drooped as she closed her eyes. “No. It would have been mine. That’s the problem.”

  Jack pulled her into his arms again, then sat and eased her into his lap, cradling her and letting her cry, her face pressed into his shoulder, her fingers trailing along his chest and opposite arm.

  When her shaking eased, he moved until he could see her face and run his thumb across her cheek and chin. “Put it into words if you can, sweetheart, because I’m not following how any of that was your responsibility. You tried to talk us out of it nonstop.”

  “Tried, but failed.” Her shoulders flexed as she balled her fists. “I’m supposed to pay attention to flow, to understand how to make sense of my instincts and use them for the health of my fighting group, and I think for the health of our missions and purposes, too. And I don’t know how.” She thumped her fist against his bare chest once. “I’m not sure about what I’m sensing. I’m not confident about it, and half the time I can’t even tell what’s my bull-headedness and what’s my gut, you know?”

  “You’re expecting too much of yourself. You haven’t been doing this Sibyl stuff since you were born.”

  More tears pooled in the corner of her eyes. “Is that going to matter when I get somebody killed?”

  “The bad guys do the killing, not you.” Jack brushed away her tears. “Even with all your instincts, you can’t see the future any more than I can. Any more than I could in New Jersey, when I whacked my old man and lost Mo
m and my sister forever—or talked you into the raid that almost got you killed.” His own words punched him in the guts. Truth was truth, but—yeah. Damn. “Sometimes you just have to take your best shot. Try to do the right thing and hope for the best.”

  Andy kissed his fingertips as they slipped across her lips. “What you did in New Jersey was right. I don’t have any doubts. And now I’m pretty sure the raid itself was right. That wasn’t the problem. If I’d been tuned in enough to this flow crap, I might have been able to pinpoint the trouble spots and been more prepared.”

  “Maybe we should just listen to your gut from now on. Period.”

  “And if we do that, how do I get you to back off and let me do what I have to do?” Her eyes glistened, stabbing at his insides.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to lose you.” He touched her lips again. “I can’t let that happen.”

  This time she bit his thumb when her pressed it to her mouth. When she turned him loose, she said, “Then we may have a few problems.”

  “Enough.” He did his best to smile at her and keep his worries to himself. “Seems to me the next steps are straightforward enough.”

  Her eyes shined at him again, but this time the right way. The happier way. “I’m listening.”

  “Breakfast. Coffee. Lots of it. Then we’ll look at whatever intel’s come in about the three buildings Junior coughed up in your interview last night. What does your gut say about that?”

  He took a little risk and pulled her closer. Definitely better shining in those pretty eyes now. He liked that. A lot.

  “I think we need to scour those buildings,” she said, “top to bottom.”

  “See?” He kissed her quick and lived through it. “Not so hard for us to agree.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll be hard to do breakfast. It’s already, like, five in the evening on Kérkira. I’ve missed morning and noon training classes. If I miss evening, too, Elana will kill me.”

  Jack kissed her again even as she pulled away. “What a life you live,” he called after her as she headed out of his bedroom, aiming for the townhouse’s communications room.

  “Oh, yeah,” she yelled back, her sweet voice echoing down the hall. “I’m a real globetrotter.”

  The whistling came next, that old basketball theme, “Sweet Georgia Brown.”

  All Jack could do was listen and laugh.

  Rebecca blinked in the early-morning sunlight, immediately estimating the time to be between 6:30 and 7:00 A.M., as New York City measured its passage. She was growing ever more accurate with figuring time, and with estimating and predicting other natural occurrences and forces like outbursts of dangerous weather, how much it might rain on a given day, and how many sparrows had hidden themselves along a leafy branch in Central Park.

  She had no idea why she could do those things, but the skill was proving useful. For example, somehow she knew her brother would wake in the next handful of minutes, and he’d go immediately to her quarters to check on her. For “safety,” of course. Because he “cared.”

  It would be safer if he found her where he expected her to be, at least for now.

  Despite her great care to slip quietly from the man’s bed, Donovan Craig woke with a start. His big hand shot out and captured her wrist, squeezing the delicate bones just hard enough to make her gasp with pain.

  “Sorry,” he murmured, thick beard twitching around his lips as he turned her loose. He sat up, giving her a full, delicious view of his scarred and muscled chest. His usually gruff voice sounded chagrined as he said, “Didn’t mean to grab you like that. You startled me.”

  Rebecca shrugged and massaged her wrist, drinking in the pain. Then she pulled on her clothing, enjoying the big man’s look of disappointment. She liked him best of all the Coven. He had decorated his earthy-smelling private cell with stone crosses, intricate metal knot sculptures, and colorful prints from his home country. The sight of those crosses and knots and pictures gave her strange comfort, as did his Irish accent. His wild, passionate lovemaking fed her need for energy in ways she hadn’t thought possible, save for standing near death and letting the darkness take over her senses. She felt renewed and strong from their night together and pleased by the flickers of adoration in his gaze.

  “I have to go back to my room.” She allowed herself to pull in the energy of Craig’s lust for her, thrilled yet again that she had discovered so many new ways to meet her need to absorb energy from other creatures. Death and torture, after all, could be messy and inconvenient. Sex always seemed to be possible and readily accessible.

  “Don’t worry about your brother.” Craig’s voice became a possessive growl. “I won’t be lettin’ him cage you or chain you like he did before.”

  None of the Coven would stand for that, Rebecca was fairly certain. She gave Craig a grateful smile anyway, as she had come to learn some of what men needed. She wasn’t a child and hadn’t been for many years, no matter what her brother thought.

  “Griffen’s not what he once was,” Craig added, pulling Rebecca back toward the bed and treating her to another burst of hot, satisfying lust.

  “He’s obsessed with vengeance.” She kissed Craig’s rough mane of hair. “He’ll find his way out of that dark forest soon enough.”

  Craig let her go. “Before he destroys everything we’re building? If I don’t miss my guess, you’re far more powerful than he ever was. Am I wrong?”

  Rebecca studied the man’s dark eyes and considered his question, then gave him an honest answer. “I don’t know.”

  “You are. I can see it. Everyone can, except Griffen. Whatever blood you’ve got running in you, it’s stronger than all the concoctions he’s mixing.”

  Rebecca bent down and kissed Craig’s whiskery mouth. He wasn’t the first man she had been attracted to in the Coven or elsewhere, but he was the first of Griffen’s group she had allowed to touch her. A good choice. A strong choice. If her brother did force her to act to bring him under control, Craig would be both powerful and loyal in the fight.

  “I have to go,” she told him again as she separated her body from his. He didn’t argue as she let herself out of his cell, but she had figured he wouldn’t. Craig wasn’t ready for outright conflict with Griffen, either. Rebecca didn’t know why they were both avoiding that course of action, but she had a sense it was the right choice, at least for the moment.

  She blended into the shadows still lingering in the warehouse, padding back to her room so quietly she didn’t disturb the mice and cockroaches she sensed scuttling behind the old, damaged walls. They kept to their own paths, and she resisted the urge to take energy from them. It wasn’t necessary. She was full for the moment, brimming over, after her time with Craig.

  Keeping her movements quiet and economical, she covered the last few feet to her own cell and let herself in without a single noise.

  The hulking figure of Seneca waited on the single chair in her room. He lifted his monstrous head and studied her with his flat, glittering eyes. Rakshasa-like claws and fur tufts extended, he smelled like ammonia and death—but the air of despair that had clung to him until she convinced her brother to release him from his barred prison had dissipated.

  Rebecca moved immediately to a small, covered cage she kept at the foot of her bed. She worked the elemental lock that had been keyed to her energy, reached into the darkness inside, and snatched the larger of two field rats she had stored within the bars a few nights ago. Without comment or recrimination, she carried the writhing, snarling creature to Seneca, and he took it from her with an almost dignified gratitude.

  Before he could begin twisting and breaking the rat’s limbs, Rebecca backed away from him and sat on the edge of her bed. She didn’t need this energy. Seneca could have it all, and she knew he appreciated her generosity, her understanding—and her silence until he finished torturing the creature to death. When he had taken from the rat every bit of pain and terror the animal had to offer, Seneca quickly and quietly consumed the carcass
, dusting away his mess until not even a hair remained.

  He folded his hands in his lap, and Rebecca saw the claws on his gnarled hands retract. “You take chances with your brother’s temper,” he said in a low voice as, down the hall, Griffen’s door banged open.

  Rebecca glanced at her own door, waiting for Griffen’s entrance but feeling nothing. “I’m not afraid of him now.”

  Seneca grunted, giving away his trepidation. “Why?”

  “Because his men are becoming my men, and you’re my friend.” Rebecca didn’t smile at Seneca because he didn’t need tokens from her. He only needed rats and rabbits and squirrels—and her respect.

  He grunted again. “I have no friends.”

  Griffen opened Rebecca’s door, and she noted that his jeans and black hooded sweatshirt needed a wash. He could use a wash, too, with his greasy blond hair and food-flecked chin. Her brother had begun to slip in ways she hadn’t expected, but she still didn’t fear him. Perhaps she was being careless, but she didn’t think so.

  Griffen’s cold blue eyes shifted to Seneca for a second, then flicked back to Rebecca. “You really have done a great job with him. He’s so much more useful and controllable now.”

  Rebecca tensed at the way her brother spoke about Seneca, as if he wasn’t even in the room. To spare the monster his dignity, she got to her feet and moved out of the room, knowing that her brother wouldn’t try to stop her, that he’d follow her—so she led him where she wanted him to be. Downstairs, to the center of the training floor, where most of the Coven was assembling to work with Griffen’s genetically enhanced fighters. In the farthest area of the room, Craig made an appearance, leading two of the fighters with him and making a good effort to keep his greedy eyes off Rebecca.

  Keeping each gesture casual, Rebecca greeted some of the men, then turned back to Griffen, who was trotting along behind her like a dog. “Do you have a plan to capture one of the creatures we ran into in that basement the night the Sibyls raided that stock operation? The winged things who seemed to be made of shadows. I think they were fascinating.”