by Pam Godwin
What did the landscape look like beyond the door? A sandy beach? A rolling field of silvery grass? Or the crumbling concrete of a fallen city?
Holding my hands to the steel, I rested my forehead on the inner gate and angled my gaze toward the nearest two hybrids. “Are we in Florida?”
One of them didn’t twitch—the normal reaction. The other hybrid clenched his fingers around the crossbow. He must’ve been a new guard on this post and wasn’t familiar with my heckling.
“How about Mexico?” I arched a brow.
Nothing.
I listed more warm locations, threw in the Nine Circles of Hell and Disney World, and was met with the usual silence.
“If you let me go…” I looked at the new guy. “I can give you power, wealth, and women.” I talked out of my ass, because none of my realistic offers ever worked. “Isn’t that what every man wants?”
Rigid and unyielding, the guards didn’t blink.
“Come on.” I stomped a foot dramatically. “You guys have no rhythm. Your combined personalities are that of a leech, living in a cold sunless void and feeding off a dead man. I can give you colonies of flesh to fuck and bite. Just open this door, and I’ll let you hang out with me. Who knows? My awesomeness might rub off on you.”
I swore I saw the bounce of a smile from the male in the back corner.
“See?” I pointed at him and returned my hand to the heat permeating the door. “That guy knows what I’m talking about.” I shifted my gaze to the new guard. “I don’t know your name.” I didn’t know any of their names. “But your fly is down.” It wasn’t. “Is that…are you wearing unicorn underwear?”
He didn’t glance down, didn’t even look at me. None of the guards did. Neither did the residents. In two months, no one had spoken to me or acknowledged me in any way. Salem’s message in the orgy room had been more than effective. It’d made me invisible.
Being invisible was really fucking lonely.
Maybe I should accept Salem’s offer to join him for dinner. Except the women would be there. I couldn’t be around them without seeing red. Not until I knew he was with me and no one else.
“I’ll give you a choice.” I scanned the guards, my voice echoing through the garage. “You can let me go and never hear from me again. Or you can stand there like slack-jawed meatslappers and listen to my tedious babbling and half-baked offers. I mean, I have all the time in the world to string together obnoxious insults loaded with truths. I can make this really painful for you.”
My fangs descended a fraction of a second before I sensed movement behind me. I turned, and my gaze crashed into glowing silver.
Salem stood ten feet away, arms relaxed at his sides, and a crooked smile on his lips. My blood hummed, heating my skin.
How long had he been here? On the opposite side the garage, the door to the stairway was closed. I would’ve heard it open. His guards hadn’t fluttered an eyelash at his approach. He must’ve been here before I arrived.
“You knew I’d come here.” I held one hand against the steel door, reluctant to let go of the sun’s warmth.
“You like to distract my guards.” He prowled toward me, bare chested with shorts hanging low on his narrow hips.
My pulse kicked up. “They’re really good conversationalists.”
He reached my side and studied me with a strange private smirk on his face.
“What?” I anchored a fist on my hip.
He shook his head, his smirk stretching into a wide grin.
“Tell me.” I reached out to tweak his nipple.
He caught my wrist and used it to angle me toward the huge door. Slipping behind me with his chest to my back, he gripped my other hand, raised our arms through the gate, and held our palms against the sun-warmed steel.
“I love your mouth.” His lips brushed my ear. “Your patronizing sarcasm.” He nibbled on my neck, sending a shiver to my toes. “I love your twisted little smile and the force of nature in your sunlit eyes. Don’t even get me started on your staggering beauty.” His fingers curled around mine against the door. “I love everything about you, Dawn of Eve.”
Sincerity rasped through his whispered words. His forehead lowered to my shoulder, his breath stroking tenuously. He was softening toward me, opening himself and giving me affection without pretense.
I pivoted in the cage of his arms, my hands rising to his chest, palms pressing against muscle that was stronger and hotter than the steel at my back. My legs felt unstable, and I swayed toward him, searching his eyes, uncertain.
“You love me?” I whispered.
His lips separated on a breath, and his strong fingers framed my face with startling tenderness.
An answering emotion swelled in me, deeply-rooted and powerfully moving. He was going to say it. His affirmation was right there on his beautiful lips.
His hands twitched against my cheeks. A shadow rolled over his eyes, dimming the glow and darkening his expression. No, no, no. What was happening?
The warmth of his touch vanished. The door to the stairs swung open, and he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Come on. You can press more weight than that.”
I seethed at the rasp of Salem’s voice, my arms shaking violently beneath a hundred-and-twenty-pound barbell.
“I’m benching more than I weigh, motherfucker.” I lay on my back, straining with agonizing effort to push the bar high enough to return it to the rack.
My muscles burned and trembled. I couldn’t…push…up… The last of my strength waned. My fingers lost purchase, and the bar tipped down.
Salem caught it in a flash of motion and set it easily on the steel supports with one hand, the fucking showoff.
With a ragged exhale, I collapsed on the bench beneath me, my arms dangling toward the concrete floor. The stench of my sweat permeated the workout room, the labored sound of my breaths stirring the stale air. The residents shared this huge space and all its fancy equipment, but right now, Salem and I had it to ourselves.
He stood above me, his face upside-down and hovering over mine. With a gentle finger, he caressed my cheek and tucked a wet strand of hair behind my ear.
“Beautiful.” His gaze was as bright as a summer sky as it kissed along my cotton-covered breasts, short shorts, and bare legs, before returning to my face. “Sometimes you make it so fucking hard to breathe.”
My own breath lodged in my throat.
It’d been three weeks since he’d left me speechless and floundering in the parking garage. Three weeks since I’d asked him about other women or demanded he let me bite him. I’d left that garage focused on one thing—his almost confession of love.
Every day since, I pushed and prodded and begged. Do you love me? Please, tell me. I need you to say it. His reaction was always the same—a longing look in his eyes, the declaration teetering on his lips, followed by complete and total shutdown.
I didn’t need to hear the words. I needed him to accept them.
As I stared up at him now, I saw the same intensity in his gaze that had been there the past few weeks. Hell, it’d been there all along, in the mansion, at the camp, and every moment we spent together in his utopia.
He loved me.
I’d let the cruelty of his betrayal cloud my understanding and make me believe otherwise. What I hadn’t stopped to consider was his true motivation. He’d captured me because he couldn’t kill me. Lied to me out of fear of losing me. Forced me sexually and publicly to protect me.
He’d pursued me with all the gracefulness of a devil, his morals that of a conquerer. But he loved me, in his own way, in his own words.
I want to fuck you, cherish you, and protect you for the rest of our lives.
His love was coarse and twisted, dark and reluctant, but it was real. I saw it in the adoring way he watched me. Heard it in the catch of his breath every time I met his eyes. Felt it in the unconscious strokes of his fingers in my hair. Tasted it in the self-giving sweetness of his kisses.<
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When he fled the garage that day, I realized he didn’t just love me. He loved me so much it terrified him.
I knew he’d never been in love before and had never received the love of another person, not even from his own mother. The fucked-up part was I had loved him and never said the words. Instead, I’d made countless attempts on his life. No wonder he shut down when I demanded he admit his feelings.
Love might’ve conquered all, but in his case, the notion was literal. It wouldn’t just conquer him. It might disintegrate him to ashes.
A burn ignited in my chest, as it always did when I thought of his death.
He knelt beside the top of the bench, his torso level with my head and his upside-down face inches from mine. His fingers found my hair, combing through the strands with aching affection.
I love you. Fuck, I just needed to say the words.
He lowered his mouth to mine, the brush of his lips patient and unassuming. This wasn’t a kiss that led to sex. It was his language of devotion. Each tender stroke of his tongue told me I was beautiful, cherished. The desperate intensity in his eyes said I was essential and loved.
I love you. I needed to say it and sound like I mean it, while not meaning it.
The soft glide of his fingers across my collar bones whispered a thousand apologies. His touch ghosted over my breasts, mourning emotional scars. He traced my ribs, silently promising his protection, worshiping me, loving me.
I love you. If I could fake it, it wasn’t real. If it wasn’t real, I wouldn’t have to choose.
Except I couldn’t fake it. I’d tried. Fuck, I’d tried every second of every day for months. Didn’t matter that his betrayal had tarnished our connection. My love for him had survived, burning as strong as ever at the core of our bond.
My heart was bruised, my trust beaten to hell, and if this were only sex between us, I’d take him into my body without thought or attachment. But it wasn’t.
His fingers feathered across my skin soothingly, humbly, and without pretension, and my blood sang. The breathing fundamental marrow of my soul was so deeply infused with his I was powerless against it.
“What are you going to do, Dawn?”
I locked onto his gaze, my voice shivering. “What?”
“Are you going to love me without conditions? Or kill me to save humanity? You can’t do both.”
Every muscle in my body stiffened. It was always going to come down to this. A choice between him and the future of mankind. How could the prophecy be so cruel? It’d stolen my mother and devastated my fathers. How many more people needed to be sacrificed?
I had to believe there was another way. If Salem would just let go of his fear and offer his vein, I could beckon the living venom in his blood. I knew implicitly that my fangs were meant to extract it and sever the links. I could do it slowly, cautiously. I would stop if it hurt him. He didn’t have to die.
“You have my heart.” I sat up and stared into his eyes with conviction. “If you give me yours, I won’t destroy it. I’ll be careful.”
“Do you know how fucked up that sounds?” He rose and paced across the room, shoving his hands through his hair. “You have no evidence, no scientific proof—”
“We have no evidence or proof that my bite would kill you.” I stood, shoulders back, voice strong. “We have to try.”
Devastation contorted his expression. He didn’t want to tell me no. I saw it in his liquid gaze, his need to give me what I wanted warring with his fear of the consequences. I knew he was thinking of Kip’s combustion beneath my bite. I wasn’t just asking Salem to risk his life. I was asking him to risk the lives of every hybrid beneath his roof. According to the prophecy, I would end them all.
But this time, he didn’t say no.
I inched toward him with cautious steps, my pulse hammering from the wretched conflict in his gaze. I ached to soothe him and quickened my gait, reaching with hands sliding up his bare chest.
A purr vibrated in his throat, and his arms encircled me, pulling me to him with his lips on my forehead. “What are you doing to me?”
I caressed his sculpted chest and bulging shoulders. He allured me with his beauty and tantalized me with his ferocious personality. But it was this, the exquisite way we gravitated toward each other, that made me weak in his presence.
The more I touched him, the quicker his breaths came. His head lowered, brushing his cheek along mine, and lower still, until his throat hovered a bite away.
My gums ached, pulsing a throb through my teeth. He’d bared his throat, every sinew in his neck straining taut. Was he offering or teasing?
Heart pounding, I clutched his shoulders and leaned in. My fangs scraped his skin, and his body went utterly still. I was at the precipice of decision, waiting for him to make the next move. Would he flash out of the room or press closer against me?
He twitched ever-so slightly, just enough for my fangs to dent his throat without breaking skin. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
Then I felt it, the moment the silence went from hopeful to despondent. His muscles tightened, and his entire demeanor blackened, shutting down. Warmth fled from his body, and in the next blink, the only thing I held was cold empty air.
I stared at the swinging door and the vacant hall beyond. Salem was long gone and had taken my heart with him. But I had his. I rubbed my breastbone. The connection between us was overly-sensitive, but it was also persistent and unbreakable. He could run to the other side of the world, and he wouldn’t be able to escape the raw emotion that melded us together.
I returned to our bedroom and didn’t see him again until that night when he delivered my dinner.
“Come to the dining hall with me.” He lingered in the doorway.
A pillar of power encased in black leather, he owned the very air that surrounded him. But his expression was guarded, his eyes looking everywhere but at me.
My hesitation made his jaw flex, and he left without my answer, shutting the door and vanishing my fangs.
Could I blame him? I wore a ratty sleep shirt with no intention of leaving the room. Turning away from the door, I stared at the spread of food he’d brought. The meat probably smelled delicious, but the only thing I smelled was the stench of my weakness.
I wanted him to overpower his fears and risk his life, yet I couldn’t even face a room of women he’d fucked. Not fucked? Was still fucking? Images of him thrusting inside Macaria twisted my stomach. I needed to grow up and let go of my jealousy. He loved me, and we wouldn’t move past this deadlock unless we both made an effort.
An hour later, I waffled and stalled in front of the full-length mirror in the en-suite bathroom. A black lace corset cinched my waist and pushed my breasts up and out in fleshy mounds. The satin skirt gathered up in multiple places, creating billowing drapes that swished with my steps. The seductively high-low hemline looked like a miniskirt in front that ruffled to a floor-length back.
When the seamstresses in Canada had given me this outfit, I’d balked. I had no use for fancy shit. But somehow, it’d made its way into my pack and into Salem’s room. I suspected he had something to do with that.
I pulled my knee-high boots over bare legs. A few sweeps of my fingers fluffed the waves of red hair that fell over my shoulders and curled around my ribs. I pinched my cheeks and dabbed beet juice on my lips for a splash of color.
When I stepped back and took in my reflection, my breath caught. I looked different. Good different. Borderline hot. Maybe hot enough to prompt Salem to whip me out of that hall of horrors and back to the bedroom, where this painful corset would be shredded beyond repair.
I was scared to go in there, but I needed to do this. I wanted to and not for the reasons that should be driving the daughter of Eve. This should be a calculating mission, but it wasn’t. It was just me, longing to put a smile on his face, aching to make him happy.
A deep breath lifted my breasts to my chin and shot a twinge of pain through my ribs. Sweet hell. No more breathing
.
I walked stiffly down the corridor toward the central hub. The orgy room came into view first, the air vibrating with music and thick with the scent of blood and sex. Hybrids flowed out of the dining room, laughing and smoking and corralling the outnumbered females. The women smiled and flirted back. Two of them were human. No sign of Macaria.
Salem wasn’t among them, confirmed by the absence of my fangs. I continued into the dining area. No one looked at me directly, but I felt the scorch of their gazes on my back. My skin prickled, and my stomach fluttered with nerves as I wove around the tables, searching faces for the only one I cared to see.
Why hadn’t my fangs lengthened? Where the fuck was he? I would’ve passed him if he’d returned to the room.
I swept over the space again, and panic rose. My palms grew clammy.
Erebus sat at a corner table, his blond head standing out above the others he ate with. He didn’t look my way, but I sensed him watching.
I strode over to him, scanning every hybrid in the room. “Where’s Salem?”
He didn’t acknowledge me. No one twitched an eyebrow in my direction.
Salem wasn’t here, and neither was Macaria.
Denial straightened my spine. He was a liar, but he loved me. That couldn’t be faked. He wouldn’t betray me.
He already did!
But not like this. Not with another woman.
He never said he was monogamous.
The barbed hooks of doubt rooted into my heart.
I backed away from the table, lungs heaving, hands trembling. Dread knotted so viciously in my gut every breath was an agonizing stab of pain.
The room carried on with a din of merriment, every male and female eating and conversing as if I didn’t exist. I clutched the medallion against my bodice and walked out on unsteady legs, swiping my tongue over my teeth and urging my fangs to appear.
Despite the ball of fire in my throat, I held my chin high, passed through the orgy room, and into a hall I’d only entered a couple times. My fangs remained absent, and my blood burned hotter. The instant I slipped out of view, my composure crumbled. My face pinched painfully, my breaths wheezed, and my legs hurtled me forward.
