by SM Reine
I couldn’t do it.
The coven closed around Rage and Donne again, cutting him off from my view. All I could see was a wall of backs. Graham had the coven’s entire attention—which meant that nobody was looking at me.
It was my chance to escape.
I jumped off of the bus and scurried inside the stadium, leaving The Hierophant where I had been sitting. The crew didn’t even glance at me when I rushed through the hallway. Desdemona’s dress was great camouflage. I could have been any of a million fans.
Walking quickly with so many layers of lacy skirts was difficult, though. I had to hike them up to give my feet clearance to move quickly without tripping.
Music was already pounding inside the stadium, piped over the speakers to get everyone jazzed for the concert.
It got me jazzed, too.
I was almost free. I had almost escaped.
There was another hallway on the opposite end of the backstage area that looked like it would lead to the audience. It was blocked by a pair of bouncers facing away from me. They were meant to keep people out, not block people in.
My pace increased.
Chad wasn’t far. I’d be able to track him down, get in his car, and head back to OSU before anyone realized I had gone missing.
And then hands clamped down on my shoulders, stopping me halfway down the hallway to freedom.
“Where are you going?”
Donne had found me.
XII
I couldn’t bring myself to answer Donne’s question. I couldn’t even face him. The idea that he would know I had been trying to escape made me feel sick all over.
He jerked me around with surprising roughness, fury brightening his eyes.
“Answer me,” Donne snapped.
I shook my head.
He growled with frustration. “You said you believed.”
“I do, but—”
He jerked me off of my feet. Tossed me over his shoulder.
The world flipped upside down.
“Donne!”
He slapped my thigh with an open palm. “Quiet, woman. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Hey! Put me down!” All the blood was rushing to my head. I thought I might pass out on his shoulder, which was all the more terrifying. Who knew when I would wake up again? For all I knew, he’d shove me onto the bus, drag me back to Rage’s mansion, and lock me up forever.
But I was helpless to escape him as he hauled me backstage again. Donne behaved like I weighed nothing. I couldn’t see where we were going, but I did catch several crewmembers laughing.
They thought we were messing around. Or maybe they just didn’t care if he abducted me.
Either way, nobody there was going to help.
Nobody except Graham.
The older werewolf came limping out of the darkness. He was a little too slow to catch up with us, so he shouted at his son instead. “Donne! What are you doing?”
Donne rounded on him. “I told you to lie down in the dressing room.”
From my perspective over his shoulder, I could only see a sliver of Graham’s face. His skin was ashen, eyes hollow. I was amazed that he could stand up in his condition. “Leah doesn’t deserve this.”
“She was trying to escape!”
“So let her go. She’s not your property—nor mine.”
“You need her,” Donne said. “And I’m going to repay you, whatever it takes. If that means making her hate me…”
“What she has isn’t ours to take,” Graham said. “It needs to be freely given.”
“Lie the fuck down and leave me alone. You’re sick.” Donne sounded so mean that I flinched. But then a tendril of kindness threaded through his words. “Remember to drink Ravyn’s tea.”
“I can’t let you detain her.”
“You can’t stop me,” Donne said.
He whirled away from his father and stormed off. I lifted my head enough to see Graham’s dismay—and the moment he decided to limp off in the opposite direction. Hopefully to get someone to save me.
I thrashed against Donne with renewed strength.
The opening act started playing on stage, and it was suddenly very loud. Guitar and drums roared backstage, drowning out my protestations. “You can’t do this to me, Donne—”
The rest of my rant was cut off by being dropped unceremoniously on an amp that wasn’t in use.
We were in some dark corner backstage where equipment was being kept, surrounded by a tangle of cables and a ring of amps. They must have been reserved for The Forbidden’s set. None of them were making any noise, but it was still ridiculously loud in the storage room.
“You need to save my father,” Donne said. It almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than me.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said. “I mean, okay, I’ll concede that there’s magic. There’s werewolves. I get that now. Maybe there’s even a little bit of magic in me. But…that’s not mine, I don’t know what to do with it, and I can’t help you.”
Donne’s glare made me feel like I was going to shrivel away into nothingness. “You can’t give up.”
“It’s not giving up. It’s being realistic.”
“Rage told me what he saw. Are you going to deny that?”
No, it would have been impossible to deny that my skin had lit up like one of those inflatable Christmas lawn decorations. I hadn’t been drinking any of Ravyn’s crazy mixes, so there was no chance I’d hallucinated it, unfortunately.
“It just doesn’t mean what you think it means, Donne.”
“What makes you think that? How do you know?” he pressed. “Is it so hard to believe that you could be powerful? A savior? Someone important?”
My eyes stung with unexpected tears. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” One of his hands came up to encircle my throat, scraping his fingertips on my collarbone. “We need you, Leah.”
The raw hunger in his voice was too much for me.
“I heard someone tried to pull a runner.” Rage joined us, carrying his guitar by the neck—a black instrument that looked like a jagged teardrop. He set it atop one of the nearby amps and took a swig of the drink in his other hand. “And I heard you stopped her.”
Tension rippled from the square line of Donne’s jaw down his arms, almost like he was going to transform into a werewolf again. “She was trying to get past the bouncers.”
Rage turned to me. “Who’s waiting for you? I can’t imagine you were planning on taking a cab all the way back to Oregon, so you must have another escape plan.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“When I found her at the last venue, she was with a friend,” Donne’s hands clenched into fists. “Some guy.”
“He’s gay. It’s not like that,” I said.
That didn’t do anything for Donne’s temper. It was like he’d gone beyond rationality into this intensely jealous place where he couldn’t stand the idea of anyone remotely male approaching me.
Which he quickly demonstrated by growling at Rage, who had been trying to approach the amp.
Rage stopped walking at the sound of Donne’s snarl. “What’s your problem?”
“The urge,” Donne said. I thought he was trying to keep me from hearing him, because he spoke in a ragged whisper. “I want to take her.”
“Fuck. Tonight? But I told you to be careful!”
Donne raked his hands over his scalp. He was barely under control. “It’s not my fault. I didn’t mate with her.”
Rage rubbed his jaw as he paced, looking thoughtful.
“How bad is it?”
“Bad,” Donne whispered.
“You’ve made your choice. You’re going to mate with her sooner or later—probably sooner.”
Anger seized Donne. “I would never—”
“Or you can put some space between you right now, let me take care of it. See if we can make her smell less delicious so that she’s safe for Graham.”
D
onne growled and alarm raced through my veins. Rage and Donne might have been friends, but I knew that if Rage took so much as another step, he was going to get his throat ripped out.
“Careful,” I whispered.
Rage didn’t seem to hear. He only had eyes for Donne.
If a werewolf had been looking at me like that, he would have had my full attention, too.
“If there’s any chance that Graham’s going to get her, you’ve got to back off right now,” Rage said. “How can she save Dad if you won’t let other men near her? Think about it.” Mirth flashed over his face. “Think about it using the big brain.”
Donne’s eyes raked over my body, and I realized that my skirt had been pushed up when he’d shoved me onto the amp. I was exposed to mid-thigh.
His hand curved around my throat again. The touch of his skin was enough to make me forget completely about running away. I didn’t even care if Chad was looking for me.
The light pressure of his fingers was enough to take my breath away.
His nose traced the line behind my ear down to my chin, and then his teeth nipped my jaw. “Leah,” he said.
Liquid heat flooded my body.
“See? It’s too late,” Rage said. He’d drawn closer to us while we were distracted with each other. Donne tensed at the nearness of his voice. “You’re not going to be able to let her go if she keeps smelling like this.”
“I can,” he said. “I will.”
“It’s not that simple. We don’t control these things.”
“Control what?” I asked.
Rage gave me a warning look, as though to tell me to be quiet, but it was too late. Donne turned on me again.
There was a little more humanity in his eyes now, battling against the beast within that hadn’t been tamed by the full moon. “I promised to protect you,” Donne said. “From me and from yourself. You can’t run. But if I leave her, she’ll try to escape again.” That last part was directed at Rage.
The lead singer studied me over Donne’s shoulder. “Yeah. She will, won’t she?”
I wasn’t going to promise that I wouldn’t try to reach Chad. That would have been a lie.
Donne’s hand wrapped tightly around my wrist, pushing me against the wall. His lips roved over my shoulder. “But I can’t stay here when you smell like this.”
“And I’ve got to get on stage in a few minutes,” Rage said. “Looks like we’ll have to tie her up, won’t we? Did you bring the chains?”
Donne swore under his breath. “I left them in the car. I didn’t think I’d have to restrain anyone tonight.”
“Even Graham?”
“He’s not going to change again!”
“All right. Fine.” Rage gathered amp cables off of the floor and tossed them to Donne. “Get creative.”
The werewolf stepped behind me. I tried to escape, but he jerked my wrists back, forcing both hands together.
Even my blind trust of Donne wasn’t enough to put up with this. “This is illegal. It’s imprisonment.”
Donne lowered his nose to my shoulder and inhaled. “It’s arousing you.”
“No, it’s definitely not.” Probably the most obvious lie I had ever told. Dampness pooled at the juncture of my thighs. Apparently, I was starting to confuse “situations that should scare me” with “situations that make me hornier than Chad watching a Jensen Ackles movie.”
He cinched the cords around my wrists.
“But Donne,” I protested.
“You are safest like this,” he said, like he’d been reading my thoughts.
He ran his nose from my neck down to my chest and belly, then dropped to his knees between my legs. His stubble tickled my thigh. He inhaled deeply.
Donne was smelling me.
“Oh my goodness.” It came out of me in a pained whisper.
“Donne,” Rage said warningly.
“Her scent. I can’t—”
“Get out of here. Go.”
Donne’s fingers dug into my thighs as he glared at Rage. “Why? So you can have her?”
“So I can make that scent go away,” Rage said.
“What do you mean? Someone needs to tell me what’s going on.” I squirmed my wrists within the bindings of the amp cables, trying to loosen the knots.
Donne ripped away, flipping one of the bigger amps onto its side. It slammed into the floor with a bang.
“Fuck. Do it,” Donne said.
Rage stepped up where Donne had been. He cupped my cheeks in his hands. It was a friendly gesture, not a romantic one—like we’d been best friends for years. “Kitten—Leah—you’re going to have to trust us.”
“No,” I said.
“Too bad.” Rage’s hands pressed me to the top of the amp. His grip on my hips didn’t hurt, but it was unrelenting.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from his chest and all of its elaborate tattoos. There was more detail to them than I’d thought. I never would have imagined that an artist could have managed to get so much texture in the marks.
Maybe they were magic.
With a hard twist of my wrist, the amp cables loosened.
Donne was on me in a flash. He climbed onto the amp behind me and worked fast, yanking the cables tight around my wrists.
“Don’t make me chase you again,” he growled. He was breathing hard on my neck. His hands skimmed up my back, over my shoulders, down my chest.
My eyelids fluttered when his fingertips brushed my breasts.
“Oh my goodness,” I breathed.
Rage gave a warning look at the man over my shoulder. “You can’t. You know you can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked. It wasn’t hard to guess what he had in mind judging by the way he skimmed the lacy neckline. It felt so wanton, but darn it, I wanted Donne to do exactly what he was thinking.
My head dropped back on his shoulder, spine arching to make it easier for him to expose my breasts.
“She’s aroused,” Donne growled. “That smell. I can’t—”
Rage interrupted him. “You have to.”
But now Donne’s mouth was moving over my shoulder, all warm lips and stubble. I twisted into him. Rubbed my cheek against his. My whole body yearned for Donne, and I would have ripped my own darn clothes off if my hands had been free.
His teeth sank gently into the flesh on the side of my neck. I groaned.
Rage grabbed my knees and jerked me further forward on the amp, almost until I slipped off. But that wasn’t his intent at all. He’d pulled my hips flush against his so that I could feel the hard ridge of braiding on his leather pants against my panties.
He pulled me in for a hard kiss, and I was so shocked by it that I responded on instinct, tipping my head back against Donne’s shoulder. Rage tasted like liquor and smoke. It was both offensive and sensual, as thrilling as his music.
They wanted me to trust them. How could I trust two men who happily took charge of my body like this? Pinned between Donne and Rage, such powerful forces of nature, I was helpless.
I felt like I was going to get ripped apart by the combined strength of their magnetic pulls.
Rage’s fingers slipped between my legs, crawling to my panties, rubbing my hot core through the cloth. I gasped.
A hand flashed over my shoulder and seized Rage’s wrist. I thought I heard bones pop.
“I’ll kill you, Bartholomew,” Donne said.
Bartholomew? My confusion almost killed the mood completely.
Then I realized he was talking to Rage. That was his real name. Not Rage, but freaking Bartholomew.
I giggled. Donne’s teeth against my throat cut that off almost just as quickly.
“Kill me and take the girl, and you’ll kill Graham too,” Rage said in a soft, dangerous undertone. His fingers were still pressed to me, held in place by Donne’s hand.
For a breathless moment, neither of them moved. I really thought that they were about to get in another fight with me trapped in the middle.
But Donne finally release
d Rage’s wrist.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“Donne’s a werewolf, Kitten, and he’s attuned to the scent of witches like you. The hornier you are, the more unsatisfied, the wilder he’s going to go trying to mate with you.” The way he said “mate” made it clear he didn’t just mean sex. It was something else entirely—something far more exciting.
I wanted to mate with Donne. I didn’t fully understand what that meant, but it sounded right to me.
“And we can’t do that?” I asked.
“Mating is a lifetime commitment. One that you need to make with Graham.” Rage dug his fingers into my hips. His anger flared, almost choking me. “If Donne mates with you first, then Graham will die.”
The idea of mating with Graham was gross. Not that he was gross—just that he was kind of old. And I was much more interested in someone else.
“So I can’t be horny or Donne can’t resist me,” I said, utterly thankful that my mother was on the other side of the country where she would never know what the heck was happening to me. “Okay. Are there, um, cold showers here? Maybe I could—”
“Sit back and let me satisfy you,” Rage said. “It’s that simple.” Nothing seemed simple when I had Donne on the brink of losing control behind me. “I won’t fuck you, Kitten. I promise you that. If I let Donne work you over, though…” Rage pulled one of my legs around his hip. “All bets are off.”
I didn’t get a chance to argue. Rage ground his hips against me, pushing his erection hard between my legs. There was a pair of panties and leather trousers between us, but neither of them seemed to create any real barrier.
His erection rubbed against my damp core, and it was good.
Leave it to a rock star to have a great sense of rhythm. He knew just how to move to make my whole body burn.
The motion dragged a low groan out of me.
“Oh my goodness…”
I leaned back against Donne, who gripped me like he was on the brink of throwing me to the floor and screwing me senseless, and I had Rage rubbing between my legs. He braced himself against the amp. I could watch his abs flex as he undulated in just the right way to make waves of pleasure radiate all through my body.
My vision blurred as his tempo increased. I gazed up at him, our lips just inches apart, and I tasted the warmth of his choppy breath.
