He grinned and gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked uncertain, his eyes running slowly over my body. The heated look was not an act.
I gave him a seductive look from beneath my lashes. “I’d like that. Vodka and juice.”
Charlie ordered it from the bar, and I took the opportunity to appreciate the perfect proportions of his muscular back beneath the tight tank. I wanted to dig my fingers into those shoulders, to run my hands up and down the long lines of muscle either side of his spine.
Charlie turned to hand me my drink and froze. He must have seen the heat on my face, because his own eyes hooded. He stepped into my space and gave me my screwdriver. I took a sip and set it on the bar. I wasn’t really drinking tonight, I needed my wits about me.
“Do you want to dance?” Charlie’s voice was a husky tickle close to my ear.
I just nodded, and he downed his drink and led me to the dance floor.
We were pushed close together, but I didn’t mind. That was exactly where I wanted to be. My body involuntarily swayed to the beat, and Charlie closed the remaining space between us. His hard body was pressed right along mine, his hands on my hips, moving in perfect synchronization with mine. My ass brushed the front of his jeans as he swayed and his fingers dug harder into my hips. I turned and hooked my arms around his neck, not leaving an inch of space between us. He stared down at me, such raw need on his face.
“Rella.” It was a desperate sound. God, I wanted to kiss him. This was not the time or the place, but I couldn’t resist. I leaned up and brushed my lips over his. He kissed me back with the same desperation. His lips were hard and demanding, but I wasn’t resisting. I wanted to give him everything right here on the dance floor.
Somehow, we were still dancing perfectly to the beat, our bodies moving sinuously against each other. I sipped at his lips greedily. I wanted more, right now. His hands slid down to my ass and pulled me tighter against him, and I could feel the outline of his own need. I rolled my hips, creating delicious friction between our bodies and he moaned low against my lips.
“Rella,” he repeated, and my name was a plea. I just didn’t know what he wanted. Did he want to take me here on the dance floor? At this moment, I would have said yes. Or did he want to stop, because he didn’t want our first time to be on a sweaty dance floor surrounded by a thousand people? That sounded more like Charlie. He’d want it to be special.
Still uncertain, I just kissed him again, and he groaned against my lips, his fingertips stroking the bare skin of my back.
We kissed like that on the dance floor for hours, or maybe only minutes, I couldn’t be sure. Eventually we pulled away, panting.
My body screamed with wanting. I had this crazy need to make my best friend something more. I needed to make love to him, to make him my fourth. I felt incomplete, which was such an odd sensation, given that two weeks ago we’d been nothing more than lifelong friends. I’d been happy that way, too. Now my soul ached with the need to tie him to me, to my pack.
“Not here,” he murmured against my lips. “I’ve waited too long to rush it. I've wanted to see your face as I made love to you for so, so long.” He kissed me again, two magnets that refused to be apart.
I nodded. “I can wait. But Charlie…” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t promise him what he wanted. Monogamy was no longer an option. I would do almost anything for Charlie, give up almost anything, but I couldn’t give up the others. They needed me, and although I would never have guessed it, I needed them.
“I know, Rella and it’s okay.” Then the need for words disappeared beneath the soft warmth of his lips. We stayed like that for a while, kissing tenderly in the center of a writhing mass of dancers.
I pulled away and sighed. “We should get back to work.”
We walked off the dance floor. I’d lost sight of all my other guys. Logically, I knew they were probably fine, but I’d feel better if I could just catch a glimpse of them.
“Let’s go check out the bathrooms,” Charlie suggested.
The toilets were in a small portable building out the back area of the warehouse. A long line led from the doors, and I groaned. The line to the men’s was two people long at most, with the excess taking a pee in the dark alley that ran alongside the building. Men.
I ignored the disgruntled shouts as I jumped the queue, walking up the steps. The stalls were all occupied, and a woman dressed in fluro pink faux fur grinned and swayed drunkenly in front of the mirror as she tried to apply lipstick. Her friend came out, and I ducked into her cubicle. I desperately had to pee.
I finished up quickly and walked to the sink, ignoring the death glare of the girl who’d been the next person in line. Fluro girl was gripping the sink now. She was definitely going to puke. Her friend got a shoulder under her arms.
“Come on, sweetie, we’ll take you out the back way,” Fluro’s friend cooed.
I looked around. I hadn’t noticed the door at the rear of the building, next to another bank of sinks. I followed along behind fluro and her friend, reopening the door when it swung shut on their retreating backs. I wondered if this was how they were getting their prey?
I soon answered my own question when I saw Fluro’s friend pass off a now completely unconscious Fluro to a guy, who stuffed her unceremoniously into the back of a van.
“Hey,” I shouted on instinct, and all eyes shot to me.
Something pricked me, and my vision went blurry. I looked over my shoulder at another woman, with lipstick that was way too pink to be flattering, and my world went fuzzy. I stared at the number plate on the van as they dragged me toward it.
Hope, I murmured groggily, ZH547912. That was it. Lights out.
The rocking of the van made my stomach roll. My first thought when I resurfaced was that I was going to puke all over Fluro. I forced my eyes to open and look around. We were in the back of a normal van which looked like millions of other utility vans. White. Unremarkable.
I glanced at Fluro again, but she was still out of it. Her body bounced around as if it had no bones. Or as if she were dead.
I slowly shuffled closer to her prone body. I didn’t want to alert the men in the front I was awake. I lifted my fingers to her pulse. Still strong and steady. I moved my arm slowly back to my side.
Whatever they jabbed us with was obviously meant to keep us unconscious for a lot longer. Apparently burning through drug cocktails was another perk of my newfound Queendom.
I sent a reassurance to my guys and felt a huge wave of anger and relief pour back to me. The Gargoyles had been all but rabid.
I reached out to Hope. I’m fine. Just a minor kidnapping. Can you let the guys know for me? I’ll stay with it, maybe get some intel.
Hope’s relieved voice answered right away. Thank goodness. Do you need an extraction? I can send Memphis.
Could she now? When did she get a Fallen Angel as a golden retriever?
I’m fine. There’s another girl here, and I want to see where this van goes. The guys will get me out if things get too out of control. I had complete faith in my guys.
I could feel Hope’s indecision. She didn’t like this at all, but I was normally the one doing the saving. If I said I was alright, I probably meant it.
Finally, she sighed audibly in my head. Fine, but be safe. I love you, Rella. Call me if you need me!
Love you too, Sis.
I closed my eyes and opened my ears, picking up what the guys in the front of the van were saying. My already enhanced hearing had become supernatural when I bonded with the guys. Perk number 673. There were only two people that I could hear. Given how powerful those drugs were, I wasn’t surprised.
“He’s going to be happy,” the driver said as the van sped up. We were going straight, and fast. The freeway maybe?
“The brunette will bring in some good coin with a body like that,” the passenger said, make a gross noise like a grunt. “I bet he puts her in the auction.”
It took me
a bit to figure out they were talking about me. I still wasn’t used to having my dishwater brown locks.
“It’s too late for that. It’s only two nights away. The catalogue has gone out. Maybe he’ll save her for the next one?”
“He’ll put her in the auction as a surprise lot, you wait. She’ll start a bidding war. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up, and she won’t look as fresh in a month as she does now. Bet she’s got a bit of fight in her,” the passenger said, making another lewd noise.
Oh, they were going to see how much fight I had as soon as we stopped.
The two men upfront moved on to comparing my ass to some Hollywood starlet’s and I tried to formulate a plan. I could go through the auction and hope I got a good look at the man behind the curtain. Maybe I could get a good look at the customers too and put them on my shit list.
As much as I needed that intel, my sense of self preservation rebelled at the idea of putting myself in such a vulnerable situation. The drugs wore off quick, but they worked for a little while, and being unconscious in the presence of human traffickers was not an ideal situation. That would definitely be Plan B.
Plan A relied on me getting the hell out of this van before we arrived at our destination and possible reinforcements. I needed to get a look where we were, but that would involve spoiling my element of surprise.
The van slowed and veered left. Maybe we were taking an exit? If we got somewhere open, I might be able to take the chance of disabling them while the van was moving. It’d be rough, but it was doable.
I laid back and formulated a plan. I had no weapons, only my hands. I would have killed for my short swords right now. But Lux had made sure I could fight with nothing but my body and my mind from a young age. You didn’t have an ancient Spartan for a father without learning a thing or two.
“What the…” the passenger yelled as the driver slammed on the brakes too late. The van went airborne, flipping, and I grabbed hold of Fluro with subhuman speed, wrapping my body around hers to protect her head and neck as gravity flung us into the air.
Time slowed, making it feel like one of those zero gravity chambers astronauts used to acclimatize to space. The van flipped over, and I finally got a look out the windscreen. Two big dragons stood in the middle of the road, and unmovable roadblock with snarling faces.
Then the van crashed down to earth on its roof, and I hit the ground with a bone cracking thud. I still held Fluro tight in my arms, and she was still blissfully unaware of what was going on around her.
I rolled her off me and tried to breathe. Definitely winded. The back doors of the van were wrenched open, and Naz and Charlie were there. My heart flip flopped at the sight of their concerned faces. Claws reached in and plucked the male occupants of the van from their seats. They dragged them to the middle of the road, one was still alive because he was screaming.
At least until my Gargoyles ate his head.
My stomach rolled again. “I’m gonna throw up.”
Naz was beside me in a second. “Anything broken?”
“No.” I hurt like a bitch, but nothing had cracked. Naz half carried, half dragged me from the van. He looked at Charlie. “Get the other girl.”
As soon as I was free from the crumpled wreckage, Naz picked me up in his arms and carried me to the other side of the road, where our rental sat on the graveled shoulder. I snuggled close to Naz’s chest, sucking in a lungful of his scent, reassuring myself that they were really here. I could see Charlie carefully carrying Fluro toward our car too, and past him to where Romanus and Rouen flung the bodies of the drivers around like a dog with a rabbit, whipping them violently back and forwards, claws shredding delicate flesh..
I buried my face in Naz’s neck and pretended that the dragons before me, and the men that had made love to me, were two entirely different beings.
We stopped outside the rear passenger door. “Can you stand?” Naz asked, his jaw so tense I could almost hear the grinding of his teeth.
I nodded, and he placed me on my feet. My body ached, and I was probably going to have a pretty good abstract artwork of bruises tomorrow, but I was alive and whole. That had to have something to do with my newer gargoyle traits.
Naz helped Charlie get the still completely unconscious girl in the car. I hoped she stayed that way. I hoped she could wake up tomorrow and never know she was almost sold into slavery, and that she was saved by two big ass dragon like creatures who ate her captors. I hope she woke up tomorrow and thought the effects of the drugs were just an epic hangover.
I didn’t know how we were going to get her home, though. It would look extremely suspicious if we dropped a drugged girl off at the hospital, or the closest police station.
“Does she have any ID?” I asked the guys, and both of them looked down at the girl. Because now that I could see her up close, she couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen.
“Where the hell would she keep it?” Charlie grumbled. He had a point. She was wearing what I could only call Flintstones in Fluro. Kind of a hot pink fluffy bikini combo. The fluffy skirt couldn't have been more than six inches wide, and the fluffy boobtube thing barely covered anything. The boots however were fluro yellow and came up to just above her knee. They were also, you guessed it, fluffy. Nothing had anything as practical as pockets. “Boots?” Naz suggested, and Charlie slipped off one boot, then the other. Nothing.
I sighed. I’d been to enough nightclubs to know where most girls kept their cards and cash. “Look out of the way.”
I reached up and poked at her fur boobtube cautiously with one finger, like whatever stuffed toy she made it from was going to come back to life and bite off my finger for touching an unconscious woman's boob.
“Sorry, Fluro,” I said, as I found what I was looking for. I pulled twenty bucks, a cellphone, a small flask and her driver's license out of her bra. Ah, the humble brassiere. A pocket for when you have no pockets. The guys were staring at me as if I’d just discovered Mary Poppins magical carpet bag. I rolled my eyes and read the license.
“Sadie Ridge. She’s nineteen in a week.”
Charlie and Naz’s serious faces told me they were thinking the same thing as me. If we hadn’t been here, looking for Hope’s abductors, Sadie Ridge would have had a very different birthday.
Naz stuffed everything but her ID back in her long boots, then held my arm and maneuvered me in beside her. Before he could shut the door, he was yanked out of the way by a very intense looking Romanus. Rouen was only slightly behind him, looking just as wild-eyed.
Romanus pulled me from the car and wrapped me in his arms. He crushed me to his chest, and I tried to suck in air as he held me close. I could feel the hammering of his heart, the hot gush of his breath against my cheek. I could sense his panic through our bond.
“I’m okay,” I reassured him as I tried to draw breath. “I’m okay.”
He relaxed his grip and I sucked in a huge gulp of air. It didn’t last long as Rouen pulled me from his grasp. Romanus was reluctant, and I briefly worried that they might play tug’o’war with me, but eventually Romanus let me.
“I was so worried,” Rouen whispered between pressing kisses to my face. “I thought we would lose you.” He didn’t hug me as tight as Romanus had, but he only stopped kissing me long enough to bury his nose in my hair.
Rouen hopped into the back of the car, still holding me tight against him, and nestled me into his lap. He banded two arms around my waist, unprepared to let me go. Naz stared daggers at Romanus as he got into the driver's seat, and Romanus’ face showed nothing. Charlie climbed into the rear of the SUV. He hadn’t said a word.
The silence was deafening the entire drive back into Geneva. The only noise were the tiny sounds of Rouen’s lips pressing against my skin. I thought he was handling it better than Romanus, but now I wasn’t so sure. He seemed to need to have his face pressed against me, and there was a hint of desperation to his movements. I just let him go, let him soothe us both with his tendern
ess.
Still, no one had spoken by the time we had pulled up in front of Sadie Ridge’s apartment. Rouen volunteered to carry her up to her floor, and I accompanied him. There was something less suspect about a man carrying an unconscious woman if there was another female there too. Which was so wrong. Our little altercation with the women in the bathroom had shown that evil was both genders. We found her apartment, and then stopped.
We hadn’t found a key on her, and I wasn’t willing to do a more thorough search of her bra pockets.
We’d have to knock.
“Can we just dump her on the ground and run?” Rouen asked, and I shook my head.
“She isn’t’ a flaming bag of dog poo, Rouen. Besides, what if no ones home?”
Rouen nodded reluctantly and shifted the girl in his arms.
I knocked. It must have been close to three A.M. and there was no movement inside. Eventually, I heard shuffling from the otherside. An elderly woman opened the door, which showed a stupid amount of trust given the time and the fact we were complete strangers. Probably the girl’s grandmother. She stood in a fluffy pink robe, apparently the love of fluffy things was hereditary, and her hair was salt and pepper gray.
She frowned, the wrinkles on her face deepening, as she said something to us in rapid French, her eyes darting between the unconscious Sadie and the large scary man holding her.
I hoped the old woman spoke English, or this was going to be very hard to explain.
“She was at a party. We found her passed out in the corner.” I waved a hand at Sadie, and mimicked drinking.
“Oui.” The woman’s frown deepened, if that were possible. “She told me she was at her, err, friends house. Uh, looking at the books, err, learning.” Her English wasn't great, and was very stilted, but I got the idea. Sadie had told her grandmother she was going to study at a friend’s house. Man, that excuse never gets old.
Rouen said something to her in perfect French, and my eyes shot to him. The old woman smiled at him and motioned us in. She led us down a short hall to Sadie’s room. It was the room of someone who still hadn’t fully grown out of their teen years. Her comforter was hot pink, the same color as her Wilma Flintstone on Acid getup, and the rest of the room was decorated by posters, photos and school ribbons.
The Unrepentant- Part Two Page 7
