by Katie May
“More like in a Compound,” she murmurs, her cryptic statement leaving me with more questions than answers. I exchange a bemused look with my brother, and he shrugs, feigning nonchalance. I can tell he’s trying to act like he’s not utterly captivated by the female who smells like blossoms and sunshine, but his eyes follow her as keenly as mine do.
“We’ll have to rectify that straight away!” I say, and the melancholy in her eyes abates with my dogmatic words. “Wait. That’s insensitive. I’m sorry. I forgot about...” I gesture vaguely toward her eyes, and Cain whacks me on the back of my head. Scowling, I flip him off.
An adorable giggle—seriously, when did I start saying words like “adorable?”—interrupts my retort. It’s a sound I yearn to hear every second of every day.
What is it about her? Am I just that desperate to get in her pants?
Maybe I just need to get laid.
“I may be blind, but I would love to watch Bamble with you,” she says softly...though her tone holds a hint of something in it, something I can’t name. Amusement, maybe, like she is in the know of a secret we can’t even begin to comprehend.
“Bambi,” Cain corrects, speaking to her for the first time. She spins toward him with a wide smile, and I watch as my twin automatically takes a step back. A muscle in his jaw twitches as he crosses his arms over his chest and scowls at her.
“And you must be Cain. I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.” She extends a hand—the nails chewed down to stubs—and I watch my brother narrow his gaze at the offending limb.
Taking control of the situation before it can escalate and implode, I gently wrap my hand around Nina’s wrist and pull her toward me.
“Enough of this,” I say easily, bopping her nose. Apparently, I do cute shit around this female. The horror. “Let me give you an official tour of your new home.”
Though the term “home” makes me want to vomit. A blowjob it may giveth, but a home it does not maketh.
Pretty sure Shakespeare said that somewhere.
If Nina is confused by the abrupt change in topic, she doesn’t show it. Her brows furrow at my initiation of contact, but she takes a deep, calming breath, and her body begins to relax incrementally until she is calm and flaccid—unlike my dick. Her hand is warm in mine, and that warmth seems to migrate straight to my groin. God, even her hand feels amazing.
Her small, dainty hand that I can just picture wrapped around my—
“How long have you known Kai?” she asks conversationally. Cain wanders a few steps behind us. One glance over my shoulder shows his hands in his pockets and a wry grin playing on his lips.
“Oh, a few years, give or take,” I say dismissively.
Her face practically glows as if someone had lit a candle beneath the surface. “He’s a good man.”
I just barely hold in my snort. Good man my fucking ass. He’s a good leader, for sure, and he’s just and fair, but never would I consider Blade a good man. He keeps men like Damien around him, for fuck’s sake.
“Shouldn’t you be asking us the most important question?” Cain cuts in scathingly. Both Nina and I give him befuddled looks. I recognize the expression on Cain’s face: cruel and cold. Icy terror skates down my spine stealing the warmth from my body.
“Cain, what are you doing?” I warn darkly.
His smile grows, revealing sharp teeth. A flash of red appears in his irises, the color nearly blocking out both of the pupils. The distinct stench of smoke and sulfur permeates the air.
Ignoring me, Cain keeps his attention on the trembling Nina. No doubt, she can feel the shift in the air as his demon form makes an appearance. Fucking asshole.
Blade will kill us.
“Don’t you want to know what we’re in for?” he asks, and I growl.
“Shut the fuck up,” I hiss, my own teeth instinctively elongating.
“You see, my brother here is a trickster demon,” Cain continues. “Me? I’m a sex demon.” His voice takes on a seductive purr that brings most women to their knees. The power he exudes is almost staggering, a physical force thickening the air like syrup.
Most women, that is, except Nina, apparently.
To my shock and horror, her shoulders lift and her spine straightens. The only indication that Cain’s power is affecting her is the tightening of her fists, dull nails digging into her palms.
“What are you in for?” she asks with more bravado than I’m sure she feels. Her chin lifts almost imperceptibly as she rests her blind, silver gaze on Cain.
“Well, well, well. I can’t give you all our secrets, can I?” he taunts, smirking.
I take a threatening step closer until I’m nose to nose with my idiotic twin. “Seriously, Cain, shut the fuck up.”
“Kai obviously trusts you enough to leave me alone with you,” Nina insists, and Cain swivels his head to glare at her once more.
“Your precious Kai is the worst of us all,” he hisses, and then Nina does the stupidest thing I have ever seen: she takes a step closer and places a hand on his arm.
An enraged roar escapes my brother as he staggers back a step, clutching at his stomach. I step in front of Nina, fully prepared to fight my brother until she’s capable of escaping. It isn’t just because I’m attracted to the dark-haired beauty. I would save anybody from my brother’s unwarranted wrath.
The color drains from Nina’s face as if she is only now understanding the severity of the situation. The danger she had unwittingly placed herself in.
Her next words, however, are a proverbial kick to the nuts. “I’m sorry.”
What. The. Fuck?
“Why the hell are you sorry?” I ask, spinning toward her. Bambi’s eyes aren’t on me, but on my brother. Guilt swirls in that milky gaze, and she lowers her head submissively.
“I shouldn’t have touched him,” she whispers in a choked voice. To Cain, she adds, “I hate people touching me too.”
Dozens of emotions flicker in my brother’s garnet gaze before he settles on anger.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” he snarls before stomping away. I watch my twin’s retreating back before turning toward the trembling female. Miles upon miles of pain are buried in her expressive eyes. It would take a necromancer for me to uncover it all.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats to me, and I manage a wobbly smile, suddenly grateful as fuck she’s unable to see it.
“It’s fine, Bambi. My brother has his issues.”
“Don’t we all...” The last is said in a hushed murmur, her expression contemplative.
But I have to wonder why my brother ran away. It’s not his usual MO. He much prefers facing the problem head-on and snarling at it until it scampers away.
If I know my brother as well as I think I do—better than I sometimes know myself—it’s because he had just been seen more clearly than ever before in his life, and that terrifies him.
“Let’s take the tour, shall we?” I ask, clearing my sluggish head. And then, with more of my signature humor, I quip, “I’ll let you touch whatever you want as long as you’re good.”
When she laughs, not understanding my sexual innuendo, my smile grows.
Yeah, I’m an asshole. Sue me.
But fuck if something about this female isn’t twisting me up inside.
Chapter 10
Nina
I can’t stop thinking about Cain’s explosive reaction.
There was a pain in his eyes, an agony that emanated in those gorgeous depths. As I stared at him through his brother’s vision, I saw a man laden with pain and suffering. A man on the verge of breaking.
Clearing my head, I allow Abel to lead me down a twisting hallway. I have long since given up on trying to see through his eyes—his gaze is always on me.
“I’m sorry about my brother,” Abel says easily, guiding me around a corner. I try not to flinch when his hand tightens imperceptibly around my upper arm to lead me.
He’s Kai’s friend. He’s not going to hurt you.
But even I can sense the danger lurking just beneath the surface. The untamed beast. Everything about Abel is a contradiction. His golden hair and bright eyes give him an angelic appearance, but there’s a darkness exuding from every pore in his body. What did Cain call him? A trickster demon? Of that, I have no doubt.
“Your brother,” I begin slowly, choosing my words carefully. We stop abruptly, and I hear the telltale sound of a lock being undone. A moment later, Abel ushers me through a door. “Your brother hides a deep pain,” I continue at last. “As do you.”
“Me?” Abel scoffs. “The only pain I like is in the bedroom, Bambi.”
My internal temperature rises a thousand degrees at his words. I may have lived my life in a bubble, but I’m not completely stupid. I have heard the guards talking enough to understand what, exactly, the trickster twin means.
Beneath the embarrassment is something else, something akin to...jealousy. My gut is buzzing like angry bees at the prospect of Abel with another woman.
What is wrong with me?
Maybe it’s because I’m so desperate for love I’m willing to relish in any attention thrown my way.
“I still don’t get why you call me that,” I point out as Abel helps me step over something in the middle of the walkway.
“What? Bambi? We’ve been over this.”
“What’s it about?”
The air in this part of the prison is staler. I half wonder if we had ventured deeper into the abyss, though we never touched any stairs. My hand, stroking the wall, comes away wet and sticky. Grimacing, I move to rub it on my dress—before deciding against it and rubbing it on Abel’s shirt.
“Hey!” he protests, and I giggle. There’s a smile in his voice when he speaks next. A genuine smile, not the one he dons like a mask. “I don’t really remember what the movie is about, but I remember there’s a deer. And someone dies. The mom, maybe?”
“What?” I gasp, spinning to face him. “That’s awful. Why would you call me that?”
“Because of your wide, gorgeous eyes,” he replies easily, lifting his hands to caress the skin around them both. Just as quickly, he drops them back to his sides and steps back. “Just like the deer’s eyes. If you don’t like the nickname, I can come up with a better one.”
My heart is thundering a mile a minute. Did he just...? Did he just call my eyes gorgeous? They’ve been called a lot of things—creepy and ugly, yes, but never gorgeous.
“Is that a thing here?” I ask, quirking a brow. “Nicknames?”
Some of his familiar snark returns. “Only if they’re given by you.”
I smile, remembering snippets of conversation from my time in the Compound. One in particular sticks out more than the others. During a trip from my cell to the torture chamber, we stumbled across a couple in the throes of passion. Her nickname for him comes to the forefront of my mind.
“Okay, you want a nickname? I’ll give you one. Anything for you...Daddy.”
Abel stumbles over his own two feet, curses, and then places his hands on my shoulders.
“No...just...no.”
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” I ask. Does he not like the nickname? At the Compound, the man had been overjoyed to be called such a thing, his moans of ecstasy increasing.
“Goddammit, woman,” he curses, stepping away from me. “We are not going to be doing this shit.”
“Doing what...shit?” I parrot, furrowing my brows. He exhales sharply.
“You know what? Let’s just never talk about this again. Okay, Bambi?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Motherfucker.” With another muffled curse, he intertwines our fingers and pulls me after him down the hall. “Call me something else. Anything else.”
“Alright,” I concede with a sigh. “How about...Sunshine?”
He snorts, but this time, he doesn’t stop moving.
“Sunshine? Why that?”
“Because you’re always sunny and cheerful while your brother is dark and broody,” I surmise. There’s a moment of silence as I’m pulled down another passageway. If I was with anyone else, anyone Kai didn’t obviously trust, I would’ve been terrified. Right now, I’m more excited than anything. It feels as if we’re going on an adventure like those books Kai used to read me at night.
“Don’t mistake my smile for what it’s not,” Abel warns me, his tone unexpectedly serious. “There’s more darkness in me than you know.”
It almost sounds as if he’s warning me of something. Warning me away from him.
But I have seen monsters—well, metaphorically, of course—and I don’t believe Abel is one. There’s a darkness in him, sure, but that darkness is nothing compared to the light I sense.
“And there’s more light in you and Cain than you know,” I retort back.
When he speaks next, something dark is in his tone, something that hints at his underlying darkness. And it scares me, but not in a way I can articulate. I fear that if he submits himself fully to the darkness, he’ll never again experience nature’s ethereal light. I can’t fathom a fate like that, bound eternally by pain and suffering.
“You don’t know anything about us.”
“I know that you’re stuck in the shadows, pressed so far back that you’re incapable of seeing the light. I know that you experience self-hatred, anger, and pain, but I can’t begin to comprehend why. I know you and your brother don’t see each other—or anyone else, for that matter—clearly. Sometimes we have to walk in the darkness. Sometimes we’re left with no other alternative. But we must strive to find our way back into the light.” The words come from deep within me, a part of me I didn’t know existed.
I don’t need vision to know I struck Abel speechless.
“Shit, Bambi, that’s deep,” he jests, but I can hear a slight quiver in his voice that wasn’t there earlier. He places a hand on my lower back, guiding me forward. “Down this hall, we have some of the cells. Rooms. Whatever you want to call them.”
I take the moment to slip into his eyes and survey our surroundings. We appear to be in a worn-down cell block, rows of concrete gray cells lined up on either side. The one we stop in front of consists of a set of bunk beds, a bookshelf, and a scattering of clothes. The twins’ room.
“Our...friend group resides in these cells,” he continues, voice stumbling over “friend group” as if he actually wanted to call it something else. “Blade...I mean Kai’s cell is to the left of mine, near the door. Bronson’s is across.”
“What about Damien’s?” I ask. I count at least four dozen cells expanding the length of the room. As we walk farther, I spot what appears to be female cells, stray bras and underwear thrown about. For some reason, that makes me furious. I don’t want females so close to...
So close to whom, Nina? I ask myself. Kai? The twins?
Other male cells are spread intermittently throughout, some devoid of any memorabilia and others decorated with pictures and novels.
“Damien sleeps at the end of the hall.” Abel points to a heavy metal door located opposite the rest of the room. “He doesn’t like when people disturb him.”
“What about the one cell I found?” I ask as Abel pauses to peer at a picture pinned to the wall. It shows an older man with graying black hair with his arm wrapped around a petite female. Two children stand in front of the smiling couple.
“What cell are you referring to, Bambi?” He glances away from the picture to stare at me intently.
“I...” For some reason, I feel stupid to admit that a cat led me there. No doubt, Abel will think I’m denser than he already believes. “I stumbled upon it when I first arrived here,” I admit at last. A half-truth. I found that I’m better at telling half-truths than full-on lies.
I pull out of Abel’s head when I begin to fidget, turning away from the intimidating man to run my hand over the metal cell bars.
“There are some shifters who are not a part of our...friend group,” Abel admits at last. “They have a friend group of their o
wn, scattered throughout the Labyrinth. With the maze always changing and twisting, we gave up on trying to find them all.” Suddenly, Abel is in front of me, his hands once more on my shoulders. I stifle my scream at his sudden movement, closing my eyes to fight off the impending panic.
“Nina,” Abel says slowly, seriously. I can feel the caress of his gaze on my forehead and cheeks. “How long did you stay in the cell?”
“What?” I manage to gasp.
He won’t hurt you. He won’t hurt you.
“Did you touch anything? Get your scent on anything?” There’s an urgency in his voice, an urgency that belies his laidback exterior.
“I... I slept on the bed,” I admit at last, finally gaining my wits. The panic abates to be replaced by something far colder.
Fear.
“Shit,” Abel murmurs, his nails digging into the skin of my shoulders. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit on a fucking duck.”
“Why would you want to shit on a duck?” I ask half-heartedly, waiting with bated breath for Abel to explain what has him so worked up.
He takes a deep breath and then another one, his muscles relaxing slowly.
But even then, he can’t quite dispel the tension tightening his body like the string on a bow.
“We should find you a place to sleep,” Abel changes the subject, pulling me with him once more. “But Kai’s going to probably want you to sleep with him.”
I want to prod him for answers, demand that he tells me what has gotten his panties in a twist, but I keep my mouth shut. I’m not the greatest at speaking out of turn, especially around men.
“How long have you been friends with Kai and the others?” I inquire again, remembering he hadn’t quite answered me earlier, as we stop at the largest cell sporting a queen-sized bed, two dressers, and an assortment of novels and magazines. Kai’s smoky scent surrounds me, comforts me, and I inhale deeply.
“We’re not exactly friends, Bambi,” Abel admits at last, nudging me forward. “Now, do what you need to do to familiarize yourself with the room. Touch everything or whatever.” He pauses, staring at me intently. Through his eyes, I can see my head tilt to the side inquisitively. “You know, for a blind person, you’re awfully good at walking and shit.”
