by Alyssa Day
"Okay, oh, well, thank you—wait. What? Like hell you are!” She backed away from him so fast that her feet must have gotten tangled, because she tripped and fell backward.
He shot across the floor in a blur of speed and barely managed to catch her before she landed on the electrified bars, then he whipped around and strode to the center of the cage before releasing her.
She turned wide eyes up to him. "That was…well. Thanks.”
"You're welcome. And I'm sorry.” He quickly patted down her jacket to be sure there was no knife or gun concealed in her pockets, debated what might be strapped to her thighs, and somewhat regretfully decided he couldn't take a chance.
"No, I don't have a gun,” she snapped.
"Then you're really going to hate me for this,” he said ruefully. In one quick motion, he yanked the hem of her skirt up with one hand and whirled her around with the other so that she did a quick half-turn and he could very clearly see that she had no gun or any other weapon--unless you counted what the tiny scrap of white lace covering her feminine delights was doing to his libido. He gave himself a mental smack on the head.
Focus, Lucas.
"How dare you?” she shouted, yanking out of his grasp.
"I'm sorry, but—”
"But nothing, Buster. Sorry this!” She punched him in the stomach with what was probably all her strength. It was a respectable blow, too. He didn't doubt that a human would be on the floor or at least doubled over and gasping for breath.
For Lucas, it was a feather-light tap that bounced off the muscles of his abdomen, but he almost felt guilty about it. After all, she'd really put some backbone into it.
"Hey,” he said, patting her arm. "Good one.”
Her eyes lit up with twin flames that he was pretty sure meant she was plotting his impending slow and ugly death. "Good one? You condescending jerk!”
"Condescending jerk is my middle name.” He grinned and dodged when she tried to punch him again. "Okay, enough with the violence. Are you prejudiced against Atlanteans? Or are you this mean to everybody when you're trapped in a cage?”
She sighed, all the anger seeming to evaporate with her exhalation of breath, and then she slumped down to sit cross-legged on the floor. "I don't know what kind of life you live, Lucas, but I've never been trapped in a cage before.”
Oddly enough—or not so oddly, considering—he actually had. Twice.
What did the humans say? Third time was a charm?
"Look—” she began, but then the sound of loud, male voices reached them.
When the two men sauntered into the room, Lucas didn't recognize either, but he knew they were shifters.
"About time,” he called out, making an elaborate show of stretching his arms. "It was getting dull in here. Is this when the torture starts?”
The bigger one, who had to be a bear shifter with all that hair and those thick brows on a low forehead, let loose with a nasty laugh. "You guessed it!”
Rhiannon walked up to stand next to Lucas. She'd turned pale beneath her tan. "Yardley, please let me out now. Please. I need to get home to Stevie before she gets scared. Please.”
The bear—Yardley, then—scowled at her. "Your kid is fine with Viola. Shut up, Rhi.”
"But, please! I don't understand any of this. Why do you—”
Before she could finish her sentence, the other man pulled a rectangular black object out of his pocket and shot Lucas and Rhiannon an evil grin. "Stand back from the gate,” he commanded.
"Plusick. Please. Please let me out of here.” Rhiannon's voice broke, and something deep in Lucas's chest twisted.
He didn't know why, but he suddenly wanted to protect this woman. To help her get to her daughter. To act like the hero he'd never been.
What a joke.
"You too, Water Boy,” Yardley taunted. "Get back from the gate, or else.”
"Or else what?” Lucas thought it was a reasonable question, even for low-rent villains like these two. "Or else you'll hurt me, or else you'll steal my motorcycle, or else—”
"You have a bike? What kind?” The other one, Plusick, asked, a dim light of interest brightening his piggy little eyes. Pig shifter? Did those even exist?
Yardley thumped him on the back of the head. "Shut up, you moron, and be ready. I'm going to unlock the cage.”
Plusick took position at the side of the gate, and Yardley turned the key in the shiny lock that, in Lucas's mind, was the only thing standing between him and freedom. The minute Yardley opened the gate, Lucas rushed him, reaching by habit for the daggers that wouldn't answer in an electric cage. Almost simultaneously, his still-fuzzy brain finally identified the rectangular object.
Just before fifty thousand volts of electricity smashed into him.
For the second time in an hour, he felt his head slam into the hard, cold, concrete floor. His arms and legs twitched uncontrollably as the fiery pain from the Taser seared through his body and his vision tunneled down to a kaleidoscoping swirl of lights. He roared with pain and rage, but his poor, battered head shouted Enough, already at him when the noise reverberated through his skull. His mind tried to sink into unconsciousness, desperate to escape from the blistering pain, and he welcomed it.
Time to go bye-bye. He could take a bit of a break from the day, right here on the concrete...maybe check out, just for a little while. His bruised and beat-up body, his probably-concussed brain--both were on board for that plan.
But then Rhiannon screamed.
5
Rhiannon was one thousand percent beyond fed up with both shifters, and she was even a little worried about the Atlantean on the floor. He was a killer, if Yardley had been telling the truth, but then again, the bear shifter was not the most reliable of witnesses. He damn sure wasn't known for his honesty.
Case in point: the situation she was currently in.
"Okay, you got him, so let me go now. I need to get home to Stevie,” she said firmly, trying to sound calm and assertive. That's what that dog whisperer guy said worked with dogs, so maybe it worked with shifters, too.
She suppressed a nervous grin at the idea of what Brock would have said—or done—if she'd ever compared him or anybody in his precious wolf pack to a dog, and then she forced herself to take a deep breath to calm down.
Plusick gave her a nasty grin, made even more malevolent by his blackened and missing teeth. "You ain't going anywhere, sweetheart. In fact, we might have a little fun with you before we toss you back in the cave with the merman.”
"He's not—” she began, before realizing what a stupid move it would be to argue the merman issue. She sure as hell was not going to be having any fun with them, either. She wasn't terrified yet, but she was getting there, and she only, desperately, wanted to go home.
She turned to Yardley instead, because maybe he was the more reasonable of the two. "Please, Yardley, I only want—”
He punched her in the face.
One second, she was staring at the biggest fist she'd ever seen as it rushed toward her face, and the next second, she was lying on her back on the floor. She had zero memory of falling, or hitting the floor, or anything beyond the sight of that fist.
Yardley's fist.
Plusick laughed. He laughed. And then he drew his big, booted, foot back and kicked her in the ribs.
She couldn't help it. She screamed.
She was still screaming when they picked her up and tossed her back in the cage. She landed on top of Lucas, who was trying to pull himself up off the floor. They both went crashing back down, and in her scramble to get away she fell gracelessly to the floor next to him.
Plusick laughed. "Thirsty?"
He shoved a sloshing-full bucket of water in the cage, slammed the gate shut, snapped the padlock back in place, and then the two shifters strolled back out of the room—laughing. The sight of them leaving her there and laughing about it broke something in Rhiannon, and she stopped screaming as abruptly as if she'd flipped a toggle switch to OFF.
&n
bsp; "They're going to die,” she snarled, in a voice so raw and ragged that even her ex-almost-mother-in-law would have approved.
That bitch.
That's when the tears came, though, as much as she tried to fight them back. As impossibly horrible as it was to cry in front of a serial killer or mass murderer or whatever this Atlantean was.
She wanted out.
She wanted her daughter.
Her cheek and jaw ached with a hard, throbbing pain, and her eye was trying to swell closed already. She curled into a ball and then cried out when her … bruised? Broken? … ribs shot a bolt of agony through her torso.
"Stevie, Stevie, Stevie, Stevie, Stevie,” she moaned. "I need to get to my daughter. I just want my life to be normal again. I need to protect my daughter.”
The tears she'd been fighting broke free and streamed down her face, and Rhi wondered if anything would ever be normal again. If she'd ever hold her baby girl again.
Lucas pushed himself up to a sitting position next to her and tentatively touched her arm. "Hey. I'm sorry.”
"You didn't do it.” She stared into his compelling gray eyes and silently dared him to pity her.
"I wish I could have stopped them,” he said, in a low, feral tone that would have terrified her if the fury she could hear in it had been directed at her. Instead, oddly enough, it comforted her.
"I wish you could have, too—ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch,” she said, and she was shouting by that final ouch. It didn't help, though.
"The shouting will make your face hurt more,” he offered, and the look of sympathy mixed with commiseration told her more than any mirror would have just how bad she looked.
"Never having been punched before, I'm not really educated in the best way to act afterward,” she snapped back at him.
Wow. Bitterness and sarcasm, both. She was becoming an entirely different person in the wake of unexpected, violent assault. Well. Maybe not a different person. Maybe she was becoming the person she'd been five years ago.
Silence.
Well, fine. So maybe she hurt the pretty boy's widdle feelings.
Damn, damn, damn, she was hurting so bad.
Knives of pain were carving up her insides and a steady hard thrum of pain pounded in her face and head. Nausea started to well up the back of her throat, and she fought to keep from vomiting, because that would only make her head worse. Instead, she settled for trying her Lamaze breathing.
In, out, in, out, pain pain pain, in, out, in, out…
"I can help,” he said, finally. "I have a minor amount of healing magic, and since it's so small a talent, and since I'm not going to try to break through the electrical barrier to use it, it might work to help your injuries. I wish Griffin, our mage, could be here, instead.”
"Because he has more healing magic?” She was interested almost despite the grinding pain in her face and ribs.
He flashed the sexiest grin she'd ever seen in her life. Too bad she was in no mood for grins, sexy or otherwise. She'd learned the hard way how dangerous violent, sexy men could be.
"No. Because he can be an ass, and I'd enjoy seeing him get locked in a cage for a while.”
Surprise almost made her laugh, but the pain in her ribs intensified to a fever pitch and made her cry out, instead.
His expression immediately turned serious. "Please, may I have leave to touch you?”
She gasped. Distrust turned into why not, or maybe yes, please, because it hurt to talk, it hurt to breathe, it even hurt to think. "If this is some weird come-on, dude, you have the worst timing.”
Lucas held his hands out over her torso, about six inches above her ribs, and asked the question again, this time with his eyes.
She nodded, because what could be worse? Well, dead could be worse, but if he was really planning to kill her would he have asked permission?
A polite murderer? Doubtful. But maybe that's how they raised them in Atlantis, she really didn't know, her thoughts were whirling like a hamster on crack, and oh, boy, he was touching her, and her ribs didn't like even that light-as-air touch, and—
"Lucas! Don't—”
"Shh,” he soothed, and a lovely silvery blue light began to glow, emanating from the tips of his fingers, and it spread across her abdomen and over her battered ribs and felt so cool and calming and unbelievably good that she started to cry again… but this time they were tears of relief.
"Am I hurting you?” His eyebrows drew together, and he started to pull away, but she caught his big hands in hers and refused to let go.
"No! Please don't stop, oh my goodness, it feels so much better, Lucas, thank you, thank you, thank you, can you do this to my face?” She was babbling but she didn't care, and she was clutching his hands, but she didn't care about that either because his magic, glowing light was taking the pain away and without the pain she'd be able to plot a way to escape this damn cage and those damn shifters and get home to Stevie, pack their things, and run far, far away from this snake's nest of a shifter community.
He gently pulled his hands out from her grip and moved them to her face, and the minute—the very second—that he touched her skin, cupping her cheeks in his warm, strong hands, the pain started to abate. A sensation like the feather-light caress of a gentle spring breeze flowed over her aching face and jaw and eye, and her heartbeat actually slowed …slowed…regulated itself to its normal rhythm as the massive amount of pain lessened, became manageable, and then disappeared completely.
She slowly exhaled a deep, deep sigh of relief. "You healed me, Lucas. It's so much better, it's—” A horrible thought occurred to her. "It's not only masking the pain, right? You really healed me?”
She gingerly tried to open her mouth and found that her jaw moved up and down and back and forth and side to side as easily as it normally did and didn't hurt at all, not even the slightest bit.
"It's real healing,” he said. "I'm not all that good at it, but you didn't have any broken bones, which would have been much harder for me to repair. Simple bruising and swelling—”
"It didn't feel simple to me!” She gently touched her ribs, first lightly, and then more firmly when she realized they didn't hurt at all. "The pain is really all gone. It's like magic!”
He sat back. "It is magic. Not much, but enough for small wounds.”
Rhiannon stood and took a few exploratory steps, jumped up and down, and then whirled to face Lucas. "I'm perfectly fine. In fact, I feel better than I did before they hurt me!”
He rose from the floor with cat-like grace, and her breath caught in her throat. But, no. Comparing him to a mere cat was ridiculous. This man was more like a panther or a tiger; predatory power and danger and grace all wrapped up in the shape of a very virile man.
A gorgeous, sexy, astonishingly hot man who'd had his hands on her and was standing really, really close to her, she suddenly realized. At this proximity, she was even more aware of his heavily muscled body and the breadth of his powerful shoulders. The glow of silver sparkles in his gray eyes. The silky, dark hair that she wanted, very much, to reach out and touch.
Everything else she wanted to touch.
What the heck?
"Is horniness a side effect of this Atlantean healing?” she blurted out, and then she groaned. "Oh, no, I did not just say that out loud."
He started laughing, and she glanced up at him. She couldn't help it—he had a rich, husky laugh that was so sinfully deep and rich she wanted to wrap herself up in it like a kitten in a blanket.
Oh, no. Not again.
"No,” he finally said, still grinning. "No, arousal is not a side effect of the healing. Usually the person healed simply wants to take a nap. I find that I like your reaction much, much more, though.”
Shaking her head, Rhi backed away from the gorgeous Atlantean, who still—healer or not—might be a murderer. However, after that beating, she was less and less willing to believe a single word out of Yardley's mouth.
Lucas was probably as innocent as she was of any
wrongdoing.
Any wrongdoing.
Oh, boy, she wished she could commit some wrongdoing with his body. She giggled and then clapped a hand over her mouth, shocked at her weird and wrong reactions when her daughter could be in danger. She felt…high. Like those few times she'd tried pot.
"You must be wrong,” she accused. "This healing magic has made me high! You roofied me!”
Lucas tilted his head and looked at her. "I what? I know what a roof is, obviously, but what—”
He paused. "Oh. Roofs are high, you use high to describe the feeling of being drugged, okay. American slang is difficult. It's not roofied. It's simply the relief from pain. Your endorphins are flooding your body."
She sighed, coming back down from the temporary high to reality as her mind adjusted to the abrupt lack of pain and the euphoria started to fade. "That makes sense. I'm sorry."
Lucas shook his head and then started to prowl around the cage, closely examining every angle while being careful not to touch the bars. "You are a very confusing woman,” he tossed back over his shoulder.
"I am a very confused woman,” she muttered. "But none of that is important right now. We need to get out of here, so I can rescue my daughter from these monsters.”
"Yes, we do. I just need some time to figure out how.”
Time, though, was the one thing Rhi didn't have. Every second that passed was a second more that her precious girl was alone with Viola. Or with Viola and anybody V had decided to invite over to Rhi's apartment.
I'm going to kill Viola, too. Or at least maim her. She was supposed to be my friend, and she betrayed me. Separated me from Stevie, when she knows what we went through for the past few years. No matter what, our friendship is over.
Because the best way to live her life and protect her child was by never, ever trusting anybody, ever again.
The harsh screech of a loudspeaker system being turned on blared through the warehouse and vibrated through her bones.
"See you in the morning, Rhi. Hope you two have a good night.”
Yardley. And he was laughing.
The list of people she planned to kill was growing longer every minute.
