When he didn’t answer right away, she picked up his hand and pressed it against his neck, and he felt the thin loops as well as a vibration beneath his fingers. “You’ve bound me.”
“I have.”
His anger returned: Even though the wrought-iron manacles were gone he was still a prisoner, just a different kind. And bound to a human.
He glared at her, letting her feel his anger.
This time, she touched the chain at her throat. “So much rage.”
“Yes, at the very least, rage.”
“I didn’t want this.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“But you’ll be well paid for your trouble.”
At that, she released a sigh. “Yes. I will.”
He continued to hold her gaze, to let her feel that he didn’t intend to go easy on her, that she wouldn’t be enjoying her time with him, and that if it came to it, he’d destroy the weapon before he let her have it.
Her chin dipped several times in succession as though she understood his thoughts. Maybe she did, because he could feel her easily through the chains as well—he knew that she feared him but was determined to do whatever needed to be done to fulfill her mission.
And she was a locator, rare in either the vampire or the human world. But how had either Kiernan or Daniel found her? He’d heard of this kind of ability, and that it could only work if paired with a vampire of sufficient power. Through the blood-chain, she’d be able to access his power, draw it into her, and eventually gain the skill of connecting with anything she wanted to find.
In this case, a weapon to destroy his kind.
That anger toward the vampire world radiated from her didn’t surprise him. The worlds had begun to clash, and it was getting harder and harder to keep the vampire world a secret.
And somehow she had run head-on into either Kiernan or Daniel, a deal had been struck probably involving a small fortune, and now she was here.
Yet really angry, as though some injustice had been done to her. That was the surprise: that she would be using Kiernan to gain a fortune, yet be almost as angry as he was by the arrangement.
Now, there was a mystery to solve.
Because she was so physically close, however, a more urgent problem surfaced as he caught the rich scent of her blood. His hunger returned and he groaned.
He felt her emotions abruptly shift to concern for him. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Not hurt. I need blood.” He glared at her. But the woman ought to know what was headed her way, and that he’d hit her like a freight train right now if she didn’t back off.
She leaned away from him as though sensing his thoughts. Her eyes widened, and now he smelled how much he frightened her.
The scent of fear beat at him and his fangs emerged. “You’d better move as far from me as you can right now—or offer me a vein. One or the other, human.”
She rose to her feet then backed up far enough that he felt the tug of the chain at his neck, the warning that because they were bound, they were limited by distance as well.
He pressed his hand against the chain and glanced at the woman. She stood ten feet away, no more.
He closed his eyes.
Bound, again.
Chain-bound.
He’d worn a different set of chains in his youth. He’d been bound to the evil one, and couldn’t leave the house or the grounds since dear old Dad had built an electric fence to keep his sons prisoner.
“Adrien.”
He shifted his head toward her once more.
“I … this isn’t who I am.”
“What do you mean?”
She shifted her gaze away from him. “Nothing. Never mind. As soon as you’re able, there’s a shower in my tent. It’ll help.”
But a different kind of emotion vibrated through the chain at his neck, coming from her. He didn’t understand it at first; then a roll of pain went through him and he finally got it: The human was incredibly sad. In fact, she was grief-stricken.
But the part of him that had suffered snorted at her despair. Let the human feel her pain.
What was she to him?
What could she ever be to him, but the enemy?
* * *
Lily slid both arms over her stomach as she stared at the massive vampire in the huge yet too-small metal tub. He watched her with such a predatory stare that chills kept chasing over her body.
She sensed so many things from him—his confusion, his anger, but mostly his blood-hunger—and right now she felt like the fly to his spider.
She’d never been around a man like him before. The sheer size of him was enough to make her wary. Only he wasn’t just a man, but a vampire, a different race altogether, something she didn’t understand, something she didn’t trust, something much more animal than human.
And lethal.
Nor was it helping that the shared chain opened him up to her, revealing his aggressive intentions toward her—his desire for her blood for one thing, and sex for another. His level of determination became an itch on her skin.
Right then she felt the energy of who he was: a ball of fire, of rage. He had power as well. Formidable power. Kiernan had told her that Adrien had the potential to become an Ancestral, something rare in the vampire world and something laden with preternatural ability.
And for the first time, she truly doubted that she’d ever be able to see her mission through. For one thing, his loyalties lay elsewhere, with his brothers still in prison and with the vampire world generally, so he could never be a truly reliable partner. But given his size and physical strength, that he was a trained fighter and that he had tremendous potential among his kind, what on earth made Kiernan think she’d be able to control him all the way to the end?
* * *
Adrien stood beneath the shower attached to Lily’s tent. He hadn’t been clean in a year and he didn’t care how many times Lily’s crew had to refill the tank, he’d be damned before he took one more step into the future without getting every molecule of filth off him.
He scrubbed his hair until his scalp burned; his legs, arms, and chest until his skin felt raw; his crotch until he felt bruised.
Only then, stripped of the last of the cavern muck, did he step, naked as hell, from the shower into Lily’s tent. His captor sat at a small desk.
She glanced at him and grew very still as she looked him up and down. Her lips parted, her nostrils flared. And just like that, as unexpected as anything he could have imagined, he smelled her sex, a warm, sweet flow of desire that tightened his abs. She wants me.
She cleared her throat, then gestured to a stack of towels on a small table to his right. “Help yourself.”