Ecstasy Unveiled

Eight

Underworld General was the last place Sin wanted to be. But Lore was missing, and the fact that the chick who had interrupted Sin during her assassination attempt had tried to kill Sin with his dagger was a chilling sign that he was in trouble. The only upside was that the blade had tasted the female’s blood, which meant it wanted more.

Unfortunately, the Gargantua dagger had one serious limitation; it could only be used to track a victim during the devil’s hour in the time zone where the prey’s blood had been shed. So, since Sin had time to kill, she searched for Lore in all of the obvious places. She’d gone to the assassin den. Nothing. She’d stopped by his house. Nada. She’d called and texted and emailed. Not a goddamned thing.

Her last resort was UGH, where he might be a patient… or where he might be getting all chummy with his brothers. His brothers, because she refused to acknowledge them.

And why the thought that he might be hanging out with them made her horribly uncomfortable—jealous, even—she had no idea.

She stepped out of the Harrowgate and into what must be the emergency department. A male Umber looked up from the triage desk, his steel gray lips peeled back from white teeth.

“What do you want?”

Apparently, people skills weren’t necessary to work in a demon hospital. Sin approached him, limping from the wound she’d taken during the battle with the mystery chick. “Do you have a patient named Lore?”

The Umber sneered. “I’m not allowed to give out information on patients.”

Both relief and dread flooded her. “So he is a patient.”

“I didn’t say that,” the Umber said.

Sin slammed her fists down on the desk. “You ass.”

“Is there a problem here?” The deep voice froze her to the black stone floor. It wasn’t Lore’s, but the forbidding tone was the same. This would be one of the brothers. Crap-o-rama.

Slowly, she turned. Found herself looking at a sinister medical symbol on a scrub top covering a broad chest. Swallowing dryly, she dragged her gaze up, and yup, this guy, with his short hair, I-own-this-hospital presence, and stern expression might not be the spitting image of Lore, but close enough. Plus, the dermoire that extended to his neck and connected to two rings around his throat—mate marks and maturity marks—sort of gave him away. Well, that, and his nametag. Eidolon.

Not good.

“The female is looking for Lore,” the Umber said, and inside, she cringed. This was the scenario she’d hoped to avoid.

Eidolon’s expression remained stony, and she suddenly wondered what it would take to rile him up. “How do you know Lore?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Guess you don’t want to know if he’s a patient.” Eidolon swung around and headed toward a couple of curtained cubicles.

Cursing, Sin jogged to catch up. “I work with him.”

Eidolon stopped and eyed her with suspicion. “He’s not here.”

“You couldn’t have said that without all the drama?”

Eidolon didn’t have a chance to reply, because the sliding emergency room doors opened, and two medics guided in a stretcher—a stretcher laden with her warg victim. Holy shit.

One of the medics straddled the warg, pumping compressions into his chest. Eidolon sprang into action.

“What do we have?” he asked, moving alongside the medics. Sin kept pace despite her limp, but hung back to play fly-on-the-wall.

The medic pushing the stretcher, his flashing fangs giving away his vampire status, said in a clipped voice, “Warg. Found unconscious and not breathing. Our attempts to resuscitate him were successful, but we lost him three blocks out.”

He rattled off some vital statistics that Sin didn’t understand as they wheeled the stretcher into one of the curtained rooms. More medical staff swarmed inside. Sin waited just outside, listening to more medical-speak that didn’t sound good. Well, not good for the warg. Good for her.

After a few minutes, the medics exited. One took off through the doors, while the other, the blond vamp, paused outside to scratch notes on his clipboard.

Sin cleared her throat. “Hey, how is the warg?”

His eerie silver eyes shifted to hers, but he kept writing. “Dying. Why?”

“No reason.” She rubbed her arms through the sleeves of her denim jacket and fidgeted under his unnerving gaze. “What’s wrong with him? Was he in an accident? Is he sick with something?”

“You’re kind of nosy.”

You’re kind of hot. She shrugged. “Just a concerned citizen.” Yeah, concerned Eidolon would save the werewolf and she’d have to kill him again.

The vamp watched her for a moment, and the floor seemed to shift beneath her. He really was extraordinary. He was easily as tall as Lore, his shoulders as broad, but that was where the resemblance ended. Hot Vamp Medic had a lean, athletic build, chiseled cheekbones, and a full, sensual mouth that no doubt could latch on to a female’s most sensitive spots and make her whimper.

He scanned her from head to toe. “You should get your leg looked at.”

Frowning, she looked down at the spot of blood that had seeped through her jeans and the bandage she’d wrapped around her thigh. “It’s no big—”

He didn’t even wait for her to finish. He handed the clipboard to the Umber and exited through the doors he’d come through. He was a charmer, that one.

She’d have been irritated by his blatant dismissal if not for the fact that the warg she needed to die was being treated by her brother, who didn’t know she existed. Christ, only she could get herself into this kind of mess.

This had never happened before—a victim of hers surviving even minutes after being infected by her touch—and a horrifying thought stabbed at her brain; what if he’d infected someone else? While her heart had turned to brimstone decades ago, and for the most part she couldn’t care less about the lives and deaths of people she didn’t even know, she didn’t kill for fun. When she killed, it was deliberate and quick. Controlled. Killing was the only thing she had any command over, the only aspect of her life that wasn’t chaotic, and she couldn’t stand the thought that she might be responsible for deaths she couldn’t prevent or make happen the way they should.

She paced, hanging back near the Harrowgate where the Umber wouldn’t notice her but she could keep an eye on the room. It was weird, being in the hospital her brothers had built. She hadn’t known what to expect, but disarray and unprofessionalism wasn’t it. The staff was grumpy, and when a patient came in with a spear impaled in his gut, two doctors spent so much time fighting over who got to treat the guy that he collapsed while the doctors screamed at each other.

She’d seen more order in a bar brawl.

“What the hell is going on?” Eidolon stepped out of the warg’s room, his gold-glowing eyes fixed on the guy bleeding out on the floor. His fury seemed to knock some sense into the arguing doctors, but as Eidolon rushed toward the patient, his expression told Sin that those physicians were soon going to wish their parents had practiced birth control.

But hey, the commotion made for a great distraction, and Sin could turn any situation into one that benefited her.

While all attention was on the skewered-guy drama, Sin peeked into the warg’s room. Relief flooded her at the sight of a sheet draped over a body. Now, if she could just gather her proof of death and get out of there so she could find Lore…

Of course, she couldn’t very well get proof while the body was lying in the middle of the emergency department. She’d have to wait until they took him to the morgue. In the meantime, she needed privacy.

Making sure no one was watching, she slipped down one of the halls and into a room full of medical equipment, wicked-looking, odd restraints, and even odder homey touches, like a wooden dresser and shelves stocked with towels and slippers in various sizes and shapes.

Sin removed her jacket, sat on the edge of the bed, and waited. She didn’t have to wait long. A vibration started deep in her body, growing steadily until it concentrated in her right arm. Her dermoire writhed, tightened, and finally, the skin between two symbols split, and a deep gash appeared in her biceps.

Even clenching her teeth so tightly her jaw popped, she couldn’t contain a cry of pain. Blood spurted, but she didn’t bother to stop it. No, this was a cleansing of sorts, something that happened after every kill, as though her body was purging itself of the guilt she couldn’t allow herself to feel.

“What the fuck?” Eidolon rushed into the room, grabbed her wrist, and slapped his hand over the gash.

“Don’t touch me!” She wheeled away from him, but he moved like Lore, with incredible speed and grace, and in a heartbeat he had her back on the bed, arm stretched out, with one palm putting pressure on her biceps.

His dermoire lit up. She kneed him in the junk, and with an “oof!” he doubled over, his grip loosening enough to allow her to leap away, scoop up her jacket, and dart toward the door.

He tackled her before she made it.

She smacked the floor hard, her breath exploding from her lungs. Eidolon rolled her, straddled her, and pinned her wrists together on her chest. Then he stared down at her with that furious, golden-eyed glare Lore had perfected.

“You want to explain those?” His gaze cut to the markings on her right arm. “And how you got around the Haven spell?”

“Haven spell? Get the fuck off me and I’ll leave you alone.”

He kept her wrists pinned with one hand and used the other to tear away her tank top’s shoulder strap, revealing her dermoire all the way to her neck. “You had this applied. How? Magic?” He rubbed his thumb over one of the symbols. “Permanent ink? Tattoo?”

“Fuck you.” Pain streaked up her arm from the tear in her biceps, which was gaping open from the awkward grip he had her arm in, and blood was pooling on the floor next to her.

She wriggled, but he held her tighter, squeezed her more firmly between his thighs even as he slapped his palm over the laceration and applied pressure. “The top symbol is my father’s. Were you mated to him? To Khane?”

Mated? To a Seminus demon? Eew. Still, she put on her best honest expression. “Yes. Love those hot, sexalicious Seminus males.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re lying. Wrong arm for mate marks.”

“If you already knew the answer, why’d you ask?”

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “Unless… you could be bonded to Lore, since the markings are the same. With his human genes, the bond could have gone funky.”

“Yep,” she said, feeling nauseated at the mere thought of being bonded in any way other than birth to Lore. “We were wondering what happened with that.”

His gaze cut sharply to hers, and in the long, tense silence, they stared at each other. It was weird, looking at the complete stranger who was her brother, as he tried to puzzle together both the obvious and the impossible.

Blood pumped from her wound in a warm rush between his fingers, and his dermoire lit up.

“No!” she snapped. “Don’t heal it. It’s mine to deal with.”

Ignoring her, he slid his fingers into the wound. She rocked her head up and bit him in the biceps.

“Ow!” He jerked his hand away. “Damn you. At least let me stitch it.”

“I’ve hit you, kneed you, bitten you… and all you can think about is fixing a scratch?”

“It’s more than a scratch, and I am a doctor. So, go figure, I’ve got this crazy desire to help people.” Warily, he released her. “You going to play nice so I can close that wound?” He scanned her body. “And the one on your leg?”

Shit. This had gotten way out of hand. She could promise to play nice and try to escape again, but she had a feeling she’d end up in the same situation she was currently in. And he wasn’t going to let the dermoire thing go. The fire in his eyes made that clear enough.

Damn you, Lore. You just had to find these guys, didn’t you?

“Fine,” she growled. “But don’t you dare use that stupid healing thingie Lore says you do. I want stitches. On my arm. You can zap the leg scratch.”

“Stitches will leave a scar…” He trailed off as he took in the hundred other scars running the length of her arm. “Though I guess that’s not a big deal for you.”

“Duh.”

He shook his head in exasperation, but he eased off her and offered her a hand up. She refused. Her arm hurt like hell, but she managed to get up and plant herself on the bed while he gathered a tray of supplies.

“So. You’re mated to Lore. Since when?”

Her heart shot into her throat at the seemingly innocent question she knew was really a grilling. Low-level heat, but still. “It was recent. Still honeymooning, you know?” God, it actually grossed her out to say that.

“Really.” He drew a chair and the tray around the bed in front of her. “And you say you’re looking for him?”

“Yeah. I’m worried.”

“Is he in pain?” His dermoire lit up, and he channeled an excruciating amount of power into her leg.

“I have no idea,” she gritted out. “How the hell would I know?”

He leaned forward to look her in the eye, and she started to sweat, because he’d just turned up the heat a notch. “Because,” he said, “if you were bonded, you’d feel his pain. You aren’t mated to him. So why don’t you tell me the truth?”

“And what would that be, Dr. Smartypants?”

“That you are somehow his sister.” His voice went low. Dangerous. “Which means you’re somehow mine.”

Eidolon shut off his healing power and waited for the female’s response, his mind working overtime to believe what it insisted made sense, despite the utter impossibility. A sister? How?

“There are no female Seminus demons,” she said finally. “You should know that, brainiac.”

His movements were jerky and brisk as he swabbed the area around her arm laceration and prepared to inject her with anesthetic. “I do know that. But unless this is a trick, the evidence is telling me otherwise.”

“Well, aren’t we the logical one?”

“I try.”

He eyed her, noted that she had their family’s dark hair, though hers was so black that it had a blue cast to it. She had their dark eyes, tan skin, and the markings on her arm were fucking perfect. Of course, any of those things could be manufactured. Only her size was odd—she was short, maybe Tayla’s height, and though she was toned, she was petite, and in that way very opposite Eidolon and his brothers.

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re wrong. And don’t put that shit in me. I can take the pain.” She shoved his hand away as he attempted to inject the numbing medicine.

“Funny how you sound just like Wraith, Ms. I’m Not Related to You.” Ignoring her Wraithlike string of insults, he paged a nurse, and while he waited, he prepared a suture kit and let what he’d learned sink in. Lore’s markings were identical to hers… faded, with no personal symbol. Lore was a cambion, born of a human-Seminus mating, and those went screwy a lot, so even though it was unlikely that a female could be born of that kind of mating, it might not be impossible.

The door opened, and Chu-Hua, a Guai nurse who resembled an upright wild boar, stepped in. “Yes, doctor?”

He gestured to the female. “Take a blood sample. I want DNA results compared to mine ASAP.”

The little female jerked away. “Oh, no. Stay the hell away from me.”

“You got something to hide?”

“No.”

He nodded to the nurse, but his patient hissed and backed away. He grasped her wrist. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I strongly recommend the easy way.”

Her glare drilled holes right through him. “I hate you.”

“I’m hurt.” That earned him a middle-finger salute. He held her arm while Chu-Hua started the draw. “How is the patient?” he asked the nurse, referring to the one who’d been bleeding out while doctors Pon and Rivers went at it.

“He’s being prepped for surgery,” she said, dragging out the “y” in a grating piglike squeal.

“Keep me informed.” He’d have dealt with the patient himself, but the elflike blanchier demon was one of the few species that didn’t respond well to Eidolon’s healing gift. “And make sure Rivers and Pon don’t leave my office.” On any other day, he’d have fired the doctors, but Eidolon suspected that whatever was making the rest of the staff snap was affecting the two physicians as well.

Chu-Hua left with the blood sample, leaving him alone with the female, whose glare hadn’t eased up at all.

“What’s your name?” He pinched the base of her laceration and started the first stitch.

“Ouch! Fuck. Where did you get your degree? Online?”

“I told you it was going to hurt. What’s your name?”

“Sin.”

“Short for?”

“How do you know it’s short for anything?”

Because a human wouldn’t name a child Sin. “Answer the question.”

“Sinead.”

“So… Loren and Sinead. Twins, I’m guessing?” It wasn’t a longshot of a guess; their father had been the rape ’em and leave ’em kind, and Eidolon seriously doubted he’d impregnate the same female twice. When Sin didn’t answer his question, he sighed. “The DNA test will confirm what I already know. So just admit it.”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Lore is my twin brother. You must have been at the very top of your online class.”

He ignored the barb. Tayla had broken him in to a female’s sharp tongue a long time ago. “Why hasn’t Lore mentioned you?”

She snorted. “I told him not to tell you about me.”

“Why keep it from us?”

“Why not?”

Gods, she was exasperating. She was like a female Wraith. “Are you going to answer the question?”

She sighed. “I have one pain in the ass brother already. I don’t need more, okay?” There was a defiance and a wariness in her eyes that indicated there was more to the story than what she was telling him, but now wasn’t the time to push.

Working carefully, he put the final stitches in place. “So if you didn’t want to know us, why risk coming to the hospital?”

“I told you. To find Lore.” She bit her lip, and he gave her a moment to decide if she wanted to say anything more. “He’s sort of missing.”

Yeah, Eidolon was achingly aware of that. But before he told her what he knew, he wanted as much information from her as possible. “He’s after a friend of mine. You know that, right?”

For the first time, something other than anger flickered in her expression. Fear. “What did you do to him? I swear, if you hurt him—”

“I didn’t do anything to him. Yet.”

She swallowed audibly. “It’s not Lore’s fault. He has to do it. There are severe consequences to failing a mission.”

“You sound like you know this from experience. Are you an assassin, too?”

“Another gold star for you.”

“My online degree has served me well,” he said dryly. “So who hired him?”

“Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you, nosy-ass.” She swung her legs to the opposite side of the bed and leaped down. “Now, unless you plan to tackle me again, I’m going to go find my brother.”

Eidolon blocked the door, fully intending to physically restrain her if he had to. “I just want to ask a few more questions. And maybe I can help find Lore.”

She seemed to consider that, and though she narrowed her eyes at him, she nodded slowly.

“How did you get hurt?” he asked.

“That’s none of your business.” When he cursed, she huffed. “What? It’s an answer.”

Gods, she was starting to make Wraith look agreeable. “What’s your gift?”

A plastic model of a set of lungs crashed to the floor, startling Eidolon and making Sin jump. “What the hell was that?”

“Ghost.” Damn, he was getting sick of this shit. “Your gift?” he prompted.

Glancing at the shattered model as if it was going to launch at her, she rubbed her bandage, but when she realized what she was doing, she let her hand drop. “Gift isn’t the word I’d choose for it.”

“Ability, then. What is it? You don’t wear a glove, so I’m guessing it’s not the same as Lore’s.”

She laughed bitterly. “No, but it’s still fucked up. Apparently, only you purebreds get the cool stuff.”

“Apparently.” He waited for her to answer his question, but she didn’t, and he gnashed his teeth. “So… your ability? What is it?”

“I can cause disease at a touch.”

“Disease?” he repeated, just to make sure he heard correctly.

“D-I-S-E-A-S-E. Disease. You should have learned all about them in one of your internet classes.”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. “What kind of disease?”

Turning away, she rubbed her injury again. “It’s different in everyone. It’s like I send a spark into someone, and the spark searches out the most horrible, personalized disease it can find to kill that individual.”

Gods, Lore and Sin couldn’t be more the opposite of Eidolon in terms of abilities. He healed; they killed. “And you do this, why?”

She rounded on him, jabbed her finger in his chest. “Don’t you judge me, asshole. You’re not exactly an angel, either. I do what I have to do. And if it makes your highly educated, superior self feel any better, I do it quickly. The werewolf was an accident.”

“What werewolf?”

She jerked. “It’s nothing. I have to go.” Sin shoved at him, but he seized her arm and hauled her up so she was on her toes, off-balance, and couldn’t possibly mistake how through with her games he was.

“The warg that came in,” he growled. “His death was your doing, wasn’t it?”

“Fuck off.”

“Sin, dammit, answer me!”

“Yes, okay?” Her black eyes glinted with flecks of gold, a Seminus trait that couldn’t be faked, and every last drop of doubt left him in a rush. “You happy now?”

“Not really,” he muttered, releasing her. Gods, his mind was still having trouble processing all of this. Lore’s existence had been unexpected, but a sister? A brother with a human mother was fucked up enough, but Eidolon couldn’t even begin to imagine what could go wrong with a Seminus female. “I was hoping to help Lore deal with his gift… maybe I can help you with yours.”

She laughed and put a few steps between them. “Help? Yeah, okay. If you really want to help you’ll chop off the warg’s head and bring it to me in a bag. That would be a big help.”

He let out a disgusted breath. “You need proof of his death.”

“There goes the brain surgeon again.”

“You’re not getting his head,” he said tightly. “I won’t let you desecrate his body.”

“You have to!” Panic snuffed out the gold flecks in her eyes. “I need proof.”

“Or what?” When she said nothing, he repeated himself, his voice cracking in the still air. “Or what?”

“Or I’m going to be sold to Neethul slave traders.”

Eidolon inhaled sharply. As far as punishments went, it didn’t get much worse.

“Hey!” Sin jabbed him in the biceps. “You stroking out or something? You’re pale. And you’re not being all superior. Something’s wrong.”

Oh, she was a riot. “Will anything other than his head be acceptable?”

“Sometimes a unique identifying feature will work, but you need a damned good reason for not having the head.”

“Would your employer accept my word as a Justice Dealer and physician?” Granted, he was no longer an enforcer of demon law, but he had powerful connections and a fucking great game face.

She leveled a look of disbelief at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I can make it look official. I’ll include an autopsy report and a photo.”

“I guess that’s not a horrible idea.” She slid him a puppy-dog look with a side of pout and batting eyelashes that must come standard on every sister, because Omira, the Judicia sister he’d grown up with, used to try the same thing. “You sure I can’t have his head? Pretty please? It’s not like he needs it.”

“I’m sure. Come back tomorrow for the report.” He paused. “About Lore…”

Sin froze as she reached for the door handle. “What?”

He told her about Lore and Idess, and everything that had gone down, though he left out the details about Kynan’s Sentinel status.

“So this chick is protecting Kynan? Why?”

“I don’t know,” he lied.

Sin erupted with a creative flow of curses, and when she was finished, she asked, “What does she look like?” Sin asked.

“Like she’d look good on a mattress.”

Sin jammed her fists on her hips. “That tells me nothing, and aren’t you mated?”

“I’m also a male sex demon. I didn’t go blind when I took a mate.” He had, however, lost all desire to so much as touch another female. He only wanted Tayla. Wanted her constantly, and even now heat began to kindle at the mere thought of her. “Long, dark brown hair she keeps in a ponytail, light brown eyes. Tall. Right ear is pierced at the top.”

“That bitch.” Sin’s voice went low and deadly, her body coiled like a predator about to strike, and he suddenly saw the assassin she was. “She attacked me, too. And she had Lore’s Gargantua-bone dagger. I got it back.”

Eidolon blinked at that. Those daggers were rarer than acid sprite mana and just as priceless. “Did it taste her blood?”

Sin’s grin was downright evil. “Yes. Come 3:00 A.M., I’m hunting.”

Eidolon had no doubt Sin would find Idess. He hadn’t known his… sister… for long, but already he knew she’d inherited their family’s single-minded determination. And stubbornness. “Sin, you can’t kill the female when you find her.”

“Oh, I plan to kill her. Like, a lot. After she tells me what she’s done with Lore.”

“She’s an angel. You’ll only get yourself killed.”

“You might be surprised. But what happens when I do find Lore?” she asked quietly. “He’s after your friend. You just going to stand by and let Lore have him? Or will I be rescuing him just so his own brothers can kill him?”

“Nothing is going to happen to him,” Eidolon said, but he doubted she believed him, because he didn’t believe it either.

Warmth surrounded Idess like a blanket. A heady, masculine spice tickled her nose. Wriggling, she burrowed closer to the scent and warmth. After all the years of loneliness and feeling as if she didn’t belong—or deserve to belong anywhere—she finally felt at peace. She must be dreaming… except, she didn’t dream. She had nightmares. Not that she was going to complain. She was going to enjoy this wonderful feeling while she could.

“Idess?” The husky voice floated down to her. “Angel?”

“Mmm.”

“I gotta take a leak.”

She jerked upright, blinking, trying to focus her eyes and her brain. It took several seconds to recognize her bedroom, her bed… her demon that was chained to said bed.

Stunned by the realization that she’d fallen asleep on him, she muttered into her palm, “Oh, I’m… sorry. Are you okay?” Her weight had to have put extra pressure on his shoulders and arms.

“Yeah.” His voice was gruff. Maybe he’d fallen asleep, too. A sudden tenderness in her groin nixed the sleep theory, as arousal pulsed into her through their blood connection. Grr. She knew it had been a mistake to feed from him. “I just gotta take a piss.”

Flustered by the powerful sexual need coursing through her, she scrambled awkwardly off him, wondering how they were going to manage this. Wondering how much longer she could keep him prisoner.

She checked her watch and let out a mild curse.

“What is it?” Lore asked.

“It’s almost 3:00 A.M. in New York, which means that in about fifteen minutes, your girlfriend is probably going to be hunting me down with your Gargantua dagger.”

“You stole it from me?”

He sounded so indignant. “I borrowed it. But she took it.”

“And she knifed you?”

“Please. It was just a scratch.”

The morning sun streaked through the window and fell across his body but cut off abruptly at his neck, leaving his face in shadow. His espresso eyes seemed even darker in the gray wash.

“What do you plan to do?”

A note of jealousy rang through her at the way his voice had gone low and dangerous at the mention of his girlfriend. His fear hit her as well, a psychic blast that gave her a headache.

“Nothing,” she snapped irritably. “I’ll flash around and make her chase me, but I won’t kill her.”

“Why not? She hurt you and killed your Primori. Why not take revenge?”

“I’m an angel. I’m above that kind of selfish pettiness.” Liar.

“So you’re saying you’ve never let your emotions rule your actions? You’ve never done anything shitty to someone in your entire life? Not buying it.” He jerked on his chains, and her heart jerked in response. “What are you going to do to her, Idess?” He tugged on his chains again, more violently, and sparks of gold pierced the coal in his eyes.

His concern rattled her, became her concern. No matter how desperate she was, she would never feed from him again. “Lore—”

“Tell me!”

“I already said I won’t hurt her,” she said, but his doubt screamed in her mind so loudly she wanted to cover her ears. “We try not to mess with Primori lives if we can avoid it.”

His breath caught. “She’s Primori?”

“No, you are,” she blurted stupidly. So stupidly. Primori were never to be told what they were. The idea of being watched didn’t sit well with many of them, and in the past, they’d found ways to hide themselves. She had to get away from Lore. Now, before she said something else that compromised her. Or Kynan. Or the entire universe, with the way she was going. “I’ll be right back.”

Ignoring his irate curses, she hurried to the garage and found another length of chain. He’d stopped swearing by the time she returned, and he remained silent, watching her with shrewd, intelligent eyes while she rigged the chains so he had some freedom to move around. Not much, but he could at least get to the bathroom five feet away.

She stood back as he came to his feet smoothly, if a little stiffly. Instead of moving directly to the bathroom, he stalked toward her. More accurately, he stalked her. And now that he was on his feet, he was much bigger than she’d remembered, a wall of muscle and male flesh that filled her vision so there was nothing else but Lore. Every step made her heart skip a beat, as if the heavy thud of each footfall shocked it out of rhythm.

Though she knew the chain would stop him, she couldn’t help but take a step back.

The chain yanked him short two feet away. He stood there, dark eyes drilling into her and holding her as captive as he was.

“I’ll get free,” he growled. “And when I do, you’re going to experience everything I have. I promise you that.”

Swallowing dryly, she stepped forward, resisting the urge to flinch when he strained against the chains so he was no farther than an inch from her.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, surprising the wind out of her, and she suspected that if he could, he’d kiss her.

“You can’t best me,” she ground out, a little breathlessly.

“Yeah. I can.”

Oh, he was arrogant and intimidating and way too sexy for his own good. And worse, he might be right. She was vulnerable to him in a way she’d never been vulnerable to anyone before. Especially now, with his blood coursing through her veins, and his every desire and emotion channeling into her, making her sympathize with him. Empathize. Want him.

“Maybe we don’t have to best anyone,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as choked with lust to him as it did to her. “We can help each other.”

He smiled and lifted his gaze so their eyes were locked. “Agreed. You let me go, and I’ll do whatever you want.” He inhaled deeply, and his smile grew sinister. “And I know exactly what you want.”

Her body tingled and her heart raced, pushing super-heated blood through her veins. Yes, he knew exactly what she wanted. And it was something she could never have.