Corrine! Stop!
Corrine yelped as the deep, rich, vibrant voice reverberated around the inside of her head. Sheer panic and disbelief made her freeze where she was, on her knees in that bed. She had been watching him every second and knew for a fact he hadn’t opened his mouth to speak. Her frightened eyes scanned the room, looking for another source for the voice. It had to be something . . . something other than what it had felt and sounded like. She looked for a loudspeaker, some kind of communications device, but there was nothing she could see. Nothing anywhere.
Drawn to those vividly blue eyes, she began to shake as his big body clenched, jerking his bonds all the tighter.
Don’t be afraid of me, Corrine.
Corrine’s jaw dropped open again. Those sexy lips had not moved a smidge, but it was all too clear from what she could see in his deep, imploring eyes that he was the one making the plea. She sat poised there for almost a minute, ready for flight and riddled with confusion. She had to be out of her mind. Maybe it was an effect from a roofie some bastard had slipped in her drink?
“What in hell is going on here?” she demanded to know, the pitch of her voice little more than a growl.
Then the son of a bitch had the temerity to smile at her. And somehow, maybe because of years of experience with this kind of reaction, she just knew it was loaded with condescension. The old “Aww, how cute, the redheaded temper thing!”
With quick angry eyes, she ran a contemptuous gaze over him. That lasted for about a second because once she made it past his belt line she realized he was . . .
Holy shit! She gasped when she realized he was fully—fully—aroused. God, please tell me that is a full-on hard-on because if that’s only a partial I might just have to stay and think about this for a moment.
Corrine’s captive stud suddenly erupted in laughter, resting his head back so the rich, rolling sound could bolt out of him and echo around the room. Since the entire place seemed made of stone and rock, the echo was rather significant. But that didn’t bother Corrine nearly as much as the realization that he had heard her thoughts.
He heard my thoughts!
He really was inside her head!
Oh no, she thought with horror. No one knew what went on in her head, not even her sister Isabella. She had made an art out of snarky internal dialogues and editing them before they passed her lips. Well, at least since college she’d internalized and edited them. Her blithe tongue had gotten her in trouble more often than not before then, so she had learned to temper it. And if this guy really could read her thoughts and talk inside her head, he was about to prove to her all the reasons why.
Yes, Corrine, I can read your mind . . . and one day you will be able to read mine.
“The hell I will!” she blurted out. “Where are my clothes? I’m getting out of this freak show right now!”
“No, don’t!”
Too late. She had reached the edge of the bed and put her feet down. First, the bed was much further from the floor than she had judged it to be and second, despite a good start, her legs simply refused to hold her. She hit the painfully hard floor in a pile of awkward, uncoordinated limbs, hurting herself in numerous places.
“Ow,” she complained aloud.
“Corrine?” The demand was hard and full of restrained anger, but it was also laced with very obvious fear. Fear for her safety, perhaps. Or maybe he was just afraid she would leave him trapped and alone?
Corrine curled up against her thighs for a moment, closing her eyes and nursing her pain and heart-racing anxiety for just a moment. Jumbled thoughts and questions tripped over one another in her head. She didn’t know what to focus on first. She didn’t know which direction held safety and comfort and, just as importantly, peace of mind.
Moving slowly onto her knees, steadying herself with her hands, she tried to get her feet back under her. She made it only as far as her knees, and, panting softly for breath with her head hanging, Corrine tried not to give in to the sting of frustrated tears filling her vision. She was confused and was abruptly being forced to realize that she was weak and helpless on top of everything else.
“Corrine . . .”
His voice, spoken aloud in a softly coaxing tone, was as deep and compelling as it had been when it was ringing inside her head. Something about it helped her find focus, helped her draw herself out of her momentary emotional panic. She focused on him and his voice, even though she couldn’t even see him over the high edge of the bed. Just the feel of his presence was enough to steady her.
“How do you know my name?” she asked, her own voice sounding rough and disused. She recalled having been ill. Yes. She’d called in sick to work several days in a row because the flu or something had been kicking her ass. She’d been weak and exhausted . . . something like the way she felt now, only it had been getting much worse.
“Is that important?” he asked. She could hear the sound of him shifting, the noisy clank of steel chains making a chill skip down her spine.
“No, I suppose not,” she responded in a breathy whisper. She also realized the answer was obvious. If the guy really was a telepath, obtaining her name was no doubt a piece of mental cake. “God, I can’t believe I am actually considering this is real.”
Slowly, balancing carefully on her rubbery knees, she grabbed for the edge of the mattress and drew herself up until her eyes and nose could peek over it. There he was, laid out and trussed up like a Christmas goose. He was watching her every move, of course, those deep blue eyes steady and unreadable at the moment. His entire frame was locked tight with tension and where his skin was bare he was gleaming with perspiration. He looked like he was in pain. She recalled the blood around the cuffs that bound him and suddenly felt really stupid. She hadn’t even stopped to consider that he was probably in just as much trouble as she was. She’d just acted like such a girl and freaked out.
“Corrine, listen to me very carefully,” the captured male said, his tone both coaxing and compelling. “You have to get back up on the bed.”
Corrine sat down sharply on her heels, a tired sigh jolting out of her as she rolled her eyes. Well, that’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to scale a wall of mattresses with spaghetti arms.
No, I don’t, came the amused response deep inside her head. But if you don’t find a way to get back in this bed you will only get weaker and sicker as time goes on.
It was bad enough that she was listening to a man’s voice in her head where there ought not to be one, but listening to implied threats just topped the cake.
She turned her back hard against the mattresses and frame, sitting down stubbornly on the cold stone of the floor. Crossing her arms under her breasts she gave in to the urge to pout out her bottom lip.
“I’m just supposed to believe everything you say because you can . . . can . . .”
“Read your mind?”
“Yes! And it isn’t fair that you know my name and everything I think. I don’t know a damn thing about who you are and if you think I am getting back up into that bed with you—!”
“My name is Kane.” He cut her off with the simple announcement. Then he switched to the more resounding impact of his mind within hers. And if you do not get into this bed with me, you are going to die, Corrine.
Corrine couldn’t help the laugh that snorted out of her nose. It instantly mutated into a fit of giggles as the outrageous threat tickled the more perverse side of her sense of humor.
“Listen, buddy,” she called up to him between chuckles, “I’ve met plenty of men who thought they were God’s gift to women, but no one has ever told me before that getting into bed with them was a matter of life or death.” She giggled at that absurdity again. “I gotta give you points for originality though.”
“Damn it, Corrine, get up here!”
“Or what?” she demanded. “What are you gonna do to me, bondage boy? Rattle your chains?”
“I could take control of your mind, turn you into a simple-minded puppet and h
ave you climb into this bed like a well behaved puppy, Corrine. That is what I can do.”
Cold dread sliced down through her chest and belly as she realized he was speaking the truth. Oh, she knew nothing at all about this weird telepathy stuff, but it was a dead-on fact that he had the power to speak into her mind. It wasn’t much of a stretch to believe he could do what he said. Her heart began to race again at the idea of someone being able to take control of her in such an absolute way. Looking around in a frantic renewal of panic, she searched for the door to the room.
It was really, really far away. A good eighteen yards—okay, so maybe it was just feet—away. Christ the room was big! Or maybe it just felt that way because even the idea of crawling across all that harsh stone was exhausting. Corrine leaned forward, her hands touching the stone in the beginnings of a crawl, and suddenly there was an explosion of crashing steel and groaning wood from the bed.
“Corrine, don’t! Don’t leave! Damn you, you stubborn little—!”
“Stubborn?” Corrine sat back on her heels once more, turning her head to glare at the bed, if not the man within it. “You are chained to a bed, you idiot! My coming up there to keep you company isn’t going to help either of us! Maybe if I can get out of here, I can find some help and we can both go back to our lives. Unless, of course, you enjoy being lashed down? If that’s the case I won’t interfere with your fun. But I happen to like my life out there in the free world!”
“Fine. Have it your way.”
Corrine ought to have realized then and there that there wasn’t even a hint of capitulation in his words.
Chapter 3
Corrine felt herself resolving into an awareness. It took only a heartbeat for her to realize that, not only was she back in bed with her blue-eyed boy in bonds, but she was curled up like a contented kitten across his chest. She tried to push away from him in her shock, but her body did not respond to her demands. She felt exhausted and her hair was drenched in sweat as though she’d just run some kind of a marathon. Worse yet, she was bare butt naked again, her breasts mashed between their bodies.
She realized then what he had done. He had made good on his threat to take control of her actions. Somehow he had seized her mind and forced her to climb back into bed with him. In a sudden and dreadful panic, Corrine wondered just what, exactly, he had done to make her break the awful sweat drenching her body.
“I didn’t do anything,” he snapped out with a scowl. “You’re critically ill, Corrine. Just getting your stubborn little butt back in this bed was an Olympic event.” He dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling, his jaw set with angry tension. “I didn’t want to make you come back like that, but you left me no choice.”
“No choice?” She could barely hear herself. Corrine realized she was short of breath and so damn tired she couldn’t even get a good mad on. “How about the choice where you leave me alone and let me do what I decide to do! You had no right—!”
“I had every right!” he bellowed suddenly into her nearby face. “If you’d just sit still and listen for five minutes you’d understand that!”
“Oh, really?” she hissed out snidely, sliding up against him just enough to put them nose to nose. “Go ahead. Make me understand why you’re chained to a bed like some rabid dog and why you think it’s life or death that I stay with you! I’m listening!”
Kane drew a breath, impatience and temper fueling his desire to hit her with the truth and use it against her. His mind was blind with emotion and need she couldn’t understand. He shouldn’t have had her curl up into contact with him, but he had not been able to help himself. He’d needed her nearness so much . . . oh, so much. The feel of her, just the smell of her gave him a measure of comfort, even as it created brand new tortures. It sickened Kane that she had thought the worst of him, that Corrine had thought he’d used his power over her mind to make her obey his need for sex, but maybe that was because the idea had, in fact, crossed his mind several times.
Corrine watched Kane turn his head aside, hiding his face against his biceps for a long, long minute. Her skin almost felt alive with the strange sense of energy she felt radiating from him into herself. It left an odd tasting tang on her tongue. Even in a sea of exhaustion, there was something wildly rejuvenating about the sensation. Slowly the sense of numbing weariness began to fade and a keen sense of perception replaced it. Once again she became acutely aware that he was in a great deal of pain. She felt it was focused physically at the biting raw places where the cuffs held him fast, and yet there was something else, something like a symphony of agony that radiated through him from head to toe.
She sat up as best she could manage, pressing flat palms against his chest as she slowly let her eyes walk over him. His dark hair was damp and curling in a messy collection of rings. His dark skin was as slick as hers; every vein and vessel beneath it was distended to the utmost.
Corrine cleared her throat, her anger fading when she acknowledged that, whatever else he was, Kane was suffering.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she asked him more gently this time. “Why are you trapped like this? Why don’t you want me to find someone to free you? God, I can tell you’re suffering from some kind of pain. Why won’t you let me help?”
Kane looked at her, his crisp blue eyes hot with unspoken emotions she had no access to. Not unless he deigned to share them with her.
“I am being held here like this”—he jerked on the chains—“because right now I can’t be trusted. The pain I am in is transient. It will pass.” She saw his jaw clench briefly. “I just need you to understand one thing, okay?” He waited until she nodded. “There is a special sort of . . . of chemistry, between you and me. The moment you and I came into contact with each other, it made something happen to both of us. It made us change into symbiotic beings. That means—”
“I know what symbiotic means,” she broke in tartly.
“I know you do,” he sighed. “I meant to say, what that means for us is that we are each dependent now on the other. You became sick, Corrine, because I wasn’t there to support you. You almost died because of it. Now you are weak and can barely function. You were in a coma until just a little while ago. And you’ll go back into it if you don’t keep close to me.”
“Wait a minute . . .”
“No. You can’t think about this now. You just need to go to sleep and rest. In a little while you’ll start to feel better and then we can talk some more. Please, Corrine, just rest.”
Corrine wanted to complain. She wanted to question him about things like: How did he know all of this? Was this real or just some kind of delusion that he truly believed with that unnerving conviction of his? And if this had all started the moment they’d met, how was it that she’d been sick since before meeting him?
But none of those questions made it past the point of thought flashing through her mind. Her exhaustion had rapidly caught up with her and before she could think to fight it, she slipped into a deep, natural sleep.
Or so she thought.
“Hmm.”
“What?” Noah looked up from his reading when Abram made the speculative sound.
“Nothing really. Only, I find it fascinating to watch the mistakes that the young tend to make.”
“If you mean Kane, he is hardly what I would call young. And mistakes are not exclusive to youth.” Noah frowned at that, thinking of all he had learned recently about Demon history. A thousand years ago the Demon race had actually been comprised of two races. Demon and Druid. They had lived a symbiotic existence. Demons could not know the depth of true and meaningful love with a soul mate, without a genetically perfect Druid counterpart; Druids could never know their own power without that perfect Demon’s touch to give birth to it. And, as Kane and Corrine were discovering, once that connection was made, they could not survive apart from one another. The Druid would whither away and die within a couple of weeks for want of the energy of the Demon it fed from, and the Demon would pine for its love, suf
fer untold depression, and usually seek an end at its own hand or simply waste itself away into death.
Yet, even knowing this, a millennia ago the Demons had taken an active hand in the destruction of the Druid race. Just because of a slight by one King to another King, whether real or imagined in the distant dust of history, the Demon King had declared war on the Druids. And what had been his first, most vicious attack against his enemy? To lock up his own people. All Demons that had been mated at the time had been locked away from their Druid mates.
The deaths had been in the thousands. The Demon King had wiped out nearly half the Druid population in one cruel act. Druids suffered and starved with their energy sources torn from them. Their loves torn from them. And the backlash of all those Druid deaths had made the Demon King’s victory short lived, because Demons had killed themselves in untold numbers once they were set free. And those that did not take their own lives died of broken hearts and spirits in under a year.
No. Demons could not survive the death of their Imprinted mates any better than Druids could survive theirs.
In the end the Druid population suffered a complete genocidal eradication. Thus, there had not been a Druid born in a thousand years. They were gone and gone for good. In one fell swoop the Demons had exiled themselves to empty, loveless immortality. Imprinting between Demon and Demon was all but unheard of, though in rare instances it did happen. Instances like Noah’s own parents. And yes, Demons did wed, joining with each other, producing offspring.
But those relationships never lasted very long. Maybe a half century. Maybe more if they were lucky. Never as long as they would have if they had been Imprinted. Imprinting was forever. It was exquisite and beyond compare, soul deep and heart bound. And it was gone.
Or so it had seemed for a thousand years. The truth appeared to be complex and yet simple at the same time. Druids, seeing the writing on the wall, had done the unthinkable. They had escaped Demon persecution and hidden themselves deeply amongst the infantile human race. They had given up any hope of ever knowing the power that hid in their blood, opting for survival instead. They had muddied their proud blood with that of the more savage humans around them. They had had no other choice at the time.