He slid a finger under the blood-chain at his neck. The metal had been infused with his blood when it was forged, and he had a matching chain in his pants pocket ready to bind Shayna to him. Once bound, their powers would combine, they’d form a tracking pair, and they could then go on the hunt for the extinction weapon.
He rose up slightly and drew the second chain out of his pocket, holding it in his hand as he settled down beside her once more.
The prudent course would be to slide the chain over her head right now and be done with it. She’d be enraged, but he could force her with any number of threats to get her to help him find the last weapon. And for a long moment, he debated doing just that.
She moaned softly, though still unconscious. She’d be coming around quickly now, and she’d be in pain.
But there was something he could do to help. At least he was pretty sure it would work.
Using the second bonding chain, he spread it out in a double line, laying it over Shayna’s throat. She arched slightly, then relaxed. He could feel some of his power leaving his body and he knew the proximity of the chain next to Shayna’s skin now allowed her to siphon his power and start healing. Altered flight was hard on humans, causing severe headaches and nausea.
Watching her draw a deep breath, he again considered slipping the chain over her head. If he did, she’d really be able to take on his power. The latent abilities that she’d previously exhibited would grow stronger, and her healing would progress quickly.
He was damn tempted.
He touched the chain at her neck and touched his own and felt a corresponding power surge within his own body. Her body arched again, stronger this time.
He’d gain from the bond as well, maybe even enough enhanced power and ability to battle his father if it came to that.
But he hated the thought of violating her freedom. It was bad enough that he’d basically abducted her from Seattle. But to go this far, to actually make it impossible for her to take the chain off without risk of dying—shit, he didn’t think he could go through with it.
But he was tempted.
The sooner they started hunting the weapon, the better.
He leaned forward, planting an elbow on his knee, then dropped his head into his hand.
He couldn’t do it.
When Rumy had first given him information on the winner of his little online game that proved Shayna’s ability, Marius had thought he could rip Shayna out of her life and force the bond. Once her power came online, she’d be able to find the last of several dangerous, mass-destruction weapons and keep them out of the hands of Marius’s maniacal father. In that way, Shayna would help save not just his world but the human world as well, since Daniel had designs on both.
Despite his belief that two worlds hung in the balance, though, he couldn’t force her to do anything against her will.
He just couldn’t.
Shayna must be given the chance to choose.
As he debated, his stomach cramped and without thinking, he began to rock as he attempted to force the pain away. Daniel had kept him blood-starved during his last incarceration, which had left him with a problem he’d have to deal with sooner or later. He would be cycling through a bout of blood-madness at some point, a condition caused by being deprived of blood, but hopefully not before he had everything settled with Shayna and maybe even the extinction weapon already in hand.
For now, he worked to control the pain in his gut and the disorienting swirls in his head. After a few minutes, he brought his symptoms under control and the debilitating pain eased back. Based on past experience from other episodes of blood-madness, he’d be good for several hours, possibly even a couple of days.
* * *
As Shayna came to consciousness, she felt that Marius was close by, even though she couldn’t open her eyes. She could sense his presence in a way that was as much a mystery as his sudden arrival in Seattle.
She pressed a hand to the top of her head and moaned. She was in so much pain that she was pretty sure knives whirled inside her head.
She’d been abducted just outside her apartment building—that much she could recall. She also knew that she needed to pull it together to figure out just what kind of hell she’d gotten mixed up in. But right now, the pain was the only problem she could focus on. She didn’t even know how she was surviving it.
She put both hands over her eyes, aware that she lay prone on some kind of bed. At least a comforter was keeping her warm. The space was cold and dark except for the glow from a fireplace opposite and what might have been a few candles on a stand to her right.
Barely opening her eyes, she saw that Marius sat on the side of the bed near her.
“Shayna, how you doin’?” He spoke quietly and sounded so compassionate for a vampire.
“I … hurt.” She wanted to say something more, to explain about the knives, but she couldn’t.
“I need you to focus on the chain at your neck. Can you do that? It will help you to heal more quickly. You’ll be able to siphon my power, and the pain will start to subside.”
“What … are you talking … about.” Her stomach boiled.
She felt Marius’s warm touch as he picked up her hand and moved it very slowly and gently to her throat. She felt the solid links beneath her fingertips just as he’d said. And the moment she made contact, a stream of power flowed through her hand and up her arm.
She gasped, because the same energy touched her mind and sent healing waves through her embattled brain. “Oh, God, that feels so good.”
“Keep siphoning. This will all be over in a few minutes. You’ll see.”
She didn’t know how it was working, but her mind knew a good thing and blocked out everything except the warm waves. She sucked in the sensation, and with each second that passed the pain lessened.
Marius was right. It didn’t take long.
When she finally opened her eyes, his brow was furrowed heavily. Maybe it was the chain, but as soon as she looked into his eyes she could feel that he suffered in a way that hurt her own heart.
“What is it?” she asked. “I’m sensing this heaviness, a kind of weight that lives inside you, hurting you.”
He stared at her, not answering for a moment. “I’m desperate about the fate of my world.”
She felt certain there was more to the story, but she hardly knew him. It would be improper to probe further.
Shayna rubbed the chain at her neck. The pain in her head was now a dull throb that she knew would soon disappear so long as she kept her fingers on the chain and kept siphoning.
As she held Marius’s gaze, she thought how strange it was to be here with him in a world completely hidden from human earth.
Above all, she was knocked out of stride by the way she responded to him. Again, he felt like home to her, which made no sense.
And his eyes.
Her thoughts funneled down to the small gold flecks set in an exquisite hazel. In her world, he would have been a supermodel, maybe even a movie star—he was that gorgeous.
She recalled the unexpected kiss outside her apartment building. The moment had been surreal and she was still shocked by how much she’d responded to him.
Her fingertip moved over the links as she looked at him. With each slide, desire started to build, a swell of more unexpected sensation inside her body that arrived so swiftly, she had to catch her breath.
She really didn’t understand why she was responding to him like this, at the speed of light. Or why she resonated with him like she did.
Was this love at first sight? Or maybe it was more like the kind of animal attraction that generally led to a hot-and-heavy one-night stand. Whatever it was, her cheeks flamed at the thought that she could easily tumble into bed with him, even though that was something she never did. As a rule, she had to get to know a man first, feel that she could trust him, before she had sex with him.
Maybe it was a vampire thing, an enthrallment power. But even as she had this thoug
ht, she knew it wasn’t true. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt confident Marius would never do that to her.
Suddenly a wave of a scent rolled toward her, reminding her of grassy fields, very male, very worked up. Marius held her gaze, his chin lowered, gold-flecked hazel eyes dilated. Apparently, a response similar to the one that had just swamped her held him captive as well, and it was rampantly sexual.
At the same time, the scientific part of her brain lit up, adding a different kind of chemical into the mix. She felt rabidly curious about what was happening. Maybe for that reason, she didn’t try to stop it or to remove her hand from the chain. Whatever this was, this knowing that flowed back and forth between them, she wanted to understand what was happening. The dangers that she’d already experienced told her that she needed information and she needed it now. Her life might just depend on how well she gained a raw set of parameters to define his world.
“Again, Marius, what’s happening between us? Can you explain it to me? We just met, but suddenly my hormones are in overdrive.” Her gaze fell to his lips. He had full lips that had felt so warm and moist on hers. And his tongue. He’d taken possession of her mouth without apology.
He’d make love to her that way as well. A kiss said an awful lot about a man.
She resisted the temptation to touch him. He’d removed his long leather coat to reveal a short-sleeved black T-shirt outlining a whole lot of muscle beneath. Her gaze drifted across his massive shoulders and, for a moment, she almost couldn’t breathe.
She drew in a deep breath, settling back against the pillows. She continued to press her fingers against the chain to keep it in position across her throat. At least her head no longer hurt, but she sure wished her body would settle down. She wanted Marius way too much for just having met him.
* * *
Marius wasn’t sure how to explain what was going on between them. He wasn’t sure he understood the intensity of it himself. He knew that blood-chains always enhanced an experience, but the basic building blocks had to be there in the first place. When it came to having sex with Shayna, those blocks were piled sky-high.
“I’m not sure what to tell you.”
He watched her gaze shift from his face to his shoulders, to the chain at his neck, then back to his eyes. She narrowed her gaze. “So do the chains cause the desire? Or is some other factor at work? And what are these chains, anyway, that they helped me heal?”
She had an interesting mind, seeking to know. She asked a lot of questions and was amazingly composed for having arrived in his home with so much pain that he’d had a hard time bearing her suffering. The chain around his neck and his proximity to her kept him informed moment by moment just how much the swift, dangerous flight had hurt her.
He explained about the chains, adding, “If you decide to put these on, you’ll be bonded to me, sharing my power as you are now, only more of it. Blood-chains are known to enhance sexual desire, but only if there’s an attraction in the first place. Apparently, there is. Also, for reasons I can’t explain, you have a certain level of latent power, as I mentioned in Seattle, that I’m drawn to. Together we can form what’s called a tracking pair, which might account for the strong attraction we have to each other.”
“You’re talking as though you’re assuming I’ll do this chain-bonding thing with you, but Marius, I can’t possibly stay in your world. I have a very long list of things to do in order to get ready to … fly to … Malaysia.” She glanced around as though just now becoming aware of her surroundings. “Okay, we’re not in Seattle anymore, are we? But what is this place? Because it looks like a cave.”
“It is a cave, much more rustic, you might say, than most modern dwellings.” He shifted his gaze to the arched doorway, also chiseled in rough strikes, then to the wall opposite that housed a tall antique armoire. “I own several.”
“I’m recalling that you mentioned a ‘cavern-based’ world. Is this your home?”
“One of them.”
“How many do you have?”
He turned to her, chuckling. “Are you cataloging in order to collate and analyze later?”
She looked sheepish, but her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “I suppose I am. You’ll have to forgive me. I collect data like some people collect bugs or stamps.”
“I’m getting that, but I don’t mind answering your questions. Given what I’ve put you through so far, it’s the least I can do. I have six cave homes and was working on a seventh before the imprisonment.”
She clamped her lips shut, but he could feel a whole host of questions bubbling in the air between them. He applauded that she politely refrained from asking.
He gave her permission anyway.
She stared at him. “Imprisonment? Where and why?”
He released a deep breath and decided that for her to make a decision she ought to know about his father and the scourge he was in his world. He told her about Daniel putting him and his brothers in the Himalayan cave, how he’d had them tortured.
“But what were you imprisoned for?”
“Daniel called it treason. Essentially, he recently took over our government, with plans to rule our world—and the only way to do that was to get rid of me and my brothers, because we fought him. We always have.”
She stared at him, and he could feel how hard she was working to digest all that he’d said. “Let me understand. Earlier you mentioned we would form a tracking pair. So if we did that, what would we be tracking?”
Marius explained about the extinction weapon, that the last one was hidden somewhere in his world. “With this weapon, he could take over our world. And if he succeeds, trust me, he’ll go after human earth.”
She clutched the chain in her fist, her light-blue eyes wide. “You’re serious.”
“With every fucking bone in my body. We’re in trouble, Shayna, and that’s why I’m asking for your help.”
She sighed heavily. “So, who is this Daniel person?”
Marius felt a familiar queasiness anytime he had to own to his connection to Daniel. “He’s my father.”
“What?” Her brows rose.
“Yeah. Four hundred years of having to live with the fact that my brothers and I were sired by a monster. It sucks.”
“What do you mean ‘four hundred.’” She figured it out and her brows rose. “You’re long-lived.”
He nodded.
She looked away from him, but her gaze settled on his forearm. “You mentioned having brothers.”
“Four of them, all half brothers. Two are aligned with Daniel, the other two are my best friends: Lucian and Adrien. We’ve been through a lot together.”
She cocked her head. “So how is it you turned out so well? You and your brothers?”
“When we escaped Daniel’s control, we had a lot of great teachers and counselors who got us through.”
She glanced down at the chain in her hand.
“What is it?” Marius asked.
“I’m just so surprised by what I’m experiencing here. I can sense who you are.” She lifted the chain. “Which is why I know what you’re saying is true. But it’s just so strange to be in this situation, let alone to feel and know these things about someone I’ve just met.”
“When I came to you in Seattle, Shayna, I didn’t want to rip you out of your life. I need you to know that. Only the arrival of Daniel’s security force would have caused me to take you into the air and bring you here.”
She now had the chain wrapped around her fingers, her thumb rubbing over the links. After a moment, she lifted her gaze to her surroundings. “You know, you have very little lighting in here but I swear this room has started to look like it’s lit in a glow. How’s that possible?”
“You’re starting to experience what our vision is like. We are, as your human lore suggests, extremely sensitive to sunlight, and yes, it can kill us. Humans moved out of cave living very early on, but our kind had to remain hidden deep in the earth. It’s the perfect environment for us.
”
She nodded her gaze flitting around his rustic bedroom. “You must be very content here, Marius.”
He was surprised by the statement. “Do you actually like this room?”
“I do. I think the stonework is fantastic. Rugged. Simple. Very clean. The craftsman clearly had a steady hand. There isn’t one cut that jars the eye and I’m seeing some unique patterns.” Her gaze drifted upward to the chiseled-out ceiling. “I like this design, how the indentation reaches to a point in the center of the ceiling. It’s very aesthetically pleasing.”
Marius tilted his head back. “I’ve never tired of looking at it.”
“And it’s just symmetrical enough that I doubt you’ve ever felt the need to improve it.”
He’d had the same thought about this space. “No, never.” Funny to think that he’d kidnapped this woman, only to find out she appreciated this room for almost the same reasons he did.
He rose from the bed, crossed to the fireplace, and added a couple more logs. He liked Shayna a lot. She had a calmness about her he hadn’t expected. She was of course shocked out by where she was; he could sense it in her underlying tension.
He shifted his gaze back to her and saw that she’d scooted up to a sitting position. She thrust a couple of pillows behind her, but kept the comforter tucked around her legs and waist. She still siphoned his power, maybe fearing that if she didn’t her head would start to hurt again.
He drew a chair close and sat down, but leaned forward to clasp his hands between his knees.
“So you want me to find this weapon before Daniel does.”
“In a nutshell.”
CHAPTER 3
Shayna stared at Marius, holding on to the blood-chain as though it was a life preserver—and maybe it was. Besides, she liked the feel of his power as she streamed it. She also loved being able to see so easily in the dark, and of course she really liked being out of pain.
Her brain whirred, working to process so much new information, and she let her thoughts fly in whatever direction they chose.