Caris Roane - Born in Chains

He nodded.

She picked up the list she’d made and flipped the edges of the paper. She drew in a deep breath then stood up. “I want you to know that while you’re in my care, Adrien, I intend to be humane.”

He snorted his laughter. “How kind of you. Then I should be clear as well: I’ll need blood, soon. And sex. If you can’t provide either, you’ll need to bring someone in. Got it?”

“Understood.”

“Has it occurred to you, human, that I might not want to help you find this weapon?”

At that, she leveled her hazel eyes on him. “I’ve thought about that, but I already know something about you because of the chains: You’ll do whatever you need to do to survive, to get back to your brothers here in the cavern in order to free them. Am I right?”

He nodded. “Just short of turning a race-killing weapon over to Daniel or anyone else like him. So you work for Harris Kiernan.”

“I wouldn’t say that I work for him.”

“But you think he’s a stand-up guy, no doubt.”

She leveled her gaze at Adrien. “I wouldn’t say that, either. I’ve never met him. We’ve handled everything through email and the much rarer phone call. That’s it.”

“Well, take it from me, he’s a real prick.”

She stared at nothing in particular. “Yes, I would say he is.”

He felt it again, a vast amount of sadness—and somehow Kiernan was connected to it. He wondered if she’d been a sex slave at one time, but she didn’t seem the type, she didn’t seem ruined in that way. No, whatever had caused her so much grief was something else.

She lowered her chin slightly and drew in a deep breath. “Now I have a question for you. Kiernan explained to me about how vampires can use a phenomenon that he called altered flight —sort of like moving at a fantastic speed but in some kind of altered reality that allows you to pass through anything solid. Is that right?”

He nodded.

“And just how good are you at altered flight?”

He lifted a single brow. “How good am I?”

“Kiernan suggested that because I’m human, we might have some trouble getting from one place to the next.”

He eyed her narrowly again. The woman had guts, he’d give her that. Humans didn’t enter altered flight easily, not with lesser vampires like himself. Any vampire of Ancestral status could easily take a human anywhere around the globe within minutes, sometimes seconds—they were that fast, that powerful.

But Adrien had resisted his Ancestral call for centuries, being outraged generally by that inbred, narcissistic, compassionless, and incredibly ineffective group for as long as he could remember. He’d rather eat dog shit than become an Ancestral.

No, this would be a rough ride for Lily. She knew it, too, by the look in her eye, like someone facing a tiger in the dark.

His mind shifted sideways for a moment. She stood at least five-ten, not a bad height against his own six-six. Her hazel eyes glinted in fear, but her lovely chin rose with courage. He had a sudden desire to put his hand on her face and rub his thumb along her cheekbone.

With these thoughts, his chain vibrated softly against his neck and chest. Dammit, he liked the look of her, and as much as he wanted to despise her, the blood-chain told him a different story.

He looked away from her, steeling his mind against any kind of thought that would make him sympathetic toward her.

“So what I suggest is that we head to Paris, using altered flight. I understand you have an apartment there. Or will that be too much for you?”

He snorted. “Hell, no, it’s not too much for me, but you’re probably not going to like it.”

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s get going. You can get dressed and I’ll alert Kiernan that I have you in my custody, then we’ll see what he wants us to do next.”

Adrien stilled. He hated the thought of leaving the Himalayas and his brothers—but what choice did he have?

No, this path was set. He could feel in his bones that he needed to travel this course. He would just have to trust that somehow, as he went along, he’d figure this out: how to survive, how to keep Lily alive, and above all, should they actually find the extinction weapon, how to keep Daniel or Kiernan from gaining control of it. And somewhere in there he’d get back to Lucian and Marius.

He dropped the towel and held his hand out to her. “Okay, Lily, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Lily glanced at his open palm, and her heart rate jumped up a few notches. She’d already touched him, but this felt different—as though a door swung wide, daring her to step through. That strange sensation reached her again, the one she’d felt in the cavern when she first saw Adrien, of a kind of strange knowing, like an echo bouncing from one jagged stone wall to the next.

But how could she really know a man she’d just met?

Her chain vibrated once more and as had happened from the first, her desire for him spiked, something she had a hard time squashing down. Of course, it didn’t help that he stood in front of her with his extraordinary body on full display. She’d never seen a man like him before.

“Take my hand, Lily. We need to go.”

Another deep breath and she placed her hand in his but retained her distance.

He shook his head. “No, this won’t work. You’ll have to come closer. Altered flight can be damn dangerous for humans. I’ll need to protect you the whole way.”

Her heart now thumped heavily in her chest. She didn’t want to get closer to this vampire, but she didn’t really have a choice. “Fine.”

As she moved toward him, he drew her into his arms so that she ended up balanced on top of his feet, her arms wrapped around his neck. Basically, she was plastered against his naked body.

He slid his arms around her back and waist and held her tight—but nothing happened, at least not the altered flight phenomenon Kiernan had told her about. Instead, she felt him take a deep breath and release it slowly.

Lily hadn’t been this close to a man in a long time, not since her husband died two years ago. She’d forgotten how it felt, the simple pleasure of the hard planes of a man’s chest, his heavier muscled thighs, and of course she couldn’t ignore his cock, which she felt firming up against her lower abdomen.

She wished there was some other way of doing this because it felt so good, even dangerous. The chains had already begun exposing the depth of her need and of her desire for the vampire, but this level of proximity wasn’t helping at all.

After a moment, when he hadn’t started to fly, she asked in a mumble against his shoulder, “What’s wrong? Did you forget how to do this? I mean, I know you’ve been chained up for an entire year.”

He snorted. “Just taking a breath.”

His voice had a threatening edge. She couldn’t imagine exposing her throat and having him sink in his fangs, but the only other choice was bringing in a third party. And from what she knew about vampires, sex usually accompanied the taking of blood.

The thought both sickened and excited her, especially the thought of this vampire throwing her on her back and taking so much from her. But she’d be feeding the same kind of beast that had killed her family if she serviced Adrien.

She felt trapped again by her situation. Yet what choice did she have if she ever hoped to get Josh back?

Thoughts of her son shook her to her core all over again, so she toughened up. She would do whatever needed doing in order to bring him home safe and sound once more.

She shifted in Adrien’s arms so that she could look up at him. Maybe she scowled, but she said, “I’m prepared to give you what you need once we’re in Paris. I know it’s part of the deal because of the chains, but are you sure I have to hold on to you like this right now?”