Night Hungers (14 page)

Pain surged through her. Just when she thought she’d scream at him to stop, he pulled up and looked down at her. There was something there, some emotion she’d never seen on a human or vampire before.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about...are you all right?”

She started to tell him no, then he moved. Zane wasn’t stupid. She knew all about sex. When she’d been in the lab they’d made them watch people copulate so that if the time came and they needed to have sex to prove they were human they would know the basics. But nothing, no movies, no films, nothing could have prepared her for the feelings she got when he moved inside of her.

“That feels good. Do it again. Slower this time.” When he chuckled, she looked up at Aiden, ready to blast him, but there was that look again. “What’s wrong? Am I doing something wrong?”

“No. Christ, no. You feel good. Tell me what else you want from me, Zane.” His voice was low, husky, and velvety along her skin.

“Why do I get the feeling that...oh, yes! Please, do that again. Aiden, please, you should...don’t stop, please.” His laughter this time was smooth and soft.

When he pulled nearly out of her, she could still feel a part of him within her. When he moved deep, his body pressing hard against her, she wrapped her legs around his hips and locked her ankles around him. Aiden growled deep in his chest when Zane wrapped her hands around his shoulders.

His movements were slow, almost measured. She wanted to make him go faster, harder, but this…she was really enjoying this. When he nuzzled her neck she was so close to letting him sink his teeth into her and drink. He moved on before temptation got the better of her. When his mouth moved over her jaw and up to her mouth Zane suckled his lip, worrying it until he pulled back, his lip still in her mouth until it popped free. As his movements got stronger, deeper, and more frantic Zane felt her own body responding to him.

A need of something rippled along her skin, making her instinctively tighten her legs around him. When Aiden palmed her breast and rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb he licked her throat. Her breath caught and her heart went into overdrive. She wanted him to mark her, to take her more than she wanted her next breath.

When Aiden suckled at her vein without breaking the skin it was almost too much.

His whispered command sent her over the edge. “Come. Now, Zane. Come.”

Her body responded to him as though he was her master and she had no choice. She bowed up off the bed and screamed out his name as wave after wave of pleasure moved through her body. Every time she started to come down he would say something, do something to her that had her reaching that peak again and again. When she was sure that she couldn’t take any more Aiden took her higher; his body pounded into hers faster and harder until she felt him stiffen above her. Then with a powerful thrust, he roared out her name, his body taking hers with quick, hard jabs as he filled her with his cum. Over and over he surged into her body until he finally slowed then collapsed atop of her.

As sleep claimed her she knew that she was lost. Aiden would not give up until he had claimed her fully. She needed to speak to the queen before that happened, and it would be soon she was sure. Zane rolled over and felt Aiden pull her closer to him as she closed her eyes.

Zane was used to sleeping very little. Her jobs, the one at the garage and the one she worked for the queen, had her running on both ends. So when she woke only an hour after they’d had sex she wasn’t surprised. What she was surprised about was that Aiden wasn’t in the bed with her. She reached out to him and discovered that he was in the bedroom down the hall and in the slumber of his kind. Rolling out of his bed Zane tried not to be hurt by his leaving her.

By the time she had a quick shower and materialized in her own lair it was well past noon. She had to get to the garage and call Danny to let him know she was still coming in.

“No problem. I heard through the grapevine that some pretty unicorn saved Tristan and Bailey’s kid. Russell said it had to be you. You can shift, right?”

“Yeah, I can shift.” Zane decided that someone was going to pay for that ‘rumor.’ “I can be there in about ten minutes. I have some stuff being delivered there at two for that POS in the back.”

“All right. Oh yeah, there is another thing here for you. It’s from some place called

‘The Kingdom of Sinclair.’ Is that some sort of kinky place you order all them leathers from?”

Zane froze. He knew her. Or so he thought. “Who’s it addressed to, Danny? Me or the shop?”

“You know, I don’t know. Let me check. Hang on.”

While he was checking, Zane did something she hadn’t done in decades. She reached for the queen. It didn’t take her long for her to touch back.
“There’s a problem. It could
be big, but right now it’s just a problem. Someone is trying to get me to overthrow you
and give up the MacManuses. With your permission, I’d like to set up a meeting with him
and his Mrs.”

“Agreed. If you think it’s something bigger than it is, I’d like to…Sara is my cousin
and I’d very much like to be there with you when you talk to them. I can be there in an
hour.”
Zane could hear the concern in the queen’s voice and tried not to be moved by it.

“I can’t do an hour. I have to appear normal since you won’t let me be dead. I can
be there after three. I owe Danny.”

“Zane, this is much more important than some stupid job. I want you to—”

“You can ‘want’ all you care to. I’ll be there after three. If you want to go and upset
them now, be my guest.”
Zane closed the connection.

It was getting harder and harder for her to speak to the queen. Zane knew it had a lot to do with this mate thing with Aiden, but not all. Zane was tired. Not just tired, but worn down, and she just wanted to end it. When Danny came back on the line she brushed at the tears, refusing to think of them as anything but exhaustion.

“It’s to you…well, that’s not right either. It says to the Mechanic. I guess I just assumed it was to you. Shall I open it?”

“No!” Zane took a deep breath and tried again. “No. I don’t want…Danny, do you trust me?”

“Zane? What the heck is going on? I trust you, but you’re starting to scare me a little here. What’s in this package? Should I call David and tell him to meet you here?”

If only it were that easy. She’d been compromised, her cover blown. More than that, she’d involved Danny and Russell and whoever else Simon knew she was with. That meant all kinds of people.

“Don’t call the police. I need you to put the package outside of the garage and leave it be. I don’t…I’m sorry, Danny, but close up and go to Russell. I need to be sure that you and he are safe. It could be nothing, but then again it might not be nothing. I’ll call some people and have them protect you. Please?”

“I don’t like this. Not one bit. I’ll close up now, but you have to promise me something in return. All right?”

Zane closed her eyes. Here it came, he was going to tell her that she couldn’t come back to work or, worse yet, he was going to tell her not to come around anymore. She leaned her head against the cabinet above the phone and answered him. “All right, Danny. I understand. I didn’t mean to bring trouble to you and yours. I’ll keep away from—”

“Mother pots, Zane. Why would you…you are to be safe. That’s what I want. Good heavens to Betsy, woman, I don’t…your friendship means a great deal to Russell and me.

I want you to be safe, kiddo. You be careful and come back to us, you hear?”

Zane didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t even sure she could speak over the large lump in her throat. No one had ever wanted her friendship before much less thought enough of her to tell her to be safe. It took her a full minute before she could answer him.

“Yeah, I will. I’ll keep in contact. Stay away from the package, Danny, and I’ll pick it up later.”

Reaching for the queen again, she simply gave her the facts.
“Change of plans.

Things have gone from a problem to a FUBAR. I’ll meet you at the MacManus’ in one
hour.”

~~~

Sara sat at the table and just looked at Mel. Seriously looked at her. This went beyond just an announcement, this was scary.

“We have to tell Bailey. She…Christ, Mel, are you sure? I mean, that would put Sherman plotting against you before we made him pay for…well, from the beginning.”

Mel had just told Sara that she was positive that Sherman was the magic behind Zane’s power, that he had given some of his DNA to the lab rats he’d had working for him to give her the magic she now had. If that were true then Zane was a true immortal or as close as one could get.

“Yes, so it would seem. I don’t know what to tell her. When I first met Zane I was so angry. Not at her, but with Sherman. He didn’t want me to go to the lab that day, but I had gone anyway. Sara, you should have…it was a blood bath. Every human in that place had been murdered by torture and…and worse.”

Sara watched as Mel paced. She rubbed her swollen belly and seemed to not realize that she did. Sara placed her hand over her own flat belly and knew that she would be doing the same in a few short months.

“Have you ever found out what happened there, Mel? Why those people were killed?

And if Zane was responsible for it all?”

Mel had told her that when she got to the lab she was horrified at the carnage. The dead weren’t just killed but torn apart. Sometimes in more than just pieces, but like someone had tossed them against walls and dropped them from incredible heights and they had exploded apart. And she had told her that Zane was injured too, shot in several places, yet she wouldn’t tell her what had happened.

“Yes. Just recently. I’ve been piecing things together for years. Every time I came across one of the…well, I’ve began to call them inmates, I would just keep adding to the story.”

“Inmates? I don’t think I like the sound of that. I’ve heard about what Bailey had to endure. Is it the same?”

Mel sat down and a glass of juice and an apple appeared. She looked up at the ceiling and frowned. Sara just knew it was Shamus. He was a bit overprotective of his mate, it seemed. Mel picked the glass up and twirled it in her hand.

“Oh Sara, it was so much worse. The conditions they were subject to…it makes me shudder to think that they had to live like animals. And the people running it were little more than that themselves. Filth and excrement everywhere and not just what they had done that day either. The cells, little more than boxes with holes that meals, if they got any, were shoved through. I found Zane’s and the…she lived like that for decades with nothing more than a towel on the floor and a bucket in the corner for a bathroom. There was a large spray over the entire…they hosed them down twice a month to clean them.”

Sara didn’t know what to say. She knew from Bailey that she had had a hard time of it, her being a child and growing up like she had. But she’d never said anything close to what Mel was describing. Sara had gotten that the place was clean and well run if one overlooked the fact that they were creating people for their own use.

“So, who did the killings then? You don’t think Zane did it, do you? Not anymore, right? So you can release her from her sentence with you now.”

“No. No, she didn’t. Zane killed the first four men then she passed out from blood loss. She’d been shot several times and had more than likely saved all the people on that floor that day.”

Sara could tell there was more, something else besides Sherman being Zane’s father.

Sara didn’t know if she wanted to know. Was positive she didn’t.

“If I let her go, release her, she’ll want me to release her from everything. Including her life.”

~CHAPTER 16~

Zane had not yet shifted to human from a hawk at the MacManus mansion when she felt a disturbance. Something was…off, she supposed was a good way to describe it.

Tasting the air, she knew the scent, but not where it was coming from. It was then that she felt the queen. She was close. Moving just to the door of the house Zane reached to the women in the kitchen and put them on alert.

“Move to the interior of the house. Don’t do it quickly, but don’t fuck around either.

Something comes, but I can’t get a…the king needs to stay where he is. He is hidden in
the house above you.”

Zane felt them both move to the middle of the home. Whatever was tracking them moved as well. Not within the house, but just as Zane was doing outside of it, feeling them move. Only she was aware of it and he wasn’t of her.

“Shamus wants to know if he can breach your hold on your mind. He says that he
feels it too. He said to let him in through me.”

“No. I don’t want him in my mind any…keep the vamps close. It knows they move
within the house.”

“It? What are we dealing with here, Zane? Is it human, vamp, what?”

Zane didn’t answer. It was moving again. She took to the air just as he moved away.

She spotted him just a mile from the house, slinking along the road in a beat up car. Zane moved lower and tried to get a better scent on the man when she felt Aiden move into her mind.

“Zane? What is it? I can feel that you’re in danger. What the hell are you doing
now?”

Zane had gone for decades without a single person really bothering her if she didn’t count the queen, and now she had a frigging open pathway to everything that she knew.

Next thing she’d have the creatures of the earth tapping in for a chat.

“I’m working. If you can’t say something constructive then shut the fuck up. Fuck a
duck and watch it waddle, you people are a bunch of nosey bee buddies.”

“Come back to the bed and I’ll help you when—”

“Which bed, Aiden? The one you left me in alone or the one you rested in today?