Rebel Heat (4 page)

She’d known Nazerel was smart, but she hadn’t expected him to put the pieces together this quickly. “Lor owns the collar and he will never release you.” The statement was true. Bilarrian scientists had provided her team with the coding needed to establish co-ownership. Lor
was
the collar’s owner, but then so was she.

“I think you’re lying.”

“I don’t care what you think. How did you find out about the taskforce? My contact said Sevrin didn’t know.”

One of his brows arched and she didn’t think he’d answer, then he said, “I stopped depending on Sevrin for reliable intel shortly after we arrived on Earth. Who’s your contact?”

“It doesn’t matter and you can browbeat me all night. I can’t unlock the collar.”

“There’s another option.”

Thank God. She did not want Nazerel focused on her personally. “I’m listening.”

His gaze moved over her body with insolent interest as he stalked toward her. “My power spikes whenever I’m feeling strong emotions, like anger.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Or lust.” He knelt beside the sleeping bags and placed his hand on her belly. He just let it rest there, a warm weight against her tense abdomen. “It might take days, even weeks, but I’ll keep trying. Once I find the perfect combination of desire and rage, I’ll access my power long enough to disable the collar.”

“I don’t respond well to threats.” She twisted around and kicked him in the shoulder.

He laughed. “It’s not a threat and your response isn’t necessary.” He grabbed her ankle when she tried to kick him again. “But you will respond.”

He couldn’t be serious.
Please God, let this be a bluff
. “Shadow Assassins detest rape. Everyone insists their captives aren’t abused.”

“I have no intention of raping you.” He moved closer. His knees pressed against her side as his fingers lightly caressed her skin. “I’m going to look at your amazing body and touch you in progressively more intimate ways until my senses are on fire. Then I’ll use the intensity to burn through the collar’s circuitry.” He slid his hand just under one of her breasts and pushed his thumb between, still on top of her bra. “Or you can admit you own the collar and avoid all those unwanted touches.”

“I don’t own the collar and your definition of rape must be different than mine. Any
unwanted
touching falls within my definition of rape.”

“Really?” His fingertips skimmed across her skin, circling her navel and tracing the waistband of her panties until she began to squirm. “Do you feel defiled?”

“Not yet, so stop now.”

He laughed and the blue rings flickered to life within his dark eyes. “Let me know when I’ve crossed the line.” He retraced his path then avoided her breasts entirely and explored her upraised arms.

“This isn’t funny.” Morgan turned her head, unable to think with his penetrating stare boring into hers. Everything about him was brutal, so how could he touch her so gently. He found a particularly sensitive spot near her elbow and she shivered.

“Are you ticklish?” He teased the sensitive bend with ruthless patience until she was wriggling helplessly.

It didn’t tickle, exactly. It sent strange tingles down her arm and lower, much lower, to places she refused to think about. Her nipples were getting hard and her skin felt tight and prickly. She couldn’t let him do this to her. She would not be turned on by his sick game. Rolling away from him, she brought her knees up toward her chest and pressed her thighs together. “Leave me alone.”

“I don’t want to.”

She could see him moving in her peripheral vision. Oh God, he was taking off his shirt. Was that all he was taking off? Panic sliced through her and she looked over her shoulder. Big mistake. He knelt on the edge of the sleeping bags bare to the waist, a golden-skinned sculpture of masculine symmetry. She whipped her head back around, but it was too late. His image was seared into her brain. She found his features harshly intriguing, so full of determination and pride, but his torso was a work of art, perfectly proportioned and harshly defined. Even his eclectic collection of tattoos only added to his savage beauty.

Despite her fear and determination to remain unaffected by his seduction, her body came alive, melting and aching for the pleasures she continually denied herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t like sex, she did, quite a lot actually, but her life made intimate relationships almost impossible.

This wasn’t the beginning of an “intimate relationship”, this was cruel manipulation. So he had an amazing body. That didn’t mean she was powerless against him. Elias was well-built too and she didn’t go into heat every time she saw him without his shirt. She was just tired and stressed beyond belief.

Nazerel lay down behind her and slipped one arm beneath her neck. Then he pulled her toward him, which angled her upraised arms away from her head. It also took the slack out of the restraints so she couldn’t slam her elbow into his face, she realized. The man didn’t miss much. He pressed against her back and wrapped his other arm around her waist. He did nothing else for a long time, just lay there and let the heat of his body surround her.

She could finally see her hands. Wide leather cuffs with silver buckles and miniature padlocks now encircled her wrists. A length of chain connected the cuffs and he’d passed the chain behind one of the tent poles. The pole wasn’t secured with stakes and rope. He’d somehow driven it directly into the ground, providing a much sturdier anchor for her confinement. But the chain simply passed behind the pole. It wasn’t locked down like the cuffs. If she could unfasten the chain without him realizing what she was doing, she could easily free herself.

Slowly easing her hands together, she reached for the chain’s simple clasp. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her hands apart. “You won’t like how I bind you if you free yourself now.”

Indignation rushed through her, making her want to scream. Was she just supposed to lie here and accept whatever he chose to do to her? She’d been trained by the FBI. Surrender was not in her nature.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on filling her lungs, keeping each breath slow and even. But his scent became more familiar with each inhalation. Rich and earthy with an intriguing hint of spice, he smelled wonderful.

“When was the last time a man held you in his arms?” His voice was barely a whisper, his tone oddly rough.

Her eyes flew open as a possibility unfurled within her mind. “Last night. My
husband
loves to cuddle. I’m called away so often, we have to make the most of every minute we have together.”

His chuckle ruffled her hair, his breath warm against her skin. “If you were with a man last night, cuddling was all you did. I would be able to smell him if it were otherwise.”

“I showered this morning, thank you very much.” She tried to wiggle away from him, but he simply tightened his arm.

“It can take many days for a male’s scent to leave a female completely. That’s why pleasure givers never satisfy. It’s hard to loose myself in passion when all I smell are other males.”

If she could shift his focus yet keep him talking, maybe he’d give up on seducing her. Anything was better than giving in without a fight. “What about Roxie? She’s not a pleasure giver. You’ve been very protective of her.”

He brushed her hair away from her neck, which also exposed her face and ear. “Why does everyone want to put me in bed with Roxie?”

“You’ve clearly spent a lot of time with her. You’re covered in tattoos.”

His face pressed against her neck and he inhaled deeply. “Gods, you smell good.” He slowly swept his hand down her neck then up her extended arm. “Do you taste as good as you smell?” His lips brushed the sensitive spot just below her ear then he touched her skin with the tip of his tongue.

Her treacherous heart leapt in her chest and tingles skittered off to all sorts of unacceptable places. She had to stop this
now
. “Flynn is my contact.”

He tensed, his arm tightening around her. “What are you talking about?”

“Varrik gave us profiles on all of you guys. Elias determined that Flynn was the most likely to flip, so we recruited him.”

“Who is Elias?”

“You met him this morning. He was with Roxie when Flynn brought her to the team house. That was all part of our plan by the way. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who collared you.”

Disentangling his arm from hers, he sat up and rolled her onto her back. Then he swung one of his legs across hers to keep her from kicking him. He propped himself up with one arm and rested his other hand on his thigh, which was still covered with black cargo pants. Thank God.

“I’ve known Flynn my entire life. He has many faults, but he is not a traitor.”

She licked her lips. This was a dangerous distraction. If she pissed him off too badly, she just might give him what he needed to free himself from the collar, yet failing to make the conversation interesting would likely result in their returning to their earlier activity.

“Is Varrik a traitor?”

“Yes,” he snarled the word, clearly demonstrating his dislike for the man. “Varrik is the worst kind of traitor. He was a First Son, like me, and still he chose to abandon the Sacred Customs for a female.”

“Varrik wanted a lot more than a beautiful woman. He wanted to liberate your people, to free them from the world below and—”

“You know nothing about the world below!” He leapt to his feet and raked his hair with his fingers, menace radiating off him in tangible waves. “I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m trying to understand your point of view.”

He scoffed. “You’re trying to keep my hands off you, but all you’ve done is postponed the inevitable.” He dropped to his knees, straddling one of her legs. She braced for an attack, accepting that her risk had failed, but all he did was free her arms from the tent pole. “I’m no longer in the mood for lust. Let’s focus on anger.” He pushed off the floor and stood up, moving to the other side of the tent.

She drew her arms down, groaning as her muscles protested the new position. Her wrists were still locked within the cuffs, but the length of chain between the two gave her a reasonable range of motion. “Where did you get these or why did you think you would need them? Did you plan on taking a hostage all along?”

“I planned nothing that happened this morning,” he snapped. “You attacked us!”

“Then when…that’s right. You called your outfitter and told him you had additional requirements then you started speaking in Rodyte.”

“We were speaking Bilarrian.” He paced what little space there was in the middle of the tent, clearly distressed by the implications of what she’d said. His features were tight and the telltale rings in his eyes had begun to glow. “What did you promise Flynn? He wouldn’t have sold us out for money.”

She sat, rolling her shoulders and stretching her back before she reached over and retrieved his discarded shirt. If he was determined to parade around half-naked, then she was going to make use of the garment. She folded her legs in front of her and then draped the T-shirt over the front of her body, leaving the bottom to pool between her legs. It was as close to decent as she was likely to come until he returned her own clothes.

“You’re right, it wasn’t about money with Flynn,” she began. “He’d figured out that Sevrin was full of shit, but returning to Ontariese wasn’t really an option. We offered him an opportunity to take responsibility for his mistakes and start to rebuild his future.”

“By betraying the rest of us?” His hands fisted at his sides and the rings in his eyes blazed like blue fire. “That’s a coward’s way out. He knew I had other plans. I would have given him other options.”

There was a lot more she could say, a lot more she wanted to say, but it was smarter to back off right now, give him a minute to calm down. “How did you pay for all this?” She motioned to their surroundings. “I was under the impression that the council’s funds were seized when the Shadow Maze was liberated.”

A secretive smile curved his lips, but the rings in his eyes continued to burn. “High Queen Charlotte only knows what Varrik told her, and Varrik doesn’t know everything.”

“Then you didn’t get the money from Sevrin?”

He scoffed again, but sadness dampened the sound this time. “Sevrin made us beg for everything. We were honestly better off in the City of Tears. Roxie was the only luxury Sevrin allowed. Why do you think she was so popular?”

“Roxie told Elias that you get off on the pain.”

His gaze locked with hers and a smile finally parted his lips. “What else did Roxie tell you?”

She could almost see the tension flow out of him. Roxie was the first name she’d mentioned that had a soothing effect on him. “She told us Sevrin was the real villain not the Shadow Assassins.”

“Lor should have known that without having to be told.” He turned his back on her and grabbed the open bottle of water out of the crate. He drained it then tossed her a new one. “Are you hungry?” he asked without looking at her.

“Starving actually. What time is it?” If she could figure out how long she’d been unconscious, she’d have a better idea how far they’d traveled.

“It’s almost dark. I better locate a light source.”

He rummaged through the first crate with no luck, so he unloaded the second. Morgan watched him set the lantern aside without realizing he’d found what he was looking for and debated what to do. If she doomed him to darkness, she doomed herself as well. She struggled up from the makeshift bed while keeping his T-shirt pressed to her chest.