Savage Chains: Scarred (#2) (2 page)

After getting ready for bed Angelica crawled beneath the comforter. Reyes gave her some much-needed space, leaving the room to take care of other business.

As she fell asleep what slipped through her mind didn’t have anything to do with concerns for her mother or even what she might have to do if she stayed in Reyes’s world but, rather, her own heart. She already felt a connection to the man, so what would happen if she joined him in a blood-chain bond? Most certainly he would become her lover, but what if she grew even more attached to him than she already was? What if she fell in love with him? How would she ever be able to leave this world after that?

###

Later, long after Angelica had fallen asleep, Reyes lay on top of the comforter next to her. For her sake, though he usually went commando, he now wore pajamas and a robe. He didn’t want her to assume for a moment that he had any expectations, and he was pretty sure the last thing she needed to confront right now was his naked male body.

With one arm slung over the top of his head, he thought back to the cave she’d described, to the bedroom from his youth that reflected his plans to take up his father’s cause.

Despite the fact that his father had been killed by his enemies, Reyes had embraced his calling to bring down the vile elements in his world. How ironic that Reyes had then been enslaved by a sadistic female owner for over a century.

Now Angelica was here and she was considering remaining with him.

With his mind reeling at this unexpected turn of events, that Angelica would have an added power if they forged the chain-bond, he finally left the bed and paced quietly in the opposite sitting room.

He poured himself another Bowmore and drank deeply, his gaze shifting to the bed. Angelica had thrown the comforter back and lay on her stomach. She wore a short dark-blue silk nightgown that rode up, exposing much of her white creamy skin and the curve of her buttocks.

His constant need for her flooded him in a sudden wash of desire. For just a moment he imagined kissing that curve and running his tongue in the erotic crease where her buttocks met the backs of her thighs.

He shifted away from her and sipped his scotch again. He needed to get hold of himself, to stop lusting after the woman. If she chose to remain, more than anything he would want her to feel respected.

###

When Angelica woke up she lay on her back staring up at a carved ceiling. Reyes’s world made use of stone in ways she’d never seen before, sometimes a reflection of the actual makeup of the cavern, sometimes added. In this case, she wasn’t sure. An angled flow of black granite, speckled with silver, stretched across the entire cavern space. Parts of the room appeared to be squared up with drywall, but other parts had been carved out of rock.

Reyes was nowhere to be seen, but his bedroom suite was larger than her entire apartment, so he could be anywhere right now. She listened hard, wondering if perhaps he was in the workout room or the bathroom, but nothing returned to her.

She drew up her knees and crossed her ankles, resting her hands in her lap. The comforter was a beautiful burgundy silk and felt expensive. But then Reyes had money. He’d paid $5 million for her.

She pressed her hands to her cheeks as she once more processed all that had happened to her over the space of a week. She’d had her life turned upside down and was even now considering donning a blood-chain and binding herself to a vampire.

Her brain still had trouble making sense of the word
vampire,
despite the fact that Reyes had already sunk his fangs and taken his fill. If she bound herself to him he’d be doing more of that, which of course sent a shiver down her neck, and desire bloomed yet again.

What would it be like to really be with Reyes? To share his bed, his body, all that he was?

She slipped from bed and moved to the bookshelf opposite. Reyes had left the box in plain view, and she wanted to look at the chains once more.

As she flipped the lid there they were, two simple dark metal chains, each with loops about a half inch long. She recalled the revisiting vision and wondered if she would experience something similar again.

She touched the links, but nothing happened, perhaps because Reyes wasn’t nearby; she didn’t know.

She closed the lid, returning to the bed this time to sit down on the edge, her gaze fixed to the box, to the chains, to the tough decision she had to make. She’d hoped that when she awakened she’d know which way to fall, whether backward to her life as a human with a job that bored her and to the care of her mother or forward into the dark unknown, into what looked like a world that had enough evil to fill up a universe.

Instead, Angelica was as much on the fence as she had been the night before.

Her instincts told her that if she bound herself to Reyes what happened between them afterward wouldn’t be simple. Her attraction to him hadn’t dimmed in the least, despite the horrible nature of the events that had occurred after the Ruby Theater Players had put on their little production.

Her cheeks grew hot all over again as she recalled going down on Reyes in front of a bunch of strangers. She would be foolish, however, to fail to consider that something similar or perhaps even worse might happen if she agreed to stay.

As thoughts of Reyes came to mind, even going back as far as kissing him at the Ocean Club, she realized that what bothered her the most was her vulnerability to him. Her heart already leaned in his direction and had tilted even further when she’d learned that instead of being a slaver, he was intent on bringing down this part of his world.

For that reason, she couldn’t have admired him more.

But she also knew that she and Reyes lived on opposite sides of a deep gorge, with a very flimsy rope bridge between. The human and vampire worlds didn’t mix.

She simply didn’t know how to make this decision.

###

Reyes sat in his office, at his large burl-wood desk, going through page after page on the Starlin Group private Web site. Now that he was officially a member, he’d been given access.

So far his cruise through the site had essentially confirmed what he’d learned about Starlin over the decades, that Engles was Scorpion’s link to the rest of the group and that Scorpion remained the most powerful force behind the organization. But the Web site had at least given Reyes the names of all the Starlin board members.

His next step had to be getting on the Board of Governors, a process that would no doubt take a long time to achieve. And as much as he’d like to get this whole thing settled as fast as possible, he’d already accepted that his mission might require years, if not decades, of patient effort. But being on the board would give him access to the information he needed to bring the entire organization down.

When he’d opened up the Web site the first thing he’d checked was a slave mortality counter from the recent auction. The counter was still set to “zero,” which meant that none of the slaves had died yet. That number would change, but the fact that it sat on the Web site, with a flashing graphic around it, was one more indicator of the perverse nature of this group.

A link next to the mortality counter led to a secondary site for placing bets on which slaves were likely to die next and when, down to the minute. He’d clicked on it to familiarize himself with every aspect of Starlin’s operation, but what he found there only deepened his disgust, something he hadn’t thought possible. The site had pictures posted of every slave and her stats as well as information on the slave owners, including their known levels of abuse toward the humans they’d owned previously. Both he and Angelica were listed there, which meant that his cover held. He’d fabricated a reputation of having kept and killed over thirty-eight slaves over the past two decades, preferring slow-kills to short, brutal ones. Odds changed constantly, an indication that serious betting was going on even now.

As he scrolled back to the home page his thoughts turned toward Angelica and his senses told him she was awake. He almost shifted to altered flight and hurried to his bedroom in order to find out what decision she’d made about staying in his world. But he decided against it. He’d know soon enough, and the woman might want to have a shower first before confronting her vampire host.

He turned his attention, therefore, to the Starlin Festival and to the string of social events that would give each winning bidder more chances to display their newly acquired slaves.

He clicked on the Festival tab at the top of the Starlin Web site and found a rather lengthy list of parties that he could attend with Angelica, that is, if just this once the wind decided to blow in his direction.

###

Angelica still didn’t know what to do. She’d never been so torn about a decision in her entire life.

She wanted to stay as passionately as she wanted to get the hell out of this insane world.

Once more, she rose up from the bed and crossed to the leather box.

This time, she took it back with her, sat down again, and balanced the box on her lap. Opening the lid, she decided to hold one of the chains this time. Maybe the blood-infused links would speak to her in a way that would help her make up her mind.

Several very small metal latches kept the chain in place, and once she removed them she drew the chain from the box. She set the red leather container aside.

She slid the blood-chain over her wrist and found that it had a nice weight. Only this time, perhaps because it rested against her skin, she experienced a faint vibration that
felt
like Reyes. She couldn’t express it any other way. The chains reflected the way she thought of him, very powerful, intense, with a layering of determination that expressed his current goals.

She closed her eyes and forced her mind to relax. She posed the question silently:
Why should I stay here with Reyes? Why should I choose such an impossible path? Why?

A single image rose swiftly within the center of her brain, of the Russian female slave from last night, the one who bore bruises all over her naked body. Angelica saw her clearly outside Engles’s mansion, when her slave owner had attacked her throat and drunk from her neck.

Angelica opened her eyes. She could still hear the woman’s whimpers.

From that memory Angelica’s decision roared toward her with hurricane-force winds. Though she’d wanted to escape back to her ordinary life, she was needed here, maybe even for as long as it took to make sure that Starlin didn’t abduct even one more vulnerable human.

She slid the chain off her wrist, holding it in both hands.

With her decision made, she simply slid the blood-chain over her head and let it fall around her neck. She pulled her hair from beneath until each link connected with her skin.

She drew in a deep breath as the chain began to vibrate softly and a sense of Reyes came into focus. She could even tell where he was in relation to the upstairs bedroom, as though some kind of vampire locator process had just clicked into place. Right now he sat in his office on the bottom floor.

She took another breath, and through the chain she began to siphon his power, letting it flow into her. She felt strengthened and renewed, something she hadn’t expected.

###

Reyes had been so intent on reviewing all the parties to which he’d been invited that at first he didn’t notice that his power was leaving him in a steady stream.

When he realized what it had to be he stood up abruptly and struggled to take a couple of breaths.

Angelica had put on one of the blood-chains.

Though he’d never been chained before, he knew instinctively that this was exactly what had happened. He could sense it in the same way he felt the level of Angelica’s determination.

She’d made her decision.

She was staying.

A wave of relief poured through him, as well as a thrill that he’d have the woman with him for at least the next few days.

But he had to calm down. His adrenals had released a huge amount of hormones, which had in turn ramped up his ever-present desire for the human. Glancing down at his jeans, he saw he had an uncomfortable bulge and adjusted himself because what shouldn’t have been the least bit swollen was now rock solid.

He hadn’t expected such a sudden, profound reaction. Maybe he’d wanted the bond and wanted her with him, but he’d set aside just how deeply attracted to her he was. Now, however, all that longing came into sharp focus.

But the last thing she needed was him coming at her in an aroused state.

Closing his eyes, he focused not on Angelica, but on his mission. That, at least, would help calm things down. He could finalize his itinerary now and choose which of the Festival parties to attend. There’d be a boat parade first in an extensive underground cavern that had over fifty mansions built on either side of a wide and very deep underground river. Engles had a place there, so his party would definitely be one of the stops.

Reyes was still the acknowledged guest of honor, and a variety of invitations had lit his in-box within the first hour following his winning bid at the auction.

Now Angelica would be with him. But how was he supposed to control his drive toward her?

At last calm, he shifted to altered flight and made his way slowly toward his bedroom, though he thought it only fair to give her a warning.
I’m coming to you.

###

I’m here.
Angelica still sat on the bed, the red leather box beside her.

She was suddenly very nervous. The chains would change everything. She’d known it instinctively, which was why the decision had been so damn hard.

But even as these thoughts rippled through her mind she could also sense Reyes’s feelings and reactions. She smiled. His initial response had been full of sex, so much like a man.

She’d gotten that.

His desire for her had been like a warm wave easing down her body and making her feel things she shouldn’t be feeling. But she’d known this would be a problem for her and for him as well. The chains merely accentuated what was already there, what had been simmering between them from that first kiss in the foyer of the Ocean Club.