The Captive and the First Blood Game, page 1
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Dedication
Content Warning
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Don’t miss the rest of the Blood Type series… The Monster and the Last Blood Match
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Landmarks
Cover
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by K.A. Linde. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing believes stories have the power to inspire, connect, and create lasting change. That’s why we protect the rights of our authors and the integrity of their work. Copyright exists not to limit creativity, but to make it possible—to ensure writers can keep telling bold, original stories in their own voices. Thank you for choosing a legitimate copy of this book. By not copying, scanning, or distributing it without permission, you help authors continue to write and reach readers. This book may not be used to train artificial intelligence systems, including large language models or other machine learning tools, whether existing or still to come. These stories were written for human connection, not machine consumption.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
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Shrewsbury, PA 17361
rights@entangledpublishing.com
Red Tower is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Sylvan Creekmore
Cover design by LJ Anderson and Bree Archer
Edge design by Bree Archer
Interior design by Britt Marczak
Paperback ISBN 978-1-64937-972-6
eBook ISBN 978-1-64937-533-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition October 2025
To the girls who fell for the vampire
and never looked back.
The Captive and the First Blood Game is a dark supernatural romance filled with vampires, the humans they rely on for survival, and the machinations of a company that wants to rule it all. As such, the story includes elements that might not be suitable for all readers. Violence, gore, blood, needles, suicidal ideation, references to torture (off page), kidnapping and confinement, drugging of a drink, death of a loved one, emotional and physical abuse, depictions of mental illness including a break from reality, and dark romance themes including control, jealousy, possessiveness, owner/pet dynamics, and graphic sex are depicted in the novel. Readers who may be sensitive to these elements, please take note, guard your hearts, and step into the monster’s prison…
Chapter One
“Every breath and every heartbeat and every minute of every day was spent waiting for you,” Reyna whispered against his skin.
His perfect skin. The hard-muscled chest, the cold feel to him, the awareness of his body pressed against hers. She had waited so long for this. So very long.
“Becks,” she said. She ran her hands against his jaw and forced him to look down at her. A bottomless sea of onyx enveloped her. “Say something.”
“I love you,” he said like a prayer.
Her breath caught. She’d waited to hear that for so long. At her low points, she even tricked herself into believing Beckham had never said those words. That maybe he had never admitted to being part of the rebel group Elle. Maybe Beckham had never put all of his trust in her hands only for her to rip it away in one horrifying flight of dizzy terror.
But he had said those words. And she had run out of his penthouse after he had bitten her, only to be kidnapped by Visage.
This was her reality.
Now he was here and saying those words she’d so longed for.
“I love you, too.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close. She wanted to feel him, solid and immovable. To know that she couldn’t shake him—that nothing could tear him away from her again.
A tear slipped down her cheek, and he brushed it aside with his thumb. “Shh, Little One.”
“I can’t believe you’re really here.”
“You never have reason to doubt me.”
His thumb brushed across her lips as she read hot desire in his eyes. It had been so long since she’d had his hands on her and seen that look cross his face. Her body heated, and a flush suffused her face.
She said the words she’d been dying to say: “I never should have run that night.”
“I know, but you’re here now.”
After that there was no talking. Beckham pushed her backward and onto the bed. It creaked beneath her weight. She reached out for him, but he ignored her and took her threadbare dress in his hands, ripping it straight down the middle. She was naked underneath save for a pair of cotton panties, but he looked at her as if she were encased in silk lingerie. She had been, once. It felt like a million years ago.
At the sight of her, a primal growl escaped his lips. He shucked his black shirt to the ground and stepped out of the black slacks. The length of him was visibly hard and bulging against his boxer briefs. All she wanted was to touch him, to feel him inside of her again—but Beckham was in control. She’d once quaked under his gaze. Now she was shaking for entirely different reasons as his body covered hers.
His lips closed over her nipple, sucking it into his mouth. Her back arched off the bed as her hands dug into the sheets. His hips pressed her down into the mattress, and she felt the full length of him press against her core while his hand kneaded the other breast. She swiveled her hips, wanting the release, wanting everything he would give her. Then his fangs grazed her nipple and she nearly fell apart.
“Becks,” she moaned.
He just shot her a ruthless smirk as he moved to her other nipple. Her panties were soaked, and she needed them gone. As if he read her mind, he slipped his hand under the material and found her wet and wanton. A feral noise of pleasure breached his lips. Then he took the thin fabric in his hands and yanked it down her legs.
“Please.” She wasn’t above begging. “I’ve waited so long.”
“I won’t bite you,” he said, his face sliding down between her legs. A fang nipped at the sensitive artery in her inner thigh. “But I bloody well want to.”
Did she even care if he bit her? It would be a relief after what she’d endured. A relief to feel that connection so acutely. She wouldn’t press him this time. She remembered how they’d gotten carried away. He’d taken too much, drunk too deeply, and she’d almost died. They needed to take it slow.
The blood. Not the sex. She needed that right now.
His finger slicked through her wetness and used it to draw circles around her clit. Her fingers dug grooves into the mattress as she vibrated from the sensation. She was so close that she didn’t know if she’d be able to hold out before he was inside of her.
Then his eyes found hers again. That dirty smirk returned as he sped up. “Come for me.”
And she could hold out no longer. Her body contracted and a gasp escaped her as she released at his ministrations. Her body hummed as she came down from the orgasm and watched through hazy, sex-drunk eyes as he removed his boxers.
He took his cock in his hand. He pumped it up and down as he watched her return to earth. “This is my favorite view of you,” he said as he settled back between her legs.
“Fucked?” she asked with a laugh.
He grinned. “Mine.”
Then with one powerful thrust, he seated himself to the hilt within her. She cried out. Despite her prior orgasm, she was still tight, and he stretched her to the max. No warning or preamble, just his cock inside of her, filling her to completion.
Her walls clenched around him as he slowly pulled out and then quickly drove inward. Once, twice, three times. Each pull brought her right back to that razor-thin edge she had been hovering on earlier. Even though she had just come, her body was primed and desperate for him.
“Ready for me again already?” he asked.
“So close,” she admitted as he bottomed out in her again and a wave of pleasure shot through her core. “So very close.”
“Not yet,” he commanded.
She forced herself to hold back even as he drove into her again and again. She could wait. Oh God, she could wait.
Then his rhythm changed from methodical to relentless. He set his own course to owning and claiming her body. Reclaiming everything that they’d lost in his one moment of weakness. In her one moment of panic.
She could see in his eyes what that loss had cost him. The toll it had taken on him, how he would never forgive himself for giving in to his urges, for finally relinquishing control. His eyes said he’d never do it again. In them was a promise.
“Becks, come with me,” she cried, finally reaching for that strong jaw to bring his lips down to hers for one more kiss.
Their lips collided as he owned her body where he refused to own her blood. Taking everything she would give him but not everything he wanted. Not everything she wanted.
Their eyes met, both so close. She was on the precipice and knew they would finish together.
…
Reyna woke up screaming.
She jolted upright in her plush king-size bed with its too many pillows and too much softness. Her hair was plastered to her face. Sweat coated her body, soaking through the thin white shirt she’d worn to bed.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, and she looked around the small room. Everything was in place. Nothing had changed. Not a damn thing.
Beckham wasn’t here.
It had been a dream. A sick dream. A desperate, horrible dream.
Her hand moved to her cotton panties and found the slick wetness was real. The ache still building in her lower half from lack of release. The aftereffects of the dream.
It had felt so real. So very real. She had felt him moving inside of her. She had seen the love in his eyes. She had known his remorse.
That was her imagination at work. Conjuring his face just to torture her with his absence. She ached to see him one more time, to remember the feel of his body and the love in his eyes, only to twist the knife deeper when she remembered that he hadn’t found her and she hadn’t escaped.
It had been fifty-five days since she’d last seen his face. Reyna made a mark in the notebook next to the bed.
Fifty-six.
Chapter Two
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she had woken up from that dream, it had to be a Thursday, too. A fucking Thursday.
On Thursdays she had to give blood.
Reyna shucked the covers off of her legs and stalked to the adjoining bathroom. She still didn’t consider it her room. She hoped that she would never think of it like that. It might have a jetted tub, waterfall shower, an enormous bed, and a library to make any bookworm jealous, but that didn’t make it anything other than what it was—a prison cell.
She may have everything she could ever need, but she had nothing she actually wanted. No access to the outside world. No news of Beckham. No news of her brothers, not that she’d dare ask. The last thing she wanted was to bring attention to them.
And, of course, she didn’t have her freedom.
Beckham had offered that to her with a ten-million-dollar check in a brown leather folder. She hadn’t taken it, because she’d thought it was a trap. A way for Beckham to keep her indebted to him for life. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
She knew what real freedom looked like. It wasn’t that check, and it certainly wasn’t a well-maintained prison cell, no matter what the dickbag who had imprisoned her thought.
Reyna turned on the shower and peeled the sweaty layers off her body while she waited for it to heat up. She stuck the clothes in a chute and grabbed another white T-shirt and a pair of loose cotton shorts, which she dropped on a stool before entering the steaming shower.
Her closet was nothing compared to what it had been at Beckham’s apartment. At first, she’d resented the silk and satin and lace. All the little unmentionables. The mile-high heels she’d only just begun to get used to.
No one cared for her to dress up now. She was just a blood bag.
An actual fucking blood bag to the most powerful vampire in the world—William Harrington, the president and CEO of Visage Incorporated and Beckham’s boss.
He was the ruthless ruler who had brought vampires out of the darkness. After the economy had collapsed, Visage had emerged as if they were a benevolent organization dedicated to helping humanity. What they’d actually done was instate the blood type cure. It wasn’t so much a cure for vampirism as a bandage over the real issue: vampires who drank blood from a human who matched their blood type became less animalistic. Instead of bloodthirsty monsters lurking in dark alleys, they became bloodthirsty monsters in two-thousand-dollar suits, taking over the world.
The newspapers proclaimed that Visage had brought the world back from the brink. They registered the vampires. They paid humans—blood escorts—to allow vampires to drink from them. Killed two birds with one stone.
Except Reyna knew that Harrington would never be satisfied with his current status. He would never rest until all the power was his to control. But first he needed a match, which was where she came in.
Harrington had kidnapped her for her specific and very rare blood type: Rh null negative. She had none of the Rh antigens that were found in 99.9% of people in the world. A true universal donor. And unluckily, she matched Harrington.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d convinced her only friend in the city, Everett, to betray her. She didn’t even know if he had ever been her friend or if he had been conning her from the beginning. She’d been so naive. Worst of all, she had no idea what Harrington had told Beckham, or whether he’d been left without answers about why she’d disappeared.
And knowing her blood type made everything feel worse. That she wasn’t officially a match for Beckham. That as a true universal donor she shouldn’t have made him turn into a monster. Terrifyingly, anyone could drink from her. So had he only lost control because of…her?
She slammed her hand onto the tile wall. She hated thinking about this. But the shower was her only solace, one of the few places without cameras. She couldn’t appear helpless anywhere else.
Even waking up with screams irritated her. It ruined the mask she had carefully constructed these long eight weeks. She needed to get a grip. That dream had gotten to her. It wasn’t the first she’d had, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was certainly the most vivid one so far. It made her ache for him, and she couldn’t do that anywhere else. Beckham belonged in a compartmentalized shelf in her brain where he could keep her alive and make her stronger but didn’t interfere with the person she had to be to survive.
With new resolve, she got out of the shower, dressed, and slicked her still-wet hair back into a ponytail. Time to get this day over with.
When she walked back into the one-room cell, the human nurse was already waiting for her. She was a white woman with nondescript features—dark hair, dark eyes, wan expression.
“Miss Reyna,” the woman said.
She wore the crisp white Visage nurse uniform. That uniform had made Reyna cringe the first time she saw one, at the Visage hospital all those months ago on her first day as a blood escort. The only color on the outfit was the bloodred V logo. The sight still made her feel sick.
