Wraith Captive, page 14
A shudder moves through her body. “I can’t sense anything else. Just arousal. A lot of arousal.”
I lick my lips. “Yeah, that’s me.”
Her eyes open and meet mine. “Why are you so turned on?”
“You know why,” I tell her honestly. “I told Gabriel we should share you, but he seems to think you’d be insulted by the idea.”
Her mouth hangs open for a minute, then closes.
“That wasn’t a no,” I say.
“It wasn’t a yes,” she shoots right back.
We stare at each other for a long minute, and I feel her own arousal through our connection. Something blossoms inside of me… Hope, maybe. If the guys and I manage to escape this place, I can never go back home. I can never return to my people. I’d always imagined we’d create a home together, but things changed with the appearance of Elizabeth. She could either take Gabriel from us, or we could bring her into our circle.
I hoped the fact that she hadn’t outright refused the idea yet meant there was some way for us all to be together. For this beautiful woman to make our bond even stronger.
“What now?” she asks, drawing me from my thoughts.
I can’t help but smile. “Now, I’m going to lock down my emotions again.”
She nods, and I seal away my emotions.
Her eyes widen. “It was there and then just gone.”
I nod. “Now, I’m going to feel your emotions.”
Her hands pull from mine. “I don’t know…”
I don’t tell her I’ve already sampled them. Given her reaction, I don’t think she’d appreciate it. And besides, we need to do this a certain way if she’s ever to gain control of the walls surrounding her mind and emotions.
“If you’re a part of this, we need to be able to talk to you. We can’t do that if you might spill our secrets everywhere.”
Slowly, she puts her hands back into mine. “Okay.”
I close my eyes and reach for her. To my surprise, her emotions are right there, easy to sense, so easy the creatures with stronger abilities than me would read her without a single obstacle.
But I’m also surprised because of what I feel.
My eyes flash open. “You’re turned on.”
Her cheeks turn red. “I’m not.”
I smile. “Unfortunately for you, you’re terrible at hiding your emotions.”
She licks her lips and her gaze moves to my hard erection.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Don’t look at me like that unless you want me to do something about it.”
Her cheeks go a shade darker. “I thought you were going to show me how to hide my emotions…”
I nod, trying to swallow down my attraction to her. “Come climb into my lap.”
“What?” Her eyes go wide.
“It’ll help. Trust me.”
She gives me a suspicious look.
“Whatcha going to do, sweetheart? Climb into my lap and get the answers to all your questions, or continue being kept in the dark?”
Her eyes narrow, but she climbs over and gingerly sits in my lap.
I pull her back harder against me, and she cries out in surprise. For one second, I feel like I’ve won the battle, but then she starts to wiggle in my lap, and my hard cock jerks with desire. I find myself panting, wanting to do all kinds of fun things to this woman, and knowing that I can’t do a single one of them.
Damn it. I might’ve won the battle, but she won the war.
“Now,” I say, the word coming out far too husky, “concentrate on not letting me know how you feel.”
I reach out with my sense, and damn it, her arousal is still there. Fucking hell. “Hide your emotions,” I bark.
“I’m trying!” she says, wiggling in my lap again.
I bite down on a groan, then can’t help but reach around and grab her breasts.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asks, but she sounds as turned on as I am.
“It’s like I’m between your damn legs licking the arousal from your thighs,” I tell her, panting harder. “Your arousal is stronger than my own. Lock it down.”
I continue to fondle her breasts, then snag the zipper and draw it down just a little.
“Ax,” she groans my name.
“If you can’t lock down your emotions now, how are you going to hide them when things get dangerous?” I ask, my head spinning.
Reaching into her jumpsuit, I grab those sweet breasts of hers, and a shudder moves through my body. “Think about walls falling around your mind and your emotions. Imagine the way you feel drifting around you like a mist…and then imagine that they’re suddenly gone, and the walls are containing them from getting out.”
She’s breathing hard, her desire so thick that I know we’re going to fuck soon.
And then, suddenly, her emotions are just gone.
“You did it,” I say, breathing hard.
She turns slightly to look at me. “I did just as you said.”
I squeeze her nipples, drawing a surprised cry from her lips, then slowly withdraw my hands and zip her jumpsuit back up. “Now, just see if you can keep those walls up.”
Her eyes run over my face. “It feels…almost more natural to keep the walls up.”
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Walls are tricky. They take work. If it comes naturally to her, she really must be powerful.
“What are you, Elizabeth?”
She stiffens and starts to pull out of my lap, but I wrap an arm around her waist to keep her in place.
“Nothing. What are you?”
Fair enough. I can give her a half-truth. “I’m a shapeshifter.”
Her expression is confused. “Like a shifter?”
I chuckle. “Not at all. I don’t turn into an animal; I can change to look like any person or being.”
Her eyes widen. “That’s a real thing?”
I nod, watching her closely. How is it that she’s a supernatural and doesn’t know about my kind? “Absolutely.”
She frowns, and I know what she’s going to ask before she does it. “Then why don’t you just shift to look like one of the guards?”
I lift my arm and turn it around to show her my wrist. “That bastard warden and doc put a chip under my skin. It keeps me from shifting.”
Her fingers move hesitantly to the ugly scar, where they’d butchered my flesh, and she runs her fingers along the bump under my flesh. “I’m sorry. That must be…”
“It’s like cutting off an angel’s wings or the horn of a unicorn. They took something from me that’s a part of me.” I’m surprised by how raw and pained the words come out.
Images of that doctor’s office. Of being tied down and cut into flash in my mind, and then the burning loss of my powers, like the loss of my soul. I’d tried to pretend that it hadn’t mattered, but I knew deep down it did.
I clear my throat. “Luckily for me, I’m the result of my mother’s affair to some weird grafter, so I’m different from your neighborhood shapeshifter. I’m stronger, faster, and have a few…unique abilities.”
“Like what?” she asks, sounding curious.
I smile. “Your turn.”
Instead of answering, she turns away. “Whatever I am, it sounds like the doc and the warden are determined to figure it out.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, frowning.
“They have a special appointment for me tomorrow.”
My teeth clench together. I knew what they did in those “special” appointments. There’s no fucking way she’s going through that. Whatever we had to do, we needed to be sure she never made it to that appointment.
Which meant that Blade was right. We needed to talk about breaking out of this hell hole. And if Elizabeth could prove her ability to shield her thoughts and emotions from the others, she could finally be part of the planning.
I hoped.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gabriel
I don’t even know where I’m going when I find myself in the shadows of the great wall that surrounds the prison. Demons linger here. Big men, small men, all dangerous in their own ways. I act without thinking, opening my mind up and reaching out for their emotions. As always, the demons provide a banquet of negative emotions. Their rage, their jealousy, it’s all there, like a delicious scent on the wind.
Reaching my powers out, I capture the emotions and drink them in, refilling my energy, refilling my powers. I feed and feed upon them until I’m full. Three of the men stagger, and I draw my powers back. All the men look to me, fear in their eyes.
I almost tell them not to fear me. That if I wanted them dead, they’d be dead.
But instead, I turn away and begin to walk again. Energy hums beneath my flesh now, and I feel stronger and more capable. Yet, even at my strongest, I’m not enough for Elizabeth.
She deserves better.
And then there’s whatever the hell she is and whatever the hell she’s capable of.
My jaw locks. The time for her keeping her secrets is over. If I don't know what she is, how can I be sure about her abilities or limitations? How could I know how she'll impact our plans? I intended to just see her as a burden rather than any help, but the events of last night have changed that.
“Gabriel.”
I jerk my head up. Blade stands, looking pale and weak, not far from me. It’s clear in the way he looks at me that he’s been searching for me.
Everything inside of me screams to destroy him, to end his life with the smallest thought. And if it was anyone else, I would have. This man who stands before me fucked the woman I loved.
I knew it would end that way. I knew the instant I saw the shape he was in that he would need to feed, and that after his reaction to her blood they’d fuck, but I’d only thought about him surviving.
Now, I was angry. And I knew I shouldn’t be, but that didn’t change how I felt.
“Can we talk?” he asks, and I’ve never heard the hesitation in his voice before.
I nod.
We stray to a quiet area far from the guard tower. He collapses back onto a bench, but I remain standing, too tense to sit beside him.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Is she your mate?” The words slip from my lips before I can stop them.
He doesn’t answer for a long minute. He lifts his hand and rubs at the back of his neck, avoiding my gaze. “She’s yours,” he finally manages.
“That’s not what I asked.” I snap back.
More silence. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Fuck.” I turn away from him, that rage burning inside of me too dangerous.
“I won’t touch her again,” he says, as if that changes anything.
It’s hard to breathe. He might tell himself he can do that, but no shifter can stay away from his mate. No matter how much he might want to.
“There’s something else,” he begins.
I stiffen, waiting.
“In the warden’s office, he said he intends to figure out what Elizabeth is tomorrow, with the help of the doctor.”
I whirl around. “What?”
My heart races. They hadn’t been sure what Ax was either. They knew he was a shapeshifter, but they wanted to know everything. He’d been gone for three weeks. When he returned, his gaze had been hollow. He’d lost an incredible amount of weight, and he’d barely been able to stand.
It’d taken us months to help him recover.
If they took Elizabeth, it wouldn’t be for a day. And although Ax still didn’t know what his other half was, the warden and his bitch did. If Elizabeth thought she’d be able to leave without them learning the truth, she was wrong.
“We need to leave tonight,” I say.
“It isn’t possible,” Blade tells me.
My gaze meets his. “I will kill anyone who tries to take her.”
After a minute, he nods. “Then I will too.”
Something changes between us. I feel it. Or perhaps it’s not something between us, but something inside of me. Alone I have no hope of keeping my Elizabeth safe, but with Ax and Blade at my side, there is a chance.
But could I truly share her?
My head spins. I try to picture them touching her and my gut clenches, but it isn’t the crushing pain I’d felt before. The image in my mind shifts to all of us touching her, and to my surprise, I feel myself harden and my breathing grow more rapid.
I must have spent too much time with Ax, because the thought of us all fucking her turns me on. Which is all kinds of wrong. And all kinds of right. If I could do this, if I could share her…
“Ax suggested a way to handle this…situation with her.”
Blade lifts a brow but says nothing else.
“He said we should share her.
His eyes widen. “Is that…is that something…?”
He seems incapable of actually speaking the words aloud. “Maybe.”
And with the word, a weight seems to lift from my shoulders. I move to sit beside him on the bench, and he shifts so I have enough room. We both stare out at the prison yard, but the silence between us is comfortable. Like it had been before Elizabeth.
“Thanks for keeping her safe,” I say.
Blade nods. “I’d do anything for you. We’re family.”
I try not to show my surprise. After what happened to Blade’s family, I could never imagine him seeing me as family. Close friends, yes, best friends, yes, but family?
Never.
And yet, the only family I had led me to this place. The man who’d taught me how to kill. The man who had taught me to embrace the darkness within me, then twisted it to suit his needs.
I think I liked the idea of Blade being my family better.
“Do you think it’s possible to move up our escape plan?”
He’s quiet for a long time before saying, “I will see what I can do. My contact would need to get me the key today. He’d need to be prepared to unlock our cells and get us out without being seen.” He releases a deep breath. “He said it’d take another week. But perhaps…perhaps…”
Blade lifts from the bench with a wince and moves across the yard to one of the guards. I look away from them, afraid of raising suspicions, then decide it’s more than time to talk to Elizabeth and get on the same page.
No more secrets.
I stand and start back to our favorite area. Two shifters cross my path and stop in front of me.
Tensing, I instinctually reach for their minds, ready and willing to kill them in an instant, if they make me.
They both lift their hands in a sign of surrender.
Wild, a wolf shifter with grey hair and keen eyes, speaks, his voice low, “We have questions.”
I stare without speaking, waiting.
“How was your woman able to stop It?”
A question I myself have.
He shifts beneath my stare. “Does she intend to protect us every night? Or is this done?”
Normally, I’d grasp his mind just enough to bring him to his knees then walk away, but I don’t. Something about having Elizabeth here has softened me, because I feel the strangest pity for the shifters in front of me. All of us are trapped here, but only my guys and I have a plan to get out.
“We don’t know anything.” I pause, searching for the right words. “But we’ll continue watching for signs of the beast.”
The shifter’s shoulders sag, and he nods. “Thank you for the information.”
He and his friend walk away, back to the pack of massive shifters that are constantly working out on one end of the yard. I turn away from them and realize that many eyes are clinging to me. It makes me uneasy, and yet, we should have expected it. Everyone knows what happened last night, and they have to know that Elizabeth had something to do with killing the beast, even if they weren’t watching when that cloud of magic launched from her into it.
Even if they weren’t capable of seeing or feeling the explosion of power that came from her.
Walking back to our tables, I find Ax and Elizabeth. A strange tension sings between them that I don’t like.
“We need to talk.”
Ax surprises me by speaking. “I’ve been working with her to block her thoughts and emotions. Care to test her out?”
I don’t like feeling other’s emotions, unless I’m hungry, but I do as he asks. Reaching out to her, I sense the wall she’s raised between her thoughts and mind. For a minute, I find myself impressed by her. It’s stronger than most of the prisoners in this place. And then I slip through the wall and feel the rush of her emotions: confusion, arousal, interest, and others, all swirling together.
Her mind is a glorious thing. A place I’d love to remain in like the sun shining through a favorite window. And yet, I pull back.
“It’s strong.”
Elizabeth beams at me, and my heart sings in response to her happiness. “Once he showed me how to do it, it was easy.”
And yet, for a woman with her abilities, today shouldn’t have been the first time she learned about emotional and mental barriers. Who or what is she? And how could her people have allowed her to continue on like this?
It was almost a crime.
“We need to talk.”
“You already said that,” she tells me, grinning.
I force myself to sit down in front of her, straddling the bench seat of the table.
She draws back ever-so-slightly, and her smile falls away. “What’s up?”
“We need to get on the same page.”
“About what?” And there’s a note to her voice that says she’s ready for a fight.
I sigh. “Do you want to live, Elizabeth?”
She sweeps her hand through that gorgeous hair of hers. “Of course! What kind of question is that?”
I lean closer. “And you realize the only way that’s going to happen is if we get out of here.”
Her eyes widen. “Yeah, but we can’t…right?”
“We have a plan,” I tell her softly.
I can see a thousand questions in her eyes, but I continue before she can ask any of them. “We’ve had a plan set for some time, but you coming here complicates it.”
“How?” she asks.
