The Nest
The world tilted. Her vision blurred into a tunnel of black and neon green as he ripped her from the ground.
Jules's stomach slammed against her diaphragm.
She hung like a wet sack over his shoulder.
No cool armor—bare skin and steel-hard muscle pressed into her abdomen, cutting off her air. Bristly hair scratched her cheek.
Her head swung downward. Blood rushed to her temples, making her skull throb and the gash pulse hot. She stared at the mud spraying up beneath his feet. He wasn't walking. He was bounding. His leg muscles worked like tensioned steel cables under the dark skin, adapting to every surface.
His scent crawled into her pores, heavy and hot.
Burnt ozone, rotting wood, and a sharp, animal musk overwhelmed her senses.
His breath penetrated the material of her jacket, racing in hot bursts across her back.
A deep, drawn-out sniff at her neck told her he'd long since caught the sour panic in her sweat.
Jules balled her hands into fists. Her nails dug into her own palms as she pounded on his back. She hammered against hard cords of muscle. Every blow hit granite. He didn't flinch. He ignored her like an annoying insect.
“Put me down, you damn rug!” she screamed. Her shrill voice shattered against the calm rumble in his chest. “Do you hear me? I'm going to rip your guts out the second I'm back on my feet!”
He didn't react with anger. One of his hands shot up.
Claws that gleamed like black daggers dug into the back of her thigh.
The pressure was calculated, relentless.
He nailed her to his body. At the same time, the scaled tail coiled around her waist. The tip hooked onto her hip bone and yanked her pelvis hard against his back.
Not an inch of air remained between them.
Jules became aware of the silence. The silence within her. The gallows humor—her shield against this hell—shattered. An ice-cold shiver crept up her spine.
He wasn't killing her. He was abducting her.
Images from the past crashed over her. The sterile auction hall on Station Theta.
Harsh white light burning her eyes. The metallic taste of fear.
She saw the buyers' faces—fleshy lips, greedy eyes, cold steel cuffs closing around her flesh.
Heavy boots on grated floors. The knowledge that she was no longer a person, but a database entry.
I'm a prisoner again.
The burning panic suffocated under ice-cold numbness. Her body grew heavy. Her fists opened, her arms went limp and dangled in rhythm with his leaps.
Not running—raw propulsion. He devoured distances in seconds. Jules saw treetops fly past—a web of dark branches and glowing fungi. The force of each landing shot through his body directly into her stomach. He landed soundlessly, cushioned by unbridled power.
Jules closed her eyes. His scent thickened. The heat he radiated crept through her veins like a fever. Every point where his claws and tail pressed into her burned against her skin. He was marking her with his weight and his heat.
Stop breathing, she commanded herself. Stop feeling him.
But she felt the rhythmic tension of his back muscles with each leap. The lazy twitch of the tail coiling tighter around her waist like a live wire, as if reading her heartbeat. His panting changed as the subtle chemical shift in her blood hit the air—the cold stench of her silent surrender.
He didn't slow his pace. He ran into the blackness, deep into his territory, away from the red neon light of the citadel. The thicket swallowed the sky—a monstrosity of thorns, ferns, and ancient wood.
Jules's head hung slack. Sweat and blood plastered her hair to her face. The undergrowth passed by as if in a dream. Silent panic squeezed her throat shut. She was a trophy on the way to the predator's den. He didn't have to exert himself. She belonged to him.
The rhythm of his movements became a cruel metronome. Each bound that carried the beast through the forest hammered Jules harder against his hot musculature. Air escaped in choppy bursts. Blood throbbed painfully behind her eyes as the world passed by upside down.
Jules's vision blurred from the force of his movements.
The heat of his skin burned through the thick fabric of her jacket and ate into her bones.
He was nothing but heat. The smell of raw musk, damp earth, and wild animal hung so thick in the air that she tasted it on her tongue.
It suffocated every thought of the forest, claimed her senses as ruthlessly as it claimed her body.
The scaled tail around her waist wasn't dead weight.
The thick cords of muscle tensed and loosened in the exact rhythm of his leaps.
Rough scales rubbed over the denim of her jeans with each bound—a methodical chafing.
The tail pressed her pelvis relentlessly against the hard wall of his back, responding to every tremor in her thighs.
Jules clenched her teeth until her jaw cracked.
Heat seeped through her clothing, pooled in her lower abdomen, and crept deeper.
Her body responded to the unyielding pressure.
Her pulse raced. A treacherous heaviness formed in her core.
She hated this betrayal of her flesh, this primitive instinct that yielded to raw force.
The ground changed. The squelching of mud gave way to hard clicking. Claws struck stone. The oppressive jungle air cooled abruptly. A deafening roar swallowed the rustling of leaves. Cold spray settled on her heated skin.
He stopped abruptly. Before Jules could shake off her stupor, the tail around her hips released. Iron fingers closed around her neck. He ripped her from his shoulder, pulled her forward in one fluid motion, and spun her in the air.
He slammed her against the rock.
Cold stone and damp moss crashed against her shoulder blades.
Jules gasped for air. Her boots dangled above the ground.
He held her up by the throat with one hand, right next to the plunging waters of a waterfall.
Pale moonlight refracted in the spray and reflected in his eyes.
Liquid gold in the darkness. He stood so close that a sheet of paper wouldn't fit between them.
He blocked the sky, the jungle, and the very air she needed to breathe.
He stepped half a pace forward. His lower body pressed against her.
Jules's eyes flew open. A gasp scraped in her throat.
The hard, hot contour of his erection pressed with precise intent into her core.
A wall of heat beneath the leather of his loincloth.
Unmistakable. He pinned her to the rock, locked her pelvis in place with his own while his grip held her neck.
He bared his teeth. White fangs flashed. He leaned in. Hot breath gusted against her ear. A growl rose from his chest, a vibrating bass that made her bones tremble.
Jules' hands clawed at his forearms. She tore at his grip, but her fingers slid off his heated skin. Fear screamed at her to be still. To obey. But defiance tasted like blood.
She spat at his feet. “And you stink like a wet dog,” she hissed. Her voice broke, but she held his gaze. “Let. Me. Down.”
The warlord didn’t even blink. He ground his hips harder against her.
A slow, deliberate upward roll. The rough leather and the shape beneath pressed exactly where she was most vulnerable.
A sharp, involuntary sound escaped Jules’ lips.
Her thighs clenched. Cold stone at her back, heat against her core—the raw dominance overloaded her senses.
He wasn’t breaking her through pain, but through sheer overwhelm.
His jaw worked. Those golden eyes bored into hers. His tongue darted out. The rough texture scraped across her cheek, relentless. He licked sweat and spray from her skin, tasted her resistance and dismissed it in the same breath.
He didn’t set her down. One arm slid beneath her knees. With a sharp jerk, he wrenched her from the wall and crushed her against his chest. The tail whipped once through the air before coiling possessively over her shins.
Jules’ muscles went slack. Her strength was spent.
Before them, the curtain of water plunged into the abyss. He strode without hesitation into the torrent. Ice-cold water slammed into Jules, stole her breath, then the roar cut off.
They emerged into darkness. Dry warmth chased away the damp cold.
It smelled of pelts, earth, and predator.
Jules stared up at the stone ceiling of the cave.
Behind them, the falling water formed an impenetrable wall.
The roar swallowed the outside world. The bolt on her prison slid home. The hunt was over.