Chapter 4 #2
And then the stranger turns to me, all of that predatorial focus stealing the breath from my lungs. He stares at me for long seconds and I realize I’m standing in a defensive position, for all the good that would do me.
The stranger’s gaze drops to my stance and it seems to break some sort of stalemate within him.
He bows his head regally. “You’re welcome,” he says, turning and melting back into the shadows as he resumes his place on the bench.
He curls up there in the dark, draping his cloak over himself, and yet, even though I release a breath, I don’t feel any safer.
Hours pass. The stranger doesn’t move, doesn’t even speak. Instead, he lies down on the bench, hands cupped behind his head as he closes his eyes in a mockery of sleep. His silky dark hair, cut to his shoulders, spills around him.
I know it’s not real. The fine muscles in his jaw tense every time I circle the cell, but at least the fear lessens.
He hasn’t made a single move toward me.
“I’m not going to hurt you, my little lioness,” the stranger muses as if he senses my gaze lingering upon his skin.
I stare at his closed eyes, rubbing a tongue over my teeth. “Something about you being on that side of the bars, and not here in the cell with me?”
His lips flicker, the faintest sign of a smile, and then he turns his head, blinking amber eyes open to look at me.
I’ve never seen their like before. Not mere hazel, though hints of it flicker there. But a rich, predatorial gold. The intensity of his stare locks upon me and doesn’t shift, but it’s not like the way the men above us stared at me, licking their lips and ogling my body as if I was a mere object.
This stare seeks to see right through me as if he’s searching my very soul.
I stare back, because I’ll burn in the Knight Protectors’ fires before I ever lower my gaze to a man again.
Monsters don’t scare me. I’ve hunted and killed my fair share of them, preparing myself for this final, desperate hunt I’m engaged in now.
And while I don’t know exactly what I’m dealing with here, nothing will stop me from avenging my sister.
“What brings you to my humble abode?” He raps his knuckles against the bars as he sits up, and as his cloak shifts I catch the hint of a knife sheathed at his side.
I’m not the only one who managed to smuggle in a weapon, though I can’t help wondering how he managed to keep his.
“My friend and I were hunted down and dragged back here by eight burly men in armor.”
“I mean, down here.” His gaze slides over me, liquid as a caress. “They don’t usually put the women down here, so you must have made a personal impression upon Rhykus.”
“I have a friend named Kari. Three of Rhykus’s men thought they’d enjoy her before they presented her to Rhykus, so I killed them.
Several others restrained us and dragged us before Rhykus’s throne.
I took exception to his plans to auction us to all and sundry, and then dared to throw a knife between his legs when he insisted that was to be our fate.
” I shrug, circling the small cell and examining the stone walls.
“He didn’t take too kindly to it. Especially since I wasn’t supposed to have a knife on me at the time. ”
The faintest quirk of a smile touches the stranger’s mouth. “I daresay.”
“And you?”
“Apparently I’m a threat.” He touches the torc at his throat almost unconsciously.
“Rhykus has a plan to capture and auction off as many females as he can, but to do so he needs to take some of the bigger players off the board first. And I’m not too fond of Rhykus.
The last time we met, I told him I’d gut him, rip his entrails out and then feed them to the crows while he slowly stopped kicking.
He said he’s spent the last year working out a way to entrap me.
I walked right into it. And now I’m here, to be auctioned off like a bride. Or the means of my death anyway.”
My heart is all aflutter with sympathy… or it would be if he wasn’t just another bride hunter, seeking to stalk and claim some poor innocent woman.
“This isn’t your first hunt?”
“Nor is it Rhykus’,” he points out.
“You don’t seem like the sort of man who’d be easy to bring down.”
The flash of fury in his eyes makes my breath catch.
It promises a world of pain for someone else and I recognize it, because I see its like in the mirror every day.
Then he shrugs. “I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.
He pretended to be injured and when my back was turned, he leashed me with this fucking collar.
It’s designed to mute my magic. When I turned around, fifteen of Rhykus’s men appeared with crossbows. ”
“You surrendered?” He doesn’t strike me as the type, for there was not a hint of submission in him when the two guards were bothering me.
The stranger laces his fingers together over his abdomen. “You might say that.”
No. Not surrender. I return my attention to the bars he bent. He’s biding his time, just like me.
“I am Bael. What’s your name?” he asks.
“A secret.”
“Now that is an unkindness,” he teases. “I have given you mine.”
“More fool you. Some say there is power in a name.”
The air seems to thicken between us, like charged lightning. His lashes half-lower as if he considers my words. “Perhaps you are correct.”
“And you have not earned mine yet.”
“Did I not earn it before when I scared away your tormentors?”
They weren’t merely my tormentors. They were my escape route. I wanted them closer. I wanted Broken Nose to forget his orders and make an attempt at me. But I don’t say it. Let him think himself the hero. Let him play at protector. He merely forestalled the inevitable.
I am going to burn this fucking whorehouse to the ground.
But first, I’m going to nail Rhykus, Broken Nose, the Mouse, and all their fucking merry little band of murderers to the walls.
“So, what is the plan?” Bael asks, pushing to his feet again.
My head jerks toward him as he saunters toward me. “Plan?”
There’s that smile again, slow and sinful as he traces his fingers along the bars between us. “You think I believe a woman like you isn’t plotting her escape? You’ve been stalking the cell ever since you got here, looking for a weakness.”
There is a… weakness here.
If one could call it that.
“You bent those bars,” I muse. “How far could you…?”
“Not far enough,” he warns, leaning against the ones between us. “I was angry at the time, but I’ll never get them wide enough to slip through. Not wearing this fucking torc.”
I tap my finger against my lips. “You also seem to want Rhykus dead.”
His eyes narrow. “I am not the hero you’re looking for.”
I tip my chin up, staring into his eyes. “I never wanted a hero.” Stepping closer, I curl my fingers over the bars, taking the moment to enjoy the sight of him. He’s dangerous, yes, but something inside me thrills a little at the thought.
“No?” He’s close enough to touch and the rumble of that one word does things to me.
I’ve never been with a man—the Knights of Malus check for chastity within their promised brides—but I’ve seen handsome men before.
All of that fades before the sheer presence of Bael. I knew nothing of true temptation. There’s a sheer carnality in his expression, a hint of a smile touching his lips as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking as I let my gaze drop to his mouth, and bite my lower lip.
Not a hero. A villain then.
Oh, so tempting…
“Careful, little lioness,” he whispers, leaning toward me until our faces are mere breaths apart, constrained only by the bars between us. “If you keep looking at me like that then I’m going to think you want me to throw you over my shoulder and carry you off to some cave somewhere…”
“I do want something from you,” I whisper back, daring to run my knuckles down the linen of his tunic, feeling the ripple of his abdomen.
He doesn’t move a single inch closer, but the air of the cell thickens as if his mere presence has stolen all the oxygen from the room. “Do tell?”
“I just want…” I whisper, fingers curling around the dagger sheathed at his belt and jerking it free as I swiftly step back, “your knife.”
Bael makes a swift grab for it, but I judged the distance correctly.
I tap his fingers chidingly with the flat of the blade, and he growls under his breath at me as he slams against the bars of the cell.
“Down, kitty,” I whisper.
Those eyes flare wide in shock as I flip the blade, testing its weight.
It’s beautiful. The balance is perfection.
I’ve never laid eyes on a piece of steel as finely wrought as this, the edge practically winking at me in the light.
There’s a rose engraved into the blade, the thorns glittering in warning.
“Kitty?” he growls, eyes locked on the knife as if he’s seen a ghost. “For that you deserve a spanking.”
My eyebrows lift at his words, but I smile at him, feeling giddy at the perfection of the blade. I had a collection of Beldt-made knives back in my home world, but nothing like this.
“You’re not human. I can feel it. There’s something inside you.
Something sleek and dangerous. I can almost sense your tail lashing right now, like I’m a mouse you want to play with.
” I press the tip of the knife against my finger, sucking in a hiss when I feel it prick me. It’s even sharper than I suspected.
Bael’s head tilts as he leans his forehead against the bars, those amber eyes never taking themselves off me.
There’s no lasciviousness in his gaze, not like the others.
Instead, it feels as though he’s trying to read my mind, one arm resting on the horizontal bar, his forearm dangling through into my cell. “It’s not a cat.”
A thrill lights through me, an ancient sensation like knowing there’s something dangerous in the forest with you. He didn’t say there wasn’t something inside him. He just said what it wasn’t.
And then his lips curl in that faint half-quirk of a smile as he holds his hands up in surrender.
“Go on, then. Chase your vengeance. But don’t you dare lose my knife.
My mother placed it in my hands the day she died, and I fully intend to take it back.
” His voice is a low, silken threat. “You’re not the only one who knows how to hunt, little huntress.
So run. Hide. Play your wicked little games.
But know this—I’ll be right behind you. And when I catch you?
” His gaze darkens, heated. “I’ll turn you over my knee and spank your ass until you beg for mercy. ”