A Wicked Night (Creatures of Darkness 2): A Coraline Conwell Novel (21 page)

Tremors burrowed maddening tunnels under her skin. Itching, crawling, unrelenting.

It had been a little more than an hour since the doctor left her to cope with the consequences of his vile concoction.

It was different than before. More potent. She seemed to be freezing and burning simultaneously, suffocating and taking in too much air, hyper aware and unbelievably exhausted.

Nothing made sense.

Nothing but the lust!

By the goddess, the lust was unbearable.

So much more engrossing than before. Every nerve ending, every cell, every nuance was keyed up to a ferociously carnal level. The animalistic need chased away rational thought, and she heard herself begging for salacious and horrendous things. For something, anything—anybody—to relieve her of the choking misery.

She eyed Brayden with furious longing. His head still hung limp, but his body stood taut, with delicious ridges of muscle she wanted to touch, lick, devour. She told him so, even though he seemed to be passed out. She called to him, enticing him to awaken with purring entreaties.

She didn’t recognize her own voice, and she couldn’t seem to stop.

But he
must
hear her. On some level. The cords of his stomach rippled with each of her licentious words. And his scrubs appeared tighter in the front.

Yet the rest of him did not move.

She licked her lips and moaned in frustration.

Her squirming caused her shirt to ride up over her stomach and the thin sheet to bunch at her calves. The sweat on her thighs caught the cool air, making her shiver. She thought she caught him peeking from under his hooded lids, but when she looked again, his eyes were closed.

And still her affliction grew worse. On a throaty moan, a beseeching, “Please,” tumbled from her lips, but there was no one to come to her rescue.

Or so she thought.

To her delight, one of the guards—the one with a newly lit cigar seated between half-rotted teeth—breached the cell door and approached her with deviant intent.

In that moment, she cared nothing for her extreme abhorrence to the man. Disgust was a consequence for a later torment. Immediate relief was all her mind could comprehend.

But his black haired comrade rushed in and caught him by the arm, shaking his head in clear warning. “You remember what the doctor said. She belongs to Nikolai. Are you really that hard up?”

“She’s begging for it,” cigar man replied in a petulant manner, though his thinning hair declared him the elder of the two.

“There are a thousand ways you can kill yourself, but if you do this, it will be
me
scraping your innards from the walls. That is, if the master even allows me to live.”

“We can share her,” cigar man whispered. “No one need know.”

At the offer, the younger man’s gaze slipped to her, and she saw the desire he’d successfully buried till now. He wet his lips. She watched reason drain away and rejoiced at her impending release.

He eased up beside her. Cigar man took her other side, already unzipping his pants.

But just before either of them laid a hand on her, a threatening growl drew all their gazes toward Bray.

The vampire’s eyes were wide, alert, and they were fixed on the two men.

——

“Step toward me,” Bray said.

There was ancient power in his command, and the men obeyed without resistance. The effects of the tranq were waning, but he was still weak. The horny bastards hadn’t bothered to make sure he was fully doped up before following their dicks inside. Still, his trance wouldn’t last long.

“You.” He indicated the younger guard. “Release me.”

The man hurried to pull the pin from the manacle holding Bray’s left arm, but the rust had essentially glued it in place. Needing to obey Bray’s command, he retrieved a gun that had been shoved in the back of his jeans and began to pistol-whip the pin till much of the rust flaked off. Then he finally yanked it free.

The shackle creaked open.

Bray rolled and cracked his wrist, then reached toward the other manacle and popped out the second pin with much less effort than the human had required.

Both hands free, he reveled in his first steps of freedom in five years.

He gazed down at the thick metal pin in his hand that had kept him hostage so long. Then, without much warning, he rammed the pin four inches deep into the younger guard’s left eye socket.

The man’s right eye rolled back into his head as his body crumbled, dead.

Bray faced the older guard, still blank-faced and entranced. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d eventually screw up?”

The pathetic plump man nodded dumbly.

Cora’s frustrated moan claimed Bray’s attention. She squirmed fitfully. Feverishly.

What had the doctor given her? Not even an overload of vamp blood could make a woman accept two snakes such as these.

He glowered at the man who had been seconds from violating her. He reached out and snapped the ugly bastard’s neck, relishing the
pop
that rang out. Then he moved to unclasp Cora from the gurney.

A mistake, he soon realized.

She threw herself at him, nearly knocking the gurney over as she shoved off it. His back met that hated wall with the force of her advance. Her arms enwrapped his neck while she hiked her body up and clamped her legs around his waist.

His body reacted strongly to her aggression.

Her lustrous feminine scent blended with the sharp metallic spice of the blood rushing under her skin, knotting his stomach with more than one kind of hunger.

Her urgent lips felt too good against his neck, her pleas too sweet. His palm gripped her clinging thigh and luxuriated in her exquisitely soft flesh, softer than he’d even imagined. Everywhere their skin touched, she was like silk.

Her mouth took his with urgent demand, and he found himself kissing her back with equal fervor.

Those guards hadn’t been the only ones hard up. When Bray had still been chained to the wall, it was all he could do to keep still while she had begged for his cock. He’d been waiting to see if those lechers would take her unwitting bait—they’d been arguing over it for half an hour at least. Thankfully they’d inadvertently waited till Bray was more coherent.

However, Cora’s sexy suggestions had affected him just as much as them. And if he was a lesser man…

He squashed the thought.

In her ear, he whispered, “I’m sorry you’re suffering, angel, but I cannot help you as you wish. At least not right now. We have to make our way out of here before we’re detected. But first I need strength.”

That was the only warning he gave before his clawing hunger led his fangs to the fast beating vein at her neck. Her delicious blood gushed into his mouth. Together they groaned, both for equally rapturous yet vastly different reasons.

Her invigorating essence rushed down his throat, filling him with life while she was submerged in the ecstasy that accompanied a vampire’s bite.

His teeth clamped harder, breaking through more skin as he drank her down. He drank until he was almost lightheaded from excess, and then drank some more.

Her thighs, still around his waist, clenched as she ground against him, seeking further release. His already ridged shaft went painfully tight. The temptation nearly became too great for his half-drugged, blood-drunk mind.

Without removing his fangs, he whirled around and leveraged her against the wall, then pressed his crotch to her core. The only thing that separated them was his thin scrubs and the wispy fabric of her panties. She moaned, undulating her hips at a frantic pace. Her sweet fragrance saturated his senses, driving him to want to do something despicable, like take them both over the edge.

His head reared back, and he captured her lusty gaze. “Calm yourself,” he commanded, using compulsion.

“That doesn’t work on me,” she cried miserably. “I can’t be compelled.” She flushed as though embarrassed over the salacious actions she seemed to have no control over.

Bray cursed.
Can’t be compelled?

Her body resumed its sensual dance against his crotch, her expression pained. “Please.”

He touched his forehead to hers. “We cannot. I’ve kept my sanity thus far. I will not be turned into a monster at the end.”

Tears broke through the barricade of her eyelids, making him feel like a shit for trying to preserver her honor.

He lowered her to the floor and attempted to put distance between them.

She wasn’t having it. She fused herself to his front and planting hot kisses to his chest, constructing a trail of temptation he so wanted to let her complete.

He pried her off him, snatched up the dead-man’s gun, and then, as gently as he could so as not to damage her too badly, he thwacked the butt against her skull. He caught her as she went limp and lifted her to the gurney.

“I will return for you,” he promised. His eyes stole glimpses of her body, and his lungs pushed out an appreciative breath. “When I think back on this, I’ll imagine events went differently.”

With that, he ducked into the hall, making sure there weren’t any other guards around—if there had been, the commotion should have drawn them out.

The other captured vampires were hollering unusually loud, sounding ravenous. It’s possible they deduced what was happening. Or they scented the freakishly aroused female. Moreover, the blood flowing from that first guard’s head wound saturated the air. All of that alone would make the other vampires crazed. Jointly it made them savage.

Which made them a threat.

If he freed them now, they would tear through him to get to Cora, and to the dead guards whose blood still ran warm.

His first priority? Find the doctor. Have him reverse whatever he’d done to Cora. Then get her the fuck out of this hellhole.

They were bonded now. He needed her blood to regain and keep his strength. But he’d be lying if he said that was the only reason he wanted her with him. She was the most beautiful thing he’d seen in ages, and not only because he’d been locked up and isolated for half a decade.

Over his five hundred years on earth, there was only one other he’d encountered who matched her in beauty: a woman who’d had no interest in him. He’d been green then, with the wildness that came with youth.

He made his feet light but swift as he stalked down the hall. He’d been wrong in his assumption. It wasn’t an L shaped corridor. It was a T. He turned right, following a trail of wires along the cavern’s apex.

He wasn’t really expecting to encounter more guards, though he didn’t discount the possibility. He couldn’t be sure, but it only ever seemed as though they kept two on duty at a time. However, he’d only come to that conclusion based on what he heard and smelled from within his cell. Who knew how large this place was.

At the end of the path, he found a set of double doors. A button to the right suggested it was an elevator. Assuming they were in fact underground, perhaps this was his way out. He wouldn’t dare check it out, not without Cora. The chance of getting locked in was too great.

He turned around and headed in the opposite direction. The second hall was more brightly lit and just as deserted as the first, however, the scent of blood was overwhelming.

A tiny, wet drop thwacked him on the top of his head and then dispersed over his scalp. Condensation? He reached up to touch the liquid and then pulled his hand away. The tip of his finger was splotched with red. A whiff told him it was…

“Blood?”

The metallic tang was undeniable. He glanced up. The slick substance glistened over the ceiling and dripped down the walls.

What. The. Fuck.

What were these assholes doing down here?

In a few hundred feet, the scent faded to a sterile fragrance. The path curved to the left and then back around. The stench was growing more pronounced.

Several yards ahead, light cut a thin shard across his path. A door was cracked open. The cloying stench of antiseptic wreaked havoc on his nostrils.

A shadow moved, momentarily clipping the shard of light.