Betrayal's Shadow (6 page)

“Be silent.” His voice, low with a harsh insistence, cut through her haze of retaliation faster than a quick slap. “Listen.”

The sounds from outside the cell froze every molecule in her body. The familiar gurgle, the rough slide, and granular scrape—an instant image of leathery gray skin flooded her memory.

She tried to shake her head and wish away the sound, but he pressed his cheek against her crown and gave her a quick shake. With her silence, he released his hand from her mouth. Then still cradling her against him, he sucked her bleeding finger into his mouth.

The gurgles were within spitting distance. Loud, and distinct, they echoed in erratic vibrations off the cell walls. The grating of the teeth in the cavernous mouth thrummed louder in her ears than her own heartbeat. She pressed her face into the comfort of the man’s chest. His hold was gentle, but even with his protective presence she could picture the creature. The memory of bits of flesh stuck between the razor-sharp teeth triggered a hot, curdled twist in her stomach.

He moved his head against hers while involuntary shivers claimed her. She didn’t consider herself a weak person, but she squeezed her eyes shut and burrowed closer, seeking some way to drown her thoughts with his strong heartbeat.

The noises stopped. Then a heavy weight collided with the door. Her eyes opened in time to witness the pale light from the hallway disappear. Another large thunk hit the door. The three thick inches of metal didn’t give, even though the light from the hall flickered.

She tried to look into the prisoner’s eyes. Instead he held her closer to him, his hand at the center of her back. Comfort, not threat, came from his hold as his tongue applied warm pressure to her finger.

A growl slurred from the window. Not a human voice, not quite words. Something synthesized, technological and creepy.

Another series of hits reverberated along the doorframe. Mia winced, no longer able to hold back her shaking. The door held blessedly firm, but she had to work to force back thoughts of death in this cell.

The man shifted his large frame. Twisting, he pressed her deeper into the crevice where the floor met the wall and covered her legs with his, blanketing every inch of her from exposure to the door and its threat.

Her sanity wavered under the creature’s determined release of fury against the door. Cocooned under the man’s hard muscles, she strove to feel only his skin’s warmth and block out the rest. His thumb on her back began a slow, gentle stroke, a balm against her shivers.

Whatever his crime, he hadn’t exposed her to the creature. At least not yet. Shame rippled through her on the tail of that thought. He obviously rated importance to her compliance and calm, for it would’ve been far easier for him to render her unconscious.

The noises rasped and whined at the slats, a tiny child’s cry with digital overtones. However, there was nothing frail or innocent about the creature.

Another thunk and Mia’s body jerked. A long, high-pitched scrape rang along the door’s exterior, followed by a rasping tang on the metal and a frenzied rattle of the handle.

Please don’t let it come in,
she prayed. The man rubbed his cheek across her hair, as if he sensed her thoughts, his movements conveying his communication.

A gong sounded and vibrated along the rock at her back. The assault on the door ceased.

Rough and slow, the scrape on the stone floor initiated again, this time drifting away from their cell.

Thin golden light through the door’s slats reappeared on the floor and the darkness took on a fresh quiet. Mia and her prisoner/savior waited in the dark. Minutes of quiet passed until finally the man eased his grip. Air flowed back through Mia’s lungs, and the terror released its hold. He slid her finger from his mouth, moved it to his chest, and covered it with his palm.

His lips brushed above her ear, and he whispered, “We still need quiet. The hybrid beasts have exceptional hearing as well as sense of smell.”

Oh God, they had smelled her.
She’d brought that thing to his door.

Snapshots clicked through her memory and she made the connection—the creatures’ close proximity during her last visit, the same horrible snuffle followed by exaggerated breath, and frenzied movements. They had smelled her then, before the prisoner engaged them, before he’d led them away.

His breath stirred against her hair. He waited patiently for her to regain her composure, waited for her mind to assimilate the information. That he seemed so certain she would recover was reassuring. Mia didn’t feel the same confidence in her own abilities right now.

At her nod, he moved farther back and severed his connection from her. With the absence of his steady hold, her fear flooded in cold, sharp, and uncontrollable. Her shivers took on a new intensity and she tried to contract into a ball to make it stop. Her muscles and limbs refused.

The prisoner pulled her back to his chest, gently this time. His warmth surrounded her again as he pressed small strokes down her back.

It took all her effort to breathe and hold back the sobs that welled in her chest, resisting him not an option. Accepting solace from a dangerous stranger wasn’t smart, though she convinced herself it was only for a few seconds. He’d kept her from those creatures not once, but twice. Perhaps motivated by his sense of self-preservation, the result, however, was the same—they were both safe for the moment.

She tried to relax in his embrace. Just to quell the shivers and regain control. Or perhaps because her body responded to his solid male frame and protective actions.

His hands continued their steady stroke, up and down, around in a slow circle, never straying, until her tremors ceased. Embarrassment tweaked at her conscience, but she was loath to move. Thankfully, the dim light made it easier not to gauge his expression.

“Are there many of them?” she whispered.

His chest moved in a deep inhale beneath her cheek, while he seemed to debate his answer. “Here, I’ve only seen the ones that take me from this cell or bring me back. Three, perhaps four.”

Here?

“It won’t be back for a while. Someone summoned it. They are usually kept under tight wraps, given that they don’t play well with others.”

“It was my blood?” Her question came out in a croak. He didn’t answer, but started to stroke her again as another tremor traveled through her. “Where do they come from?”

He paused, and then brushed the hair along the back of her head. His every answer was so cautious it made her wonder.

“The hybrids are created.”

“Someone
made
those things? On purpose?”

“Mental instability combined with power and skill can be…very creative.”

Deviant power, maybe. He made the designer sound like a mad scientist or a superhuman comic villain. To create the amalgamation of biology and technology of those creatures would take formidable skills. Mia released her final hope that this was only a dream. In her own nightmares, she would have control and her imagination wasn’t this complicated. The thing at the door had no subservience to her will. This was all real. As real as the skin and muscles she clung to for reassurance. Another shiver spiked along the muscles she held tense. “Are there other creations?”

He silence made her wish she hadn’t asked.

Wetness slid over the hands she had curled against his chest. He tipped her head up and brushed his thumb over the tears on her cheeks. A soft hush whispered from his lips, the comfort for a small child.

“It’s gone for now.”

But she wasn’t a child, and the power, the strength of this man’s arms along her back certified his potential as a formidable threat. Even with that thought nudging at the back of her mind, she relaxed when his lips settled on hers with a light pressure.

Soothing comfort enveloped her with no tightening of his grip or movement from his hands. Instead, his lips traced hers with slow precision, his breath fanning her cheek. His touch, so gentle she held her breath to feel the fleeting caress. The stroke of his lips enticed her thoughts away from the fear. The distance was enough to allow her sanity to resurface and her mind to regain control over her body’s fear.

When his mouth moved away, she followed him. Reluctant to leave the minute escape he provided, reluctant to stop the swirl of heat uncurling from her belly, she pressed her lips back to his. His mouth slanted across hers and she opened to him, allowing the wet trace across her lower lip and into her mouth. Their tongues tangled, once and back, offering her the spicy taste of him. Heat tingled, burning along her skin, firing tiny sparks through nerves and muscles everywhere they touched.

Her response shocked her. The fear, the repugnance of intimate contact with a total stranger, a caged and potentially dangerous stranger, didn’t surface to stop her. Her body imposed its own will over the logic of her mind. Vibrating with need, she pressed against him, thoughts of demonic creatures and torture far away. Darkness, cold, and fear were, for a second, quelled.

He gently pulled back and shifted them both to sit, not releasing his arm from around her back. The rattle of chains injected reality. “They must not find you here. You made it out before. You need to do so again.”

Again? “How did you know it was me before?”

He reached into the pocket of his tattered jeans and slid a tiny, hard object into the palm of her hand.

Her earring.

With a shock, she realized the last-ditch effort he made in the corridor last night, the insane stumble, and attack of the hybrids, had been to pick up her earring, to cover for her.

“My smell and hearing are also excellent.”

Her fingers closed over the earring and she glanced at him, wishing she could make out more of his expression. The modest growth of beard and the dark gray shadows around his eyes hid everything.

He watched her, his thoughts closed off behind an apparent mask of calm. One she no longer believed as rigid and harsh as she had before.

And he could smell her. A heated flush rushed over her skin at the embarrassment.

With effort, she circled back to the conversation the creature’s arrival had interrupted. “Why are you helping me? The first time, you almost took my head off.”

His shoulders moved in a shrug. “You are not the threat I anticipated when you first appeared in my cell.”

The response sounded synonymous with weak and inconsequential, and while her first instinct was to snap back, she paused long enough to realize it wasn’t wise or kind to antagonize him. “You’re so certain because…?”

“Because you’re human.” Humor threaded through his words. “Would you prefer to be a threat?”

“No. I mean, well—I’m as human as you are.” Wasn’t she? She leaned back against the wall, choosing more distance from his appeal to give her mind some clarity.

Silence thickened again in the cell, broken by the scrape of plastic on stone and the snap of the cap. Several minutes later, he placed the empty water bottle in her lap. “Thank you.”

“Glad to be of service,” she said, the sarcasm barely contained at becoming his personal garbage can.

He dropped his head and then tilted a look her direction. She could detect a lift at the corner of his mouth, a brief hint of amusement. “If you leave that here, others will know you’ve been here.”

Yeah, bad. “Good point.”

The man had a tight grasp of the dangers. Something she wasn’t coming up to speed on fast enough. Given she wasn’t able to control her journey here she should follow his lead. Mia gripped the empty bottle. If she could help it, she wouldn’t come back. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“No, I did not.”

She didn’t see the smile, though his voice relaxed into their previous battle of words.

“What is your name?” he asked. The soft gravel of his voice deepened. It rumbled against her, leaving a ghost impression of his body pressed to hers.

She crossed her arms to rub away the sensation. Sensual or not, there was too much sensory stimulus keeping her off-kilter with not enough substantive information being exchanged. Her name was the last thing she was comfortable sharing. “If you doubted me at first, what clued you in I’m
human
?”

“Your scent. Your blood.”

It circled back to the blood, she thought with a quick shake of her head.

“You asked,” he responded with a quiet laugh.

He wasn’t sane; well-built and a great kisser, but certifiable. Maybe not even real, except she’d endured the hybrids twice in the last two nights, and she was certain she carried the blood from his wounds all over her clothes, evidence impossible to discount.

“You sucked my blood for an analysis? Like some sort of—”

“I sucked your finger to cover your scent from the hybrid. It also allowed me to assess you. And”—he tugged her hand back into the light of the door—“it seems to have helped close your wound.”

Her bloodless finger remained between the fingers of his much larger hand. “Thank you, but that’s so gross. I’d think tasting blood would be a hazardous way to test for enemies. Infections and everything,” she whispered, not able to keep the tension and curiosity from her voice, in spite of herself.

“The risk with you was minimal. Your scent carried no threat.” He gave a deeper chuckle at the intake of her breath. “It’s unique, light, and harmless.” He held up his hands in mock surrender as she narrowed her eyes at him. “You have the capacity to be very threatening, I’m sure. But you are a bit too delicious to have caused me harm.”