Bound Guardian Angel (4 page)

Her teeth rattled as she slammed into the
ground.

“Oomph!” Her vision winked out and back
in.

She didn’t need to experience physical pain
to know when her body would be black-and-blue and look like it had
been in a fight with a saliva-flinging rodeo bull.

Briefly disoriented, she blinked through
flashing lights.

Her momentary lapse of lucidity gave
Skeletor the opportunity he needed. He spun on his heel and leaped
onto his waiting crotch rocket. The engine ignited with an angry
whine.

“Until next time, sweetheart,” he called
over his shoulder as she wobbled to a crouch and fought her blurry
vision to try and figure out which of the three guys she was
looking at had just spoken to her.

Which meant she had a concussion.

Lucky for her she was a vampire and didn’t
need to worry about the complications head injuries caused humans.
Her tissues were already mending themselves back into pristine
condition even as she felt the deli sandwich she’d grabbed a couple
of hours earlier threaten an encore.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t heal fast enough
to catch Skeletor. But she did catch the shit-eating wink he gave
her, as well as his throaty, self-satisfied laugh before he gunned
the accelerator. Rubber burned as the fat rear tire spun, sending
up white-grey smoke and gravel as the whine of the engine
reverberated off the damp brick walls. Then the tire caught the
pavement, and he rocketed out of the alley, leaving her in an angry
daze.

The buzz of the motorcycle’s engine quickly
faded, and then the skies opened up in earnest, adding insult to
injury. Large, fat drops poured down, soaking her within seconds,
plastering any hair not in braids to her cheeks and forehead.

Could tonight get any worse? She hadn’t been
able to follow up on Grudge Match. She’d been bested by a goddamned
cat burglar. She was caught in a monsoon. And now she was late to
meet that jizz stain, Micah, and his peckerwood sidekick,
Trace.

She checked her watch, thankful for that
whole waterproofing feature now that God had scooped up an ocean in
a supersized cup and was dumping every last drop of it directly on
her.

Shit! Had a whole twenty minutes passed
since she’d spied Skeletor scaling the outside of the Sentinel?
They say time flies when you’re having fun but this was ridiculous.
And there was nothing fun about being left sitting in an alley, in
a growing puddle of piss-scented water, nursing a concussion, with
the taste of blood in her mouth and a fat lip.

Pushing to her feet and wobbling unsteadily
for a few seconds, she tried to gather her bearings. Where exactly
was she? Better yet, where was her Range Rover? She’d parked it on
the side of the road near the Sentinel, but for all her effort, she
couldn’t cut through the brain fog to calculate what direction that
was, given the little stars and birdies still fluttering around her
head. What she did know was that she needed to hurry and get to the
pickup location before Micah did something to get on her last
nerve, such as move Trace without her permission.

Trace was hers for three months. He didn’t
even get to take a shit without her saying it was okay. But she
knew Micah thought Trace belonged to him. And being that Micah was,
well . . . Micah . . . and that he
was prone to doing whatever the hell he wanted whenever he wanted
as if he were the sun and everyone else were just planets caught in
his gravitational field, he was bound to do something stupid that
would piss her off all the more.

So yeah, she needed to hurry before that
skid mark did something above his pay grade. The good news was, if
he did and took Trace without her sign off, she would have an
outlet where she could take out the night’s frustration.

As she staggered toward the mouth of the
alley, she considered that maybe Micah
should
take Trace
without her permission. Because, yeah, she could use a good fight
right about now. One she could win.

Chapter 3

Mother. Dead. His fault. It was his fault.

Trace shivered on the floor of the holding
cell. The memories assaulting him had shattered him to within an
inch of sanity, and they’d done it in less than sixty minutes. He’d
been fine when he arrived at the processing center, but with one
casually flung insult—
Freak!
—he was on the verge of crossing
the threshold into mutancy.

Curling into a tight ball, his teeth
chattered as he fought for control.

Where was Micah? He needed Micah.

He barely held on, his mind racing with
rampant thoughts from both the near and distant past. He was lucid
enough to know where he was, but not by much.

Brak. Father. Dead. No . . . alive.
They survived. Would never forgive him. Fire. His fault.

If only he hadn’t flicked the razor blade to
the floor in his dungeon cell, he could use it now. Maybe that
would have been enough to prevent the scales from tipping.

Where the hell was Micah? Trace needed his
master, and he needed him now.

Mother’s cries. The fire.

Tears broke against the seams of his tightly
scrunched eyes, and he cringed through another muscle spasm that
ran from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

Micah, where are you?

He needed his friend and master now more
than ever.

* * *

Micah scowled into the pouring rain, seething, then
checked his watch again.

“She’s fifteen minutes late, for fuck’s
sake.” He turned toward the sock puppet dressed in the king’s guard
uniform behind the industrial desk set up in the small lobby.

The guard lifted his gaze from the screen of
his laptop, where he was probably playing Solitaire or some other
seemingly useless and nonproductive game.

“The instructions are explicit, Micah. Trace
is to be released into Cordray’s custody.
Only
Cordray’s.”

Micah was up the guard’s nose in two
strides. He slammed the laptop closed and slapped his palms on the
cool, rubber-topped desk. “And she’s just going to sign him over to
me five seconds later, asshole, so we might as well dispense with
the middle man.” Or woman, as the case may be. Or
it
.
Because who the hell really knew with Cordray?

The guard’s brow bunched and lowered over
his eyes. “You don’t hold jurisdiction here. Now, sit your ass down
and wait. Or leave. I don’t give a shit. Just get out of my face,
or you’ll be the next one in King Bain’s dungeon.”

Micah slowly straightened and loomed over
the little shit with balls of steel. Or perhaps he thought hiding
behind the royal insignia gave him some kind of protection. If only
he knew. Micah wasn’t beyond doing what was necessary to protect
those he cared about. If that meant wiping the floor with this
overly confident turd stain so he could get to Trace and get him
home, he had no problem with that. After all, Micah believed in
acting first and asking forgiveness later. And while the threat of
the king’s retaliation might send lesser males quaking in their
footsies, Micah wasn’t so squeamish.

Still, he backed off. He would give Cordray
five more minutes. If she didn’t arrive by quarter past, he was
going in for Trace even if he had to take a bullet to get to
him.

He paced toward the door and glared out at
the diffuse light from the city reflecting off the torrential rain
as he thought back over the conversation he’d had with Sam before
leaving AKM thirty minutes ago to come here. He’d been a nervous
wreck. Still was. This was Trace, for God’s sake. His best friend
and the first true submissive he’d taken on in what felt like a
lifetime.

“Quit worrying,” Sam had said as he let out
a heavy, concerned exhale.

“I’m not worried.” He had tried to lie to
her but she knew him better than that by now.

Sam had made a noise as if she was trying
not to laugh, and he imagined she had one of her perfect, loving
smiles on her face. “You’re like a kid with a shiny new BMX bike on
Christmas.”

Where did she get these analogies? “Are you
saying I’m excited, Mrs. Black?”

“Baby, I thought we’d talked about this.
Just because you put a ring on it doesn’t mean you can call me Mrs.
Black. We still aren’t officially hitched.” The amusement in her
voice made him smile.

“We are
so
hitched. You’ve no
idea.”

A moment’s silence crossed the line, and he
could almost see Sam’s cheeks turn rosy as she grinned from ear to
ear and stared at the ring he’d given her in February. She’d told
him that even though he was a vampire and she was now immortal, she
wanted a proper human wedding. She’d been married once before to
that abusive asshole, Steve, and Micah suspected she wanted to wipe
the slate clean and mark a new beginning by marrying him, even
though vampires didn’t get married. They mated. Big diff. A
marriage could be terminated. A mating couldn’t. At least, not
without consequences.

Micah knew firsthand how hard losing a mate
was. He’d lost his first mate centuries ago and had barely lived to
tell the tale.

He shoved his thoughts of the past aside.
“If I remember correctly, you told me when I gave you that ring
that I could call you Mrs. Black.”

“Baby, a woman will say anything when a man
gives her that many diamonds.”

“I’m no man. All male, baby. Right here.
Male.” He tapped the tip of his index finger against the center of
his chest. He loved teasing her over her constant use of the term
man instead of male. Human males were
men
. A vampire male
was a
male
. Nothing human or
manly
about him.

She groaned good-naturedly then giggled.
“Yes, you are. All male. Down to your pinky finger.”

“Don’t you forget it.” He could live off
these playful exchanges. “So, are you saying that you lied?”

“Lied?” She considered it a moment. “What do
you mean?”

“When you told me I could call you Mrs.
Black?” He tsked. “How quickly you forget.”

“Oh, we’re back on that.” She sighed
endearingly. “No, I didn’t lie, but my ability to think rationally
was severely compromised at the time.”

He kicked back in his chair. “I see.”

For centuries, his life had been barely more
than a shadow, but then Sam had shown up and given purpose to his
soul again. She was his life’s blood. He was alive because of
her.

Well, because of her and Trace.

Trace was his best friend and
self-designated guardian angel. He had taken on the role of living
shield, caring enough for both of them to watch over Micah when he
hadn’t given a shit whether he lived or died.

He loved Sam and Trace more than anything in
the world, but he loved them each in different ways. There was a
part of him that needed something Trace could give him that he
refused to take from Sam. The debasement that resided deep in his
soul desired a kind of control and submission even Sam, who was one
of the strongest females he had ever known, wasn’t able to provide.
That wasn’t the kind of play he engaged in with her, because it was
too demanding, too severe, too harrowing, rife with the potential
to scar her mind. Only a hardcore submissive could take that kind
of treatment.

Trace.

That wasn’t to say that Trace’s submission
was a
requirement
for Micah to have a full life. If Trace
hadn’t come along, Micah would have been perfectly content to live
the rest of his days as Sam’s mate without a thought to his BDSM
past and the extremes he’d gone to in his dungeon. His life would
have
felt
full. But in the way a caterpillar turns into a
butterfly, he couldn’t go back to the way he had been before
sampling a taste of the fulfillment Trace could provide. Trace had
given him wings again, and there was no going back from that.

This was why he was like the kid with the
new bike on Christmas morning. Because the moment he took
possession of Trace, the scene would begin. Trace would need him
after two weeks in lockup. And, once more, Micah was ready to don
the Master hat to give Trace what he needed. His dungeon was
already set up in his basement. Ready and waiting for Trace to fall
to his knees in subservience and become Micah’s slave.

He and Sam had talked about what would
happen once he got Trace home, so she knew the importance of what
was about to happen. Trace needed Micah in a way Micah hadn’t
allowed anyone to need him in a long time. For decades, he had
practiced BDSM as a Dom, and a damn good one. Other Doms wanted to
be him. Submissives had practically thrown themselves at him. The
leather lifestyle had provided an outlet for Micah’s tormented
side, but also for the long-repressed side of him that had
once—almost a thousand years ago—been a strong, trusted leader.

After a while, though, it had become too
hard to reconcile himself to reality, and he grew disenchanted.
Being a Dom began to lose its luster. Submissives came and went,
and humans were too weak to take what he could dish. Vampire
submissives were in short supply, and to be honest, he had wanted a
more permanent arrangement, not one where the sub only used him to
get off on the pain and degradation. Domming a vampire who wasn’t
his mate had begun to feel like blasphemy, and he eventually backed
away from the lifestyle on all fronts, especially after harming a
submissive during fireplay. Something he would much rather
forget.

Then Sam came along. She rekindled his
desire to pull out the proverbial flogger, but even though she
could take a lot, she wasn’t a true submissive and never would be.
She was too strong willed. With her, he enjoyed playing—tying her
up, spanking her, even mindfucking her on occasion—but he liked her
more hands-on than he would ever allow a true sub to be.

Enter Trace. The perfect solution.