Girl from Jussara (10 page)

It was the first time Felix had addressed me by my given name throughout my entire abduction nightmare. Somehow it made him seem more human and allowed the meaning of his words to sink in, to cut through the fog encompassing me.

The stabbing pain stopped as Remy lifted his head from mine and affixed narrowed, disapproving eyes upon something—or
someone
—to my right.

“Break his arm,” Remy enjoined impassively. “Gag him and the others until Alex arrives.”

I heard the movement of what sounded to be multiple footsteps and noted a flurry of activity just beyond my peripheral vision. I was still unable to turn my head away from Remy’s visage. With all of my attention heretofore fixated on Remy, I’d not realized there were clearly numerous other occupants in the room with us—wherever it was that we were.

“Milena, please!” Felix cried out in a rush. “Please believe me? Your brother, Raul … we were friends once, I swear it … and he could resist their enthrallment!” It sounded like he was struggling as the words rushed out of him.

I heard a sickening crack. Felix screamed.

Terror lodged in my throat as I realized the first part of Remy’s cruel orders had been carried out, even as Remy gazed amiably down at me, a nonchalant smile quirking his lips as his fingers combed through my hair, massaging against my scalp in a manner I found unnervingly pleasurable given the fact I was becoming increasingly petrified of him with every passing second.

“Raul’s the only one we’ve ever known to resist their power,” Felix relayed quickly, his voice thick with torment. “Raul’s mind—it was special! Alex … Alex knew it! Yours might be, too … you have to try, Mil—” he pleaded, right up until his voice was muffled and reduced to grunts and groans of agony in the back of his throat as I presumed the second part of Remy’s order had been completed.

“Call Alcaeus down here,” Remy instructed as he turned on his heel. “And break his other arm.”

Remy covered my outer ear with his free palm, which served to simultaneously press my opposite ear more securely against his chest, effectively blocking my ability to hear whatever else was happening as he carried me away from my kidnappers and the frenzied commotion and palpable tension permeating the air.

It might’ve been only in my head, but somehow I swore I could still hear the sound of Felix’s other arm bone breaking behind us, along with his muffled scream.

Remy quickened his steps, shushing me and crooning words of comfort as his puzzled eyes searched my features. I hadn’t even realized I was crying until he’d deposited me upon a cushioned surface in another room and was wiping my tears away.

“Hey, hey now, it’s okay,” he consoled, concern pinching his brow. “Felix kidnapped you, Milena. He
hurt
you,” he stressed, as if I’d forgotten it.

For the first time since I’d awakened, I found I was able to look away from Remy’s face and observe my surroundings. Strange. Had I imagined I couldn’t do so before?

We were alone in a large and ornately decorated room. It might have been a fancy sitting or receiving room. One I imagined would be found inside of a grand mansion.

How had my brother ever come to know these people?

Remy stretched out alongside of me, half-seated, half-reclined, propped up on his side facing me, upon what seemed to be an oversized daybed.

“I’m not a fan of violence either, sweetheart,” he continued conciliatorily, dabbing a soft cloth over my tear-stained face, “but sometimes I need to take care of the bad guys.” He paused to regard me. “You understand, don’t you?”

He said it more as a statement than a question as his eyes scanned over me in a manner that made me feel profoundly exposed—like he was cataloguing every single subtle emotion I experienced as it played out across my face. Leaving me no choice but to attempt to mask and swallow my growing confusion and inner confliction.

What he’d said about Felix was true. Felix had kidnapped me. He had intentionally hurt me. But I wasn’t certain he was entirely a bad guy. For reasons beyond my comprehension, I believed Felix’s peculiar words of warning to me had been in earnest, delivered in spite of the immediate threat his actions posed to his own person.

And now both of his arms were broken.
And I was alone in a room and under close surveillance by the same man who had callously ordered those arms be broken.

I focused on breathing in an attempt to distract myself from my growing panic.

“Drink?” Remy reached over my head to an adjacent side table.

As he was procuring the proffered beverage, I took the opportunity to really look him over. My bleary eyes were soon roving uninhibitedly up and down his densely muscled, tall frame before I could think better of it.

He was positively huge! He was dressed in an expensive-looking white shirt and well-fitted slate dress slacks. I suspected they’d been tailored in order to so perfectly conform to his powerfully muscled thighs.

By the time my eyes returned to his face, he was smirking, and I blushed yet again at being caught ogling him.

Why was I ogling him?
I never ogled men. Now was hardly the time to start—
with a scary arm-breaking stranger.
What was wrong with me?

When he raised my head in one hand and brought a crystal glass of amber-colored liquid to my lips with his other, I finally snapped from my stupor.

“Nooo
… pee!” I blurted gauchely, my eyes widening with desperation and embarrassment as I realized I still needed to go. “Um … bathroom? Please?”

Remy’s abrupt shout of laughter shook the daybed. He tossed the drink down his own throat before fishing a cell phone from his pocket and thumbing what I suspected was a text message.

“But of course you may use the facilities, milady Milena,” he intoned with mock formality. “However, I’m afraid due to your injuries you’ll need some assistance. I’ve summoned a female companion for you. Think you can hold out a few minutes longer? I’m fairly certain this is a rather expensive couch.”

I nodded, feeling mortified now, in addition to the myriad other emotions I was struggling to decipher.

He arched one brow. “Even … if I tickle you?”

I squealed “no” and childishly pled “uncle” the moment his fingers shot out in pretense of a tickle attack, grazing the small expanse of my abdomen beneath the hem of my tank top before ceasing.

As I caught my breath and my spinning head, I looked up to find him beaming down at me.

“I got you to smile,” he boasted. “It seems I’ve made you cry, blush, and smile, all in the span of three minutes. Maybe at least you won’t reject me for boring you.”

He looked so ingenuously boyish, so harmlessly playful pouting down at me. It was all so confounding! So impossible to wrap my head around the fact that he was the same person who’d so coldly decreed the torture of another human being minutes ago.

“Are you … American?” I asked, cursing the increased heat that flared in my cheeks when his eyes sparkled and he shook his head, grinning broadly—as if to suggest he were withholding a great secret.

“Would you feel safer with me if I said I was?”

“Raul’s not welcome in this house, and that means neither is his family!” a booming male voice thundered, followed by, “Holy fuck, what’s that smell?” as another enormously built, dark-haired, gorgeously godlike man stomped into the room and into view just above me on the opposite side of the daybed.

“Fuuck,”
he swore, his nostrils flaring, his massive chest and muscled shoulders heaving smoothly up and down as he audibly sniffed in my direction.

“I want her,” he proclaimed, his hazel eyes devouring every inch of me in a way that was utterly primal.

Remy released an extended sigh. “Don’t scare her, Alcaeus. She has a full bladder and she’s already distressed.”

“Who is she?” the larger-than-life man named Alcaeus demanded.

“Raul’s sister.”

While Alcaeus muttered a string of colorful expletives, Remy squeezed my hand and reminded me to breathe. I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding my breath—or that I’d apparently been holding Remy’s hand in mine against my abdomen ever since I’d snatched it up trying to prevent him from tickling me.

Alcaeus was attired similarly, if not more formally than Remy. He was what my mother would have described as ruggedly handsome, with hard, angular features; jet black, short hair that had a slight curl to it; deeply tanned skin; and what looked to be more than a few days’ worth of five o’clock shadow. He looked older than Remy, maybe in his mid-thirties. And he was looking at me like he wanted to eat me!

“Her name is Milena.”

“She’s human.” Alcaeus shook his head. “Why the fuck does she smell this good?”

“Don’t know.”

“Who hurt her?”

“Felix.”

“I’ll kill him. Where is he?”

“I already had them break his arms. Let’s let Alex kill him.”

“But I want to kill him,” Alcaeus said with near childlike petulance.

“It’ll be better if Alex does it. ’Sides …”—Remy jerked his head in my direction—“this little one got upset with me for breaking his arms. She might not speak to you for days if you kill him.”

“Really?” Alcaeus’ brow rose with amusement. “You’re kidding?”

He and Remy both chuckled then over an unknown joke I wasn’t likely to comprehend.

My head was spinning.
None of what was happening or being said around me made sense. It was as if I’d stepped into an alternate universe rather than onto another continent.

“Fuck, I haven’t had a hard-on for a human female in over half a century, Remy,” Alcaeus imparted lewdly. “You gotta let me at this one.”

My eyes widened and I gripped Remy’s hand tighter. I realized I was holding onto it with both of my own now. He squeezed back reassuringly.

“No. She’s mine,” he told Alcaeus.

What?
I fought to disentangle my fingers from Remy’s. He let me.

Alcaeus harrumphed, crossing his thick arms over his chest. “Remy, you have a harem of human girls already. Let me take this one.”

“No.”

Briefly I wondered if I’d entered some altered state of shock. My brain felt foggy, and it suddenly occurred to me I’d stopped sensing any pain in my ribs—or elsewhere, for that matter.

“Oh, c’mon! You’ll only turn her into another one of your mindless pets.”

“I won’t,” Remy refuted. “Not her. She’s different … she smells too good.”

“She smells a fuck lot better than good,” Alcaeus rumbled, raking me over with his eyes. “I wanna lick every inch of her inside and out.”

My stomach flipped over, and I struggled for air. My night was becoming more bizarre and disturbing with each passing moment, terrifying on more levels than my fuzzy brain cells could keep up with.

Alcaeus’ leer morphed into a scowl as his eyes paused over my neck and then my knees. “You fucking missed half of her bruises, Remy. You didn’t even heal her properly.”

Remy cleared his throat. “Working on it. We were … interrupted. I only had time to tend to her face while she was briefly passed out.”

As ludicrous as Remy’s statement was, it occurred to me the moment he said it that my face did in fact feel much better since I’d awakened, and my eye that had been swollen partially shut before was functioning fine. What the hell?

Alcaeus’ frown deepened the longer he stared at me. “She has internal injuries, Remy.”

“Yes,” Remy confirmed, as if this were a fact. “Fractured ribs and a few other …
concerns
. Getting to those, too. I’ve been holding off the pain from her as much as possible in the interim.”

Either they were both crazy, or I definitely had a head injury.

Alcaeus appeared even more perturbed by Remy’s explanation. “Why the fucking delay?”

“I encountered …”—Remy hesitated, assessing me—“difficulty … penetrating her. When I tried to fully enter her mind, she pushed back. And when I exerted force, it seemed to become quite painful for her.”

“And? Since when are you such a pussy?”

“She’s suffered head trauma, Al. I didn’t want to push things and upset her.”

Alcaeus’ hazel eyes rolled. “Human craniums are too delicate and injured far too fucking easily. All the more reason to force your way in and fix it before greater damage is sustained.”

Or this was all a dream.
It had to be.

“Yes, I realize that, but she just looked so … tiny in my arms. So fragile.”

“And she’ll look tiny and dead soon if her brain is swelling and we don’t get in there and stop it.”

“Humans don’t heal as well when their systems are overloaded and flooded with stress. I needed to calm her down first.”

“She’ll heal regardless if we give her Alex’s salve,” Alcaeus concluded, waving a dismissive hand. “Ten cc’s via intravenous push ought to do it.”

“Alex wouldn’t approve of us wasting his salve on any human, much less Raul’s sister.”

“Don’t care what he approves of; I’m healing her. Now hand her over,” Alcaeus said, taking a step closer. “You clearly don’t know how to care for her.”

“And you’ll break her!”

Unwittingly, I emitted an odd, strangled sound in my throat. They were discussing me as if I were cattle—or some kind of
house pet
rather than a person. Perpetually describing me as “human” as if it were something foreign, something other than what they themselves were.

I needed to get away from them.
But my brain felt so cloudy—my body too heavy to move.

“Fuck no!” Alcaeus objected, appearing to be disproportionately insulted by Remy’s assertion. “I’ll be gentle with her. Promise.”

“How would you know how? You just admitted you haven’t fucked a human in half a century.”

“That’s fucking bullshit! I’d be gentle!” Alcaeus roared at a decibel that shook the room, belying the very point he hoped to make.

Something was seriously amiss with them both.
It was time to panic.

“She’s Raul’s sister,” Remy reminded Alcaeus stiffly. “Alex might want to kill her on sight.”

“We’ll talk him out of it. She smells too good to die.”

“But it’s Alex.”