Predator's Salvation (3 page)

At his thoughts, she licked her full, copper-tinged lips. When she smiled at him, he saw something else simmering beneath her predator’s glare: fierce desire.

Mateo didn’t know whether to be flattered or not, struck suddenly with how much her intense gaze reminded him of Genesis Ryan, as if the two were sisters from a different mother, or at the very least, countrywomen.

Was it possible—?

“I hear your mind working a thousand miles a minute. Busy, busy, busy.” She stood straight and sauntered several steps away. “All of your conjectures are for naught, however. I have suitably squelched your chance to be enlightened at the feet of the converted allies.”

What the hell was she going on about? Was she talking about Genesis and Alex? Allies of who and what?

“Am I going to have to keep you bound and gagged or can I trust you enough to allow you a small measure of comfort and freedom?”

Was she asking him whether or not he would scream or try to escape if she uncuffed him?

“That is exactly what I am asking you. Not that you could escape me. If I chose to, I could stop you before you got within twenty feet of the door. As for the tape, I did that to protect your voice and my eardrums. If you do scream, however, I must warn you, one, that we are quite isolated here and there is no one around to hear you, and two, my loft has been reinforced with excellent soundproofing materials, so have a care and do not waste your time.”

Mateo didn’t doubt her speed or intent, especially when he remembered how she had so effortlessly plucked him out of the parking lot. He didn’t doubt any of that speech about the isolation and soundproofing either. He most especially did not doubt anything she said when he realized that she was…reading his mind!

He had thought the first time had been a fluke, but he was sure of it now.

Christ, this was getting creepier by the moment, creepier than his own alien gifts.

Mateo stared at her back as she walked away from him to the stainless steel kitchen in the distance. He tried to see if he could spot the wings she had used to fly away with him, but there was nothing except the mahogany smoothness of her well-muscled back.

10

Predator’s Salvation

His fingers itched with the memory of how that smooth skin felt beneath them, as if he had been with her before, inside her, too many times to count, and craved to do it all again.

He let his gaze lazily drift down her six-foot tall, hour-glass figure from the gentle slope of her bare back to the slim curve of her waist and finally to her endless legs encased in painted-on burgundy leather pants and matching knee-high boots.

Despite his precarious state, Mateo felt his cock hardening in his boxer briefs, fantasized about putting his dick in her slick, hot cunt. What was
wrong
with him?

She turned back to him then, hazel eyes glinting with insight, leering as she stalked across the burnished parquet floor.

She sat at his bedside. “I am LaMia Enlil, and there is nothing at all wrong with you except that you are a healthy, red-blooded male.”

What was this? Formal introductions before she killed him? And damn, he wished she would stop dipping inside his head like that!

He used to think it was cute as well as advantageous to know other people’s feelings, especially girls he was involved with as a late teen. He had, however, gotten over his psychic voyeurism years ago when, at twenty, he’d experienced his then girlfriend’s severe menstrual cramps. He’d snooped because they’d argued earlier in the day and he had thought she was just using her period as an excuse to get out of having sex with him. He had been sorry for his mistrust ever since.

LaMia was more outright and rude with her snooping than he had ever been though, and he didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t like someone like her tooling around in his brain and knowing every little thing he was thinking.

“Contrary to your assumptions, I am not rude. I am merely availing myself of any and all opportunities to get to know my submissive better. And you will call me Mistress or Mistress LaMia, by the way,” she said then firmly placed her hand on his forehead.

Mateo grimaced.

Who the hell is this woman?

He closed his eyes and braced himself as her subtle, yet heady, cinnamon-and-female scent washed over him. He felt the tug on his brain as if she had reached inside his head to gently peel back the layers of his past.

Mateo’s heart pounded a vicious beat in his chest, obliterating all miniscule sounds in the loft as he wondered if his heart would explode.

She held her palm against his forehead for several long moments, ransacking his mind, melding with his memories until she became a part of them.

He knew this woman! Knew her too intimately to deny her or forget what he had been doing with her for the last several months—but more importantly, he knew her too intimately to deny what she had done to his family so many years ago.

One woman he implicitly trusted with his body and soul. The other had taken too much from him for Mateo to trust her at all.

How could they be one in the same?

11

Gracie C. McKeever

Her touch was insidious, seductive, seeping into him like the mist in his dreams, and then he realized she
was
the mist in his dreams.

He could see how his brother and father had succumb to her allure, how his father had allowed her to come between him and Mom and how his brother had allowed her to drain the life right out of him. The promise of the ultimate climax and release was too powerful to resist.

But resist he would…this time.

Suddenly, LaMia jerked back her hand and gasped.

Good! He wasn’t the only one so overwhelmed by what she’d just done.

“It
is
you! At first I was not certain, did not believe it was possible that fate would actually send you to me...” She reached for a corner of the tape and viciously stripped it off his mouth.

“Shit!”

“Do not make me regret doing that.”

Like he wasn’t regretting it already, Mateo thought as he flexed his jaws in concert with his fists clenching and unclenching in the cuffs above his head.

“Speak!”

“I’m not a dog!” Mateo shot back and silently gauged her reaction. He noticed the slight upward tilt of her lips, an expression of admiration and amusement that just barely reached her hazel eyes.

So, she was enjoying this, enjoying him. Hell, he’d give her something to really admire and smile about once he was free. “What do you want me to say, Mia?” he asked, thinking two could play the game as he let the moniker slide off his tongue and saw her blink at his audacity.

“You accuse me as if I tried to defraud you.
You
abducted
me
.
I thought you knew who I w—”

“Silence!” She slashed the air with her hand as she leaped from the bed.

Mateo had a flash of her in Julian’s bedroom the last time he had seen his brother alive.

He saw the woman’s glowing yellow gaze when she glared at him over a shoulder, bared her teeth and hissed.

Mateo had a second to react as she finished draining Julian of his life-force—or whatever the phosphorescent red light that was arcing from his brother’s body into the woman’s was called—before she turned on him.

He charged across the threshold and hurled his body through the air, intending to knock her off Julian. He got within a couple of feet of the bed before she raised her arms in front of her and rasped,
“Kundalini”
right before zapping him with a green bolt of lightning from her fingers.

His body heated now with the memory. Lust raged through him, making his cock jut upward like a repugnant invitation.

Get a grip, Matt. Forget how much you want to drive your dick into her and make her
scream like she made your brother scream. Just concentrate on now. Here and
now.

12

Predator’s Salvation

“You killed him.”

“Julian’s death was an unfortunate consequence of our coupling.”

He reacted without thinking, violently kicking out with his shackled legs.

She drew back and stared at him as if he were a dangerous animal that had to be watched carefully.

Her reaction was instant and infinitesimal, just enough to let him know that he wasn’t the only one affected by their encounter.

Mateo closed his eyes, tuned into her body’s responses, felt the shimmering fire inside her, felt her vaginal muscles spasming and…was that regret hovering just on the outside of her consciousness? Regret for what had happened to his brother?

Good, he would take these and run with them.

He opened his eyes and smiled. “Why did you take me?”

“I took you for the same reasons I took your brother. I took you because…” She slashed the air with her hand again and sat back down on the bed, a tightly wound ball of energy.

Mateo’s body immediately reacted to her closeness, that energy. If he had been free, there were all sorts of ways he could have helped her unleash that energy but she wasn’t giving him a choice. Not yet. “Why?” he demanded.

“It matters not why I did it, and beginning now you will learn it is unwise to question my actions or my motives. As of this moment, you are a human with no rights and no say over what I do to you here.”

The hell he was. Human, yeah, but with no rights and no say? Where the hell did she come off? This was still America, wasn’t it?

“The quicker you learn to deal with that, Mateo, the better.”

He didn’t know what angered him more, the familiarity with which she addressed him or the fact that hearing his Christian name flow from her lips made him hotter than had she put her hand on his cock and caressed him. In fact, the more she spoke, the angrier and hotter he got.

He had time and energy to indulge his desires. He was, as she had just put it, a healthy red-blooded male, after all. He didn’t, however, like to waste his time or energy on anger and a past he could not change. Life was too short. For Ms. Arrogant Nubian Queen though, he thought he might make an exception. “I’m not afraid of you,” he said and as he peered at her, she returned his glare tenfold. He didn’t flinch, would die before letting this woman intimidate him.

“Oh, you are a spirited one, so worth the effort of taking you. I am going to enjoy breaking you in, Mateo.”

He just bet she would enjoy breaking him in if he allowed her to, but he had no intentions on allowing her to break him in.

All this time he had thought she was a figment of his traumatized, juvenile imagination, something he had conjured up to help him deal with the bizarre nature of his brother’s death. He thought she was something he had created to help him deal with the horrendous circumstances surrounding his parents’ murder/suicide.

13

Gracie C. McKeever

She was real, however, and before him now, the woman at the root of all three losses, a being he had grown to despise.

Mateo pulled against his manacles. “Undo these cuffs,” he commanded, sudden rage fueling his bravado. He knew very well what she was capable of, how powerful and lethal she could be. He didn’t care.

“You are giving me, LaMia Enlil, an order?”

“I’m giving you an order, yes,” he bit out.

She laughed, reached out a hand to smooth a stray lock of light-brown hair from his face, and his dick twitched in his boxer briefs at the unexpected gentleness of the contact. “You are absolutely precious,” she murmured.

She said it like he was a cute poodle or kitten who had just done a neat trick.

Mateo snarled and jerked his wrists against the cuffs again. “Bitch. Let me out of here, now!”

Silently she stood, shaking her head as she looked down at him. She raised that infamous fist and Mateo didn’t blink as a strip of duct tape appeared over his mouth to silence him.

He roared behind it and frantically struggled against his bonds.

After several minutes, he began to feel like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum, especially when he got no reaction from her except that indulgent smirk that was already becoming a familiar and irritating sight to him.

LaMia folded her arms across her generous breasts and arched a brow. “Are you quite through?”

Actually he was exhausted, but he was nowhere near through, and if she could read his mind, then she already knew that, knew that as soon as she gave him an opportunity, as soon as he saw his chance, he would try to escape.

He had no choice. If he stayed here in her company a moment longer, he would succumb as his brother had and become her willing slave. He knew it. His desire for her washed over him even now with enough hunger to make his cock throb painfully. It was a hunger that tampered with his good sense and obliterated his revulsion.

He hated not being in control of his feelings, not being in control of himself. He had learned long ago the price of losing control, the price of being undisciplined.

Then he had been a stupid grieving kid and teen with more rage and testosterone than sense and no outlet except to rebel against what he had seen as the injustice done to his family.

Looking back now, Mateo realized he had been more than a handful for a matriculating college student with a couple of part-time jobs, selfishly taking every opportunity he could to get his brother’s attention, from minor infractions like vandalism and shoplifting to the last straw for Julian when Mateo had been arrested with an older teen for grand theft auto.

Short of ringing Mateo’s neck and trying to knock some sense into his sixteen-year-old head, Julian spent the last months of his life working to get Mateo’s criminal record expunged.

“I want you to have a chance, Matty. Clean slate, no strikes. You’re a smart kid when
14

Predator’s Salvation

you’re not being totally stupid about who you hang out with, and I’m not going to let the street
life get you. You hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“Look at me, Matty.” Julian put a hand under his chin and made Mateo meet his eyes.

“You’re going to graduate from high school and go to college. And with any luck, you’re going
to go further than I ever will. I’m not going to let you waste your talent...”