“I’ve been waiting all night for you.” He moved toward her, his polished loafers making a scraping, sandpaperlike sound against the wood floor. “Where were you?”
“Working.” Sara shifted her hand higher on the cordless. To the left, then up two buttons.
“Working with him, that disfigured mute you love so much,” he said with an exaggerated pout. “All you care about is him. The rest of us are just your experiments.”
“That’s not true,” Sara assured him gently. The image of Gray that shot into her mind made her all the more conscious of remaining alert and alive.
Tom noticed the man on the floor behind her, cocked his head to one side. “Who’s that?” His tone instantly changed from childlike to menacing. He looked accusingly at her. “You brought someone home? Are you going to be with him? Let him touch you?”
There. Sara stabbed the call button on the phone. Knowing she had only seconds before Tom’s aggressive side surfaced, she looked down and dialed. But she never completed the call. Tom descended on her, knocked the phone from her hand. Terror pulsing in her chest, Sara ran for the door, but Tom was right behind her. He reached out, grabbed her wrist, and hauled her back against him. She winced in pain, but she wasn’t about to give in. The little bastard was going to get a knee to the balls if it was the last thing she did. She kicked at him, twisted in his grip, tried to bite his shoulder, get her hands free, get to his eyes with her nails.
“I like you like this,” Tom hissed in her ear, clamping his hand over her mouth. “Why do I like you like this?”
Where was the phone? The front door? Was it still open?
Sara’s gaze went wild, looking, searching as her breath remained jailed inside her lungs. Then she saw it—the front door. Open a crack. She had to get out, get free. She bit down on Tom’s hand, then jammed her elbow into his gut.
“Bitch,” Tom cursed, releasing her.
Momentarily free, Sara made another run for the door, but tripped over one of the couch legs and landed on her hands and knees.
Get up! Move!
Behind her, she heard Tom mutter the words “You little whore ...”
She scrambled to her feet, her lungs aching for breath. But she never made it to the door. Tom caught her coattails and yanked her back. She stumbled, losing her balance as panic closed in on her. She pushed against the feeling. There was no way she was going to be taken down like this.
She scissored her legs, but just as she managed to get her feet under her, Tom grabbed her shoulders and whirled her to face him. Sara opened her mouth to scream, but before the sound cleared her throat, Tom’s fist slammed into her face. Time stopped, then slowly picked up again, and then she was flying back, her head hitting the hardwood floor with a nasty thump. Blinding pain assaulted her, followed by pins and needles. No. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her lungs ached for air, but there was none. The room narrowed. From the back of her mind, she heard a growl—slow and menacing. Was it her? No . . . didn’t come from her. She struggled to stay conscious, turning her head to the side and blinking.
Again. The sound of an animal.
Her gaze lifted. The man on the floor. Was it him? No, he was still lifeless, eyes closed, skin pale, except for the key-shaped brands on his cheeks. Oh God, she wanted to help him, warn him, but her body felt impossibly heavy—
Suddenly, without warning, the man’s eyelids popped open, his head jerked back, and within seconds, he was on his feet and heading straight for Tom. Sara struggled to stay conscious, to focus on the impossible scene playing out before her. The man was so huge, his face a mask of animal rage.
“Who the hell are you?” Tom cried out, backing up, his eyes little balls of terror as he stared at the stranger.
“Very thirsty,” the man hissed.
The image of Tom’s terrified face drifted down the tunnels of Sara’s clogged mind. So tired. She just wanted sleep. Her gaze flicked upward. The man had Tom in his clutches, his feet dangling off the ground like a puppet. Tom was swinging his fists . . . hitting nothing but air . . .
Sara’s head pounded with the slow beat of her heart. The last thing she saw before she blacked out was the man’s teeth.
No. Not teeth. Fangs.
3
The puny male squirmed in Alexander’s grasp. He weighed less than nothing, his jabs little more than the delicate slap of a butterfly’s wings. Alexander’s fangs quivered against his lips, the stinging pain from his burns fueling his ire.
“Please,” the human begged, his watery brown eyes wide and scared. “Let me go.”
Alexander lifted his brow. “She asked for release, didn’t she, cockroach?”
“What?” he sputtered. “What? I don’t—”
“The woman asked for release,” Alexander roared. “And did you listen to her? Give her what she asked for?”
Trembling like a wind-up toy, Tom stared at Alexander, his bulging gaze moving from one branded cheek to the other.
Alexander grabbed the bastard’s neck with both hands and growled, “Speak, human! Did you give her what she asked for?”
“No,” Tom croaked.
“No. You terrified her. Wounded her.” Alexander brought the man’s face close to his own. “You deserve no less than that.”
Tom started to cry. “Please . . . no.”
Unfazed, Alexander leaned in and sniffed the air around the human. His nostrils flared angrily. “Weak blooded and pissing in your pants. You should be grateful you didn’t manage to kill her, human. I would like nothing better than to end your miserable—”
Alexander’s skin began to vibrate and arrows of pain shot through him, making him wince. He looked down, at the hands that encircled the human’s neck, and his jaw went rigid at the sight before him. The sun-seared burns on his wrists and forearms were fading, shrinking into permanent tattoos—the markings that identified him as a morphed male, just as the ones on his face forever identified him as a progeny of the Breeding Male.
How had this happened to him? A Pureblood paven didn’t go through morpho until his three hundredth year. He had another century, for fuck’s sake! His fingers dug into the thin skin of the human’s neck. Just a few days ago, he’d been a creature of the night and of the day—of a life that was his own. Then the hunger hit, followed by the sun . . .
A sound, nothing more than a sigh really, floated up to Alexander. The woman. She stirred. Alexander glanced down, and his temper ebbed slightly. The human woman who had heard his thoughts, who had saved his life, now writhed in slow motion on the wood floor several feet away, her heart-shaped face contorted in pain.
Alexander changed his grip on the male, one hand slipping under his arm, the other remaining around his throat. He squeezed, just enough. Killing the piece of shit, pulling the breath from his body, would surely be a proper punishment for what he’d done, but Alexander knew that such a temporary wave of satisfaction would lead to big problems, problems he and his brothers had made every attempt to avoid—that is, until the premorph hunger had claimed him.
He released the man, and with a defeated sigh, the skinny human passed out and slid to the floor, his long body hitting against the wood with a dull thud.
Alexander went to the woman and dropped to one knee beside her. She breathed comfortably, but the red bruise on her pale cheek was already starting to darken and swell. Rage rippled through him like the aftershocks of an earthquake, and his hands and fangs trembled with the desire to tear into the flesh of the human passed out behind him.
The woman stirred again, her full lips moving, her brow coiled with tension. Her color was good, but she needed rest and a doctor. Until then, Alexander would offer her what comfort he could. In addition to new powers morpho provided, individual gifts were also given to each Pureblood paven. Alexander already understood his as well as he understood his own name. He brushed back the woman’s long, dark hair and placed two fingers on her temple, breathed calm into her blood, then watched as her body relaxed. When he believed her to be sleeping gently, he reached into the pocket of his coat for his cell phone. Dammit. It wasn’t there. He looked around the room, his gaze quicker than it had been only hours previously. Near the threshold leading into the kitchen, he spotted the cordless. He reached in its direction and muttered a terse, “Come.” The phone shook against the ground, then flew across the room and into Alexander’s waiting hand. He stabbed at the numbers, then pressed the receiver to his ear.