Watched her with the single-minded intensity of an aroused male who wanted one thing.
And wanted it now.
Chapter 3
“Talk to me, Shade.”
Runa stretched to the end of her chain. Their captors had left him secured to the wall with a collar around his neck and just out of her reach. He’d gone crazy at first, leaping at her like something possessed, giving her a glimpse of the demon beneath the human appearance. Eventually, when his throat began to bleed from the struggles, he’d curled into a fetal position and lain there, panting and moaning, for what had to have been half an hour. His vulnerability broke through the barrier of anger she felt for him, until her fingers had itched to smooth his hair away from his face, where sweat had beaded on his brow.
Idiot. The man … creature … whatever … had tossed her away like garbage. She didn’t give a crap about his you-know-my-nature bullshit. For the first time in her life, she’d taken a risk, had believed that maybe it was time to put aside the past and let herself be happy.
Her anger roared back, and she welcomed it like an old friend.
“What did they do to you?” she asked, her voice steely.
“Need …” He broke with a shudder. “Pain.”
“I know it hurts. What can I do?”
“Pain. Hurt … me.”
“Yes, they hurt you—”
“No.” His face twisted into an agonized grimace as he stretched until his toes made contact with her fingers, at which point he hissed. “I need you … to cause me pain. Make it … hurt.”
“What? No.” She jerked away from him. “I’ve been dying to do that for a long time, but if you want it, it sort of takes the pleasure out of it.”
“Please.” He opened his eyes. Dark shadows framed them, and the gold was gone, replaced by the near-black that always sucked her in.
She stared at his foot, wondering what she could do. There was nothing within reach she could strike him with. But maybe … no, if she shifted into a werewolf, the manacle around her ankle would hurt like hell as her size doubled.
“Runa.” He shuddered so hard his chains rattled. “I’ll die … if you don’t.”
Oh, damn. No matter how angry she was at him, she couldn’t let him die. He fell still as she stripped off her shirt, as though he knew she’d decided to help. She peeled off her jeans, as well, but had to leave them hanging off the cuff around her ankle.
Bracing herself, she shifted. Skin stretched. Bone popped. Excruciating pain ripped through her face as her jaws extended and teeth erupted. Sure enough, the ankle manacle squeezed like a vise, sending such intense waves of agony up her leg that her vision blurred. Shade watched with wide eyes as she leaped to the end of her chain. Her larger size and canine muzzle gave her the extra length she needed to clamp down on Shade’s foot with her mouth.
He yelped, a brief shout of pain before he smothered the sound with a moan. Between her teeth, she felt bones give but not break. His skin didn’t fare as well, and she tasted blood.
“Enough,” Shade growled, and she released him.
Her leg throbbed as she shifted back to human form. She lay on the ground, exhausted from the transformation, feeling spent and hoping no one had seen. If their captors learned she could voluntarily shift form into a warg, they might not wait until the full moon to take her pelt.
She gagged at the coppery taste of blood in her mouth and spat into the straw.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely, and if she didn’t know better, she’d think his shredded voice was the result of hours of screaming. But he’d endured his torture and suffering in silence. He sat up, pulling gingerly at his foot, but he seemed much better despite the amount of pain the wound must have caused. “Why can you shift at will?”
Weakly, she faced him, her gaze dropping to his na**d body before she could catch herself. Even sitting there, chained up and injured, he radiated masculine power. She raised her eyes to his caduceus pendant. She’d recognized it as a medical symbol back when they were dating, but now that she knew where he worked and what he was, the odd design made more sense. The common staff had been replaced by a dagger circled by two sinister-looking vipers, and the wings above their heads were batlike and tribal.
“You first,” she said, as she pulled her jeans up. “Why do you feel better even though I just gnawed on you like a Rottweiler’s chew toy? What did they do to you?”
He threw his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “They forced a female on me. It’s a curse of my species that once we’re aroused beyond a certain point, we need release, or the pain becomes disabling. If it goes on long enough, we die.”
“Oh. So the female …” she trailed off, not wanting to know what the female had done to him.
“She pleasured me with her mouth until I was crazy with lust, and then she stopped.”
“So … didn’t the fact that you’re in a chamber of horrors put a damper on your libido?”
“My mind wasn’t willing, but my body responded.” He drilled her with a hard look. “I’m an incubus, and she was as aroused as I was. I couldn’t help it.”
Right. His nature again.
“So if you sense arousal, you have to respond?” When he nodded, she bit her lip, thinking. “The day we met, you said you sensed my need. Is that what you meant?”
He nodded again. “It’s why I generally avoid public places. A nightclub, especially a demon nightclub, can be hell. No pun intended.”
That would explain why they’d never gone anywhere during the month they’d dated. Their entire relationship had revolved around his place or a hotel, sex and food. Once, they’d taken a walk in a park—at night when the area was deserted. At the time, she’d thought it romantic. Now she knew better.
“Then, no matter where you are, you have to stay if you sense need? You can’t leave?”
“Not if a single female wants sex. I’m compelled to find her. If she’s with another male, the results can be violent.”
“Why not just, um—”
“Release can’t come by my own hand.”
Which was why he’d tried to get to her when they first brought him in. He’d been frantic with pain and lust, needing release, and she’d been the only female in sight. They’d chained him just out of reach to torment him. Sick bastards.
“And you needed me to hurt you … why?”
“It was a gamble. I hoped the pain would overwhelm the lust-agony.” He studied his foot and applied pressure to a gaping wound that was bleeding badly. “Your turn. Why can you shift at will? Wargs only shift during the full moon. And shapeshifters turn into true animals, not were-beasts.”
“I’m not sure why,” she lied. “I was hoping maybe your hospital could help me find out.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “How do you know about the hospital?”
“I’ve been hunting for my sire, which means I’ve met some nonhumans. And your uniform pretty much gave you away.” More lies, but the truth wasn’t an option. He couldn’t know that the R-XR knew about his hospital and that one of the reasons she’d been looking for Shade was to learn more about it.
Shade had told her he was a paramedic, but it wasn’t until the R-XR was given a caduceus pendant taken from a shapeshifter doctor The Aegis had killed that she realized Shade must work at the demon hospital. The shapeshifter’s pendant had been identical to his.
Normally, her job with the R-XR was to literally sniff out other were-creatures. The military would then secretly tag them, and their information would be added to a giant database, allowing for monitoring.
But Runa’s familiarity with New York City, as well as her past association with Shade, had earned her this assignment.
“You shouldn’t hang out with nonhumans,” he growled. “You aren’t ready.”
“I didn’t ask for your permission.”
“You’re a baby in my world, Runa. Stay out of it.”
She waved her arm in an encompassing gesture. “Look around you, Shade. I can’t get in much deeper. I certainly don’t have a choice.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s your fault I’m in this world in the first place.”
“You do realize that as a warg, your lifespan has quadrupled, right? So you should be thanking me.”
“Assuming I don’t die in the next couple of days. Or get killed by The Aegis. Or by other wargs.” She huffed. “If you’re expecting gratitude, you’ll be waiting a long time. Not that we have a long time.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
“And you know this how?”
“My brother can sense me. He’ll find us.”
Too bad her brother couldn’t sense her. Heck, neither he nor the R-XR would know she was missing until after the full moon when she was supposed to check in. She watched as Shade checked his bleeding foot and returned pressure to the wound. He didn’t so much as flinch, his movements precise and coldly efficient.
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” She’d asked him the question a long time ago, but his answer had been vague—a few—and then he’d changed the subject as deftly as a politician.
“One sister—the Umber. Two brothers. Wraith and Eidolon.”
“Are they Umber demons, too?”
He shook his head. “No. They’re Sems like me.”
“How is it that you have an Umber sister?”
“We share a mother. With my brothers, I share a father, but our mothers are all different species.”
“So … you’re half-breeds?”
“No. All Seminus demons are purebred and male. There are no female Sems, so after s’genesis, we impregnate females of other species. The offspring are born purebred Seminus demons, though everyone inherits minor traits from his dam.”
Interesting. “Why would these other species volunteer to have Seminus children?”