The Shadows

When he was finally finished, he jacked up, his fists punching into the sheets on either side of her.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he gritted out in her ear.

“Oh, God, please—”

Selena shouted loudly as he jabbed into her, stretching the inside of her nearly to the breaking point. The pain was the perfect bite—and then he started to pump. There was no slow-and-steady windup; hard, pistoning power made her see stars until she lost the strength to hold her upper body off the bed. Collapsing face-first into sheets that smelled of him, she struggled for breath and loved the suffocation as each thrust shoved her face-first into the pillows.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The headboard was having the same rough ride she was, nailing into the wall, the sound reverberating along with a grunting from him that was all animal.

Craning her head around her shoulder, she strained to see him.

Trez was magnificent, his pectorals and shoulders seized up, his huge arms carved in muscle, his abdominals ribbed as his hips punched at her. As he orgasmed, his head fell back as it had when she had first taken hold of him, and he howled, his bright white fangs flashing long and deadly, his neck cording up on both sides, his hips slamming into her and locking in as he pumped, pumped, pumped …

He filled her up.

And her sex milked him, urging him on until she felt the wetness on the inside of her thighs.

He didn’t so much disengage as fall over to the side, as if every ounce of strength had been spent from him. The headboard let out one last bam! as he landed and bounced, his hands and arms, his torso and legs going loose from all that straining effort.

His mouth moved, his dark eyes meeting hers and staying there.

She had no clue what he was saying to her. She didn’t care. Her ass was still up in the air, her sex humming from the hard use, her body as satiated as his looked. Air currents, from the vent above, drifted down from the ceiling, brushing against everything that was exposed, tickling, cooling.

That had been the sex of her life. Hard and raw, the way she had been told and trained it could and should be.

Before Selena allowed herself to lie to the side and slip into her own sleep, she smiled so widely her cheeks hurt.

She had been, for the first time in her life, not just well and truly fucked, but marked by the male she loved.

Even with the future she had to face, it was hard not to feel blessed.

TWENTY-TWO

iAm regained consciousness, but kept his eyes closed. What woke him up was the shooting pain in the back of his head—that and the ice-cold floor his naked body was lying on. For a moment, he considered playing possum and trying to get an idea of where he was through his hearing, sense of smell, and instincts, but there was no reason to.

He knew exactly where they’d put him.

Fucking double-crossing bastard.

Opening his lids, he saw a whole lot of nothing much. Then again, he was on his stomach, one arm trapped under his torso like he’d been thrown in—

A door opened over in the corner behind him. And he knew that not by any hinge creaking, but by the sudden addition of voices and footsteps in the cell.

“Why would I check his marking?” a male asked. Not s’Ex.

“It is procedure.”

Yup. Nothing had changed.

iAm reclosed his eyes and stayed perfectly still except for breathing shallowly as the footfalls came closer.

There was a gasp. And then fingers palpated the small of his back, as if they were stretching the skin where he had been marked, as all males were, when they were six years of age.

“That cannot be right.”

The footsteps left in a hurry, and he assumed the panel was shut again.

Lifting his head, his vision blurred and came back into focus. There was no one else in the well-lit twenty-by-twenty cell, the glossy white walls so slick he could see his dark reflection in the panels of marble.

His head hurt so damned much, he was forced to lay it back down again, his cheek finding the exact spot on the stone that had been warmed to the temperature of his body while he’d been out of it. His arm was killing him, the limb both numb and painful at the same time, but he lacked the energy to move the thing free of his upper body’s weight. Lying there, breathing, existing, he had no idea how long he’d been out, what they were going to do to him, or whether he was going to get out of this bright idea he’d had alive.

From out of nowhere, he had a mental image of him leaving Sal’s the night before, stepping free of the restaurant he loved, talking to the waiters.

He found himself wanting to rewind time and go back to that incarnation of himself, his memories of the way the night had been cool on his face, and how the smoke from his waiters’ cigarettes had curled up off of the lit tips, so clear that, for a moment, it seemed impossible that he could not return to that place in time … step into the shoes he had been wearing then … reassume his suit of skin just as he re-formed after dematerializing.

But of course, time didn’t work like that. And memory was but a television show of your own life, a movie screen you could play witness to, but not interact with, change the course of, redirect.

Desperation for Trez, the great motivator in his life, had propelled him back into the heart of the enemy he and his brother shared.

And there was a very good chance this shit was going to get the best of him.

With a groan, he rolled himself onto his side and blinked a couple of times. His weapons, like the robing he had been wearing, were long gone. And there was nothing else in the cell—

The door opened, the panel sliding soundlessly into the wall. And what came in was robed from head to foot in black folds of cloth, the face covered, the feet covered, even the hands gloved.

Was it the Grim Reaper? he wondered. Had he passed out and was dreaming—

A subtle scent registered.

But not in his nose. Through his body.

Like a lick of electricity.

The door was shut behind the tall, robed figure. And as the male approached, iAm did his best to assume some kind of defensible position.

He didn’t make it far at all with that one.

A gloved hand reached out; he was rolled back over; and then he felt a touch on the base of his spine.

“I will … kill you…” iAm mumbled. “Hurt you…”

How, he hadn’t a clue. But he was going out fighting, that was for damn sure.

The figure stepped back. Tilted its head as if it were considering the method of death that would be used.

In the s’Hisbe, most prisoners were tortured first. Tenderizing, iAm had always thought. Then they were slaughtered and either buried or eaten by s’Ex and his guards, depending on the offense.

The latter was a proud tradition. Also took care of the whole what-to-do-with-the-body problem.

iAm curled up fists and braced himself for whatever came at him.

Except the figure simply regarded him for a long moment. And then backed over to the door and left.

Oh. Okay. They’d verified who he was, and there was no reason to kill him before they got Trez back here. That would be a waste of leverage.

Shit.

Relaxing his muscles, he tried to get himself to go loose and prayed that his body’s natural healing abilities took care of the concussion quickly.

He was going to need to be able to back up his fighting words with more than an inert body and limbs made of lead.

Goddamn it, he should never have trusted s’Ex.

Back in Caldwell, Paradise sat on her bed, legs tucked under her, eyes on the night sky on the far side of her closed, locked windows.

“So you’re going to do it?” she said into her cell phone.

Peyton laughed. “Hell, yeah, are you kidding me? I’m dying to get out of here. Ever since the raids I’ve been on lockdown, and the fact that my parents are letting me go into that training program is a miracle.”

She focused on the latches on her own bedroom door, which were, as a matter of fact, in the locked position.

“Wonder if my dad would let me,” she murmured.

There was a pause. Then a laugh. “Oh, my God, Paradise. No. Uh-uh. No way.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. He’s really protective—”

“That program is not a place for females.”

She frowned. “Excuse me. The letter from the Brotherhood said we were welcome to try out.”

“Okay, number one, ‘try out’ does not mean ‘accepted.’ Have you ever even done a push-up?”

“Well, I’m sure I could if I—”

“Number two, you’re not your average female. I mean, hello, you’re a member of a Founding Family. Your father is First Adviser to the King. You need to be preserved to breed.”

Paradise’s mouth dropped open. “I cannot believe you just said that.”

“What? It’s true. Don’t pretend the rules are the same for females like you. Like, if some scrub civilian who happens to wear a skirt wants to give it a shot, fine. That loss means nothing to the species. But, Parry, there aren’t many of you left. For males like me? We don’t want to get mated to anyone but you, and there are like, what, four or five of you left?”

“That is the most reductive reasoning I’ve ever heard. I gotta go.”