“Foster…Darcy,” she whispered, her hands wrapped around the bars. “Wake up Foster.”
He grunted but didn’t move. Alarm rolled through her. This corner of the room was in darkness but that didn’t matter to her. She could see well in low light, a factor which had helped her bring him in. Guilt slammed into her again. She’d done this, brought him back to this nightmare. If she’d known what they planned to do—if she’d known this hellhole was even here—then she would have just let him go, Fitzgerald’s cure be damned.
“Darcy, please…wake up.” She was begging but she didn’t care. She just needed to know he was okay. “Come on, you’re a damn wolf…you’re tougher than this.”
He grunted and rolled to his back, hair falling away from his face. She winced. His skin was bruised and bloody, a vicious gash along his jaw that bisected the scar she’d given him what seemed like a lifetime ago. Biting back a whimper, she held onto the bars, despite the sting of the silver coating. Silver was bothering her less and less these days—another change she should be worried about but that disappeared under her concern for him.
“Come on, handsome. Talk to me…”
That got a reply. Of sorts. He groaned again and shifted, flopping on his side like a fish out of water and breathing hard. Toni bit her lip. His torso was decorated with cuts and bruises. No claw marks though—not like the vicious injuries she’d seen in the room outside, like the ones that had killed Hurst.
“Come on, Foster. What are you, a f**king p**sy cat or a wolf?”
His eyes snapped open, making her jump. But they were human brown, not the amber she expected.
“I’m a man, but I’d be happy with a little p**sy…if it was the right p**sy.” He chuckled, a sound that turned into a cough that racked his body. “And only my ma calls me Darcy. It’s Darce.”
“Is that supposed to be seductive? ’Cause I gotta tell you…don’t give up the day job.” She winced with him as he held a hand to his ribs and started to drag himself to the back of the cage. “Careful…crap, they really worked you over out there.”
He reached the back of the cage and slumped against it, next to her. His body might have been abused and covered in dark purple-blue bruises but his eyes were clear of pain when he looked at her.
“For you, I’d do it all again. Even listen to Bieber on repeat,” he joked, an easy grin on his handsome face.
She grimaced. “Don’t even go there. Even for this lot, that’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
Shifting to lean straighter against the bars, he threaded a hand through them, then froze when she reared back. It was an instinctive move. He was a wolf, she was a Blood. By rights they should be at each other’s throats. Despite that, she knew she could trust him. That the hand he held out wouldn’t sprout claws and slice through her jugular.
She relaxed and his fingertips whispered over her cheek in as gentle a touch as she’d ever received. It was all she could do not to turn and nuzzle into his palm. Some bad-ass vampire bitch she’d turned out to be.
“You’re beautiful.”
His voice was deep and low, the pitch and tone raising the hairs on the back of her neck. In a good way though. She’d always liked men’s voices, but his hit her on levels she wasn’t ready for, dragging a shiver of feminine appreciation from the depths of her soul.
“Do I get to know your name…finally?” His lips quirked and he distracted her by sliding a hand into her hair. She tensed automatically, but the touch was gentle. Seductive.
Dangerous.
“Fielding. Antonia Fielding.”
Her voice was a bare whisper as his grip tightened, pulling her toward the bars in a slow movement. He moved at the same time, twisting in a lithe motion that made a mockery of the injuries decorating his body.
“My friends call me Toni…”
His eyes dark and fathomless, he threaded the other arm through the bars and wrapped a big hand around her wrist. Capturing her gently…can you capture the willing? Her heart pounded. Power coiled around him, the energy of his beast. It should have repulsed her, but instead the darkness within her reached for it, wrapping and winding around it like a cat looking for attention.
“Toni,” he repeated, all his focus on her. As though she were the only thing in the world. “Pretty name for a pretty lady.”
He leaned closer, tilting her head up to look deep into her eyes. The bars were wide, but even so, he bore the sting of silver without a flinch as he leaned down until their lips were millimeters apart.
“I’m going to kiss you…”
God, yes.
He needed to get on with the kissing part already.
A frustrated growl broke from her throat and she wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and dragged his lips down to hers. It wasn’t just a kiss—it was an explosion of heat and desire. He groaned and parted his mouth, his tongue sweeping over the full curve of her lower lip, demanding access. Pressing against the bars to try and touch as much of his body as possible, Toni opened up to accept the thrust of his tongue with eagerness.
He kissed like he fought, with aggression and dominance, both sparking a reaction within her. She kissed him back. Slid her tongue against his in an embrace hotter than the fires of hell. Heat blazed between them, rolling through her body and racking the tension in her core ever tighter. She needed to get closer, to touch more of him, have him touch her…
He broke away, panting, and leaned his forehead against hers.
“Fuck… Lady, you’re killing me.”
The ghost of a smile whispered over her lips and she played her fingers through his long hair. She rested against the bars, her free hand on the broad plains of his chest. His strong fingers wrapped around her nape while the other hand massaged the small of her back. Somehow he’d gotten his fingers under her top and found skin.
The maddening touch over the small of her back, the hard bar of his c*ck pressed against her softer stomach, tightened her body almost to the point of pain. Her n**ples beaded, the plain fabric of her bra like steel wool against her sensitized flesh as she pressed against him, her p**sy clenching hard. She wanted to tear through the bars separating them and ride his lean, hard body down to the ground.
“Toni…” He groaned. The scent of her arousal wound around them, matched by the deeper musk of his. Longing and raw desire sharpened his features. Lust sparkled in his dark eyes and he bent his head again to claim her lips.
A feral howl echoed through the air before he kissed her, followed by screams of pain and terror. Darce closed his eyes, resignation on his face.
“Doll, you have to get out of here. If they catch you…” He shuddered, pain flitting across his face. “Believe me, death would be a blessing.”
Chapter Eleven
“I won’t leave you.”
Darce smiled fondly, cupping Toni’s face as she glared at him with a stubborn expression. Toni. His mate. Even now, he couldn’t quite believe she was real. Any moment now he expected to wake up to find it had all been a dream, and that she was a figment of his fevered imagination, loneliness and desire for a mate of his own.
Sure, the fates had thrown him a curve-ball with the fact she was a Blood, but no odds were insurmountable. Not where love was concerned. After all, she’d found him, hadn’t she? Even though she’d brought him in, handed him over to the Project, she hadn’t been able to stay away. She’d seen him in the hangar and had tracked him into Hell.
Pleasure and worry warred within him. She couldn’t be discovered. Her rank and position wouldn’t help her down here if she got caught. His gut clenched at the thought. She’d end up as more grist for the mill. Just another body for the bloodbath on the sands of the cage.
Shame hit him hard and fast, punching him in the gut and stealing his breath. Had she seen him in there? Seen him lose it and kill? He’d slaughtered all those put in front of him—Reanimate, Blood and Lycan alike. All of them. Kill or be killed, law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest, because at the end of the day he was what he was—an animal.
Did she see him as an animal?
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “Stubborn, but beautiful.”
He caressed the delicate curve of her face, content for the moment to just know she was there. His body raged for more. To tear apart the bars between them to hold her in his arms and kiss her until they didn’t know where he ended and she began. His soul, his heart—his cock—ached to make her his in every sense of the word. Even with lust and the power of his wolf charging his blood, he couldn’t do anything about the cage. The Project had made them, and knew how to hold them.
“Who says the two have to be mutually exclusive?”
Her voice soft, she nuzzled his rough palm. The instinctive movement stole a little bit more of his heart. Her eyes were the color of midnight, but they weren’t the soulless pits he’d once thought a Blood’s eyes to be. Instead they sparkled with humor and intelligence.
For a moment he felt a pang, deep in the center of his chest, mourning the fact he’d not seen her eyes when she was human. What color had they been? Blue, brown…green? Then he realized it didn’t matter. She wasn’t human. He couldn’t keep ascribing human norms and values to either of them.
“They don’t have to be exclusive.” His lips quirked in a smile. “You got both in spades. But you have to go, sweetheart. Get out of here. Out of the base if you can.”
Urgency sharpened his voice and he tightened his fingers a little on the back of her neck, trying to convey by touch how important it was to him that she got to safety.
“Head into the hills and look for my squ…my pack. Speak to Jack. That’s Captain Harper. Tell him what’s going on in here. He’ll help.”
She lifted an eyebrow and looked at him like he’d sprouted another head.
“Let me get this straight. You want me, a Blood, to leave the base and head out alone to find a Lycan pack. Because, yeah, like that’s going to end well.”
He opened his mouth to tell her not to be stupid, to tell her that she was his mate and none of the pack would do anything to hurt her. He paused, frowned. He didn’t know that for sure. Yeah, it had been the case with Lilly…but Lilly had been human, not Blood and the enmity between them and Lycans ran deep and vicious.
“No…Jack would scent me on you.” Darce was sure he would, along with the same subtle smell of a wolf-mate that Lilly carried. Once recognized it was unmistakable. “If you can get to him—”
His plea was cut off by boos from the crowd, taser fire, snarling and yelps. The sound of scuffles and approaching boots warned him they were about to get company.
“Go. Now.” The edge of a growl in his voice, he pushed her into the shadows. “Get yourself out of here.”
But she fought him, crowding against the bars for a second to reach in and brush her fingers over his cheek. “I’ll be back. Stay alive. Or I’ll bring you back as an RA just so I can kick your ass.”