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Do not vomit. Do you hear me? Do. Not. Vomit.
She must have made a noise. Neon’s gaze hit her with laserlike intensity. Gasping, she dropped her bundle and backed away. He stomped toward her, moving around the wall of death. The scream finally fought its way free...and just...never...stopped. Sharp pains ravaged her throat as her already damaged larynx protested further abuse.
Strong hands cupped her cheeks. “Female.”
Thane’s midnight-fantasies voice penetrated the haze of panic.
She blinked into focus. Piercing blue eyes watched her, diamond hard and determined. He was all that she saw. All that she wanted to see.
“You’re safe from my wrath. I told you this.”
Safe.
Yes. Deep breath in...out... Yes, she was safe. He’d said so, and Sent Ones couldn’t lie.
“Th-thank you,” she managed.
He traced his thumbs over the rise of her cheekbones—more contact, even better than before—every cell in her body coming to unexpected, dreaded life, snagged by the magnetic pull of him...reaching for him, desperate, hungry....
Vulnerable already, she was no match for his dark, wicked allure... It was as unattainable as a whisper, as heady as a caress. Undeniable. Inexorable. So powerful it nearly dropped her to her knees.
I’m so sorry, Bay. I promised you forever, and now I’m reacting to another male. I’m slime. No, I’m worse than slime. Though all she wanted to do was burrow closer, she forced herself to tug from Thane’s hold.
“You have two choices, female,” he said with a frown. “Return to the humans and chance being hunted and tortured by the Phoenix. Or come with me to the third level of the skies and work at my club, where you will be guarded.”
Work for him? Stay with him?
Determination pushed her shock to the curb.
“You’ll pay me?” Life goal one: escape. Life goal two: make bank. He could be offering both.
“Yes.”
“How much?” She may be tempting fate, but in the past few seconds, a mini-war had waged in her brain, and shrewdness had won.
His frown deepened. “We’ll figure it out.”
A nonanswer. “I...I...” Didn’t know what to do.
His gaze sharpened. “Never mind. I’ve decided for you. You’re coming with me, and that’s final.”
What! “Now hold on a second, angel boy.”
“I’m not an angel.” He clasped her by the waist—holding on—and passed her on to Neon. “See that she gets there.” Then he vanished, ending the conversation.
Well, well. Next stop: the skies.
CHAPTER THREE
ENDLESS RIVERS OF EMOTION cut different paths through Thane, though they each intersected with his heart, one bleeding into another, until he could no longer tell them apart.
Last night, thirty-eight Phoenix prisoners regenerated, the oldest and strongest first. Two had yet to reform, and might have reached their final death.
Kendra had been the fourth to reform.
One by one, Thane had hauled every single warrior to the courtyard in front of his club—and staked them to the ground. Hands, shoulders, pelvis, knees and ankles. He’d ensured every head was propped up with a rock...so that every warrior could witness the suffering of his friends.
Kendra was at the head of the line.
The Phoenix wouldn’t die quickly. As children of the Greeks, they were immortal. For weeks, perhaps months, they would starve, the sun blistering their exposed flesh, crows constantly pecking at their eyes and, later, their organs. And when the warriors finally succumbed to the sweet oblivion of death, they would regenerate, and Thane would be right there to repeat the entire process.
Merciless, yes. He didn’t care. Now enemies would think twice before challenging him.
The problem was, this would upset Zacharel, the leader of the Army of Disgrace. Thane’s leader. This would anger Clerici, the new king of the Sent Ones, Zacharel’s boss, for Thane was abusing the spirit of the amended law—do not kill, unless captured—not acting in an effort to protect others from the same fate, but to exact revenge. This would also disappoint the Most High, the commander of them all.
This would jeopardize Thane’s future.
He already stood at the corner of Last Chance and Doomed, and with one wrong move, he could lose the only thing he loved.
His boys.
Can’t be parted from them.
But he couldn’t let the Phoenix go, either. Not until their suffering blotted out the hated memories they’d given him.
Thane sat at the back end of his tub, boiling water pouring from the overhead spout, raining over his naked body. His hands clenched the edge of the porcelain so tightly it was already cracked. His legs were bent to his chest, his forehead resting against his knees. It was a position of shame. One he knew well.
He should have already rebounded. He was no stranger to sex and bondage. For almost a century, he’d found a delicious sort of comfort in the way pale, feminine flesh reddened under his ministrations. He’d adored watching wrists and ankles strain against bonds. Delighted in seeing the first gleam of fear in his lover’s eyes...knowing tears would soon follow.
Messed up? Yes. But then, he’d also enjoyed being on the receiving end of such treatment.
He was probably worse than messed up, and it didn’t take a lot of digging to figure out why. The months he’d spent inside a demon prison— Stop. No. Every muscle in his body tensed as his mind fought the abhorrent direction it was traveling, but he forced himself to continue on. Remembering kept his darker emotions at a razor’s edge, each ready to cut him, make him bleed.
He liked to bleed.
He remembered the way clawed hands clutched at him as they dragged him into a dank cell, stripped him, and strapped him to an altar. He remembered Bjorn, a stranger then, being strung up above him—and skinned. He remembered the copper scent of fresh blood, the warmth of it as it dripped onto Thane’s face, chest and legs. He remembered Xerxes, also a stranger, being chained to the wall across from him and raped repeatedly.
A roar of denial clogged his throat. Thane punched the side of the tub, leaving a gaping hole in the porcelain. What do you know. There was a limit to what even he could bear.
The pain of his friends.
As the days passed inside that terrible prison, Thane was never touched. He hurtled threats and insults, but the demons laughed rather than feared. He begged, desperate to remove focus from the other men, but the demons ignored him.
His frustration...
His hatred...
His rage...
Each had slunk to the back of his mind, and just never left him. Eventually, after his escape, his sexual gratification became tied irrevocably to the very things he’d been denied, creating a hell of a lot of crazy.
“I put your human with the barmaids.”
Xerxes’s gentle voice came from inside the bathroom, a comfort to him.
“Thank you.” Thane had questions for his lovely, unlikely savior. How had she, a human, come to live with the Phoenix? What was her name? How old was she? Did she smell as clean and sweet as he remembered?
Did she belong to one of the warriors staked outside, or perhaps to one of the soldiers out hunting with the new king?
How had she helped Thane? His memories were clouded. Why had she helped him?
The moment the urge to touch her faded, Thane would approach her and ask.
Right now, he was too aware of her. Too...absorbed in her. She made him feel soft, protective and tender, something he didn’t just not like; something he despised. And yet, his sexual desires had never been so intense. The urge to throw her down and ravage her was almost blinding.
Why the unlikely juxtaposition?
She wasn’t the type of woman he usually pursued. Line up his last hundred conquests, and each would be tall, leanly muscled and stalwart. This girl was delicate in every way.
It made no sense.
A growl rose from deep in his chest. Instinct demanded he destroy whatever he didn’t understand. What he didn’t understand, he couldn’t control.
Control was more important to him than water.
But he wouldn’t destroy the girl—he didn’t want to destroy her. Not after everything she’d done for him.
He could send her away, he supposed. But she would have zero protection.
Pass.
He could frighten her and—
No. Pass. She would scream.
Once, a screaming female would have aroused him. Now? When the slave girl did it? He experienced only rage.
At least he understood why her voice was so raspy. At some point in her life, she had screamed to such a degree, she had permanently damaged her vocal cords.
“I’ve placed guards around the courtyard.” Bjorn’s statement drew him from his thoughts. The warrior entered the bathroom behind Xerxes. “They will alert us when someone dies.”
Always these men supported him, loved him. Never did they judge him or push him for details he wasn’t yet ready to share. No man had ever had better friends.
Little wonder Thane was willing to die for them.
“Thank you for coming for me,” he said quietly.
“We will always come for you.” Xerxes walked over and shut off the water. “We heard about a Sent One who wreaked havoc in a Phoenix camp weeks before, and so we were in the area, looking for you. But they hid you well. If you hadn’t told us where you were...”
All Sent Ones could direct their thoughts into the minds of their brethren, so, the moment Thane had come to his senses and realized his location, he’d used the mental connection to shout for aid.
“Time to dry off,” Bjorn said. “You’re already waterlogged.”
As Thane stood, Xerxes offered him a towel.
He draped the cloth around his waist, a lance of anger cutting through him. Kendra had dressed him in a loincloth and forced him to parade around her people, a target for any wayward caress.
And her people had caressed him.
“Have Kendra’s robe removed,” he demanded. “Put her in a bra and panties.” Tit for tat. No mercy.
Xerxes nodded. “As soon as I leave you, I’ll see that it’s done.”
To distract himself from his black mood, Thane studied the opulent en suite adjoined to his bedroom. Steam coated the air, curling to the domed ceiling, with its elaborate chandelier hanging in the center, glistening with a unicorn’s petrified teardrops. The walls and floors were made of the same gold-veined marble. Towering archways framed large, alabaster lions and led into a closet—the one storing his...toys. A gilded mirror hung over a sink carved from a melding of rubies, sapphires and emeralds.
He’d designed the space for the women he bedded. And yet, he had never allowed a single woman inside it. Not even Kendra.
What would the human think of the decor—
He cut off that line of thought before it could tempt him. Her opinion didn’t matter.
In the living room, he eased onto the couch and, after collecting a tray of cookies and breads, Bjorn settled at his left. Xerxes poured him a glass of whiskey laced with ambrosia before claiming the spot at his right.
Thane accepted an offering from both men with a nod of thanks. He devoured the shortbread and drained the contents of the glass in a lone gulp.
“You have questions, I’m sure,” Xerxes said, settling back with a cookie of his own.
Grown men with a dessert fetish, he thought with the first stirring of amusement in his chest. Domesticated manimals in their natural habitat. Nice.
“Many questions,” he said, but he would start with the one that tortured him most. “How are you here, Bjorn?” Thane wasn’t the only one to suffer tragedy lately. “Before I ended up in the Phoenix camp, I watched you disappear in a dirty alley.”
A fateful night. Just before Kendra had died and risen from her ashes, effectively enslaving Thane, he and his friends had fought a new breed of demon. Shadows that slunk along stained, cracked concrete, hungry for more than human suffering...hungry for flesh.
Bjorn had been injured, the wound oozing some kind of black goo. Then he’d vanished.
Thane and Xerxes had been frantic, but before they could search for the warrior—the other piece of their hearts—Kendra had opened her eyes and commanded Thane to journey to the Phoenix camp.
He’d obeyed unquestioningly.
Oh, Kendra. The things I’m going to do to you...
With a new slave band hooked around her waist, negating her powers, she was as helpless as he had been.
“I can’t tell you what happened, or explain what will happen to me in the coming months,” Bjorn finally said, and Thane heard the torment in his voice. “I’m avowed to secrecy.”
He swallowed a curse. Sent Ones never broke their vows. Physically, they couldn’t. Not even degenerates like them. Thane knew Bjorn, and knew his friend never would have offered one unless those he loved were being threatened.
This was another crime to place at Kendra’s door. Had Thane been around, he might have found a way to save his friend from his current fate. “If ever I can help you...”
