“He’s awake.” The deep voice came from somewhere above Rafe, while lethargy held him down, and a thick fog crushed his ability to think.
But beautiful blue eyes stared down at him, and nothing else in the world seemed to be important in that moment.
He blinked and tried to open his mouth. He started choking.
A slick, hard pressure held his mouth open and then in one quick pull the pressure was gone, and his throat burned with the fiery pain of an uncontrolled cough that stole his breath.
The blue eyes moved, and he tried to reach out for them. His hand grasped at air. “Whahhh…”
His eyes fell shut again and the need for sleep started to overwhelm him.
“He’s falling under again, Ilson. Do something. I don’t want the guilt of his death on my head too.”
Rafe thought he recognized that voice, but he couldn’t gather his thoughts enough to remember from where or when that might be true.
“You’re in my way.”
“He’s not dying, is he?”
“Move.”
Rafe couldn’t follow the voices. Hands touched him, pinching, poking, and air chilled his skin. He started to shiver. Then a great shudder wracked his body.
“Uhhh…” he groaned.
Someone sighed. “He’s coming around.”
“That’s good,” a soft, quiet voice said. “I’ve waited so long for today. I don’t want to wait another moment.”
That voice pulled at Rafe, drawing his thoughts out of the stupor he found himself in, unsure of where he was or what was going on.
“Ac—cident?” he croaked.
A warm hand caressed the side of his face. “Shh. Don’t speak yet, you lovely thing.”
That got Rafe’s attention. He blinked harder and finally noticed that the beautiful blue eyes were part of an equally beautiful face.
A man stared boldly back at him.
“Move aside, Agg,” someone else said, and the man staring at Rafe raised his head, those eyes turning away.
Rafe missed those eyes the moment they were gone. Without them, he couldn’t focus on anything around him, and he started to drift again.
Then someone smacked him, right across the face.
Voices rose in agitation and Rafe surged upright on the—the—he had no idea where he was.
He started coughing again, his chest burning, his eyes watering, and his mouth as dry as the Arskian desert.
“Berto?” he asked.
Three men stood around him, one standing just beside him to his left, one standing to the side holding some kind of Yeeru device in his hand, and another staring at him through cautious, tight eyes.
But he’d been wrong, because there was a fourth man, standing behind the man with brown hair.
He recognized one of those men, the one with the tight eyes—
Or did he? That hair wasn’t quite—
A lock of Rafe’s own hair straggled across his face, drooping in front of his eye and tickling his jaw—and shoulder.
Rafe didn’t wear his hair long. He hated—
And that was when Rafe noticed the strange wires and the slick edges of his bed and the thick, glistening rock formations overhead.
A faint memory came to him from much too far away. A monster’s nest.
You’ll sleep for a while, a few months… a year…
“Berto!” he yelled, and he didn’t try to pretend that wasn’t panic in his voice as he started jerking his arms and struggling to climb out of whatever thing it was he’d been stuffed inside.
Strong arms clamped tight around him and when Rafe turned his head, he met wide blue eyes.
Rafe kept yelling.
Of course, Berto didn’t come.
The struggle lasted all of a few minutes before Rafe was too tired to fight. In the end, the man who had clamped his arms so tight around Rafe pulled him out of the weird looking bed and onto the smooth, dry floor of the cave, and when Rafe tried to stand on his own, he found his body surprisingly weak.
Cold seeped through the soles of his bare feet and his knees started to give out on him. He staggered once, then just let himself fold to the ground. He didn’t have the strength to stay upright. The moment his ass touched the cold, smooth ground, his thoughts finally coalesced into something resembling order and he realized—
He was naked.
His helper—co-kidnapper?—put a hand on Rafe’s shoulder, and Rafe looked up.
He started at the unexpected sight of a naked, muscled thigh right next to his face and jerked back hard enough to almost slide over.
The man caught Rafe under the arms and righted him, and that brought back more memories of his last waking moments.
All he could think was that he was in some kind of nightmare. This couldn’t be real.
Tremors coursed through his muscles and his throat continued to burn. “Wha—” His voice cracked, and he tried again. “Water. Please.”
Someone pressed a metal cup into his hand. He turned his head, already taking a sip and then a deep gulp of soothing, cold water.
“Gregory,” he croaked out, lowering the cup. “I’m going to kill you.”
Gregory grimaced, his gaze skipping away from Rafe to land somewhere above and behind him.
“Rafe,” that appealing voice he’d heard earlier said. The naked guy.
Rafe gulped down the rest of the water, so thirsty that he could have drank another cup if it’d been on offer.
“Rafe.”
Rafe plunked the cup down beside him and splayed his hand on the cool ground beside it for stability.
Fingers sifted through Rafe’s hair. “Rafe, look at me.”
Rafe wiped his mouth on the back of his other hand. “Fella, I’m not going to turn around and look at you.”
“Why not?”
His disbelief was so great, Rafe almost made the mistake of turning despite his determination not to. “You’re naked, that’s why. I don’t want your dick in my face.”
“Well,” the man said, cupping the back of Rafe’s neck and rubbing. “I thought you might be more comfortable if you didn’t have to be naked alone.”
Rafe couldn’t help it that time, he did turn his head then immediately jerked his gaze away.
On one side of him, Gregory was shaking his head, on the other, the younger man was still holding that Yeeru device Rafe didn’t recognize.
“What are you doing?” Rafe demanded.
The man with his hand on Rafe’s neck answered instead. “Ilson is making sure you’re healthy. You just woke up from—”
“I didn’t ask you, now did I?”
A short silence filled the well-lit cavern.
“This isn’t going quite how I expected,” the naked guy said.
“And how exactly did you expect this to go, fella?”
“I thought you’d be happy to see me, but it’s possible I didn’t think this through to the suddenly obvious conclusion.”
“Fancy that,” Rafe said. “You people kidnapped—”
“It’s Agg,” Gregory interrupted, gesturing over Rafe’s shoulder.
Rafe’s thoughts stuttered to an abrupt stop.
Gregory continued, turning to the man with the device, “He has all his memories, right? No reason to think anything’s wrong?”
“He’s perfectly healthy, if we ignore the spiking adrenaline.”
“That’s excellent news,” the naked guy said.
The naked guy who just might be Agg.
Unable to resist, Rafe took another swift look at the beautiful—and still naked—man standing over him. In his effort to keep his eyes off the dick in his face, his eyes got stuck meeting those beautiful blue eyes, and the man—Agg, if he could believe it—smiled back at him.
The fingers at the back of Rafe’s neck squeezed. A shiver raced down Rafe’s spine and along his nerve endings, raising a sharp tingle under his skin.
His heart thumped so hard he started to feel lightheaded. He needed to get to his feet. He couldn’t have a conversation with these people looming over him. He needed to figure out just what had happened to him—he remembered most things, he thought, but maybe not.
Because the guy standing over him was definitely not Agg.
Agg was an ugly-as-monster oceandog that slobbered all over him and got a little too close sometimes after the lights went out.
He’s a monster, his mind whispered.
Yeeru.
He could be anything. Anyone. And Rafe would never know it until it was too late.
Hadn’t known it until it was too late, he remembered.
He needs time to create a human, they’d said. He’d obviously created one, if this—this man was Agg.
Gregory crouched down in front of Rafe, but he looked up at the naked guy as he did it, huffing out a soft breath. “I told you coming in naked was a bad idea. Could you maybe back up a few steps?”
“I’d rather not, thank you. My Rafe needs me.”
Those fingers that had been gently squeezing Rafe’s neck started moving again. Rafe reached up and pushed them away. As soon as he lowered his arm, the fingers returned.
He clenched his teeth.
Gregory huffed again and settled his gaze on Rafe. “He’s not as old as he looks, so you’ll have to be patient with him.”
“I don’t have to be anything,” Rafe gritted out, the fog in his head becoming a pain that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. “And it’s a mistake for you to think so.”
Gregory shook his head and twisted to look over his shoulder at the man who’d stood so close to him. “You see that disaster coming yet? Because I’m definitely seeing it.” He turned back to Rafe, his boots making a faint grinding sound against the rock floor. “I’ve got bad news, and since I’m the one that pushed everybody else to accept Ilson’s suggestion when we realized what was happening with Agg, it’s only right that I’m the one to break it to you, so here goes.”
Gregory cleared his throat and scratched at his jaw, and his eyes seemed to catch the light, glinting with an emotion Rafe couldn’t identify.
Anger? Unhappiness? Guilt?
Ah shit. Rafe braced himself.
He still wasn’t prepared.
“You’ve been asleep for ten years,” Gregory said. “I’m sorry. I swear by all that’s holy, I didn’t think it would take that long. None of us did.”
Shock tensed every trembling muscle in Rafe’s body. All he could say was, “What?” Then, “Ten years? Ten years. Are you—I can’t—” He started shaking his head, trying to get his feet under him, but his body didn’t seem to want to cooperate.
And maybe that was why, because ten years? What the hell had they done to him that he’d spent ten years asleep in a monster’s lair?
Magic whooshed from the center of his being and spiraled out of his body in a fiery rush, so fast, so unexpected—so rich and dark and strong—that Rafe lost the ability to breathe through the cloying scent swirling in the air.
In the next instant, all holy hell broke out.