I wasn’t an expert on stalking, but over the years, I’d put some arrows in a few creepers—both hybrid and human. The pressing question wasn’t how Salem knew who I was or even why he was following me. Though I was terribly curious about the latter.
Forcing myself to remain seated on the floor, I looked him directly in the eyes. “How did you know where to find me?”
It wasn’t like I advertised my travel schedule. I strategized missions in the murky hush of abandoned buildings, temporary camps, or—on rare occasion—at home base in Hoover Dam. Those meetings included only my fathers or my most trusted soldiers in the Resistance.
“You crossed through my territory about a month ago.” Salem watched me from inches away, his eyes aglow with an unnatural inner light that swirled his irises like molten glass, wickedly hypnotic…
I blinked, breaking the spell. “You have a territory? Who the hell are you?”
“I’m no one.” He leaned back and picked at the dwindling pile of meat, chewing and swallowing as if to draw out his damn answer. “I made a place for myself. It’s out of the way. Fortified against intruders. Big enough to share with some friends who look out for me as I do for them.”
“What kind of friends? Humans? Hybrids?”
“Hybrids.”
“How?” I stood and tugged on what was left of my one-legged pants. “You can’t be friends with hybrids.”
“I can.” He leaned back against the wall, wearing an amused expression. “When they can’t impregnate or turn you, they’re really quite amicable.”
He couldn’t be turned into a hybrid. The implication of that was mind-boggling. My fathers and I couldn’t be turned because we carried my mother’s immunity. Over the years, Michio had experimented with our blood, trying to develop a vaccine. It seemed to work on the few humans he tested it on, but eventually their bodies rejected the antivenom and shut down. None survived.
I paced the concrete room, covering the length in just a few strides. “Obviously, you’re immune to the hybrid’s bite. I mean, you just got bitten and nothing happened. But you have hybrid friends? That’s just… I don’t understand. Do you hang out with them?”
“Sometimes.”
I rubbed my temples, struggling to imagine hybrids doing anything but raping and killing. “What do you do with them? Drink whiskey and trade world-domination tactics over a buffet of human throats?”
His eyes narrowed but maintained their lustrous glow. “Judgey isn’t a sexy look on you.”
“Judgey?” I stabbed a finger toward the door. “A hybrid child decapitated my friend! What do you think your hybrid buddies would do to me?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you should be more receptive to people that are different than you.”
“They’re not people!” Anger inflamed my face as I pointed at the scars on my throat. “Do you how I got these? And this? And this?” I gestured at each faded mark in turn, on my chest, midsection, and arms. My entire body was a tapestry of dental records. “Oh, and how about this one?” I positioned my injured thigh beneath his nose.
“Love bites?” A smile struggled on his lips until it split into a deep, rumbling laugh.
Heat raced over my skin and gathered between my legs. I couldn’t ignore the enticing, palpable, sinfully sexual way his laughter affected me. But I didn’t have to like it. “You know what? Fuck you.”
“Judgey and bitchy.” His expression sobered, his voice low and clipped. “Sit the fuck down and finish eating.”
“No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. My defiance felt a little bratty and a lot stupid, but I didn’t care. “You still haven’t explained your stalking.”
He nudged the tray of food toward me with his foot and reclined lower against the wall, eyes hooded. His posture reminded me of Jesse—the bored slouch, hands casually clasped across his stomach, expression slack. My dad did that whole devil-may-care thing whenever he wanted me to think he wasn’t paying attention. But I knew damn well he was always listening, watching.
I sat beside the tray and snatched the bandages and medical tape. The wound on my thigh wasn’t festering. No pus. A little pink at the edges, not the angry red of infection. Satisfied it was healing, I wrapped my leg.
“My friends…” Salem arched a brow as if waiting for me to interject.
I pulled my lips tight, refusing to give him the satisfaction of another argument.
“My friends spotted a redheaded human woman riding through Alberta.” He huffed a laugh. “I didn’t have to be a wizard to know it was you, Eve’s infamous daughter, leading her gang of human rebels into Canada. How many breeding facilities did you take out?”
We’d leveled all four of the known nests in Canada, but I wasn’t about to acknowledge my objectives or successes to him. He was a stranger, and that made him a threat. Not to mention the twin blades of pearly whites hidden behind his lips.
But he hasn’t bitten me.
I wanted to trust him. This wasn’t my usual oh-I-hope-he-doesn’t-kill-me predilection. I felt an all-encompassing desire to count on him, to foster that dependency into something profound and long-lasting. As fucked up as that was, my need to believe in him went beyond my ability to tamp it down.
There was no sparkly-eyed thralldom going on here. I wasn’t even looking at his eyes. No, I was staring at a panorama of airbrushed skin, flat pale nipples, and a rippling terrace of muscle with V-cut indentions that drew an arrow downward, down, lower… Yeah, right there, where my imagination ran wild. Thin cotton pants sat low on his hips and outlined just enough bulge to guarantee his tantalizing masculinity didn’t stop at the waistband.
A fever spread through me, firing up my pulse. Why was I so recklessly drawn to him? Out of the hundreds of men I’d known through my life, why Salem? Because he was spectacularly, unequivocally, drop-dead gorgeous? Was I really that shallow?
“I’ll take your refusal to answer my question,” he said, “as an admission of guilt.”
Wait. What was the question? Oh, right. “Are you saying you approve of the breeding facilities?”
“I don’t give a shit how hybrids multiply or at what length the Resistance will go to stop them. As long as the politics and the fighting stay the fuck away from me, I’m happy to spend the rest of my life in my little piece of utopia, isolated and oblivious.”
“Utopia? On this planet?” I gaped at him. “You’re caged in a…a…prison, captured by a psychopathic hybrid. Probably multiple hybrids, who targeted me because of my position in the Resistance. Who knows why you’re in here, but you are. That puts you balls-deep in this great big unhappy world, lover boy.”
“I like when you call me that.” He licked his smiling lips. “Especially when you’re talking about my balls.”
“You’re impossible.” I touched icy fingers to my warm neck, hoping it wasn’t beet red. “Did you listen to anything I said?”
“Yes, and if I hadn’t given in to my curiosity, I’d be at home right now, with a luxurious bed to sleep in and a plethora of delectable food to eat. Comfortable and happy. But you decided to come to Canada and pass through my territory.” His head canted as he studied me with an intense expression. “I’ve heard a lot about you over the years. A lot of speculation about the mystical powers you inherited from Eve.”
All folklore and bullshit. The only things I inherited were her golden eyes and crazy stubbornosity. “So you decided to check out my powers for yourself? See what all the hoopla was about?”
“Yep.”
“You realize that without a small army you wouldn’t have been able to get within forty yards of me.” I would’ve put an arrow through his eye the moment he tried to approach, and that was if he managed to breach my camp. “Yet here you are, conveniently sequestered for some unforeseeable future with me. Lucky break. Too fucking lucky. I think you set this whole thing up.”
“You call this lucky?” He swept out an arm, indicating the single pallet of bedding, the cardboard tray of food, and the steel door. “You should think through your accusations before flinging them around.” He dragged a hand down his face. “You’re goddamn exhausting.”
“I’m exhausting?” Frustration flared through me. “Let’s see…you’ve flirted and postured and laughed and begged for sex—”
“I do not beg.”
“—and admitted you’re a stalker—”
“Dammit, woman. I’m not—”
“But not once have you proposed an escape plan.” I pursed my lips. “If you were truly captured and locked away from your beloved utopia, why are you so nonchalant?”
“Maybe because I spent the first fucking day wearing myself out trying to escape this fucking room.”
Oh.
Not good.
The gravity of the situation sank my stomach like a lead weight. If he couldn’t escape, I couldn’t escape. Whether he was a hybrid or a human with extraordinary physiology like my fathers, the simple fact was I needed him to be my reinforcement. If…when I managed to get out of here, I faced an unknown enemy on the other side of that door. Without my weapons. A wingman with fangs would be invaluable.
I bent over the cardboard tray and finished off the fish and water with a sickening sense of dread, knowing my next meal depended on the whim of my captors. “If they want us alive, maybe they won’t starve us.”
“Unless this is a test to see how much we can endure, what we can survive. No doubt they’ve heard rumors about the prophesied daughter. Maybe they want to learn your secrets, see if you have any powers they can use before they kill you.”
The fish soured in my gut. Unable to look at the greasy, blood-stained cardboard any longer, I carried it into the bathroom and added it to the pile beneath the sink.
A toothbrush and baking soda sat on the vanity, along with a bar of handmade soap that looked creamy like goat’s milk. I sniffed it, and the aroma of pine tinged my nose. “If they’re going to kill us, why on Earth would they provide soap?”
“Maybe,” Salem said from the other room, “the last prisoner brought it in.”
I shivered. There was no mirror or anything sharp or breakable that could be fashioned into a weapon. I returned to the room, sat on the thin pallet of furs, and glared at my pants. I needed to make the legs the same length, for no reason than to busy my hands.
“When the door opens again,” I said, pulling at the seam on my ankle, “we should try to have a civil conversation with them. Maybe they’ll explain what they want.”
Salem nodded, his shiny black hair falling across his brow. He watched me from across the room as I fought the stitching in an attempt to remove the remaining leg of my pants.
“If that doesn’t work…” I lowered my voice to barely a whisper. “I can pretend I’m dying or something. Maybe that’ll lure them in here.”
“I like that idea.” He shifted to his knees. “I can pretend I’m fucking you to near-death.” His pupils dilated. “Or not pretend.”
My blood heated. “That’s not what I—”
He moved, and in a flash, he was crouched a breath away with his hands over mine on my ankle. The heat from his body filled me with equal parts shock and arousal. I tried to jerk free, but he countered my retreat, his fingers shackling my leg.
“Relax.” He stared at me with the intensity of a hungry hunter. “I’m just going to fix your pants.”
My breath fled slowly, raggedly. I pulled my hands away and rested against the wall, letting the concrete support my back and cool my skin.
Locking his eyes on mine, he dipped his head and bit through the stubborn threads around my ankle. His exhales seared across my flesh, making me shiver. He didn’t look away as his hands ripped the suede upward, opening the seam along my calf, the inside of my knee, my thigh, and—
“Whoa.” I gripped his fingers. “That’s high enough.”
He inched closer, smoothly maneuvering into a kneeling position between my legs. “Here?”
I pried my gaze from his voltaic eyes and stared at the hand on my thigh, the placement of his fingers aligning with the shearing job he’d done on the other pants leg. At my nod, he tore the soft leather away and set it aside, leaving me dressed in an acceptable pair of suede shorts.
Acceptable if I weren’t imprisoned in arctic Canada.
“We can use the scraps,” he said, “to dry off with after our showers.”
I was hoping we’d escape before that doorless, wide-open shower was mentioned. Not that I’d ever had the luxury of modesty. I’d bathed in lakes and communal showers with my soldiers, washing and watching each other’s backs in the interest of time and safety. But I had a sneaking suspicion Salem would turn shower time into an opportunity to watch my back and my front, up and down and side to side.
Thankfully, the toilet sat around the corner, but sound traveled. After a day or two of digested food, our intimate situation would become a whole lot more intimate.
Until then… I blew out a breath. “So we wait.”
He settled on the furs next to me, stretched his legs alongside mine, and looked at the door. “We wait.”
And so began my time in Purgatory.
We passed the hours with easy conversation. I explained what I saw in his veins and my speculations about what we might’ve been injected with. He remained convinced that my x-ray vision had nothing to do with our captors and everything to do with the prophecy.
My eyes grew itchy with fatigue as I talked, sticking to safe topics like my fathers. Every man, woman, and hybrid knew of the legendary guardians. Stories reveling how they’d protected my mother and killed the Drone had spread from camp to camp for twenty years. As Salem asked questions, I separated the embellishments from the facts, sharing what my fathers had told me growing up—the accounts of their lives in the old world and their adventures with my mother after the virus.
Salem and I skirted around sensitive subjects, such as his mother, the Resistance, and the hybrid war against humanity. He spoke a lot about his utopia, how it was built underground and out of view, and how dozens of hybrid males lived there harmoniously, keeping to themselves without violence or mayhem, reaping what little scraps of happiness they could find.
“I’d have to see it to believe it.” I covered my bare legs with a fold of the fur bedding to ward off the chill in the air.
“When we break out of here, you should come visit.”
My stomach hardened. “I don’t think so, Salem.”
“Why not?”
“A lone woman among hybrids?” I laughed, mirthlessly.
He turned to face me, his shoulder resting against the wall and eyes fierce. “You would be under my protection.”
His protection needed a good test drive before I would ever consider his offer. What I wanted to do was bring him to my fathers and let Michio prod and poke him with needles.
Michio had studied me like a scientific specimen my entire life, trying and failing to derive a cure for the hybrid infection from my genetics. But something had changed since I arrived here. I felt…different. Definitely more sexually aware. Damn Salem and the audacious impact he had on me. Was this a sparks-flying-in-lust kind of thing? I didn’t know, so I chalked up my strange feelings to sexual inexperience.
It was the other stuff that was breaking my brain, like how the hybrid children had seemed to only attack Salem because he was in the way in their attempts to get to me. If Salem were human like my fathers, they would’ve gone for his throat. More importantly, there was my reaction to his veins, his blood. Why had I felt such a visceral desire to bite him? That was just…no. Way too ugh-ish to comprehend.
I needed Michio to analyze my reactions with his medical mind. And I needed Jesse and Roark to tell me everything was going to be okay. I needed to get the fuck out of here.
As the hours ticked by, I grew less chatty, withdrawing inside my head and battling my coiling edginess. I’d never been this inert for this long. I’d never been imprisoned.
Salem must’ve been imperceptibly bridging the space between us, because when I turned my head, he was right there, his breath on my face and his gaze overly bright, so damn overwhelming.
“You need a distraction.” Devious insinuation glimmered in his eyes.
I groaned. “Don’t say it.”
He leaned in so close his mouth brushed my ear. “Nothing is more distracting than a cock tearing through your hymen.”
An appalled wheeze crawled up my throat and burst past my lips in a snorting cackle that quickly transformed into full, unrestrained belly laughter.
He laughed with me, not quite as hysterically, but the sound of his levity was euphoric, infectious, and straight-up sensual. It was then that I knew, without a doubt, he would seduce me. It was already happening—the tingle in my chest, the hitch in my breaths, and the wet throb between my legs.
Should I push him away? Hide my reactions? Wedge a wall between us? I didn’t trust him, but beyond that, there was no reason I couldn’t just straddle his lap and fuck him to exhaustion. My nipples tightened at the thought, my entire body painfully aware of every inch of his.
I would probably fumble through my first time, but how complicated could it be? After listening to my soldiers drone on about positions and techniques, I understood the mechanics. Then there were all the awkward conversations with my fathers. Michio, instructing me on the importance of safe sex. Roark, explaining the emotional connection that should come when two or more bodies are joined. And Jesse, carrying on as if I were asexual, declaring, You are not having sex. Ever.
My takeaway? A level of trust was needed for such an intimate act.
Trust. That slimy little sentiment wormed its way into my softer parts, but I was nowhere near ready to accept it. Hell, I didn’t even feel safe enough to fall asleep with Salem in the same room. I’d been nodding off for hours, fighting it, unwilling to put myself in such a vulnerable position.
How long had I been in here? There were no windows, no visible skyline to mark the passing of time. I’d arrived here at night, right? My internal clock told me it was nearing dawn.
Beside me, Salem launched into a conversation about the scarcity of good hunting knives, his timbre flowing through me like my dad’s Irish whiskey, smooth and drugging, lulling me into a stupor.
I hummed and grunted at the right parts, but my mind was slipping. I straightened my spine against the wall, wriggled my feet, rubbed my gritty eyes, but my body refused to work with me. My eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. Falling. Blurring. Blink, blink, blink…
I woke to a galloping sound. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. It echoed through my head as I lay on my side, my cheek pressed against a hard, warm surface. What the hell was that noise?
Lifting my head, I realized I’d been sleeping on Salem’s chest. I no longer heard the unnaturally loud lub-dub, but I could guess the source.
Veins spread down his neck, growing thicker, brighter around his heart, and teeming with silver ribbon-like organisms. My gums tingled, and greedy warmth gripped my core.
My gaze flew to his, and when I found him watching me, my hunger for him compounded.
“What’s wrong?” He raised up slightly, his elbows braced on the floor behind him.
An electric buzz snapped my attention to the door. With a mechanical groan, the steel barrier slid open.