Born in Chains

The rain still beat on the windows and as another flash of lightning and roll of thunder shook his Paris apartment, she came, crying out, a sound that matched his shouts and groans as he released into her again.

* * *

“Get off me,” Lily said, her voice hoarse. How many times had she screamed while he’d brought her, but now she wanted him off her and out of her.

Adrien pulled out and flipped over on his back, throwing an arm over his forehead.

She turned on her side, away from him as a few tears leaked from her eyes, tears of dismay and rage that she’d enjoyed giving up her blood to a vampire, that she’d taken pleasure from his body repeatedly.

She hated herself for having been weak with him—but mostly she blamed the chains because from the first her attraction to him had worked on her, building her to the point that the moment he came at her needy and trembling, she’d lost her will to refuse him.

She should have insisted on a donor. He’d even suggested it and yet she’d remained mute, unable to tell him to get someone else. Her lack of willpower disgusted her. She wasn’t a person to give in so easily to lust and yet she had, almost as though the chains had stolen her ability to choose anything but him.

The tears tickled over the bridge of her nose. She swiped at her face, still breathing hard from the sheer gymnastic quality of the joining.

She felt the bed tip and shift and glanced over her shoulder.

Adrien had shifted to sit on the edge of the bed and now had his phone in hand.

She stared at his back, her vision warming up because of the chains, despite the lack of lighting in the room. He had bloody streaks where she’d scored him and the sight made her smile grimly, a small satisfaction that she’d hurt him, if only a little, while he’d plowed into her.

She watched Adrien’s shoulders rise and fall. He’d taken a deep breath. “I need to ask you something. Have you tried to use your tracking ability yet? Now that we’re chain-bound, that ability should start coming to life.”

Oh, that. “I tried it earlier. I have to say nothing much happened.” She explained about the sensation of tendrils leaving her.

“I’ve heard it described that way. Well, just keep trying at different times. I’m sure it’ll improve as we go along.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “I’m going to make a phone call to a man named Rumy, a friend, a good friend, though he’s well connected to our underworld. He owns a place called The Erotic Passage in the Como system, Italy, on the lake by the same name. I think it’s the right place to start. If anyone knows anything, it’ll be Rumy.” He was silent, his head bent as though staring at his phone. “Is that okay with you?”

“You’re asking my permission?”

He turned to look at her. She was surprised by how much better he looked. Her blood really had helped. “Neither of us is happy about our situation. I get that. But I want to get along with you. We’ll need to work together.”

“You’re right and yes, please call this Rumy person.”

He nodded and drew the phone in front of him, then after a moment to his ear.

“I need to talk to Rumy. Tell him it’s Adrien.” She couldn’t hear what the other person said, but she could feel Adrien’s sudden anger through the shared chain. “Get him on the damn phone or I’ll come over there and twist your head off that scrawny neck of yours.” Another pause, then, “That’s better. Thank you.”

Silence as he waited.

Rumy and The Erotic Passage. What a name for a club, but then what else should she have expected from a world of bloodsuckers.

After a moment, she heard Adrien talking quietly to the one he called Rumy. There was some laughter, chatting, queries about health, about the prison, a few jibes, the usual masculine nonsense.

Lily’s thoughts turned to Josh, and she lifted the chain to her lips. Josh, her firstborn, the last of her family. Was he truly alive? How many times had she wondered if Kiernan had somehow fabricated the phone call, using the memory of her son to manipulate her into taking on this mission?

But she couldn’t have mistaken her son’s voice. She would have known it anywhere. He’d called out, “Mom? Is that you? Mom!” He’d wailed after that.

She clapped her hands over her ears, trying not to hear that sound, a pitiful, bellowing wail. She had to get to him. Had to find him.

She heard Adrien sigh. Her desperate thoughts about Josh disappeared, and her present reality returned.

Adrien rose from the bed, flinging his phone onto the comforter. “You need to get cleaned up and dressed.” He walked to the bathroom, but the chain tugged, so she sat up, leaning toward him. Damn this chain for its short leash.

He reached inside the room and the next moment he flung a washcloth at her, which she put between her legs.

So far sex was just as messy with a vampire as with a human male, a thought that did nothing to ease her temper.

“You finished glaring at me?” he snapped.

“Sure, for now.” She lifted her chin. “What’s the plan? Does Rumy know where the weapon is?”

“No, but he suggested we check out a local Paris dive first.” He moved past the foot of the bed, snatched her clothes off the floor, and flung these at her as well.

“What are you so pissed about?” She put on her bra and shirt, then scooted to the end of the bed, her jeans now in her lap.

“Can’t I be angry, like you’re angry right now? Or do you suppose I can’t tell that you’re mad?”

“I think you just had sex and took some of my blood, so I don’t know what you have to complain about.”

“You enjoyed this.” He gestured with a slice of his hand toward the bed. “Your voice is still raspy from all the moaning and screaming.”

As she slid off the opposite side of the bed from where he stood, she turned to face him. “And I suppose you think I should be grateful to you for giving me a halfway decent ride.”

“Halfway decent?”

She lifted one brow then shrugged. She didn’t know why she was poking the bear, but he didn’t have to look so damn smug.

She moved in the direction of the bathroom only to have the chain give a tug because he stood too far away. She didn’t turn toward him as she said, “Will you please cut me some slack? Literally.”

“No.”

She stood bare-assed and humiliated, her jeans in her hands. The proximity that the chains required wouldn’t even allow her a decent exit. Lifting her chin, she pivoted in his direction and waited for him to move so that she could.

His eyes glittered in the dark, although her vision once more warmed up the space, an effect of the chains, and he stood in full, naked relief watching her keenly. “First, I don’t like this any more than you do and I suppose I don’t owe you this, but I was raised to have some manners, so here goes: Thank you for giving up your lifeblood to me. You may have just saved my life, and I have no doubt you kept me from a bout of painful blood-madness. Thank you.” His nostrils still flared and his jaw ground his molars a couple of times.

Lily fought back the words because she really didn’t want to say them, but they slipped past her lips anyway. “You’re welcome.”

“Fine. Now here’s the slack you wanted.” The moment he stepped in her direction, she turned and moved swiftly into the hall, then into the bathroom.

CHAPTER 4

Half an hour later Adrien’s temper had eased a little as he flew Lily slowly in the direction of the Paris club called La Nuit, or The Night. He was still angry that he’d been forced to use his captor for his blood-and-sex needs, and even more so because she was human. But the chains had made the whole aftermath worse because he’d felt her humiliation, which then triggered a sense of guilt about the whole damn thing.

As for La Nuit, the club had a bad reputation.

Hundreds of vampires around the world owned profitable businesses, open at night to serve the clubbing clientele and to give those vampires disposed to either having fun at a night scene, or tasting humans, the opportunity to do so.

Paris had a few clubs, running the gamut from chic to seedy. And there was at least one sex club he and his brothers had raided, freeing a number of human slaves each time.

A variety of enthrallment skills kept the vampire clubs below the radar. Adrien often marveled that more incidences of vampire world exposure didn’t occur given how much interaction there actually was between the species.

Adrien had never cared much for the human-oriented clubs, since he preferred his kind, but there were many vampires who’d acquired a taste for human blood and sought it regularly.

And he had to admit that after Lily’s blood, he understood why. He still didn’t get it totally, though. He’d tasted humans before, once as an experiment but more often than not when he was stuck out in the world, policing some extremist group, and couldn’t get back to his kind for days on end. So yeah, he’d tasted human blood, but between his prejudice against the greedy human race and the usually weak nature of the blood, he’d never once been tempted to go back.

Now all he could think about was sinking his fangs into Lily’s neck again, or into other more exotic regions, and taking her once more. Desire rippled through him, but he clamped it down. The damn chains would expose him if he kept it up.

He’d been furious with Lily after the blooding, but only because the whole experience had left him craving more.

And the bonding chains weren’t helping, because each hour he stayed bound to her, he grew more sensitive to what she was feeling at any given moment. Sure, she felt a mountain of rage against the vampire world, but laced through her fury ran ribbons of pure desire, something that happened just about every time she looked at him.

He wasn’t exactly surprised. He knew what he looked like and he pumped iron to keep himself fit, so he understood her interest in the same way that her toned body, narrow waist, and full breasts kept his cock in a state of inappropriate movement.

As he flew her slowly in the direction of La Nuit, therefore, he focused on what he might find at the club. He packed a Glock beneath his leather coat, along with a couple of fighting chains and a dagger. He was sufficiently armed, but his greater concern was for Lily, keeping her alive if things went south, remaining free enough to move given the short functioning length of the blood-chains.