But how could she really know a man she’d just met?
Her chain vibrated once more and as had happened from the first, her desire for him spiked, something she had a hard time squashing down. Of course, it didn’t help that he stood in front of her with his extraordinary body on full display. She’d never seen a man like him before.
“Take my hand, Lily. We need to go.”
Another deep breath and she placed her hand in his but retained her distance.
He shook his head. “No, this won’t work. You’ll have to come closer. Altered flight can be damn dangerous for humans. I’ll need to protect you the whole way.”
Her heart now thumped heavily in her chest. She didn’t want to get closer to this vampire, but she didn’t really have a choice. “Fine.”
As she moved toward him, he drew her into his arms so that she ended up balanced on top of his feet, her arms wrapped around his neck. Basically, she was plastered against his na**d body.
He slid his arms around her back and waist and held her tight—but nothing happened, at least not the altered flight phenomenon Kiernan had told her about. Instead, she felt him take a deep breath and release it slowly.
Lily hadn’t been this close to a man in a long time, not since her husband died two years ago. She’d forgotten how it felt, the simple pleasure of the hard planes of a man’s chest, his heavier muscled thighs, and of course she couldn’t ignore his cock, which she felt firming up against her lower abdomen.
She wished there was some other way of doing this because it felt so good, even dangerous. The chains had already begun exposing the depth of her need and of her desire for the vampire, but this level of proximity wasn’t helping at all.
After a moment, when he hadn’t started to fly, she asked in a mumble against his shoulder, “What’s wrong? Did you forget how to do this? I mean, I know you’ve been chained up for an entire year.”
He snorted. “Just taking a breath.”
His voice had a threatening edge. She couldn’t imagine exposing her throat and having him sink in his fangs, but the only other choice was bringing in a third party. And from what she knew about vampires, sex usually accompanied the taking of blood.
The thought both sickened and excited her, especially the thought of this vampire throwing her on her back and taking so much from her. But she’d be feeding the same kind of beast that had killed her family if she serviced Adrien.
She felt trapped again by her situation. Yet what choice did she have if she ever hoped to get Josh back?
Thoughts of her son shook her to her core all over again, so she toughened up. She would do whatever needed doing in order to bring him home safe and sound once more.
She shifted in Adrien’s arms so that she could look up at him. Maybe she scowled, but she said, “I’m prepared to give you what you need once we’re in Paris. I know it’s part of the deal because of the chains, but are you sure I have to hold on to you like this right now?”
“Yes. I’ll regulate my speed, but this probably won’t be much fun. I need to make one pass through the cavern, then I’ll take you the rest of the way to Europe.”
She started to argue—the last place she wanted to be was inside the stench of his former prison—but he began the altered flight, which jolted her senses.
Could she even talk to him during a flight?
The first thing she realized was that she’d left her tent behind; then the path. The next moment she was hurtling toward the wall of rock outside the cave. She cried out and shut her eyes, clinging to him harder, but nothing happened, only a soft sensation like feathers across her skin as Adrien took them through the mountainside.
The movement of the flight slowed so she popped her eyes wide and found herself flying very slowly through the cavern. What she saw, however, sickened her. Lucian and Marius hung from black chains, each in a separate stall, each standing in his filth.
They were able to see Adrien and as he passed through the cavern, each shouted, calling out his name and waving triumphant fists in the air.
“I’ll get back here as soon as I can,” he shouted in return, though the movement of the altered flight seemed to muffle speaking voices.
On a more positive note, she couldn’t smell the cavern.
Adrien sped up the altered flight, and that’s when things went haywire. Dizziness and blackness swallowed her, along with a pain in her skull that made her shriek. She’d never hurt so bad in her life.
“I can tell you’re hurting but we’ve got to get to Paris, the quicker the better.” His voice had a strange resonance through the pounding in her head.
“Okay.” Even her lips vibrated with pain as something wet trailed down her lips and chin.
She clutched at him now and tried to breathe. She felt his chest rise and fall rapidly, the exertion of the altered flight maybe. She could feel that he was expending a lot of energy.
The passing seconds of the flight began to feel like an eternity. When at last he drew to a halt, she collapsed on a woven rug of some kind, facedown. She lay prone, her head on fire. She wiped at her nose, thinking maybe she’d been weeping, but the liquid had a thicker consistency than tears.
She lifted her head. She needed a tissue.
Adrien lay on the floor next to her, his hand on her back. His gaze fell to her lower face. “Your nose is bleeding.”
He pushed to his feet, left her for a moment, and just as he must have met the outer reaches of the chain’s tight hold on them, she heard water running.
He returned a few seconds later with a damp washcloth in one hand and tissues in the other.
She rolled onto her back, wiped her lips and chin, then placed the cool washcloth over her nose. The apartment was dark with no lights on, but right now with her head aching, she was glad of it.
She tracked him as he moved to a wall of closets, which meant she was in his bedroom. He dressed quickly in dark jeans and a tight black T-shirt.
She worked herself to a sitting position. “That was incredibly painful,” she said. She clutched the washcloth with one hand while she blew her nose using the tissues.
Her stomach turned over several times and she worked hard not to throw up. She refolded the washcloth, trying to find a clean spot.
Adrien sat down in a nearby chair and put on a pair of black socks. “I felt your suffering through the shared chain. I got here as fast as I could. Shit. But this isn’t good.”
“Travel is going to be a problem. My head hurts so bad.”
“Yep.”
“Maybe I’ll get used to it. It was okay at first, but when you sped up, it got worse really fast. Can we travel at the slower speed?”
“Sure, but we’d be hours getting anywhere that isn’t on the other side of Paris. Also, if anyone was tracking us or watching for us, we’d be vulnerable.”
“Do you expect an attack?”
Adrien met her gaze as she held the washcloth to her nose. “I have enemies. Daniel does, too. We have fanatic-based groups that—if they catch wind that we’re after the extinction weapon—will try to stop us. Didn’t Kiernan say anything about them?”
“No. He didn’t.” She looked at the washcloth. “My nose has stopped bleeding.”
“You were screaming.”
“I was? I don’t remember. I guess I was. I can’t begin to describe what the pain was like, sort of a dagger through my head.”
“How’s your head now?”
“Getting better fast.”
He grunted.
“What?”
“I thought the chains we shared would be powerful enough to get us through, that’s all. They felt strong enough. I guess I was wrong or maybe just wishful.”
She rose to her feet and glanced around. She pivoted toward him, continuing to dab at her nose. “What are you not saying?” She touched her chain. “I can feel your sudden indecision about something.”
He slid his feet into heavy black shoes, not quite boots but close. “There’s another type of blood-chain, a double, side-by-side arrangement, that could change things for us, but hell if I’m willing to go that far.”
“You may not have a choice. I say we get the chains if it means we can travel more easily.”
His gaze shot back to hers. “What the hell does that mean, that I may not have a choice? So far all that’s required of me is to hunt for the weapon. And right now, I don’t give a damn if it causes you this much pain.”
His sudden anger should have bothered her—after all, he was over two hundred pounds of heavily muscled vampire, and he could break her in half with his bare hands if he wanted to. “I’m not giving you an ultimatum,” she said. “I’m suggesting that in order to get this job done, we each may have to do things neither of us wants to do.”
“We’re already doing that because I sure as hell don’t want to be bound to you like this.” He reached down, put his hand on her arm, and leaned close. “Listen, Lily, I can get us both out of this. I know a couple of very powerful vampires who work with blood-chains. They’ll know what to do, to get these off without either of us dying. And I can make it worth your while, whatever Kiernan or Daniel is paying you. I’m a wealthy man. Would five million dollars get the job done?”
She just looked at him and sudden images of burying her husband and daughter, of attending several memorials for her good friends and neighbors, rolled through her mind like a dark storm.
Josh’s smiling face came next. She felt cold as she said, “Have you got fifty million?”
Adrien’s nostrils flared. “No.”
Fifty wouldn’t have made the smallest difference, either, but she didn’t tell him that. All she said was, “This mission is what I want, what I need to do.”
He stood up suddenly. “I guess that’s a real f**k you, isn’t it?”
She looked up at him, way up. The vampire was tall, especially since she still sat on the floor. “I guess it is.”
“I can’t believe you’d turn down five million.” He glared at her for a long moment, then his expression filled with disgust. “Typical human, out for what you can get, never mind who gets hurt.”