Bound Guardian Angel
Read Bound Guardian Angel Online
Authors: Donya Lynne
Tags: #interracial, #vampire romance, #gothic romance, #alpha male, #vampire adult romance, #wax sex play, #interracial adult romance, #vampire action romance, #bdsm adult romance
Bound Guardian Angel©
All the King’s Men, book seven
Published by Phoenix Press
Copyright 2016 Donya Lynne
Cover by Reese Dante - www.reesedante.com
ISBN: 978-1-938991-16-5
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with another person, please
purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this
book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use
only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you
for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission
to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at
[email protected].
References to historical events, real people, or real
locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and
incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any
resemblance to actual events or persons or locales, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Licensed material is being used for illustrative
purposes only and any person depicted in the licensed material is a
model.
Contents
Bound Guardian Angel Reader Group
Guide
As with every book I’ve written, this one took a
large team to pull off. I want to thank all my wonderful beta
readers for your fabulous feedback, and I want to thank Sue and
Laura for your invaluable suggestions. You’re both more valuable
than I can convey. Thank you to Ariel for making my words looks as
good as they read, and thank you to Reese for packaging them in
such sexy covers.
I want to send a special thanks to Wendi. It
was your contribution to this story that created a new, endearing
character named Aiden, or little Aidy as her twin brother calls
her. I hope she lives up to your expectations and hopes, and I hope
you find her as wonderful as I do. She will hold a special place in
All the King’s Men for as long as the series endures.
shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.”
-Juvenal
“Wake up, freak. Time to go.”
Trace’s head shot up off his outstretched
arms at the sound of the guard’s gruff voice and the clang of metal
on metal. He was tucked in the corner of his cell, on the floor,
his forearms stretched over his bent knees. Had he actually fallen
asleep?
He wiped his gritty palms down his face and
flexed his back, making his spine pop, then squinted and used his
hand to shield his eyes against the flashlight the guard aimed at
him. “Huh?”
“I said it’s time to go. Get up.” The guard
tossed Trace’s clothes at him the way someone might toss a steak
toward a starving lion at the zoo. Very carefully and at a
distance, making it a point to keep all body parts and appendages
out of the cage. “Get dressed. We leave in fifteen minutes.” The
guard turned off his flashlight, casting Trace into shadow again,
then flicked him a wary sideways glance before hurrying off like he
couldn’t get away fast enough.
A relieved sigh left Trace’s lips as he
leaned the back of his head against the wall and stared into the
dimly lit corridor outside his cell. He’d made it. He’d survived
two weeks inside King Bain’s dungeon.
His gaze dropped to the well-used razor in
his left hand. When Cordray had given him the razor a week ago, it
had been shiny and new. Now the blade was dull and dotted with dry
blood. His blood. Rows of angry, unhealed cuts lined both arms, as
well as his ankles.
But his self-mutilation had worked. He
hadn’t turned. He hadn’t lost control of his power. Yes, he was
frayed around the edges. Yes, he’d flirted with sanity’s boundaries
a time or two. Yes, it felt like ants crawled under his skin and
snakes slithered over his body, but he was still a vampire. Still
himself. Not some mutant ready to destroy Chicago and everyone he
loved.
Cordray’s generosity had saved him.
Blech.
Just the thought that Cordray had done
something nice to help him left a bad taste in his mouth and made
him feel like a traitor. He didn’t want to be grateful to that
bitch. He wanted to hate her. She scared him, which was a sentiment
he would share with no one, but a truth he couldn’t hide from
himself. She saw things he didn’t want anyone to see. Not even
Micah could see into his well-protected mind, but, somehow, Cordray
was able to unlock his thoughts. That alone made her terrifying.
Because if she could worm her way into his thoughts, what else was
she capable of?
Trace had worked hard all his life to shield
himself from the pain others could wreak on him. He wasn’t talking
about physical pain, because, yeah, he dug that shit. He was
referring to the mental and emotional pain someone could inflict by
discovering his secrets. Truths that shamed him and were best kept
private for the agony they could create in the wrong hands.
A small part of him wanted Cordray’s hands
to be right in so many ways. He wanted to trust her, because as
much as he despised her, she was a damn fine piece of female who
smelled as good as she looked, but he simply couldn’t allow himself
to believe she was anything but trouble, which meant avoiding her
was a top priority.
Easier said than done, considering she was
to be his lord and keeper for the next three months. As long as he
could keep his inner beast in check and not lose his Cracker Jacks
around her, he stood a chance of making it through his community
service without doing her bodily harm. But damn, she’d better not
push him. He couldn’t make any promises that he wouldn’t maim her
if she flapped her yap at him the way she usually did.
Pushing forward, his joints crackled as he
grabbed his clothes off the soiled floor and unfolded himself into
a standing position. His muscles were as taut as an army grunt’s
bunk and protested angrily as he maneuvered in the tight space. The
strain to remain vigilant over his power for two weeks had taken a
heavy toll on his body. It hurt just to move.
He readily abandoned the scratchy, filthy
prison clothes he’d been forced to wear, discarding them on the
archaic cot he’d used as a bed, and pulled on his cargo pants and
long-sleeved Henley.
He would pull his own teeth for a shower,
not to mention a good beating at Micah’s hand. That would put an
end to the feverish trembles shuddering through his body like
barely contained lightning bolts.
Pacing, he brushed his palms up and down his
arms to expel the pent-up energy making his insides feel like a
nuclear bomb on the verge of exploding. He was beyond ready to get
the fuck out of there.
A few minutes later, the guard returned with
three of his buddies and a pair of cuffs big enough to restrain an
elephant. Was he
that
scary?
“Really, fellas, this is a bit overkill
isn’t it?” he said as they manacled him.
The irons were as heavy as they looked, but
the strain helped relieve some of the bite from his
hovering-just-beneath-the-surface power.
“We’re not taking any chances,” one of the
guards said as they led him through the corridor.
“We’ve heard what you’re capable of,” said
another.
What he was capable of was certain death.
Abrupt, violent, messy, and painful death. He could crush someone’s
heart with a simple flick of his hand. He could break every bone
and rupture every organ inside a person’s body simply by making a
fist and thinking them dead. He’d done it before. In fact, he’d
done it just a couple of weeks ago to that traitor in Bishop’s
Frankenstein lab in Arizona, where he’d found his father strapped
to a lab table with tubes and needles sticking out of his arms,
having God knew what done to him.
He’d rescued his father and helped rescue
Princess Miriam, earning a shorter prison sentence for his heroics,
but he could do nothing to save his own soul. He was still the
freak of nature he’d always been. Still as deadly. Still an
aberration others were more inclined to run from than embrace.
The guards were right to be cautious. Even
wearing the shackles, he could simply focus his mind and snap their
necks with a twitch of his index finger. They needn’t worry,
though. He had no intention of killing anyone tonight. Not unless
he unexpectedly transformed into a mutant. Not even these
Chewbacca-sized manacles could hold him if that happened. As a
mutant, he would be able to break them in half like they were
nothing but dry kindling.
At one time, he’d feared turning into a
mutant was his inevitable destiny. His power had grown steadily for
decades, only forced into submission by pain and humiliation, which
was why he’d taken to the life of a submissive.
But a couple of decades ago, he realized he
was needing harder and harder punishment as the years wore on. Like
bacteria that no longer responded to antibiotics and raged out of
control, the monster that resided inside Trace had grown resistant
to the beatings and humiliation from his former Doms. Beatings that
had once pushed his power into submission for at least two weeks
had lost their effect, forcing him to seek punishment more often,
eventually to the tune of once every few days.
Now, only one Dom would do. Micah. And he’d
found Micah not a moment too soon, given how dire his situation had
become in recent years. Micah’s hard-handed domination had been
Trace’s last resort to prolong his life to its very limit before
certain mutancy took him.
But now the situation had grown more
complicated. Not only had Trace discovered his father was still
alive, but Brak was, too. His twin—who had been created to provide
balance to his power—lived. Trace was saved. Between Micah and
Brak, they would be able to keep his power in check.