To Crave a Blood Moon (5 page)

“Enough with your selfish desires.” Gunter sliced a hand through the air. “You should be well sated after last night. I have another plan for her.”

The ominous words shivered down her spine. Ruby dug her fingers into the mattress, a fingernail cracking from the pressure, not liking the sudden intent look coming over Gunter's face.

“W-what?” she managed to get out, feeling every bit of his satisfaction. His self-congratulatory attitude swept through her, raising the tiny hairs at her neck.

“Have no fear,” he assured her in mocking tones, moving toward her, one hand outstretched. She cringed at the sight of his long nails, buffed to a pink sheen. “You may have missed last night's fun. But I have something even better planned for you. I've been looking for a special female, and I'm convinced you're just the one.”

Sebastian raised his head at the sound of the door unlocking. Gunter entered the cell's dank confines, impeccably dressed, hair neat and crisp from a recent shower. And yet he brought with him the odor of death. Last night's kills clung to him, imbedded in his pores as he moved into the room.

With the glow of dusk fading from the small window set high in the wall, Sebastian knew the second night of moonrise neared. He marked it in the pull of his bones, in their overwhelming urge to bend and stretch. Especially with the aroma of freshly spilled blood sinking down to his cell. Wicked and enticing to the hunger clenching his stomach. He had heard
the cries last night. Smelled the blood of the fallen. It had only intensified his misery.

And it was misery. Like nothing he'd known before. The beast had never felt so alive, so ready to break free. He never turned unless he willed it. Unless he wanted it to happen.

Annika sank down beside him and lowered those beautiful, cruel hands to his bare flesh. “I've missed you, pet.”

“I bet,” he bit out.

Then he noticed the girl. Smelled her.

One of Gunter's soldiers dragged her forward by a single wrist. The human struggled, dark hair tossing wildly as she kicked, feet scrabbling, grappling for ground.

Gunter snapped his fingers.

The henchman flung her into the center of the room. She fell hard, a crumpled ragdoll in a heap.

His body jerked to life. He stopped himself from surging against the chains, sagging back against the wall, appearing unmoved, unaffected. His gaze narrowed on the woman. Her head was bowed, dark hair a mess obscuring her face. Her back lifted, shoulders rising and falling with ragged breaths. Her khaki slacks and red tank top screamed tourist. Easy bait for these fiends.

“A gift for you,” Gregory announced.

Sebastian understood at once.

He forced ice into his veins, blankness into his stare. Gunter had made his intentions clear days ago. Sebastian, starving away in this cell, had not forgotten. He had wondered when his victim would arrive, and if he would be too far gone to stop from killing her.

“Never say I didn't give you anything. Yusuf here wanted her for himself.”

He shifted, his chains clanking. “Then let him keep her. Just get her the fuck out of here,” Sebastian growled, rising up, crouching on the bare pads of his feet, iron manacles cutting into the raw, exposed flesh of his wrists. But he didn't feel the pain. Not anymore. Only hunger. A deep, gnawing hunger. His mouth watered, nostrils quivering, catching her sweet scent.

“She's a waste on this mongrel,” Yusuf spat out.

“Silence,” Gunter declared in a biting voice, glittering eyes communicating the reminder that he was the alpha of the pack. What Yusuf thought failed to signify.

Turning back to Sebastian, he smiled again. “I could have tossed you some wretched piece of mankind.” He stepped further into the room, one hand reaching down to stroke the liquid-dark hair of the woman who had yet to lift her head and reveal her
face. Was she demented? Or had they broken her already so that she couldn't think? Didn't care? “Instead, I give you this. Tempting, isn't she? Appetizing.” Laughter laced his voice. “However will you resist?” He addressed Annika, nodding once. “Now.”

Annika unlocked his manacles. They fell from the blood-slicked bones of his wrists and ankles. Only he didn't feel the relief he should. He snatched at the irons, as if he could put them back on. Annika hastily stepped clear of him.

“No!” he shouted, surging to his feet. He couldn't be free to move in this cell with a human. Not in his condition.

Gunter laughed. He lifted his hand. The girl's dark hair fell like water through his fingers. “Enjoy.” He moved to the door, Yusuf and Annika preceding him. His chuckle grated on Sebastian's tightly strung nerves.

“Take her with you,” Sebastian shouted.

Gunter's gaze clung to his for a moment before the door banged shut, leaving Sebastian alone with the female.

Free of his chains, he staggered to the door, pounding it with his fists until they felt like two boneless hunks of flesh.

His stomach tightened and twisted, its clawing pain refusing to let him forget his hunger. He had
not eaten in days. His strength was low… along with his will. And now he had this to contend with.
Her
. Weeks had passed since Gunter announced his intention to starve him and force him into feeding. How much longer could he last?

Turning, he did not move from the door. With his back pressed to the hard length, he watched as she rose to her knees, his gut tightening with her every motion. She lifted her head, staring at him from tangled strands of hair. She shoved the hair from her face and sent it rippling down her back. She watched him carefully, her pretty face guarded, bright splotches burning her cheeks at the sight of his nudity.

“You're not one of them,” she declared, looking away.

He drilled her with his gaze, finding her eyes through the murk… a deep brown, not quite as dark as her hair. Flecks of gold surrounded her irises. Shards of amber buried in dark earth. It'd be a shame to watch the life fade there. An even greater shame to be the one responsible for that loss of life.

He registered her fear, felt it on the stagnant air, tasted it with a salivating mouth. Not so different from a wolf in the wild. Sniffing out their prey.

Blood smeared her face, a dark brown stain beneath her nose, nudging her pretty lips. She pushed to her feet, wincing. Her hand brushed a bruised cheek as though movement gave her pain.

“Stay where you are,” he growled, his voice thick and garbled, warning him just how close he was to losing control. She smelled so sweet. Creamy vanilla. And looked even better. A feast for his eyes.

Her mouth was almost too full, plump and moist, bringing on a surge of carnal images. Those luscious pink lips surrounding him, drawing him in deep. The image sent a bolt of need straight to his cock, waking that part of him that had betrayed him so many times over the last months. After the savage treatment Gunter's bitches had dealt him, he wondered how he could even hunger for a woman again.

A cruel smile twisted his lips. The first tasty bit of mortal to cross his path and his blood pumped hard. Just spoke to the resilience of his species. No one was forcing him to crave her now. Not the impending moonrise. Not even the hunger clawing his insides. It was simply his body's natural response.

She sucked in a sharp breath. The color in her cheeks deepened… almost as though she read his mind. Impossible. She was not him, or a lycan, capable of sensing things outside a human's natural range of ability. More than likely it had to do with his raging erection.

He inhaled her from across the room. If her clothes hadn't already told him, her scent did. She was foreign to these parts. Hadn't even been here
long enough to soak up any of the odors. She came from somewhere else. She smelled of ripe woman and earth and something else, something he had never come across before in all his years… clean and woodsy, warm wind-blown hills, whisky-sweet.

He felt her stare land on his wrists and ankles. Even in the deepening dusk, she couldn't make out the full extent of the damage… couldn't see the exposed bone and shredded flesh. “Are you all right?”

When she made a move toward him, his pulse spiked against his throat and he knew he was not all right. And she wasn't either. Not if she kept coming toward him.

“Stop right there,” he barked.

She froze. Her gaze traveled his shoulders and torso, skimming over the dried blood stark against his skin. “You're hurt.” She made a move toward him again.

He threw a hand up in the air. “No.” The word fell like a loud clap of thunder.

She stilled, shaking her head.

He closed his hand into a tight fist. “Keep away from me. Don't come near.” His nails dug into his palms until he felt his blood flow against his fingers.

Long moments passed before she spoke again. “But you're hurt. I can feel—” she stopped abruptly. “I can tell. I can tell that you're injured. Did one of
them attack you?” She strode forward and splayed a hand over his chest, where one of the bitches had scratched and bit him days ago. He'd already healed, only blood remained.

His breath escaped in a hiss at the delicious sting of her warm palm over him. “Don't touch me.”

She felt good. Warm. Alive. Female. Not like the females who ravaged him body and soul these many weeks, but soft, tender. Woman. Mortal. Closing his eyes, he inhaled the clean scent of her hair, vanilla-scented shampoo… it echoed on her skin and his mouth watered.

He closed a hand around her wrist, squeezing. “I'm not hurt.”

She placed her other hand on his chest, probing gently, trailing it over him as though searching for injuries. “But there's blood. Everywhere.”

“It's old,” he gritted. “It's dried.”

She shook her head.

“Look,” he growled, turning so that he slammed her against the wall. He shoved his face close to hers. “You haven't a clue what you've gotten yourself into here.”

Her wide gaze scanned him, staring intently at him beneath ink dark brows. Anger glowed in her eyes. “I've got a pretty good idea. I lost my friends. I watched them get eaten by a bunch of monsters—”

“Lycans.”

“What?”

“Lycans,” he said, with more patience than he felt. “Werewolves.”

“Werewolves,” she echoed, glancing to the highset window. Faint moonglow spilled inside their prison.

“That's right. Last night was a full moon. And tonight.”

Her gaze returned to him then, as piercing as before. Looking so deeply, so probing, intent in a way no mortal had ever looked upon him before. A flicker of unease tripped through him. Something was different about her…

“Will they come for us tonight?”

He shook his head. “They have other plans for us.”

Between the press of their bodies, her hand brushed his chest, directly over his heart. “You're not one of them. How did you escape them? How come we're down here?”

All good questions, but he was certain she wasn't ready for the answers.

Her words gained speed, rushing forward in her fear. “Are they saving us for later or something?”

In the distance, it began. Screams flowed down, breathing through the bones of the building, looking for escape. Buried beneath the warehouse, the
tortured sounds echoed only faintly in his ears. To a mortal's ear—her ears—they would be undetectable.

“No,” he spat, imagining the humans being ripped apart, devoured upstairs. “They're not saving us for later. They're seeing to their needs tonight.”

A wild look swept over her. Unnatural. Her brown eyes gleamed, the dark centers dilating with an emotion he could not name. She shrugged out between him and the wall. Trembling, she edged away, reminding him of some woodland creature, eyes darting, her head cocked to the side as though she sensed . . . something.

He frowned. “What? What is it?” She couldn't possibly hear the distant screams.

Chafing her arms, her shaking worsened. Jamming her eyes shut, she ground out, “N-nothing.”

He smelled it first. Then saw. Rich, wine-red blood escaped her nose in a seductive trickle.

His throat tightened, a wave of hunger washing over him. “You're bleeding.”

She wiped at the sweet-smelling blood with the back of her hand. “It's nothing.”

He licked dry lips. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she snapped, pressing her fingers to her nose. “Sometimes my nose bleeds. It'll stop soon.” Opening her eyes, she looked up. Again, as if she knew more than she possibly could. As if she heard the
sounds of death. Killing. Inhaling a steady breath, she fixed molten brown eyes on him. “How long have you been down here?” Her gaze scanned the scruffy growth of beard on his face.

“Long enough.” He drew away along the wall, eyes devouring her, the fruit of temptation that he must resist. He
would
resist.

Her eyes followed him.

“Why do you… fear me?” she whispered.

Her words—the truth—sliced through him. There was no denying he feared her. He feared her before he ever knew her, when Gunter told him she would be coming. He feared what she would do to him. Drive him over the brink, steal his soul…

But how did she know that
?

Then he understood.

Incredible as it seemed, she could read his mind. Somehow. Some way. Maybe she was a witch. He knew they existed, one had started the lycan curse.

“I'm not afraid of you,” he lied.

He tried to clear his mind, to not think about the fear she roused. To not think about himself. About the beast that prowled inside him whose instinct refused to let him starve.

“Whatever.” Sighing, she chafed her hands harder along her arms, clearly attempting to warm herself against the room's chill. She turned in a small circle,
stopping to consider the window set high in the wall. Again. The window was narrow, not large enough for anybody to squeeze through.