Unchained (Men in Chains Book 3) (14 page)

Absently and with his eyes closed, he reached up to his chest to remove the thing causing the pressure and found his hand suddenly caught in Shayna’s hair.

“Nhn” came back at him. “Zat you?”

“Shayna?”

“Uh-huh. I feel like I could sleep for a year.”

“Me, too. Never felt like this before. Almost drugged.” Even his speech was slightly slurred.

Slowly he opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling of his New Zealand cavern bedroom. This was good. He’d awakened in the same place he’d gone to sleep. He just didn’t understand why he felt this way.

He tried to put it into words and finally stumbled across the reality that he felt peaceful, honest-to-God peaceful—which made no sense at all except that Shayna had agreed to stay and she’d put on his blood-chain.

She’d told him that the vision was personal, meant only for her. He got that and didn’t press her. After all, the only thing he really cared about was right here, still pressing on his chest, her arm slung across his abdomen and dangerously close to his wake-up erection.

He slid his arm around her shoulders.

He could get used to this, waking up slowly, Shayna in his arms.

She wore a thin dark-purple nightgown that went well with her almost white-blond hair.

The chain at his neck was very quiet, an indication she was still in a sleep state, so he let her be.

The trouble was, his arousal wasn’t diminishing, not even a little, and that surprised him. Instead desire for her suddenly rolled through him like a wave lifting a boat.

“Anything wrong?”

“Hard to explain. I’m trying to understand.”

She drew in a shuddering breath. “You smell wonderful, Marius, have I told you that?”

“You asked about it.” Oh, God, now his gums vibrated and dammit, he couldn’t keep his fangs from descending. None of this had been done consciously. His hips rocked.

Shayna finally lifted her head to look at him and her eyes went wide. “Your fangs? Do you need to feed?”

What he wanted was to push her onto her back, drive between her legs, then drink from her throat for about an hour. He felt almost maniacal with sudden need.

He gritted his teeth, then finally said, “I need the bathroom.”

“I can feed you if you want.”

“No.” The word came out harsher than he’d intended. “I’m sorry, I’m not myself right now.”

She rolled off him to flop back against the pillows. He’d worn pajamas, something he’d done strictly for Shayna’s benefit. He got up and made a beeline for the bathroom.

But he’d only taken three long, quick steps when the chains warned him that if he went farther he’d most likely land on his ass.

“Hold up,” Shayna called out. “The chains are pulling.”

He stopped up short and glanced at her over his shoulder. He was still making a tent out of his pajama bottoms. “Sorry. I forgot. It’s that proximity thing I told you about just before we went to bed.” The chains wouldn’t let them be farther than ten feet apart at any given time, one of the reasons they’d shared a bed.

“Right.” She slid from bed and given that her silk nightgown showed a lot of cleavage, he averted his gaze. He needed a shower. A cold one.

As soon as she drew close, he continued on. With Shayna waiting by the sink, he went into the small space that housed the toilet. He had a hard time taking care of business, knowing that Shayna was right there, until he heard the water running and what sounded like Shayna splashing water on her face.

Okay, that helped.

He shook his head. In all the concern and frustration about getting her to stay, he’d forgotten the logistics the chains would require.

When he finished, she still looked sleepy-eyed but beautiful. She’d combed her hair, straightening a careful part.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Oh, my God, yes. I come from Seattle. We drink it by the gallon.”

Taking her to the kitchen, he served up some scrambled eggs and toast from provisions Rumy had brought.

After three quick bites, she took a breath. “I don’t usually have a meal right away, but I’m starved.”

“I can fix you more.”

She got a funny look on her face.

“What?”

“Nothing. I mean I appreciate it, but I think this will be enough.”

He glanced at the frying pan. He didn’t know what had caused her sudden distress, but he could feel that his offer had struck a note that caused her to feel anxious. He just didn’t know why.

*   *   *

Shayna could feel Marius’s confusion, but she couldn’t enlighten him. The whole thing was too humiliating. How could she tell him that what had caught her off guard was his offer to fix her additional food.

He offered, just like that.

With Michelson, she’d been expected to cook and take care of him. After the affair had ended, she honestly couldn’t recall one incident in which he’d put her first, or made any special effort on her behalf.

Instead she’d been left with a terrible feeling of worthlessness that had taken a lot of effort to overcome. One of her friends had called it right: Michelson was an asshole.

Only now, a year after their breakup, could she even think about what had happened without cringing. And the last thing she wanted to do was tell Marius how she’d let herself be treated or the horror she’d experienced the last time he’d tied her up.

It had been thrilling at first to be bound loosely with a rope and to have Michelson make love to her. But the last encounter had left her with nightmares. He’d never gotten rough, nothing like that, but he had a habit of leaving her in that position, insisting he’d be right back, but minutes had grown to an hour then two.

The last time she’d been with him, he’d abandoned her for hours. She still felt panicky when she dwelled on the experience for any length of time. She could still feel the bindings on her wrists and ankles.

“Okay, what the hell are you thinking about, Shayna? Because the chain at my throat is just about tearing into my skin.”

She dropped her fork so that it clattered on her plate. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I was thinking about my ex maybe a little too hard. He wasn’t a good man.”

When Marius got a fierce look in his eye, she lifted both hands. “He never hurt me. He wasn’t that kind of
bad.
Just really, really selfish, and I was so starstruck by his exalted ‘professor’ status that I let myself get sucked into a toxic relationship.” She waved one hand at him. “So just stand down, mister. Now my neck is burning.”

Marius planted his hands on his hips and looked anywhere but at her. She watched him take several deep breaths. “Okay. Fine.” He met her gaze. “Want to talk about it?”

“No. I really don’t. It’s been a year since we broke up, but part of me is still a little raw.” She attempted a smile. “Instead, I’m going to keep enjoying the eggs you made me.”

He sat down adjacent to her and busied himself drinking his coffee and buttering his toast.

It was such a homey scene except for the fact that he was a big man and his navy T-shirt clung to his shoulders and pecs. She had a hard time not checking him out. Again.

As she slid a forkful of eggs into her mouth, she remembered what it had been like to make love with him after he’d suffered through his blood-madness recovery. Part of her still couldn’t believe she’d done that and was truly shocked at her behavior. But another part wanted to do it all over again.

His gaze slid to hers and she looked away, her cheeks warming up. He leaned close, offering a half smile. “Neither of us will be able to hide much, I’m afraid.”

“I’m getting that, loud and clear.”

She took another bite of her eggs and met his gaze. She loved his eyes. That’s what she decided. “Your eyes are extraordinary, gold flecks and hazel. Really unusual.”

He sipped his coffee. “Thank you.” He stared at her over the rim of his mug and his gaze held. “You’re beautiful, Shayna. You know that, right?”

“I’m not sure how to respond to that, except to say thank you. Although I will confess that I hate how young I look. I’m twenty-four and I’m still carded, every single time. It’s annoying.”

“I suppose it would be.” But he smiled.

The reality of what she’d just said, complaining about being carded, sank in and she shook her head. “That was really insensitive of me given what all these women go through.”

He frowned slightly. “I didn’t mean for you to feel bad about just talking, but what’s going on in my world is never far from my thoughts.”

His ever-present guilt heated up the chains. She touched them, surprised by their warmth. Everything was definitely improved and enhanced. She saw Marius, the dining area and kitchen, even her food as though in early evening light before the sun has gone down completely. Yet there wasn’t a single light on in the cave.

She seemed to be siphoning Marius’s power more than ever as well, a steady stream that helped her to feel strong and very much alive. Putting the chain on had done that for her and had also heightened her sense of what Marius felt from one moment to the next.

Right now, his thoughts had continued down the guilt-path and though she knew she was taking a risk, she felt compelled to address the issue. “Marius, I don’t mean to pry, but may I ask you a personal question?”

His gaze snapped back to hers, and she felt some of his tension dissipate. “Given that you’ve agreed to stay and that you put the chain on, I want you to think of it as your right to ask any question that enters your anthropological head.”

At that, she smiled. “You may want to take back that offer because if you haven’t figured it out already, I’m already prone to digging.”

He chuckled. “Yes, you are. But I’m also very serious. I owe you answers so long as you’re with me.”

Settling her fork on her plate, she leaned forward, holding his gaze. “And I, in turn, give you permission to refuse to answer any question that you find intrusive.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

She took a deep breath. “I want to understand the guilt. I’ve felt it coming from you almost from the first and it’s hard to take.” She touched the chain at her neck. “What comes through is oppressive. You were thinking about something just a moment ago. Can you tell me what it’s all about?”

At that, what had been a sense of goodwill between them dimmed as if a passing cloud had blocked out the sun. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ve seen a lot of things,
done
a lot of things. But what I’d been thinking about had to do with the last women I couldn’t save, the ones Daniel used to try to break me. I held their lives in my hands and couldn’t do anything about it.”

She knew he spoke the truth—that he really had been thinking about the women tortured and killed in front of him in the Dark Cave system. She could also sense there was more, but perhaps it was just as he’d said: He’d seen a lot of stuff in his life, more than she could possibly imagine. She didn’t feel it was right to press him further on the subject. “Thanks for telling me. I know this isn’t easy for you, either, this bond we share.”

“I don’t like talking about any of it. I don’t see the point.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that as well. But to change the subject, there is something I’m really curious about. I haven’t seen much of your world yet, but based on Daniel’s slavery enterprise, he must have accumulated an enormous amount of wealth. What does he spend it on? I take it it’s not on university endowments.”

Marius laughed outright. “I’ve never heard of him donating to anything.”

“So apparently he doesn’t believe basic PR is necessary in your world.”

“You’ve got that exactly right. He’s a sociopath and does what he wants when he wants. As for his wealth, I always supposed he plowed it back into the human clubs he owns, the places he’s set up around the world from which he plucks beautiful women for his Dark Cave operation.”

Shayna nodded but for reasons she couldn’t explain, she found this a less-than-satisfactory answer. Her reading had taught her that men of power rarely limited themselves to one endeavor and from what Marius had said, Daniel had already positioned himself to take over the vampire world merely by gaining control of the last extinction weapon. Had he done more than this?

Marius rose, took his plate and mug to the sink, and began cleaning up. Shayna shook her head once more, her thoughts shifting again to how different he was from Michelson. She couldn’t even call her former lover by his first name anymore. She remembered how excited she’d been the first time he’d asked her to call him Greg. That was the moment for her when she’d let herself fall the rest of the way in love with him. She believed, at least at the time, that he’d finally seen her not as a student, but as an adult.

Suddenly she realized Marius stood right next to her and he was upset. When she looked up at him, she gasped. “Your fangs are showing. Why?”

“What were you thinking about? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

She rose to her feet, uncertain what to do: The chain at her neck vibrated with a new and very different layer of heat. She stared at the tips of his fangs and held her breath. He was furious, but it made no sense to her.

She touched the chains, which always seemed to help her zero in on what was going on. Then it dawned on her that Marius was jealous or something close to it. “I was thinking about my ex.”

“Well, you need to stop.”

“You can tell my thoughts were fixed on another man?”

“Yes. And that your feelings were tender this time, not like before.”

“But why the rage?” She really didn’t understand why her thoughts about Michelson had created such a violent reaction.

He pressed a hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, but his fangs remained in a partially descended state.

When he opened his eyes, he held her gaze firmly. “This is a very vampire kind of reaction, Shayna, enhanced because of the chains. I didn’t mean for this to happen. And I know it’s because of the bond and because I’ve fed from you, but I need you to avoid thinking about any of your previous boyfriends, especially your sexual experiences with them. You can be mad all you want, but try not to dwell on the other stuff.”