Charming (A Seven World Novel) (14 page)

“I converted the entire lower level for privacy. Two feet of packed dirt with grass and plants on top. There’s a woman who grows the plants with special lights and fertilizers. I think she keeps the plants potted beneath the ground to control roots, but I leave that to her.”

“As long as you don’t bury bodies down there, I’m game.”

Prince guided her toward the stairs that led to the basement. “I can release a rabbit if you want.”

“No, it’s better if my wolf doesn’t get blood in her mouth when I’m in this kind of mood. She’s a little different than most. She’ll eat cooked meat, so if you could just put some ribs or whatever you’ve got left over, that’s what I’d rather have.”

He fell back a step, overcome with an eerie sense that Kat belonged here—that what had always been missing from his home was now standing beside him.

“Whatever you wish.”

Nadia opened her eyes when a familiar voice called her name.

“My Nadia, wake up.”

The words spoken were in Russian, repeating the same thing.

“Papa?” She blinked through the blurriness and rolled to her side, wondering if she was still caught in a dream.

“That’s right,” he said, his voice husky. “I have prayed for your safety.”

She sat up, her head pounding. The last thing she remembered was a car smashing into her ride and a loud explosion of metal and glass—a sound she could still hear repeating in her head like a record skipping.

“I made you shift once,” he said. “Do it again if you’re not all the way healed.”

“No… I…” Nadia sat up and dizzily looked at her surroundings.
It all seems surreal,
she thought.

For the first time in two decades, she laid eyes on her father—a man she had laid to rest in her heart long ago in order to cope. He appeared exactly the same, only frail, as if he’d been underfed. Coarse grey hairs mixed in with the black, and his beard was much too long. Even his voice sounded as if he hadn’t used it in a long time. Her heart clenched when she saw his raggedy clothes.

“
Papa.
” Nadia crawled across the concrete floor and fell into his arms, weeping uncontrollably.

“Shhh, my princess,” he said, his thick accent soothing her like sweet honey. A voice she had heard in her dreams so many times. “Nadia, what have you done to your hair?”

She sat up, looking down at her blond locks. “You don’t like it?”

He shrugged as fathers often do. “You were always beautiful to me. Why are you here?”

“Me? Why are
you
here? Where are we?”

He thumped the back of his head against the cinder block wall behind him. “I’ve been here many years—too many to count. I don’t even know when it’s day or night except when I’m fed, which isn’t often when he’s out of town and his men don’t come by. There is a long history between Vladimir and me.”

She lifted the chain around his feet, following the links that bolted into the wall. “But why would he do this? He’s had you here this whole time?”

“There’s something he wants that I won’t give him, so he keeps me here out of spite, hoping one day he’ll break me. But
how
did he know about
you?
”

She shook her head, not understanding.

“He did not know I had children. I convinced him I had no one, and he foolishly believed me.”

Nadia realized she wasn’t bound in any way. Her eyes darted around the room in search of something to break his chains. “I have to free you.”

“
Nyet
. I want you to lie down and pretend you are weak and afraid. When he comes back, I’m going to wrap this chain around his neck, and you’re going to escape. He’s a Mage, but I can hold him back long enough for you to get out and lock us inside. Then you take his car and drive as far away as you can.”

“I can’t leave you here!” Tears slipped past her lashes, and she gripped a handful of his shirt.

Her father cursed in Russian and then calmed himself, asking a question that distracted her. “How is my Kat?”

“She’s still a bounty hunter.”

Alex smiled, and even beneath that wild beard she could see it. “That pleases me. Did you know when she first told me what she did, I made the mistake of calling her a huntress?” He laughed, his eyes sparkling with memories. “She said a profession shouldn’t come with gender tags and she could do the job just as well as any man. Kat always wanted to be a hunter like her father. And how is my princess Nadia?”

“I’m not working in that museum anymore. I’m a businesswoman, connecting buyers and sellers of valuable art,” she said with a sniff.

“Always my smart girl,” he said, patting her cheek lovingly.

Nadia hadn’t realized how much she missed her father. She’d spent so many years trying to forget him that she’d forgotten how raw the pain of his absence was. “I didn’t think you were proud of me.”

His thick brows furrowed. “I have always been a proud father. My two beautiful girls—strong and intelligent. I do not love one more than the other.”

“And which am I? The strong one or the intelligent one?”

Her father held up both of his hands. “You are born from the same seed and will always be stronger when you are together,” he said, clasping his fingers together. “You each have strength, but different. Kat has a strong will and body, but you have an iron heart. You are smart with learning all kinds of things from books that I never understood, and Kat is cunning. She could outwit a fox.”

“But all that time you spent with Katarina…”

“Nadia, my children are two halves of my heart, but you were always the one who had control over her emotions. Your mother leaving almost broke Katarina. Even though you were the one closest to your mother, Kat has always had the tender heart. That is her Achilles’ heel. I have made mistakes; I was not a perfect father,” he said, shaking his head. “But now you are grown women, and you must be there for each other. You can’t worry about what this old man thinks.”

“Oh, Papa.” Nadia wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

When the door above opened, her father shoved her forcefully to the cement floor.

Footsteps approached. “What a coincidence. Of all people I bring here, it’s your own flesh and blood. Why didn’t you tell me long ago that you had a daughter, Alexei?” The man called Vlad stood behind Nadia, and she stayed absolutely motionless while he continued. “Silent treatment again? I don’t suppose you gave her my ring as a gift, did you? We could have settled this years ago. You could have been free! But once again, I have been deceived.”

Nadia tensed when her father didn’t reply.

“Is that how it’s going to be?” Vlad erupted. “Don’t you dare shut your eyes and ignore me!”

She tried to slow down her racing heart and meanwhile noticed the most trivial things. Like she was barefoot, and her skirt was twisting painfully around her waist.

Vlad leaned forward and grabbed her father by the collar. “You are lucky to be alive. I am the only thing keeping you in this world, so you give me what is mine or else… I just might take something that’s precious to
you
.”

Nadia gasped when her father erupted in a violent motion and wrapped the chain around Vlad’s neck.

“Run!”

***

Kat rolled over and nestled onto a cool patch of dirt. She glanced at her surroundings and remembered she was in a basement, despite the fact it looked more like a nature preserve at midnight. Small dim lights in the ceiling resembled scattered stars, and the main light shone from behind the man-made waterfall to her right, which was nothing more than water cascading down a rock wall.

“How long was I out?”

Prince was sitting on a flat rock a few feet in front of her. He scratched his bristly jaw, his hair still loose and maddeningly sexy. “Your wolf was out for maybe two hours. She especially enjoyed the rare steak I brought down for her.”

Steak?
Kat highly doubted those were leftovers in his fridge—not in a pack full of wolves. Prince had cooked for her wolf and fed her, and did
that
ever stir a primal feeling of desire in her. That was almost as good as hunting for her animal, although no Shifter had ever done that before.

Prince smiled with his warm, generous eyes. “She’s a beautiful creature.”

“Any news?”

“I haven’t heard from Vlad, but he’s not getting out of this city without my knowing. It won’t take long to track him down; we just need to rest and wait for news.”

She stretched out on her side, loving the feel of her nude body against cool earth. “This is a nice place. I felt safe in here.”

“It comes in handy,” he said, his eyes skating down the length of her body and then flicking away.

Her nudity shouldn’t have fazed him, but he was taking pleasure from small glimpses. Kat’s pulse quickened, especially when he leaned forward, showing off his taut muscles.

She felt a renewed vigor, as if her wolf had erased the anxiety of Nadia’s abduction and helped her to refocus. In the morning, she would make plans and come up with a strategy, but for tonight… Her heart sank when images of Nadia flashed in her mind. Did she have a warm blanket? Was she being brave, confident her sister would find her?

Prince’s voice became tender, as if he could read her mind and wanted to create the distraction she so desperately needed. “What is it you crave and I’ll bring it down?”

All Shifters came out of their shift craving a specific food unique to them. It was the worst kind of desire and hunger pang all at once, but tolerable.

She smiled and stretched again. “Unless you feel like cooking up some french toast with powdered sugar and syrup, I’m fine. I bet you crave something easy like tomato soup.”

Kat looked down at Prince’s bare feet, planted on the dirt, toes digging in.

“Actually, my craving is potatoes.”

Her brows popped up. “That’s unusual, and a little bit sad.”

“Yes, and not always something we have in the house. I can’t eat any of the packaged or canned foods. It has to be fresh.”

“Maybe you should make some soup out of it and hide it in the freezer.”

He looked down at her thoughtfully before lowering to all fours, crawling across the dirt like a predator.

Kat shivered and rolled onto her back, looking up at him. “What did I say?”

His blue and brown eyes leisurely made their way down to the curve of her hips, her sex, her long legs. “I like the way you want to take care of me.”

Kat bit her lip. Whether she hunted for him or vice versa, feeding a Shifter had many meanings. Offering food to someone in your house was a sign of trust, but with the opposite sex, it could be seen as a sign of loyalty and devotion. She wasn’t sure how devoted she could be to a man she’d just met, but when he stripped out of his T-shirt and revealed a resplendent physique, she decided not to rule out the possibility that the fates wanted her to share her body with this man.

“I’m going to lie with you, Kat,” he said, his voice silken as he unbuttoned his jeans.

Desire pulsed through her, as if every emotion she was feeling needed this union—this release.

She reached out, dragging his pants and briefs down his hips as he sucked in a sharp breath. Kat ran her hand along his strong back from his shoulder blades down to his firm ass while he kicked out of his clothes. She preferred strong arms and hands, but she gave his ass a hard squeeze and watched his eyes smolder.

They each lay on their sides, facing each other. The dim light made it feel as though they could have been outside, lying together on sacred Shifter land where no one would discover them. The walls were painted like a forest, and the ceiling was midnight black. All they lacked was a warm wind and the sound of crickets chirping.

As much as she wanted to feel his body against hers, she traced her finger over the coarse stubble on his jaw, across his collarbone, along the grooves of his ribs, and down to his belly button, avoiding the obvious elephant in the room that was swinging his rather large trunk. Kat adored being able to admire a man’s body and take it all in, as he did with hers. Every touch elicited a reaction, and his natural scent became stronger, mingled with earth and greenery.

Prince stroked her like a precious thing, resting his hand on the dip in her waist. “You’re exquisite.”

“And a little dirty,” she said with an impish grin. “Are you sure you don’t want to go upstairs and do this on silken sheets with golden bedposts to hold on to?”

He moved in close, his body hot to the touch. “This is the true Shifter way,” he growled under his breath. “This is the way we did it hundreds of years ago—nothing but two bodies finding bliss on the soft bed of earth.” His mouth dragged to her ear and whispered, “Open your legs, Kat.”

She gasped when his fingers slipped between her thighs and stroked the silken crease of her sex. The sharp arousal made her moan, and she put her left arm over his shoulder and parted her legs for him like an obedient wolf.

“Like silk,” he said on a soft breath.

Pleasure ripped through her with his feather-soft strokes. His ravenous eyes were no longer on her body, but staring straight into her soul. A hunger burned in those irises, intensifying each time she gasped and arched her body beneath his touch.