Blood-Bonded by Force (10 page)

Ria dipped her hand to the front of his jeans and palmed him through his zipper. She rubbed him…

Nothing happened.

Twin spigots turned on inside his armpits, sending sweat streaming down his ribcage and pooling at his belt. What the hell was wrong with him? Face flaming, he stepped back from her. “Uh…” The monosyllabic utterance hovered awkwardly in the air between them. His cheeks grew hotter. “I…had the stomach flu last week,” he lied again. “I guess I’m not completely over it.”

Ria’s lashes moved rapidly, her breathing uneven. “Really?” she said, her disappointment obvious.

His face now officially needed a fire extinguisher.
Hey, this is cool. I’m in the middle of every man’s dream: a nasty case of impotence getting in the way of sex with a gorgeous woman.

“Maybe,” he half-mumbled, “you should go.”

She stood there and stared at him—stared and stared like maybe if she looked at him long enough with disappointment in her eyes his dick would feel guilty and magically take itself to task and get erect. Golly, why wasn’t that working?

He cut a quick path to his front door. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything about Elsa’s case.” He opened the door.

Ria moved reluctantly across his living room, then hovered in his doorjamb.

He caught back the urge to shove her into the hallway.
Go already
! “Well, bye.” He eased the door closed, leaving her no choice but to step past the jamb and into the hall. The door
clicked
shut, and he cursed softly to himself.
John’s third most embarrassing sexual experience
, topped only by farting loudly while in the process of losing his virginity, and ejaculating in his pants during piano lessons when Miss Sonum had leaned forward to do nothing more racy than place his hands properly on the keys.

He crossed through his kitchen, switching off lights as he went, then trudged into the master bathroom. He stripped out of his sweaty clothes, opened the door to the floor-to-ceiling cabinet, and examined his reflection in the full-length mirror mounted there.

Kansas born, he’d worked horse and cattle ranches throughout his teen years and into his young adulthood, and had always had a muscular build because of it. Now he was a shadow of his former self: sunken belly, bony cheeks, circles under the eyes, thinning muscles. His ashen skin glistened with so much perspiration, he might’ve just gone swimming. Yes, sirree, a new symptom was exactly what he needed: uncontrollable flop sweat. He looked down at the useless member between his thighs and felt despair slide into the hollows of his gut. Maybe he
should
go to a damned doctor. There weren’t many things worse than—

Movement flashed behind him.

He spun around, fists coming up. Then froze. “Ria?” He blinked stupidly. How had she gotten in here?

She had the white wine bottle in her hand.

He frowned at it. “What are you doing?”

He got his answer in the form of her slamming the bottle against his head.

He keeled sideways, a snowstorm of white lights blasting apart in front of his vision, pain shredding through his skull. Gasping raggedly, he crashed into the cabinet door and slumped against it, his feet slowly skidding forward until his ass met the floor. He tried to maintain a sitting position, but couldn’t. He wilted onto his side.

Ria moved quickly toward him, regret on her face. “Don’t struggle,” she said, kneeling at his side. “I have to draw some of your blood, and I don’t really know how.” She grabbed his arm and tied a rubber tourniquet around it. She had a syringe in her hand.

“What…?” he tried to ask as he felt a sharp prick at his arm. Then another prick and finally one that went deep.

Stars and meteors collided before his eyes, mottling his vision. He almost didn’t see Ria leave, gliding like a wraith out of his bathroom.

The front door to his apartment open and closed distantly with an efficient snap.

Chapter Eleven

Ţărână: eight days later

Nỵko’s leg muscles tightened as he strode into Ţărână’s conference room, meeting place of the community’s twelve-person Council. The last time he’d been here the wall partition had been pushed back, transforming the conference room into a courtroom, and he’d been watching his little brother, Shọn, defend himself in a criminal trial. Not that much defending had been going on.

“The reasons I did what I did are nobody’s business” was all Shọn had been willing to say when challenged to explain why he’d attacked Luvera Nichita, now Luvera Parthen.

So this room wasn’t exactly Nỵko’s favorite.

He came to a stop in front of the U-shaped conference table, standing at parade rest on the far right side of the rest of the Special Ops Topside Team members: Dev, Sedge, Gábor, minus Thomal, but Arc was here to take his place, and since Arc was half-crazed with worry these days, Jaċken had secretly asked Nỵko to tag along as a potential team member. As strange as Arc was acting these days, he probably shouldn’t have been a part of any operation right now, but with Thomal’s life on the line, Arc wasn’t letting anyone put him on the sidelines.

Roth Mihnea, black-haired, nicely dressed, and seated in the top dog spot at the head of the conference table—even though Tonĩ was the real head honcho around here—glanced expectantly at the team.

Nỵko felt tension roll off of Dev.

During this Thomal crisis, the Council had insisted on a daily check-in from the team. Which meant every day Dev, as team leader, was forced to admit they weren’t any closer to finding Pändra Parthen than they’d been when they started. And failure didn’t sit well with Dev, especially when his best friend’s life hung in the balance.

“Any progress?” Roth asked, even though the four of them probably would’ve run in here, whooping and hollering, if there had been.

“No, sir,” Dev answered.

Same-old, same-old. Or maybe not…

Roth rounded on Jaċken, who was seated on the right arm of the U, across from Tonĩ on the left. “It’s been eight days.”

“I’m aware of that.” The grooves around Jaċken’s eyes and mouth made it look like his face had been wrung out. He wasn’t feeling too fond of the warriors’ lack of success, either.

“Were you also aware,” Roth continued with a harder edge in his voice, “that Thomal fell unconscious this morning?”

Now Arc’s tension boiled into the room.

A muscle pulsed in Jaċken’s cheek.

That was news to everyone.

“The situation has become dire,” Roth pronounced.

An expression crossed Jaċken’s features that Nỵko couldn’t entirely interpret—he’d go with disgusted impatience, though. “The warriors have always treated this situation as dire, Roth. Ãlex has been working around the clock to find evidence we can use to track down Parthen, but whoever’s running things on Parthen’s end has security locked down extremely tight.”

Nỵko shifted his attention over to the empty Council seat next to Tonĩ. Where was Ãlex, anyway?

Ãlex Parthen wore two important hats in the community, that of computer expert and that of Soothsayer. The latter meant Ãlex was the only person who could read the Străvechi Caiet, the ancient text of the Vârcolac…although
read
wasn’t the most accurate description. Ãlex
saw
certain future possibilities, or answers to questions, or law interpretations through visions. Unfortunately, Ãlex didn’t have any control over visions of the future. They came when they merry well pleased. Otherwise Ãlex would surely have told them where Pändra Parthen was by now.

Funny enough, Nỵko and Ãlex had recently become friends. Funny, because Big Bad Nỵko and a computer nerd were as opposite as two men could get. But he and Ãlex were trying to map out the Hell Tunnels—a network of torturously hot passageways that led from Ţărână to the demon town of Oţărât—and they needed each other for that. Ãlex would go into a meditative state to try and
see
the pathways using his Soothsayer skills, while Nỵko followed his directions via a headset…and tried not to melt. As soon as the tunnels were completely mapped, the Vârcolac could turn the tables on the Om Rău, who’d always been able to get at them and not the other way around. Once the Om Rău knew they could be pursued into the Hell Tunnels after an attack on the Vârcolac, said attacks would undoubtedly lessen, or stop altogether. And, more importantly, the Vârcolac could finally get into Oţărât to save the human women there.

Roth sat forward in his chair. “The unbreachable security we’re facing is exactly why we need to discuss the option of negotiating directly with Mr. Parthen.”

Jaċken barked out a laugh. “Parthen isn’t going to negotiate with us.”

“Mr. Parthen won’t negotiate with
you
,” Roth came back concisely. “He most certainly will with her.” He nodded toward Tonĩ.

Jaċken sat back in his chair, looking impressively calm…although Nỵko would eat his socks if his brother really was. “So let me see if I’ve got this right?” Jaċken said. “You want me to bring my
pregnant
wife topside to meet with a man whose main goal is to steal her and pair her with one of his sociopathic half-Rău. A man who’s already shown that he doesn’t have a qualm about using abortifacients, seeing as he nearly jacked up Marissa Nichita with one. And the baby Tonĩ carries—
my genes
—sit about as high up on the evolutionary scale to Parthen as gum on the bottom of his shoe. Is that what you’re saying?”

Oh, boy
. Nỵko dropped his gaze. He really wished he was off fixing a toaster right now instead of here.

Syrian Popovici, Jaċken’s former blood donor, turned to look at Jaċken from where she sat on his right. “We trust the Special Ops Team to keep Dr. Parthen safe during the meeting, Jaċken.”

Jaċken aimed a cold stare at Syrian. “That from someone who’s never faced down Parthen’s power, thank you.” He addressed the entire Council again as he added, “We don’t know Parthen’s full potential, yet, but you can be damned sure that he’ll blast my men with everything he’s got in order to get Tonĩ. So, I’d be sending my men into what could easily be a suicide mission, only to end up losing Tonĩ and our chance at this Pändra woman, too. Combating Parthen head-on isn’t the way to do this.”

Ælsi Korzha, gray-blonde owner and operator of
Aunt Ælsi’s
coffee shop, pinched her lips together. “Then come up with another plan, Jaċken. The only thing I hear you doing is shooting down our idea, but not recommending one of your own. Thomal will be dead soon.”

“All right, please,” Tonĩ finally inserted. “Nobody is in any doubt about how grave this situation is. But this isn’t a Council decision. Jaċken is my bonded mate and it’s his right to protect me as he sees fit.” She looked at Roth. “I’m actually shocked you’re not respecting that. Would you allow the Council to make decisions about your wife?”

Roth’s expression chilled. “My wife isn’t one of the leaders of this community. You don’t have the luxury of being only a mate in this, Tonĩ.”

“Any decision that affects my marriage,” Tonĩ returned, “is a mate issue, and will be made exclusively by Jaċken and me.”

Nỵko shifted his feet. That sounded pretty danged final.

Some of the rigidity eased from Jaċken’s mouth, and he captured Tonĩ’s gaze across the U.

Tonĩ stood. “We’ll let the Council know our decision shortly.” She exited.

Jaċken followed, then the team.

In the hall, Tonĩ turned to face Jaċken. “Roth does have a point about my position, Jaċken. We have to fix this.” She rubbed her eyebrows. “Look, contact my father, anyway, and say that you want to meet with him. He might agree out of curiosity. I don’t have any idea how to get Pändra out of him. We’ll have to be creative.”

Jaċken nodded. “The last few days, I’ve been brewing some—”

“Hey!” Ãlex hurried down the hallway toward them, dressed, as usual, in khaki pants and a button-down shirt; most days Nỵko thought of the professor from
Gilligan’s Island
whenever he saw Ãlex. He also wore gold-rimmed glasses, and—because he was Royal Fey like his sister—had a bit of red streaking his hair. “Sorry I’m late,” Ãlex went on. “But I had a vision, and wanted to gather more information on the Internet before I brought it to the Council.”

“The Council has somewhat adjourned,” Tonĩ said drolly. “What have you got?”

Ãlex held out a piece of paper. “This is the air manifest for Delta Airlines. A flight arranged by Raymond Parthen is arriving in San Diego tomorrow evening with two very interesting women on it.”

Jaċken’s brows edged together. “Interesting how?”

“According to my vision, they’re Royal Dragons.” Ãlex glanced at Nỵko, probably figuring Nỵko, as a man of half-Rău bloodlines who could only ever hope to have a future with a Royal woman, would be the most invested in that information.

And, definitely, Nỵko’s heart had lurched into a couple of strange beats.

Ãlex pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “I know it’s probably pushing things to save them with everything that’s going on with Thomal, but—”

“No,” Jaċken cut in. “Actually, this is perfect. We’ll try to grab one or more Topside Om Rău dickheads while we’re saving the women on this mission, give ourselves some bargaining power.” He looked at Dev. “Get your team ready to deploy.”

Chapter Twelve

Topside: Lindberg Field, San Diego Airport, the next evening