He got only three feet before he was turned immobile and dropped to the ground.
His heart slamming in his ribs, his gut constricting, his limbs unless, Gray stared at the young male on the ground and at the tears that leaked from his eyes and ran heavy and grief stricken down his cheeks.
Oh, god . . . Oh, god . . .
It was Uma. Beside him. Her silent plea continued, and Gray looked up, followed her line of vision.
A female clad in long red robes had appeared directly at the side of the stone slab. Gray watched as her mouth opened, so wide it split her features in two, and brick red fangs descended menacingly. She was on Samuel in less than an instant, striking hard—entering his vein with a hiss and a crack, sucking the life’s blood from his desire and his maleness as though it belonged to her.
Gray opened his mouth to yell, scream, curse his hatred and his vow to see every last member of the Order dead as the dirt at his feet. But no sound left his throat. A hand stole around his chest and he was pulled back so fast he lost his breath and his vision for several seconds.
When it returned, he was in an empty cell, and being pulled, yanked back deeper into the rocks. He struggled against whoever held him, but the arm was firm and resolute and dragged him another ten feet down a wet, black corridor.
“Save the brawn for another time, Impure,” the voice behind him hissed.
Oh, shit.
Shit
, he knew that voice. Goddamn, he knew that voice! He heard the motherfucking voice in his head every night—and every time his cock headed south into some random female.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded as a strip of light beamed past his head and hit his feet.
“Saving your sorry ass.”
“Why?”
“Just keep your mouth shut and hang on.”
A few more feet and light completely encompassed them. Then sky, and the scent of earth. With a grunt of supreme force, she hauled him up and out of what appeared to be a hole in the ground, then dropped him on the grass.
She was breathing heavy. So was Gray. He stared up at her, nostrils flaring, and wished he wasn’t bare-ass naked. Not that she seemed to care. She wasn’t staring at anything but his face.
“I have to go back,” Gray said.
“You’re welcome, moron.”
“D, there are Impures down there.”
“No shit. I just saved your bare ass from becoming one of them—truly one of them. Not to mention, saving your cock from forever limping at the side of your leg.”
So she had noticed.
Gray stood, a flood of renewed determination filling him. Samuel and Uma and Jacobi, he wasn’t leaving them down there to be castrated.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Dillon growled at him, her breath a living thing in the cool morning air. “But you can’t save them. The ones you were with.”
His chin dropped, his gaze narrowed. “You can. I’ll help you.”
Her jaw ticked and she slowly shook her head. “No.”
“You refuse to help?”
“Damn right I do. I don’t give a shit about any of them.”
“Just me,” he shot back.
She didn’t answer. “Let’s go.”
“No.”
She turned to leave and he reached for her arm. “I told you I’m not leaving them.”
She whirled around and had his arm tucked behind his back before he took his next breath. “They’re already castrated, motherfucker! It’s done. Done!”
She never let him say a word in response. Her other hand wrapped around his cock and they were flashed from the stark morning light and the only known portal leading to both the Impures he would never forget and the truth they held deep within their beating hearts.
Three
A little midflight hand job sounded exactly like something Gray Donohue would be into—if the circumstances were different. But this wasn’t the time, the place, or, he thought almost regrettably, the girl.
And clearly Dillon felt the same.
The moment they hit ground, she released her hold on his naked frame and ushered him across a great expanse of snow-covered lawn like an army drill sergeant.
“You gonna tell me where we are?” Gray said through gritted teeth, the unsympathetic midwinter cold attacking his bare skin.
“My digs,” she answered, nodding toward a two-story guesthouse set front and center on a sprawling piece of property.
“And the McMansion behind it?” he asked.
“My boss’s digs,” she said, pushing him through the back door of the house and into a sunken living area.
“The Senator? We’re in Maine?” No wonder it was so freaking cold.
“Wasn’t going to take you back home, Impure.” She stripped out of her coat. “Wherever that is.”
“Surprised you didn’t drop my ass at my sister’s.”
“Sure,” she said with a laugh, tossing the coat on the back of the long, plush couch. “ ’Cause the Order would never look for you there.”
He ground his molars at her nonchalance, her sarcasm. He wanted to shoot back with something equally acerbic, but what would be the point? She was right. Shit, he hated that. Almost as much as he hated standing before her in nothing but a sneer. “Hey, point me toward the shower, D. I need to warm up. I’m fucking freezing.”
Her gaze dropped and she snorted. “So I see.”
“Shower,” he repeated, this time grabbing his cock. “Unless you’re going to warm me up. Again.”
For a moment, it seemed as though she were contemplating it, or maybe she was just trying to make him nuts as she stared.
Gray felt his cock twitch and swell in his hand, and it wasn’t in response to his touch.
Finally Dillon’s eyes lifted and her mouth tilted up at the corners. “Up the stairs, Impure, third door on your left.”
Gray released himself and walked away from her without another word. She liked games. She liked playing people, playing him—playing his sister. Well, he wasn’t in the mood. Not today. Maybe not ever. The Paleo, and everything he’d witnessed there—everything he’d heard—still sat heavily inside his chest and made him feel unworthy to be here, in this house, his manhood intact. Dillon couldn’t understand. She was cold and unfeeling with a heart that remained still and silent. And she was Pureblood. She was born and bred to look down her nose at him and everyone who shared his blood.
He felt her eyes on him as he headed up the stairs, but all he could think about was getting in that shower, under the hot water, the steam closeting him as he fought for answers, maybe a blip of inspiration, or a plan to get his father’s best friend and his family out of that hole in the ground.
And what about the others?
Did he care about the others?
He moved down the hall, seeing nothing but the carpet path before him. The art on the wall, the trim around each door, the scent of several of Dillon’s previous houseguests—it all registered somewhere in his brain, but his need for heat trumped it all. Third door on the left, and he was through it, slamming the thick wood behind himself and locking it—locking
her
out. He saw the glass door and massive stone shower. In seconds, his hand was fisting around the faucet, cranking the thing to blistering. As the water surged out of the head and pummeled the stone floor, Gray’s mind splintered with all it had heard and consumed from Samuel back in the cage at the Paleo.
His father was an Impure.
His father was the head of the Impure resistance.
His father was blood castrated.
Firecrackers hitting him in the ass, one after the other. It was shocking, unbelievable and yet . . . he knew it was the truth.
The heat of the shower beckoned him, but once under the burning spray he stood immobile, his mind conjuring images of Samuel stretched out on the stone table, the Order veana fang-deep in his vein, sucking the very maleness from his already weak body. Suddenly, the male’s head turned to reveal not the face of Samuel, but Gray’s father. And that face . . . that face stared straight at Gray with wide, terror-filled eyes.
“Fuck!” Gray said, reaching out with his left hand and pounding the side of the stone wall. They’d as good as murdered his father—every last member of the Order.
Steam rose up, circled his thighs, his groin, threatening, menacing as it snaked around his ravaged hands. Just as the fire had done—the fire that his sister, Sara, had accidentally set all those years ago.
And yet, with all that Samuel had revealed to him, had she started that fire?
HAD SHE?
His throat went tight, painfully tight and he tried to swallow, to breathe. His entire past—was it a lie? Could that be? Or was it a mystery to be solved? Just as the fate of the Impures had been passed down to him through an old male’s tale of the truth.
Gray tipped his head back and let the spray smack him in the face, the neck, where his pulse pounded.
He would go back there.
Had to go back there.
The shower door opened with such force the glass stuttered. Gray ratcheted up, his head shifting right to catch his intruder. Dillon stood there, nearly enveloped by the steam, her full lips curled with distaste and annoyance. “You’ve been in here too long.”
If there was a place between hate, curiosity, and deep, pulse-pounding lust, then that’s where Gray resided when it came to this veana. “Worried about me, D? Or did you come to tell me breakfast is ready—cause I’m starved.”
“Yeah. It’s all laid out, Impure. Bacon, pancakes and eggs over-asshole.”
“I’ll be right down. And by ‘right down’ I mean ‘don’t hold your breath.’ ”
She looked down her nose at him, all serious now, real dictatorial. “Let it go, okay, Gray? Get over it already.”
Gray’s mouth kicked up. “Are we talking about that comment about my dick in the cold? Sure it stung a little, baby, but I was over it the moment I left you downstairs.”
“You know what I’m talking about.” Her stare was resolute, unwavering in her seriousness. “And don’t call me baby.”
Standing directly under the spray, water dancing down his skin, Gray returned, “That how you deal with the tough stuff, D? Let it go? Pretend it isn’t there?”
“Damn right I do.” She shrugged. “Any and all.”
“Well, you’re a bigger man than me.”
Her eyes flickered down, remained on his groin for several seconds, then lifted.
He couldn’t deal with her, not here, not now. Couldn’t deal with her eyes on him, her scent so fucking close it made him want to lap at the steam to just get a taste of her. He had to think, plan his next move. “I have a shower to finish,” he uttered, dropping his head, letting the water pound the back of his neck.
Again, she ignored his call for solitude. “If you don’t stop agonizing over something you can’t change you’ll make yourself crazy.”
The water fell over him in gushes. Maybe he’d thought that same thing, maybe he hadn’t thought at all. Not until he’d seen what he’d seen. Gotten personal with someone he’d never expected to meet—or shit, even knew existed.
“If you’re planning on going back, it’s not going to happen,” she continued. “I’m the only one in this bathroom who knows where the Paleo is and I’m not telling.”
Well, maybe he needed to look outside the bathroom.
But not yet.
He glanced sideways at her. “How long have you known the location of that shithole?”
She shrugged.
“Days? Weeks? Months?”
“A few years.”
Gray’s jaw was so damn tight he thought it might crack. “And you did nothing.”
She inched forward, nearly hitting water. “I told you I don’t give a flying fuck about any of them. Impures and their problems are not my concern.”
“Except me.”
“You’re not just an Impure, now are you?” She cocked her head to the side. “And why are you getting on my ass about this anyway? Before you were dragged down there, before you saw the Order’s playground and toys, you didn’t give a shit either.”
“Not true,” he fired back, wincing internally at the possibility that she was right on the goddamn money with that assessment.
“You’ve done nothing to help them, nothing to further your Cause. All you’ve been doing is baseline shit—looking for your ‘kind,’ looking for a place to live.” Her eyes narrowed. “Looking for another cunt to drown your aimless dick in.”
He growled at her. “The word cunt sounds so right on your lips.”
“Goddamn Impure pussy . . .”
Gray reached out and grabbed her by the arms. His strength peaked, he yanked her inside the shower and deposited her right in front of his face. Water rained down on both of them and she cursed.
“What’s with the rescue, D?” he demanded. It was eating at him—to know, to understand. She’d rescued him once, in the hospital, now she was at it again. Was this all about Sara or was there more? Did she have any kind of feelings for him other than clear and present irritation?