Her hold on him tightened and she nodded against him as if she understood completely but was unable to speak.
Io finally let his tears flow and held her, knowing exactly how she felt.
After depositing his father on one of the beds, Trace chased after the two drecks who had flown out the door right after he had poofed back into the room. Catching up to them in the stairwell, his hand shot out, and they both froze as he caught them into compulsion.
“Where you goin’, boys?”
Their eyes locked to his in fear, then he forced them to turn around.
“Back to the room. Now.”
Like a puppet master with a pair of marionettes, Trace marched them up the stairs and back out into the hall on the ninth floor, where he walked them toward the room, having a little fun and directing them into the wall a couple of times.
“Oops.”
His vision was still extra sharp and crystal clear, so he knew his eyes hadn’t changed back yet. Shit, with all this emotional upheaval, he was shocked he wasn’t ready to crawl out of his skin. He’d had a hell of a day. First Micah had agreed to be his master, then Cordray had…well, just Cordray. ‘Nuff said on that bitch. Then he’d been sentenced to what felt like Hell, and now he had found his father strapped to a lab table having God only knew what being done to him. What was next? Would his dead brother materialize from thin air? Or maybe he wasn’t dead after all. If his allegedly dead father had shown up, then maybe his brother would, too.
Once they reached the room, Trace stepped in front of them, opened the door, then turned as he backed in, waving his fingers in a come here motion so that the shoes of the two drecks dragged across the floor. After getting them inside, he waved his left hand, making the door slam shut behind them. Well, it didn’t really slam. Not with Io’s heavy foot action on it earlier, which had torn out a piece of the jamb. But at least it shut. Then he picked up the handset on the room’s phone.
“Have a seat,” he said to the drecks, dropping them to the floor and holding them there while he dialed out.
Tristan picked up. “This is Tristan.”
“It’s Trace. Io has Miriam. She’s safe. She was drugged, but alive.”
“Shit. Overdose?”
“No.” Trace looked around the room until his gaze landed on his father. He didn’t know where to begin with all he and Io had seen. “I need you to send someone to the Burnham. I have two prisoners here.”
“Who are they?”
“Drecks. Two of them. Dealers. But whatever they were doing to Miriam, they weren’t shooting her up with cobalt.”
“What do you mean?”
Trace frowned, emotion beginning to overcome him as memories of his past began to invade his mind. “Fuck, Tristan. We’ve got a problem.” He swiped his palm over his scalp. “I think they were planning on kidnapping her. There was another vampire here, but he was working with the drecks. He was taking her. Io and I hitched a ride as he vapored into some….” Trace hesitated, his thoughts scrambling over what he had seen. All those vampires held like animals in cells. No. Test subjects. Lab rats. Those vampires back at that lab were rats for God only knew what kinds of experiments. He looked at his father again. What had they been doing to him?
“Trace?” Tristan’s voice jolted him back into the room.
“Tristan. I’ve got an address. You need to send a team immediately. This is important.” He rattled off the address. “It’s a lab of some kind. There’s going to be heavy retrieval. Must be forty or fifty vampires locked down in cells there. They….” Trace looked at his father again. “They had my father.”
The line went silent, then Tristan said, “Say again?”
“My father, Tristan. I swear to God, this is my father.” He stood over the prone male sprawled and unconscious on the bed. “I got him out. He’s here. Send medics, but get a force out to that address in Arizona.”
A knock sounded on the door before it opened. Micah entered, leading Severin and that bitch, Cordray, inside. Trace immediately yanked the cover up and over his father. He didn’t like the thought of Cordray seeing his naked flesh.
“How many drecks were there, Trace?” Tristan asked.
“A lot. But they’re probably already packing up and getting out of Dodge. But some of those vampires were in bad shape and in no condition to travel. We need to rescue them.
“Roger that. I’ve already texted AKM’s Phoenix division, and I’m asking Stryker if he can put together a team to go out and assist. We’ll get ‘em out.”
Trace felt Cordray worming into his mind and shot her with an acid glare.
“I’ve gotta go, Tristan. Micah, Sev, and that witch are here.”
Micah frowned and glanced between him and Cordray then back at him, mouthing
Witch?
Cordray flipped him off, but refused to pull herself from his mind, threading her way in.
Trace slammed the phone down and growled right before taking one long, forceful stride to get in Cordray’s face, dropping his right hand and allowing the drecks to fall out of compulsion and right into Micah’s and Sev’s waiting fists.
“Stay out of my thoughts, bitch!” Trace hadn’t felt such a powerful reaction to anyone in a long time.
“I don’t take my orders from you.” She met his glare with one of her own, her catlike eyes narrowing.
“Oh, and you’ve been ordered to probe my head?”
“That’s right,” she said with a sneer. “Bain wants me to report back what you and Io found.”
The sound of Micah and Sev working over the drecks hardly distracted him.
“You can ask, and I’ll tell you,” he said, still glowering at her.
“My way is much more efficient.”
Trace snarled. “Well, you can suck my dick, because I want you OUT.” He reinforced the mental block he kept up around his thoughts, slamming the door on her.
She sneered. “That’s okay. I already got what I needed.” Cordray walked away and stood by the window.
Trace watched her go, shooting eye daggers at her back before turning toward Micah and Severin. Sev cinched a binding strip around one dreck’s wrists and shoved him down on the floor. Micah had knocked his opponent out and was sitting on the bed, combing his fingers through his long, black hair, pushing it off his face.
“Who’s that?” Micah nodded toward his father.
“His name’s Maddox,” Cordray said. “He’s Trace’s daddy.”
Trace turned to see Cordray standing beside the other bed. The sarcastic, I-dare-you-to-try-something expression on her face made it clear she took a particular joy in stealing his thunder and outing him.
“Get away from him!” Trace made to lunge for her, but Micah jumped up and pulled him back.
Cordray’s smirk widened and she stepped around the bed and got right in Trace’s grill. Sev joined Micah and fought to keep him from attacking her, but it was all they could do to prevent him from breaking free and coldcocking the bitch.
Narrowing her eyes, Cordray reached out and pressed the tip of her index finger against his sternum with deadly quietness. “Don’t ever tell me to suck your dick again, because next time it happens, I’ll do more than just steal your thunder. I’ll bite the goddamn thing clean off.”
This time around, with Cordray steadfastly standing her ground against him, Trace became fully aware of just how hard his dick was. And as Cordray flicked her long leather trench and sauntered toward the door, it shocked him to realize his power was completely and complacently in check. For once.
What did this mean? He didn’t know, but he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it when he found out.
Miriam leaned back and gazed at Io’s handsome, perfect face, still in shock that he was actually there.
“What happened?”
She had gone to the Burnham, met with the dealers, thought she was being injected with cobalt, but instead had passed out.
“You were drugged.” Io’s face looked pained.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think they were trying to kidnap you.”
He told her about what had happened. “I think they wanted to use you….” Io winced and grunted, clutching his stomach.
Miriam sprang upright. “Are you okay?”
He was panting.
“The
calling
….” His entire body jerked as if in a spasm. “Hitting me…ungh…hard …now that you’re…safe.” He doubled over, gripping his abdomen.
Oh God! That’s right. Io had entered his
calling
phase with her. She reached for him.
“What can I…?”
But she couldn’t speak another word as a wave of hormonal heat pulsed through her own body like the shockwave from an explosion. Miriam literally fell back against the couch cushions from the power of the pulse of core moistening arousal.
She moaned as a rush of Io’s heat answered her own and pounded through her, and damn if she didn’t almost have an orgasm on the spot.
“Forgive me,” he said, sweeping up and over her, grabbing the waist of her pants. “I know you’ve been through hell, but—”
“Do what you have to, Io.” She knew what he needed, and if her body was going to react like this, and his was going to put off that kind of heat, she would be helpless to stop him anyway.
“Don’t want…to hurt you.” Io’s fingers curled around the waist of her pants, gripping the fabric so tightly his knuckles turned white as he fought not to lose control.
Miriam needed to take care of her male. Io was in physical anguish, more worried about her than about the demands his body had placed on him. They could talk later about what had happened, but right now, Io couldn’t wait another second.
“Baby,” she whispered against his ear, pulling him down. “Take me. Now.”
Something broke inside Io at her words. Miriam felt the change immediately. His hormonal heat flooded her as if he’d been holding it back. With a primal, guttural growl, his hands practically shredded her clothes as he tore them off. And she just as violently and urgently stripped him free of his, reacting to the basic, animalistic urge to mate.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, God, I’m sorry.” Io picked her up and tossed her on the floor, tears streaking his face.
As badly as he wanted her—to the point he could barely control himself—Miriam could tell that somewhere inside it pained him to treat her so roughly after what she had been through. His reaction made her love him all the more, because she knew in that moment that he would never hurt her. He would always strive to take care of her and see to her comfort.
“Ssshhh, baby. I belong to you. Do what you need to.” Miriam dug her nails into his shoulders as he shoved her legs apart and sank down on her, thrusting himself inside.
* * *
After so long away from her during this critical phase in their relationship, Io came the instant the head of his cock breached her. Just that simple friction was enough to send him careening into the most violent orgasm he’d ever had.
His ass tightened, forcing him deeper into her as he cried out, practically convulsing out of his skin as surge after torrential surge of climactic force blew him apart. It felt like his bones were splintering from the fierce constriction of his muscles, tightening him into a tense, stretched mass of flesh that would snap with just the tiniest flinch.
And before he knew what was happening, he came again, and again, and yet a fourth time. His
calling
was good and pissed off at having been denied the pleasure of Miriam’s inner warmth for so long, letting him know it by spinning him like he was an out-of-control bumper car at the carnival. Io couldn’t focus, feeling as though he were spiraling into a black hole in the middle of the universe, lights shimmering and disappearing, his vision going dark but his body remaining lit up brighter than a supernova.
From somewhere, Miriam’s cry of pleasure assaulted his senses. Her nails raked down his back. The insides of her thighs shuddered against his hips before her legs wrapped around him.
That was when Io felt it—the telltale waves of heat coming off her. She was reacting the way a mated male did in his
calling
. He had never heard of a female
calling,
but sure as hell, she was having one, and her hormonal release pulled him, prolonging his orgasm, intensifying it.
Finally, Io stopped spilling inside her, his body calming until he lowered himself to the side in a spent heap of heavy breathing. His still-hard cock slipped out of her, leaving her saturated and pleasantly wafting of his fragrance. Instinctively, his hand slid to her flat stomach and pressed down as he kissed her breasts and tenderly played an oral trail down her torso.
He had maybe minutes—or perhaps even seconds—before another wave of fertile fire forced him to take her again, and if her body continued to push off wave after wave of her own
calling,
this would be a long, yet pleasurable, night.
Miriam practically glowed as her legs scissored in a glorious display of post-orgasmic bliss, her back arching and a moan floating from her throat like a honeyed song as she lifted her body to his mouth. With hunger flooding him to have her yet again, he passed his tongue up and over the mound of one breast, sweeping it over her taut nipple, sending her into another small, quivering orgasm. She was on fire beneath his touch, lost to her heat and his.
Suddenly, he stilled and lifted up on his elbow, pressing his palm more firmly against her abdomen. He stared at her stomach. “Miriam…?”
“Hmm?” She sounded dreamily distracted and skimmed her long fingers up his arm.
Io couldn’t believe it. He had already achieved what the
calling
had urged him to create. Life stirred inside Miriam’s belly. New and still too small to see without a microscope, but it was there. Its warmth and unique life signature flowed apart from Miriam’s but in tune with it. As the male, it was his job to feel his child’s life force. If he had been paying attention, he would have felt the moment Miriam had conceived, but he hadn’t realized at the time how far he was into his
calling
and he had been more concerned with treating her withdrawal.