Page 3 of Kidnapped Forced Mate

Chuckling almost sadistically under my breath, I pat my lap to gesture for the brunette to entertain me. She saunters forward, the salacious way she licks her lips betraying her when she perches her rear on my thigh.

She shouldn’t be drooling – not in her profession. Yet, she inhales as if she’s drinking in my scent. I pay little attention to it, watching the way my elder brothers turn their faces away as if repulsed by the strippers giving our friends lap dances.

Stryker leans in and whispers, “I think Felix feels uncomfortable.”

It’s the most obvious observation. “So does Aragon,” I scoff, hands loosely settling on the stripper’s waist. I reach up and move her hair aside to gain access to her ear. “See that blondie over there?” I whisper, earning a jab in my ribs from my twin.

“Hey!” he grates under his breath. “He’s gonna be furious!”

Clicking my tongue dismissively, I roll my eyes at Stryker before turning back to the brunette on my lap. “He’s getting married tomorrow,” I whisper, stuffing a few hundred-dollar bills beneath the waistband of her thong. “Why don’t you go ahead and show him a good time?”

“With pleasure, handsome…” she replies, stroking my cheek with long, manicured nails as she rises to her stilettos. I throw Stryker a wink, relaxing in my seat to watch the show unfold before my eyes. He mutters something inaudible under his breath, clearly wary about what’s going to unfold.

Deep down, I can hardly shake off the feeling that Stryker’s reluctance is caused by something else apart from our older brothers being around. He usually isn’t as stiff as he is right now, averting his gaze from the women all around us.

The unsettling feeling in my chest expands just as a frown crosses my brows. Perhaps it’s just a reflection of my trepidations, my reluctance to take a human mate that feels like Stryker’s reluctance to be here tonight.

When I turn back to Felix and notice that he refuses the stripper’s advances, I’m about to lose my mind. Tonight isn’t going as planned – except for the few thousand dollars Aragon won on the roulette table. When the brunette girl huffs her irritation and flicks her hair over her shoulder before strolling away, I decide to salvage what’s left of a good time.

“What are you doing, Brother?” Stryker asks me when I’ve risen to my feet.

Tugging on the lapels of my jacket and clearing my throat, I follow the movements of the stripper as she disappears behind the curtains backstage.

“I’m not letting a good show go to waste,” I reply.

“Perhaps we should return to the island, Stryder,” he suggests with a firm tone, prompting me to snap my head in his direction.

As the older one between us – older by a few minutes, but it counts for something – I narrow my eyes at him, causing him to recoil in his chair. Just then, a mind link from Felix shares Stryker’s sentiments, and I groan internally. He doesn’t want to stay in the mortal world any longer.

“Feel free to stay back with me,” I offer Stryker. “Or, you can go back with them. Either way, I’m not letting our reservation go to waste. It just means I have the presidential suite all to myself.”

Stryker loses the firmness on his face and chuckles. “Enjoy it, Stryder. Just don’t be late for the wedding.”

“Of course not,” I assured him before strolling off in search of the stripper. Not because she’s my type, but because she’s a much-needed distraction from the inevitability of what’s to come once Felix has officially married Sierra.

I don’t want to think about being next in line. With the brunette tucked beneath my arm after very little convincing, we take a stroll down the promenade toward the Bellagio.

“You know…” she begins, shrugging between her coat. “... Only the club’s finest clients book at the Bellagio.”

I grunt under my breath, hardly fazed by her impression, while my mind races a mile a minute as I soak up the last bit of my freedom in the mortal world. When tomorrow rolls around, the Council could suddenly decide it’s my turn to take my human mate and rid me of the freedom I once enjoyed.

It’s that resistance to give up my freedom that crawls up my spine, settling on my nape to prickle the fine hairs there. But when goosebumps erupt on my arms, I’m forced to stop dead in my tracks.

Suddenly, the woman’s arm slinked through mine, weighing me down like unwanted baggage. I’m forced to shrug her off when a faint ringing in my eardrums begins to hum.

“What’s wro–”

“Shhh,” I dismiss her with a finger pressed to my lips, a frown furrowing my brows. Her silence allows me to focus on the ringing in my ears, which grows louder, and more urgent, with every second that ticks by. I frown, wondering if all the dragonclaw I consumed has me imagining things.

Despite how faint it is, I’ve never experienced something like this before. It’s almost as if my primal dragon is calling out to me. Warning me of something. I’d seen a lot happen in the mortal world during our travels – things like robberies and accidents in which Stryker and I weren’t allowed to interfere. Yet, we were never forewarned about something, only ever discovering it mid-action.

As the ringing grows louder and more urgent in my head, my feet feel like they’re not mine anymore, compelling me to move, to find something. What it is, I’m not sure. I just know – a deep, inner knowing – that I have to find it. It can't just be my inebriation…

“Wait here,” I tell the woman, barely glancing at her as my eyes narrow ahead of me. I turn to the right, the buzzing slicing through my eardrums as if alerting me that whatever it is I’m looking for is in that direction.

My feet move of their own accord, leading me between two buildings until I reach an alley behind the one on the left. A cloud of smoke faintly mists the alley, a pair of red, devilish eyes staring at me through the smog. While a ripple of awareness rushes down my spine, my fits curl at my sides when I see the van's back doors being thrown open by a man in black leather. The smell of a roaring engine and skid marks on the floor signal the rush.

I can already sense what’s going on, even before a bagged human is pulled into the back of the van. I’ve seen this happen countless times before, but I’d never felt inclined to save the human who’s being kidnapped.

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