Page 7 of Under a Wicked Moon
He stood. She tensed, fully prepared to fight if he offered her an ounce of physical comfort. That she couldn’t handle. It’d for sure push her over the edge and make her cave to temptation. Then it’d be her attacking him, and not to push him off. Her heart escalated as he took a step closer. Desire rolled through her.
But he turned away to evaluate the door. With a hand outstretched, palm toward the door, he stood frozen as if willing it open with his mind. Maybe they hit his head a little too hard during his capture so that he believed he had Jedi powers. She almost called out to warn him not to touch the door, but heseemed happy to remain several feet away from it.
His back end was built as solidly as the front.
No looking. Oh, so looking.Gorgeous view. Round, muscular, tight.
With a curse, he sat down.
He crossed his arms and glared at the door. “I can’t open it yet. This drug is fucking with my abilities. Everything about us in here is wrong.” He released a long exhale of air. “I swear to God—whom I know exists, since I’ve met one of his angels—I won’t be manipulated into this with you. Not by a bunch of psychotic humans. We’re getting out of here.”
For the first time in ages, she felt an unexpected release of tension as if she believed him.
She observed him for long minutes as he closed his eyelids and pretended to ignore her. He remained tense, obviously as fully aware of her as she was of him.
“My name is Vivienne. I go by Vivi.” She shouldn’t have given him her name. A name had power. But she believed him when he said they’d escape. Her breath bottled up in her chest as a floaty sensation tingled her limbs. Somehow, his words lifted the weight of being trapped and of having lost years to this place.
Years.
Oh my God.
She had to escape. The find-Nova plan needed to be accelerated. She’d thought it might be a few weeks since she last saw Nova, but it’d been years. First, she needed out of this cell to be free to roam and get access to one of the humans’ computers.
“I’m Ky. Short for Kylan, but no one calls me that. I don’t even know why I told you. I never tell anyone, because they like to use it when they think it’s important to get my attention. Don’t use it. My full name makes me a little”—his eyes widened—“angry.” He stared at the door again. “As soon as this drug wears off, I’ll open the door.”
He had an escape plan, one she fully intended to capitalize on. “You got some sort of magic up your ass, Ky?”
“Something like that.”
She perked up. Was he a typical lycan who was repelled by the concept of using big magic? Lycans used little bits like their glamour but nothing significant beyond that. Their society as a whole distrusted witchy and elemental magic. With good cause. Witches tried to purge them from the world in the last century. The ruling Lycan Council had made magic use illegal. She didn’t fit with their society, since she believed in elemental magic, which used natural elements like wind, water, and fire as power sources. Her whole family were elementals, unlike witches who used spells, potions, and curses.
Now she had questions for him, but asking would reveal herself to be more than someone fascinated by magic. Not doing that.
They fell silent. The storm raged above. They might not be able to see the luminous full moon in the dark sky, but she felt it. Its hidden gibbous state pulled her downward into a primal condition where all she felt was the instinct to mate. Minutes stretched to feel like hours as the lust racing through her worsened.
Ky leaned forward to bury his face in his hands. His forearms flexed, large, tattooed, and powerful. She squinted into the dark to try to make out the designs of his ink.
Her body tensed, hard, as sensation roiled through her, bunching muscles and spiking nerves straight to her core. This was far worse with a guy several feet away. A super-hot one.
The pain of desire tormented her.Need to lie flat.She stretched out on the bench and breathed through it. Each shaky, indrawn breath ricocheted pulsations of lust.
“Vivi,” he said low, not uncovering his face. The mere name rolling off his tongue ignited nerves that spiked through her breasts. He leaned forward, dropped his hands, and cursed. “I’mno saint. Christ, you’re—” he rasped out at a whisper. “I swore I wouldn’t touch you, and I won’t, but… Can you do anything to tone down the hormones? That sounds stupid when I say it out loud. Of course you can’t do anything.” He dropped his head lower toward his legs and shook it from side to side. “We’re both fucked.”
“I’m trying,” she whispered. “I’d curl into a corner and try to disappear, but everything is all cramped tight. Hurts. This is the only position that helps the muscles relax.” Distraction. They needed something else to think about.
She crossed her legs and stared at the skylight. She’d been through her time of need before, but this was the first time she remembered it happening in this prison. Her mind rolled through gyrations about her time here, trying to rewind and account for all the lost years with little success. She was about to fall into the rabbit hole of panic.
His studious scrutiny of her zeroed in on her arm.
Shit.
His eyebrows shot upward. “That mark? You have abilities?”
Was that a judgy tone?
Not the kind of distraction she wanted. She threw a hand over the red, raised magic sigil on the skin of her left arm. Her mistake to show the stylized pyramidal shape called Dragon’s Eyes. Use of the elemental magic necessary to induce such a mark was punishable by death, something she knew only too well, since her parents had paid that price. Her screw-up had exposed them, but her parents had shielded her and Nova. They’d kept them out of the Council’s eye. The risk of Ky turning her in faded into the background. The largest threat lay in the humans here who listened to them. She snuck a peek at one of the three cameras on the ceiling. If they found out she was more than lycan… She shuddered. They’d do tests on her to try to find out her abilities beyond normal lycan ones. She rubbed a handover her chest as images flashed into her head of her on a table, flailing as they hit her with jolts of electricity.
Something that had been buried deep in her subconscious. Something she didn’t want to remember. Maybe they’d tried to erase it? What else had been taken from her mind?
