Did I just kill the Lord of the Dark?
She raced toward him, only realizing right then that her left hand still clutched the key to his cell. She shoved the key in the lock, she started to open that cell.
And his body began to jerk.
Mina froze.
Chapter Three
“Are you okay?” The voice floated to Luke. Worried, scared.
Most people were scared when they talked to him. If they were sane, anyway.
He wasn’t so sure she was sane.
“Please don’t be dead. I mean, I know you’re not dead, I can see your body moving but…don’t die. That’s what I meant. Please don’t die on me. I need you.”
Did she? How very interesting. He put his hands down on the stone floor. Hands that still belonged to a man, not a beast. For the moment.
“You’re moving again,” she said, relief thickening the words. “That’s good.”
Good for him. Not so good for her. Luke opened his eyes and stared at her through the bars. He was on his hands and knees, crouched like an animal. And she stood there, so dangerously close to the cell, her eyes wide and worried. Her face was still as beautiful as before, a face made for seduction, and her body was the best fucking temptation he’d seen in ages but… “Your voice is different.”
She blinked at him. Her eyes weren’t shining with power right then. Because I’d been unconscious? Because she hadn’t needed to work her magic on me when I was out fucking cold?
Her lips parted. She was about to speak—and he strongly suspected the woman was about to try and control him again. Sorry, sweetheart. Not happening.
In an instant, he’d sprung across the cell. She cried out in surprise—the only sound she was able to make—before his hands shot through the cell. One hand locked around her waist. That’s what happens when you stand too close. And the other slapped over her mouth, smothering her cries.
She stared at him in absolute horror, her eyes wide and desperate. “I had two options,” he told her. “I could have locked my fingers around your throat and just squeezed…that would have stopped you from talking, too.”
At those words, her gaze wasn’t just desperate, it was horrified.
His jaw locked. He…didn’t like that look of horror, not from her. Despite the shit the woman had pulled, he didn’t want her looking at him as if he were the monster. Even if he was. “I didn’t go with that option,” he muttered. “Obviously.”
She twisted in his grip. He laughed. He had enhanced strength. Even the strongest shifters in the world couldn’t beat him when it came to raw power. She wasn’t getting away.
But, because of the way he held her, Mina’s left hand was free—and just out of his reach. That left hand held the key. A key he needed.
His strength was great but the cell he was currently trapped inside of had been built—by fucking him—to hold all sorts of paranormal predators in check. He couldn’t break the bars. He needed… “The key,” he snapped. “Give it to me, now.”
Over his hand, her wide eyes jerked to the left, as if she’d just remembered the key. Her fingers twitched when her hand moved.
“Good girl,” he said, “that wasn’t—”
She threw the key—threw it far out of his reach.
“Bad girl,” he snarled. His hold on her tightened. “Very, very bad.”
She was trying to mutter behind his hand. He shook his head. “You think I don’t get it? The power is in your voice. Despite what you think, I’m not the type normally led around by my dick.” Though she’d sure done that to him, before the gas. “So to fix this…I can just make sure you don’t speak again.”
That horror deepened in her stare. He growled again. She needed to stop looking at him that way. His gaze raked her. “Maybe it was the drinks…I’m not normally susceptible, not to any damn one, but you caught me on an off night.” And he needed to test himself…that was why he was easing his grip on her. That was why he was moving his fingers away from her mouth. Just that reason and not because he wanted to ease the horror and fear in her stare.
Her breath heaved out. She stared at him, and…she didn’t make a sound.
Now she gets quiet?
“Who are you?” Luke demanded.
“I-I told you…I’m Mina. Mina James.”
So he’d asked the wrong question. “What are you?”
She stumbled away from the cell. If he went by her expression, he would have thought the question hurt her. He rubbed his chest. His naked chest. Luke glanced around. Right. She’d told him to strip and he’d just tossed off his shirt for her.
“What do you think I am?” Her voice was husky, sexy, but it didn’t ring with the note of power he remembered. The power that had been there before he’d gotten knocked out by the gas.
The gas had been another one of his inventions. A bit of magic and science. Only he’d never expected to be on the receiving end of that dosage.
“Luke,” she bit off his name. “What am I?”
Curious, he looked back at her. Maybe she didn’t know. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure himself, but he still guessed, “A siren?”