HeroUnleased (11 page)

She never cried over a man before and she’d be damned if she
shed one more tear for that unfeeling asshole. Well, that wasn’t entirely true.
He had felt something. Guilt and regret.

“Bastard,” she muttered and mustered all of her strength
into shutting her hurt and all thoughts about Lucian into a lead box, never to
be opened again.

Men had always held a specific purpose in her life. Pleasure
and protection. Lucian was the only man to effectively blur the line and cross
into the unchartered territory of companion. For the first time she wanted to
give her heart to a man and share more than her body with another. She wanted
to find out his dreams and do all in her power to make them come true. Make him
smile with joy and not just leer with lust. Although the lust was a delicious
bonus.

No, no, no! She squeezed her thighs against the electric
sizzle of need that took residence in her empty sheath. Best sex of her life?
Yes. But if she had to sleep with every man on this planet, and the next, to
replace the experience, she would.

Good plan, but you know that won’t work. He’s ruined you.

Never. Not acceptable. There had to be a way to erase the
memory of that damn
Llanos
.

Speaking of which. The sour taste of his guilt slipped down
her throat. He was here, in the house.

Why? Did he think she hadn’t received the message that she
wasn’t wanted loud and clear? Fuck him if he thought she would listen to
another feeble excuse that he wasn’t worthy of her touch.

Well, he could sit there until she was good and ready to
face him, which may not be ever, and definitely not until she was primped and
polished to an immaculate shine.

She tossed the towels into the hamper then attacked her hair
with a brush and dryer. A wild tangle of silken locks blew in all directions,
highlighting the sight that made her hand freeze mid-stroke. Blood rushed in
her ears and her lungs struggled to function as she leaned close to the mirror
and fingered the two-inch-wide lock of black hair that grew from her nape under
her left ear. From root to tip, the once-blonde strands were a pitch black that
shimmered with a blue halo. Lucian black.

Bastard. Self-righteous prick, son-of-
puntahi shittehoar
.
That
pundavii
had the nerve to speak the Sacred Vows then deny her with
the next breath? The gall! The
cajones
!

How utterly, utterly hurtful.

Disappointment broke through her shock and brought forth a
fresh set of tears. She had thought when a man spoke the Sacred Vows, she would
at least remember it.

In her youth the moment had been dreamt about with
candlelight and romantic music. Her fantasy had her resplendent in silk and
primped to perfection as the man she loved settled between thighs she held
spread wide in welcome. As he thrust into her body, he’d cup her breasts while
looking deep into her eyes and speak the words that would bind their emotions
together forever.

Never had she imagined that such a momentous event would
take place with her sprawled in an armchair, half clothed and panting like a
bitch in heat, or that she wouldn’t hear the words at all. Then as an added
insult have her mate reject her the next morning. That’s probably why the bond
was only partially complete.

Fool! Of course a life-altering occasion in her life would
be thus. That was her curse.

If he had come to beg her forgiveness in this, he was
fucking insane. And in front of his family? The humiliation would be too much
to bear. The seven levels of hell would turn into a five-star beach resort
before she faced him again.

She brushed the worst of the tangles free and tied her hair
into a low ponytail, disguising as much of the black strands as possible.

Rushing to her suitcase, she threw on the first items she
touched then snatched up her purse and went to the window. She could send for
the rest of her things later.

The possibility that she could be heading right into Bale’s
wicked clutches didn’t stop her flight. Let him take her. Then perhaps the
excruciating pain in her chest would finally ease.

Not a twig snapped nor pine needle stirred as she raced
through the forest. She ran so fast, she didn’t even disturb the dew on the
grass.

A quick glance at the store front of the Cedar Sports and
Marine confirmed Harlan was busy with the morning rush of fishermen. She traced
to the main house and pounded on the front door.

Dhavin answered. His smile faded as he took stock of her
from head to toe. “What happened?”

She breezed past him. “Good morning to you too.”

“Amaryllis. What happened?”

“I need to go home. My home. Now.”

“Where’s Lucian or Kristos?”

She stopped his entreaty with a firm shake of her head.
“Please, Dhavin. If you’ve loved me at all, even if all you felt was the
compassion reserved for a mere acquaintance, I beg of you, take me home. No
questions.”

Dhavin took one of her hands in both of his and stared into
her eyes. All she wanted was to look away in disgrace but she mustered the
courage to hold his gaze and silently implored him to comply with her wishes.
She knew she was asking him to not only defy his commander but his family as
well. A request she had no right making, and she would not blame him if he
refused, but he was all she had to rely on.

After several long seconds he offered her half a smile and
nodded. “I won’t take you home, but I’ll take you someplace else. You will tell
me everything once we are there. Promise me.”

“Of course.” A small request in return for his loyalty.

“Give me three minutes to pack some essentials. Do you have
an alternative location in mind?”

“Yes.” She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you,
Dhavin.”

He kissed her cheek then fell to one knee with head bowed.
“You are my friend as well as my princess. You will always be able to call upon
me.”

Unable to speak lest she fall completely apart, she bent and
kissed his forehead, lamenting that her bonded mate was not the brave man
kneeling before her now but the coward who had knelt at her feet and stabbed
her in the hearts. The very hearts she feared belonged to him forever.

Chapter Seven

Bale halted inside the threshold of The Cavern. A blast of
emotions slammed into his chest with the force of a battering ram, knocking him
back a step. Humans, even the most reserved of the species, projected their
every feeling as if they were standing with a microphone on a parade float
loaded with speakers turned to eleven. The cacophony of mental noise rocketing
through his brain was an unexpected obstacle he hadn’t prepared to face. It was
a transparent weapon with the potential of bringing him to his knees if he
wasn’t careful.

“Having second thoughts, my man?” the man monitoring the
door asked. “I don’t care where you go, but you gotta clear the way.”

He nodded and slid into a corner to strengthen his mental
barricade. The pulsating beat coming from the sound system was just as
overwhelming as the barrage of emotions. Drawing in a deep breath, then
another, he concentrated on slowing down his heartbeats and focusing on where
the flat, dead places in the atmosphere lay. Even though the princess had been
well known for her inability to lock down her emotions, she would have had to
gain some control in order to survive in such chaos. Those breaks would be
where she resided.

Under his leather jacket and hooded sweatshirt, sweat
trickled down his back, and the scent of sex and alcohol added to the
claustrophobia. Bodies gyrated everywhere he looked. On the dance floor, at the
bar, in the dark corners and on tabletops. This place was a den of vice and,
frankly, he was quite surprised that a royal, even Princess Amaryllis, would
consort with such heathens.

He wove through the crowd, trying his best not to come into
contact with anyone. The restaurant his interrogations had led him to earlier
was more in style of an exiled royal, while this place reminded him of the
underground lairs his fellow guardsmen frequented when horny and without a wife
to sate their baser needs, not that he visited such locations himself. At least
not after he had wed Natalia. Sexually she was more delicate in her desires
than he had been used to and the Gods knew she deserved better than the likes
of him. But Natalia was perfect in her fragility and provided all he had
needed. Even the simple act of stepping across the threshold to such a
salacious establishment sent a rotten-egg taste shooting down his throat with
the thought he was offending her spirit.

A wee girl jumped before him, startling him with her
boldness. She was rail-thin with hair so black it absorbed all light. The
makeup around her eyes was just as dark and her lips were stained with a layer
of red. Leather straps criss-crossed her body, barely covering her intimate
areas.

“Are you in need of a slave?” she asked, running her palms
over her breasts and down her sides.

“No.” He moved to step around her.

She stepped with him, matching him zig for zag. “I offer
myself willingly. I promise I’ll do whatever you ask.”

Obviously. “No.”

“Please, Master.”

“Stop.” He held his hand an inch from her nose. “You want to
please me?”

“Yes,” she panted.

“Tell me where to find the—Amaryllis.”

“The chick who owns the joint?”

Owner? How absolutely depraved. “Is there more than one by
that name?”

“Well, no.”

“Where is she?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen her. But when she’s not on the
dance floor she’s usually up in her private room.” She pointed up to an empty
balcony.

A grand staircase swept up to a catwalk that led to the
princess’ sanctum. One guard, if you could call him that, stood at the bottom,
Bale’s only obstacle to the top.

“Stay,” he said to the pixie. When she opened her mouth, he
silenced her with a sharp, “Stay.”

She nodded, her eyes wide and dreamy. Without a second
thought he left the pest and used his newfound powers to race from shadow to
shadow. He easily slipped past the guard and stalked down the hallway, pausing
at each door to look for his prey.

More debauchery infiltrated the corners of the club. Women
were bound in all manners of restraint while men fondled and subjugated them to
their whims.

Bale peered into the third room and came to a halt, instantly
captivated by the scene taking place. One step, then another. His feet moved of
their own accord, drawing him closer to the display.

On a small platform stood a man stripped bare and
illuminated by several floor lamps. His hands were strapped to a bar high above
his head, stretching out his torso like a canvas ready to be painted upon. The
stark light washed out his skin tone to a bluish-white, yet his cock throbbed a
deep red where it jutted out at full-staff from his groin.

A woman circled her captive. A vision of hedonistic delight
herself, she was a walking wet dream. Long, thick chestnut hair waved down her
back. Her makeup was applied with a more sophisticated hand than the pixie he
ran into earlier, and her leather corset cupped her curves like a jealous
lover. The short-shorts encasing her hips exposed the bottom of her fleshy ass
cheeks, which jiggled with her every step as she padded barefoot across the
stage. She made her slave widen his stance so she could better test the weight
of his hard cock and heavy sac.

“Who do you belong to?” she asked in a low voice as smoky as
the finest tobacco.

“You, Sir.”

That the male addressed her with such a title shocked Bale
more than anything he had seen on this planet thus far. Surely a woman would be
insulted to be addressed as a man, but the satisfaction in this female’s smile
belied his assumption.

The heavy allure of anticipation tightened his throat and
raised his body temperature another twenty degrees until he was forced to
loosen the zipper of his sweatshirt, desperate he was for some modicum of
breath. Bale’s mental barriers trembled. His powers absorbed the slave’s
excitement until the man’s desire became his own.

“Will you take your punishment?” the woman asked with a
scrape of her nails down the inside of his thigh.

He swallowed hard. “Yes Sir.”

Bale watched, entranced that such a small woman could
command a male so much larger than she. When she picked up a whip, he gasped.
His lungs billowed hard until his harsh breath matched in rhythm while the
slave’s eyes glittered with desperate hunger.

Crack! The whip flew, striking bare flesh. Bale felt the hot
lick of leather across his own back and clenched his teeth against a moan. He
curled his hands into fists so tight his nails dug into his palms.

Another lash fell, then another. With each strike the
slave’s pleasure grew, reaching across the room to squeeze Bale around the
chest. The pure joy of giving yourself over to another washed over him,
hardening his cock to the point that the bite of his zipper digging into his
erection brought its own twisted sense of pleasure, and with it the envy that
he was not the one on the receiving end of the whip.

“Good boy,” the Master cooed. “You’ve earned your reward.”

A woman from the crowd stepped up onto the stage. She knelt
at the slave’s feet and released her breasts from her corset. At the Master’s
command, the newcomer wrapped her hands around the slave’s cock and stroked him
from base to tip with firm strokes.

“Come on her tits,” the Master commanded.

The slave tossed his head back and screamed as white jets of
cum squirted on the full globes of his target.

Bale grabbed his own cock and squeezed so hard his eyes
watered and his vision went dim. He stumbled from the room, blind to all but
the shock wave of euphoria that rippled from the trio. Falling against the
wall, he bent in two and fought to regain his composure.

This wasn’t happening. He didn’t feel emotions of his own.
The experience was too raw, left him too vulnerable. This demand to be
dominated burning through his veins was absolutely deplorable and had to end.
Now.

“Hey, man. Are you okay?” a male voice asked.

Bale waited for the footsteps to grow closer before he
whirled around and pinned the man to the wall with his forearm across the
fragile windpipe. He pulled out a thin blade from his back pocket and dug the
tip into the man’s side.

“Where is Amaryllis?” he growled, ready for this shit
mission to be over.

The man’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t know.”

“Where. Is. She?”

“I don’t know.” The man gasped and dug his fingers into
Bale’s arm as he pressed deeper into his neck.

His powers sensed the truth, but that didn’t mean this human
didn’t know vital information. He twisted the blade, neatly slicing into soft
tissue. A sharp stab of agony traveled from the human to Bale, who soaked up
the pain-laced adrenaline like a much-needed jolt of reality. “What
do
you know?”

Sweat beaded on his brow and dripped into frightened blue
eyes. “She told me an enemy of her father’s may be after her and she was going
to lie low. She refused to tell me where she was going so that I couldn’t be
used against her.”

He grunted in reply. So the princess knew she was being
hunted. How? “Smart girl. Did she leave on her own?”

A pause. “Yes.”

Lie. “Who did she go with?”

“I don’t know.”

Bale lifted the blade. With his eyes locked on the human’s,
he licked at the blood coating the metal. The man chocked on a gurgling whimper
and trembled violently. “Do I need to repeat the question?”

“There was a man here the other night. Big. Dark. Like you.
She might have gone with him.”

Lucian? Could it be? Had his former mentor continued with
his duty of protecting royalty, even after being publicly denounced by their
king? The man had always been a self-righteous prat who never budged from the
rules. How thoughtful of his old friend to make Bale’s mission easier by
staying with his target.

Bale released his hold, but only by a little. He narrowed
his gaze and whispered, “If I were you, I would do all I could to contact
Amaryllis. Tell her that an admirer is looking for her, and if she wants to see
her dear friend again, she will meet me here, and bring her protector with her.
If she refuses, then I will slaughter every person under this roof. Starting
with you.”

He backed away, turning as his informant slid down the wall.
The trap was baited, all there was to do was wait.

Escape from this rotting hell-hole was his next priority.
These humans were like parasites, digging into the psyche to leach his blood
and lay eggs of depravity to fester in his mind.

Shouts of indignation rippled behind him as he stumbled
through the club, knocking into revelers and other heathens in his search for
the nearest exit. The blessed rain slapped him in the face as he burst out onto
the street, but the sting wasn’t nearly enough. So he ran, and ran, deeper into
the city where few dared to tread on their own, to where the stench of sex
turned into the stench of human decay and hopelessness.

His skin cooled, but his blood still thundered in his ears.
Above the mad rush in his head came the sound of a pleading cry and the
sensation of fire ants crawling over his skin. A presence of malice.

Around the corner Bale spotted a cluster of men. They
surrounded two others, one who lay on the ground and another who stood
defiantly. Such courage called to him like a beacon in the dark.

As Bale approached, he heard their conversation, and the
lust for flesh turned into the lust for blood. Now this he was familiar with.

“Stay away from my brother,” the defiant one shouted,
revealing her to be female, to Bale’s surprise. “He told you we don’t have any
money.”

“Too bad, bitch,” the ringleader replied. “His big mouth got
Tony busted, and now I’m out of a sale. He owes me. Kick him again,” he ordered
one of his men.

“No!” The girl jumped on top of her brother, shielding him
with her tiny body.

“If you don’t have my money, then I’m taking it out of his
ass, and yours too, baby.” The leader laughed, rubbing at his crotch with one
hand while grabbing the girl by the hair with the other.

“Enough,” Bale commanded. “Let her go.”

The entire group froze as his voice echoed down the alley.
The leader gave him a visual once-over. A sliver of terror widened his eyes as
he took in Bale’s size, but he quickly recovered and sneered, “Stay out of
this, old man. This ain’t none of your business.”

“I’m making it my business. Let her go.”

“Yeah?” the leader asked, all balls and bravado. He pulled
an object from his waistband and aimed it as Bale’s chest. From the shape it
reminded Bale of his blaster, probably functioned the same way too. “Well I say
it ain’t.”

That’s right. Give me a reason.
Bale drew a deep
breath, filling his lungs with the anticipation of battle. He withdrew his
short-sword from the scabbard strapped to his back, which for some reason sent
a ripple of amused laughter through the group of thugs.

“Nice sword, geek boy. Gonna try to go medieval on me, uh?
Are you faster than a speeding bullet?”

“Yes.”

Swoosh.
The soft slice of a quick blade was drowned
out by hysterical screaming as the leader dropped to his knees, clutching the
stump where his hand was once attached to his arm.

The girl shrieked, scrambling back like a crab while
dragging the semiconscious body of her brother with her across the asphalt.
“Don’t kill me. Please, don’t kill me.”

“Run,” Bale growled. “You’ve been traumatized enough without
having to witness what I’m about to do. Run!”

Once the girl and her brother were safely away, Bale turned
to bask in the chaos he set in motion. Without their commander, the felons
didn’t know which way to piss. A few withdrew their own guns and held them in
trembling grips while some were frozen in horrified shock. Another was a
quarter-mile down the road in the fastest sprint he probably ever ran in his
young life. But Bale was faster.