Hunger's Mate (28 page)

“Don't you get smart with me,” he warned and Jewel closed her eyes, trying desperately to keep her voice steady.

“I wasn't getting smart. I just wanted to say that this is a great house,” she told him even though her cheekbone—the one smashed up against the wall—was hurting and her lips were smushed so the words came out awkwardly.

“I don't need your compliments. I know what I'm doing,” he told her, his breath hot and moist in her ear.

“Right. I know you are, Larry.” The lie was hard, however, the fear that lived inside her each day was real. If she didn't do what he said, if she didn't do whatever it took to keep her in Larry's good graces, her father would die. There was no way some office job was going to pay her enough money, in enough time to save her father's life. And if she went back to another strip club Larry would no doubt find her. He'd told her that more times than she could count.

“You know I'm what?” he asked, this time pressing his thick erection into the seam of her ass persistently.

She knew what he wanted to hear, she'd said it so many times before, to no avail. Agreeing with Larry didn't lessen the ordeal, but disagreeing with him magnified it. Some days she thought she was in a no-win situation. Then she would talk to her father on the phone, or on one of the days she would be allowed out of the house, albeit not alone, she'd see her father's face light up as he heard her voice and everything inside her melted. Everything she endured seemed worth it.

Taking a deep breath she said, “You're very smart, Larry. The smartest man I know.”

“Liar!” he quickly replied, thrusting his hand with even more speed down the back of her pants where he squeezed her ass cheek until tears beaded in her eyes.

“You're a lying, dirty whore! I don't know why I let you stay in my house!” he yelled into her ear, his fingers not lessening in their grip. “I was going to let you stay here, you and your dying old man, but now you've gone and fucked up that plan!”

“No,” she said, gasping at the pain yet trying to keep her focus. “Please, this house is gorgeous. You were so smart to buy it and I'm so grateful to you for giving it to us.”

“I'm not giving you anything, slut!” he roared, his hand slipping from her buttock, into the crease of her ass.

She'd breathed a quick sigh of relief even though her skin throbbed from the assault. Before she could wrap her mind around the mild respite, he'd pushed his fingers into her, three at a time. Jewel bit her tongue to keep from yelling out.

“Nothing but what your lying, cheating ass deserves!” he continued to yell. “I give you everything and you continue to lie and to steal from me. You don't appreciate a damned thing!”

He was always accusing her of something. Lying about where she went, when she didn't go anywhere because he always had people watching her—that sleazy, skinny Pierson fellow and most recently some blue-eyed female that always smelled of alcohol. Larry also thought she was stealing from him—what, she had no idea, and he never said. But he'd come into the room at night accusing her of being a backstabber, of treason, of all things. She would have chalked that up to him being drunk or high, but Larry never drank and despised drugs of any kind. Except the gray powdery substance she'd seen in a container that he'd kept in the basement of the house. It had been marked with some sort of symbol and she'd seen him and Pierson dabbing their pinky fingers into the powder, then putting it to their tongues to taste.

“Larry, you're wrong,” she'd said through the deep breaths she forced herself to take.

“No, I'm not! You're a bitch! So I'm going to treat you like a bitch!”

In the next instant he'd pushed her pants down to her ankles and rammed his hard cock into her from behind. She'd cried, knowing he couldn't see her tears as her face was still smashed into the wall as he pounded hard and fast into her. She hated this position, hated the man behind her, wielding all the power over her.

Jewel screamed as she lost control of the steering wheel, the unreliable sedan swerving onto the shoulder of the road before she realized her recollections had taken her attention from driving.

But before the sound could escape, the front windshield cracked with the heavy weight of something … or some
thing,
she thought as she blinked, staring out the window seconds before it caved in, glass showering her. She lifted her arms to shield her face and felt the cold slimy hand of that beast wrapping around the back of her neck. In the next instant she was being pulled from the car, the seat belts tightening around her waist and chest for a couple of very painful seconds before they too gave under the strength of this foul-smelling creature.

She closed her eyes and kept them that way because she didn't need to look to know what it was. She remembered it from when she was in that cell. What she hadn't recalled was this awful stench and eventually, it had her opening her eyes to see exactly what was going on.

It was still bigger than she was and probably most of the men she knew. As it set her feet on the ground she got a good look at the clothes it was wearing—military fatigues and boots. But she knew this was no soldier. The thick, clear white liquid oozing from its ears and eyes like tears was proof of that. The fact that it didn't speak, but sort of moved its head around like she should know what that meant was another indication. She didn't and she wasn't sticking around to find out.

Jewel turned immediately, attempting to break into a run but it grabbed her by the waist, pulling her back. This time she didn't go willingly. She kicked and screamed and kicked some more. It was all to no avail as the beast started to shake her until she thought she could hear everything in her head rattling around.

“Release her!” she heard a familiar voice yell.

The beast stopped immediately but still held her up off the ground.

“Put her down,” the voice, which she now knew for certain was Larry's, instructed.

She was dropped at that point, her body slamming onto the heated concrete. Luckily she'd only been about two feet off the ground so she doubted there would be any broken bones, but her head hurt like a sonofabitch. She was just trying to get up, her knees still on the ground as were the palms of her hands, breathing in and out. And then Larry was there. She saw his booted feet first, watched them as they moved around her. Everything inside her screamed for her to get up, to move aside, roll across the ground, something, anything before he did what she knew he would do. She was too slow.

The ball of his foot touched the small of her back and she went down once more beneath his weight.

“You have got to be the stupidest whore I've ever met,” he told her as he leaned down closer so she was sure to hear his next words. “Welcome home, baby. I'm gonna love teaching you a lesson.”

*   *   *

To anyone outside their world this would all seem strange. How could a man, that was also half shifter, be infected by a shaman's smoke? How could his DNA or body chemistry be any more fucked up than nature had already made it? Yet, he was living proof, along with his twin. They'd both gone into that jungle with the intent of coming out stronger, more powerful shifters, and in a sense they had. The damiana smoke they'd inhaled had enhanced their strength, heightened their senses, and at the same time, fed on some inherent anger that Ezra had deep inside.

Ezra was no rocket scientist, but it hadn't been all that hard to figure out that his senses and strength had been heightened ever since he'd returned from the Sierra Leone. But the other, the dark that tended to weigh down on him like a mountaintop, had first appeared the night Acacia died. The next time it reared its ugly head was when he'd overheard Rome, Nick, and X talking about the trouble at the Comastaz Labs. He'd known immediately that he would go to Sedona, he would look into what was going on in that lab, and he would bring a measure of peace to his kind. Only then he hadn't realized that the darkness had resurfaced because it heard her calling to him.

As he sat behind the wheel of the SUV driving toward the address in Grand Canyon Village, he thought of how powerful that darkness within him had been. It had rippled through his blood, pumping into his heart and mind with such forcefulness nothing else existed but the need to stop the pain, the anger, and to kill Acacia where she stood.

His heart thumped with that thought, his mind zeroing in on the one main difference in this situation. The last thing in this world Ezra wanted to do was hurt Jewel.

Especially not after he'd realized she'd already been hurt. That brought his cat to the surface, teeth and claws bared, ready to protect her at all costs. The cat had always known she was its mate. It was Ezra who had tried to deny and then ultimately ignore that fact.

Well, not anymore.

He turned off the exit ramp, the vehicle going so fast it skidded on the left-side tires. There was no doubt he was speeding and he could not care less. All parts of him were at play now, all working in accord, finally.

Ezra almost choked the minute the air was drawn into his lungs. The stench was foul and familiar and angered him to the point that every nuance of his body vibrated. Heat pooled at his groin as the instant erection rose. His skin tingled with the beginnings of the shift, and his human eyes blinked rapidly as he looked from side to side for any sign of ADAM.

That monstrosity was near. Ezra scented it without a doubt. And if ADAM were near, that meant so was Crowe, and hence Jewel. Crowe and his cohorts at Comastaz had created ADAM, what they most likely thought was a duplicate of a Shadow Shifter. The question of how they knew about the shifters had been one that Bas wanted to figure out. For the moment, Ezra didn't care. All he knew was that Jewel was with them and that was not good.

There was definitely loads of darkness in this ADAM creature, so much of it that its scent practically reached out to Ezra, believing it a kindred spirit. The anger that spurned both the shifter and the hybrid was palpable, still, Ezra was nothing like that abomination and he was ready to prove it just as he was ready to kill to save his mate.

The closer his GPS drew him to the address that had been programmed into it, the thicker the stench grew. Ezra's eyes had long since shifted to those of his cat, he'd glimpsed them as he'd looked into the rearview mirror and didn't give a damn. Exposure was the least of his worries at this point. Saving his mate's life was the priority.

There was another turn around a winding bend and when he'd cleared it, the stench was so strong, his heart pounding so loud in his chest, that Ezra jumped out of the SUV and ran up the dirt driveway until he was at the front door. And that's when he heard it.

Jewel's scream.

To hell with knocking and waiting to be invited in, Ezra jumped down from the steps staring at the sturdy frame of the house. Inside his cat roared just as the darkness reached out for its kin and he broke into a run, stretching the length of his body the way his cat would have and crashed through the front window.

*   *   *

He was cold, Jewel thought the moment Larry had opened the door to a room and she'd seen her father sitting on the edge of the twin-sized bed. He was wearing his good dress pants, the brown ones with the brown suspenders that matched. He called them his church pants even though it had been years since he stepped foot into a holy building. His butter-colored dress shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves slightly too short for his gangly arms.

She ran to him immediately, ignoring the evil glare she suspected Larry had fastened on her at the moment. She didn't give a damn what he thought, or what he wanted, for that matter. All she cared about was getting her father to safety.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said, wrapping her arms around him.

She had to be careful to keep her voice as calm as possible and not to hug him so tight his frail bones might break.

“There's my sunshine,” Thurgood said, wrapping his arms around his only child. When his lips were close to her ear he continued, his voice low, “I don't care what he says, don't give him what he wants. Let that bastard rot in hell first.”

His words startled her and she stiffened in his embrace, then she fixed a smile on her face as she pulled away. “Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?” she asked, hurriedly looking around the room for one.

Only there was none to be found. There was a fitted sheet on the bed but that was all. At the window were room-darkening blinds that had been drawn tight. In the doorway, Larry stood with arms folded over his chest, leaning against the jamb.

“He needs a blanket,” she told him.

Larry shook his head. “He needs his daughter to get her act together. You ready to do that?”

“No, she's not ready for anything you want from her!” her father yelled, coming up off the bed in a wobbly stance.

Jewel was back at his side instantly, her arms going around his waist as she helped him back down on the bed. “I'll take care of this, Daddy. Don't worry, everything's going to be just fine.”

“Making promises again?” Larry asked.

When she looked up at him, one bushy graying eyebrow was raised in question. She'd never considered him a handsome man. While his body was very well built, she despised the way he used that strength, the intimidation that laced every word he ever spoke. If she were a rude and ill-mannered person, she would spit on him where he stood. But her father had raised her better, so instead she simply squared her shoulders and stared at him.

“I'd be interested to see how you plan to take care of everything this time,” Larry continued, too blinded by his ego and that damned military training he thought made him some type of god, to realize she was no longer afraid of him.

“Let's go into the other room and
talk,
Larry,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I'll be right back, Daddy.”