Know Thine Enemy (16 page)

Izzie flinched. He willed himself not to react.

"Hmm," Dr. Briggs mused. "Interesting proposition."

"
Not
my
fucking proposition." Ryker glanced up, another growl scratching at his throat. "What's the problem, doc? Never figured out how to pull up a dirty website?"

"
This is not about gratification."

He rolled his eyes.
"Of course not. Just have a girl stripped and bound and you're forcing me—"

"
No one is forcing you to do anything, Subject 061."

Ryker hazarded another glance to Izzie
's face. There he saw that same acceptance, hard-lined and gritty, and the pain in his chest magnified.

If she could do this, he could as well.

"I won't abandon you," he whispered, his resolve hardening. Any number of other vamps would gladly rip out the Pope's throat for the chance to caress her silky skin, especially on threat of death. He wouldn't desert her to those odds.

"
Very well, then," Dr. Briggs said, his tone bored. "Please stroke Subject Beta's sex. Prepare her as you would for intercourse."

Ryker snickered.
"As I would? Not the kinda guy who likes an audience, doc."

"
I suspect you'll manage just fine."

He sighed and nodded, his shoulders tensing.
"Right, then," he said, sliding a trembling hand up her thigh. Strange how he'd imagined touching her so often over the past few days only to see fantasy meet reality, but on terms no one could have anticipated.

"
Stay with me," he whispered, his hand disappearing beneath the t-shirt he'd spread across her in an ineffective attempt to preserve her modesty. "Just look at me, all right? Look."

Easy words to say. He wasn
't the one being explored. Instinct rivaled need, and every time he encountered an internal roadblock he pushed ahead without looking back. When his skin met the warmth of her pussy, his fingers didn't hesitate before roaming through her soft curls and dipping between her vaginal lips. Ryker willed himself not to react, even when the hard tremors wracking her body intensified. He wanted to calm her but didn't know how, and before he could explore his options, his thumb instinctively landed on her clit and a hard gasp sounded around her gag.

Oh God. Too much.

"Too much?" he asked softly, searching.

"
No," Dr. Briggs answered. "Very good. Continue whatever you're doing."

Fuck. He
'd nearly forgotten the bastard. Ryker's jaw hardened. "Right."

He
'd never been so aware of himself. Every move he made, every breath he released, every ripple that surged through his body. His moral compass didn't often decide to steer his actions, and over the years, it had grown a little lazy on the gray areas. Right now, however, every tiny voice of his psyche had banded together, bellowing a chorus of
this is wrong.
Ryker shoved those protestations aside, his gaze trained on Izzie. His thumb rubbed soft circles against her clit, his index finger tenderly stroking her vaginal opening.

After a few moments, he realized she was responding to him. Her moon-pale cheeks flushed with color, the tension in her legs relaxed. Realization seized him by the core, urging him to stop
—it felt wrong, too wrong—but he knew he couldn't.

The air thickened with her scent, a hot spicy tang that teased his tongue and stirred his cock to life. Ryker winced but he couldn
't prevent his response anymore than he could prevent hers. Some things were ingrained, learned by the body long before the mind got in the way. Reaction to stimuli was something no one could repress.

Her eyes became wider, her teeth clamping around the gag. She likely didn
't realize the needy jerks her hips made, or the small mewls that tickled the air. Ryker hated himself then—true, unabashed hatred for being too weak to refuse their captors or stifle the sudden ache in his groin. Izzie panted and he stroked, nudging her slippery pearl as his fingers dipped inside her. She was hot—Christ, she was hot. Hot, wet, and tighter than any haven his cock had ever known.

If they weren
't here, if they were a world away, he wondered, could he have touched her like this? Would she want him freely? His vivid imagination saw her straddling his waist, riding him, swallowing him into her slick pussy over and over again. Her breasts bouncing in his face, offered to his hungry mouth and loving hands. She'd feel so good, so warm, so completely his in a way no woman ever had.

The images came faster, setting his teeth on edge. His fingers pumped deeper into her cunt. Her cries, hampered as they were by the gag, became louder,
and her twists against her bonds more violent. Ryker growled, not caring now, massaging her clit with learned tenderness, and she couldn't help it. No, she couldn't help it anymore than he could.

Her pussy clenched around him and she came hard.

A trembling sigh fought Ryker's lips. She was so beautiful . . . and so far away. He had his fingers inside her, yet they were miles apart.

I
'm sorry.

"
Very good," Briggs said over the intercom. "That will be all for today."

* * * * *

The second his cell door shut behind him, Ryker tore down his sweats, took his cock into his right hand, and began pumping.

I
'm one sick fuck.

God, he couldn
't help it. Her scent, her sounds, the liquid heat on his fingers, her soft cry as she spasmed around him . . . no, he couldn't help it. Whatever control he had pretended to have disappeared. The knowledge she deserved better from him did little to slow him down. She was perfection in a thousand ways, resolute, courageous, and she hadn't shut her eyes. No, the entire time he explored her body, invited or not, her gaze had been on him.

His hand was a poor substitute for what his body craved.

Izzie. My Izzie.

It didn
't last long. It couldn't. He was too tightly wound, too desperate for touch. White ropes of semen hit his stomach, cold and hollow, and the vat of self-loathing he'd created for himself grew larger.

A normal man wouldn
't jack off to what he'd just seen, what he'd been forced to do. And though he'd never been normal, he'd always thought himself better than this.

A dull buzz filled the air. Ryker looked up. At some point, he
'd crashed against the floor, his back to the wall, his cock still in his hand. The pain in his gut exploded.

"
Very interesting," Dr. Briggs said over the intercom. "Thank you. These observations will be most helpful."

From where the voice originated he didn
't know. Hell, Ryker hadn't even known his room was being visually monitored, though now it seemed foolish to think otherwise. Of course they watched him. Every move he made was being catalogued . . . every sound he created, every expression he entertained.

And he
'd played every role they set out for him. Every goddamn one.

Chapter Nine

She had no idea how much time had passed. It felt like hours but that couldn't be right. Her legs still trembled from the orgasm Ryker had given her, and the place where her wrists had been bound felt tender to the touch. Izzie was made of stronger stuff than most girls her age and size. Her threshold for pain had not yet been reached, though the night was young and the bastards who had her chained up had made it clear this was just the beginning.

Izzie shuddered. After the doctor, that Briggs guy, escorted Ryker out, he had returned to unfasten her bindings. Briggs was smart enough not to come in unsupervised
. Had it not been for the fact that his companion wielded a .45, Izzie might have been tempted to knee him in the groin and make a break for it.

Tempted, but she wouldn
't have acted. She didn't want to risk getting into even deeper shit by causing a scene. In any case, she'd seen this movie before—the woman screams, curses, and kicks, and, eventually, the superhero would swoop in and save the day. Only there was no superhero here. No white knight to rescue her from a fate worse than death. Wright was long gone, and, even were that not the case, she had no way to let him know she was in trouble, and then no guarantee he would give a damn.

She had only herself to rely upon, and
, despite the bleak nature of the situation, she knew escape was possible. Izzie hadn't survived Harrison, the streets, and her own death wish just to fall on her face when the stakes were raised.

And she had Ryker.

Ryker.

She shivered and clutched the vampire
's torn T-shirt closer to her chest. If nothing else, she'd never forget the look on his face—the haunting despair in his eyes that spoke volumes for everything he could not say. How long ago had they stood in the alleyway? How far was she from St. Louis? She remembered going to The Wall and speaking with Connor, getting a general idea of where to search for the vampire so she might deliver her message. She remembered finding him in the place they first met, concern etched in the expressive contours of his face. She remembered talking with him, though about what she couldn't say.

And then . . . nothing. Nothing but the haze of black and the sensation of falling
—nothing she could see or experience. She'd lost time somewhere between locating Ryker and finding herself in this dreary unreality from which she had yet to awake.

Everything was confused. Though she
'd dismissed the thought as soon as it originated, she'd first considered the possibility Ryker might have led her into a trap. He was, after all, the last thing she recalled before the lights went out. And while she could easily blame her predicament on a vampire she barely knew, somehow she'd understood he had nothing to do with it. This wasn't his style.

No, Ryker was much more of a lurk-in-the-shadows and frequent-dive-bars kind of guy. Government operations and conspiracies seemed a little out of his league. Then she
'd thought of Prentiss, his vampire floozies, and the veiled threats lain at her feet upon her refusal to do any grunt work where Ryker was concerned. It couldn't be a coincidence that her memory didn't extend beyond finding and warning Ryker about C.R.O.S.S. and the plot involving his death.

And now this.

Izzie expelled a deep breath, her stomach rumbling. She hadn't eaten in at least twenty-four hours, and even then she hadn't done more than pick at the food Connor had provided. Between Ryker at The Wall and Prentiss drugging and kidnapping her, there hadn't been opportunity to wolf anything down.

Then there was the argument with Wright and the need to find her vampire.

Her vampire.

Well, she reasoned, if Ryker
hadn't been her vampire before, he certainly was now. Again she thought of the look on his face as he approached the table, and his visible objection to doing anything that wasn't invited. His hands had trembled as they caressed her skin, his eyes searching hers for permission before trespassing. She had never seen that look before in anyone—not the strangers she encountered, not Wright, and certainly not Harrison. It said what little else could.

I
'm sorry.

I don
't want this.

Please forgive me.

Tell me to stop.

Stopping wasn
't an option. Izzie couldn't chance it. Ryker touched her with tenderness and care, and she trusted Briggs would make good on his threat to tear away the only familiar face and replace him with someone who gave less than two shits about her welfare. She couldn't lose her vampire. She needed him.

And not just out of self-preservation.

The difference between what was real and what wasn't was difficult to discern right now. In the course of a few hours she'd grown decades older, giving her time to mull over the actions she'd taken and consider what tomorrow might bring. And no matter how many times she went over it, Izzie knew leaving Zack Wright had been the right thing. Wright's vendetta was based on a crime for which the entire species couldn't take blame.

Izzie wished his pain on no one, but the vampire psychopath responsible for Amber Wright
's death was hardly the first and only psychopath who'd destroyed lives. Harrison Bennett had been as a real and human as anyone else in the world. Yet if his madness did not make all humans mad, neither did the phantom that had ripped away Wright's link to humanity make all vampires evil.

Any lingering doubt to her convictions had washed away the second Ryker stepped inside this room.
When his gaze landed on hers, the mask of the man she'd met—all arrogance and self-assuredness—had been exchanged for horror, anxiety, and unrestrained concern. As though he ached every time she flinched. As though her breaths and moans and strains against her bonds echoed within him.

She
'd never felt so connected with anyone as she did in those minutes together. Reading his eyes, granting permission, and seeking comfort—no matter how forced—in the tenderness of his touch.