Alrick spun me suddenly, turning me around and gently placing my hands on the wall in front of me for support before he dropped down to his knees, leaving him at face level with my butt.
“What..” I gasped, startled.
Alrick ignored me, tracing his index finger lightly over my hip.
“Right here,” he said, his angry tone at odds with the gentleness of his touch. “You were hit by a dart of some sort.” Another touch ghosted over my skin and I started. Had Alrick really just kissed my bare skin? Before I figured out how to respond, he’d moved on, rising to his feet and stepped away, twisting his torso to see his own backside, the action dragging his erection across my body before breaking contact.
I swallowed a moan and tried to fight my body’s reaction to being in such intimate contact with the virile Alpha.
“A matching set,” he said, anger turning to self-disgust in his voice. “I let them take me down like some half-wit pet dog.”
“N..not really,” I forced myself to respond. “Th..they must have be..been well hidden. I never heard or s..saw anything.”
Alrick nodded once, sharply, but the frown stayed in place. “Still, you’re not a..”
He stopped himself, and I raised a brow in spite of myself.
“Not a..a.what? An A..alpha?” I managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes, but barely.
Alrickcolored slightly, the flush climbing up to darken his cheeks, and I forgot that I was annoyed.
“No, Sebastian. I was going to say that you’re not a trained soldierand then I realized how egotistical that sounded.”Alrick met my eyes and gave a small, apologetic smile. “There’s nothing wrong with not being an Alpha.”
My anger dissipated as quickly as it had mounted and I sighed, suddenly realizing that, for the first time since we had met, I wasn’t uncomfortable being in a room with him. Which, if I was to dwell on it, really didn’t make sense since he was naked and, even though it was a reaction to the drugs and not to me, definitely aroused.
“Wh..what do we do now?” I asked, looking around our prison for the first time. The small room was nearly bare. A single cot covered by a rough brown blanket occupied one corner. An odd five-gallon sized bucket sat opposite it.
“First, we rest for a few minutes to rebuild our strength and let more of this poison wear off,” Alrick said firmly, taking my hand and leading me over to sit on the cot. “Then, we find a way out of here.” He grimaced. “Whereverhereis.”
I started laughing. Just a little snicker at first but soon it had morphed into a full-fledged chortle.
“What could you possibly be laughing at?”
“Sorry,” I managed to get out, “but believe it or not this isn’t my first kidnapping.”
Chapter Six
Alrick
My first realization when I came to on the floor of the small room was that I wasn’t alone. The small body that was lying back to back with me whimpered when I said his name, and a feeling of relief washed over me. While there was no doubt that I had failed in my assignment to protect Sebastian, he was still aliveand we hadn’t been separated. The second realization was that whoever our assailants had been, they were amateurs. No professional kidnapper would bind their victim’s hands and feet in front of them. Another wave of relief.
It only took a few minutes for me to recover sufficiently to shift enough to allow my claws to poke through. Another couple of minutes to work my bound hands into a position where I could catch the fibrous rope and then it fell to the ground.
Turning to where Sebastian lay shuddering on the cold floor, I slashed through his bindings a little too enthusiastically, the tip of my claw catching his soft flesh and scratching it. I helped him up, holding him against my body to keep him on his feet, and concerned about the level of drugs still in his system, tried to scent him as unobtrusively as possible.
It was nearly normal, sweet and spicy, with only a slight chemical tinge to suggest that his body was still trying to filter the drugs. I caught myself as I leaned down to draw in a larger sample, forcing back the part of me that would rather simply latch onto his flesh, claiming the sweet Omega and leaving my brand on his neck for everyone to see.
Instead, I forced my attention back to the problem at hand and, remembering the way that he had fallen on the path in front of me, I spun Sebastian around and dropped to my knees, grinning as I startled a squeak out of him. Sure enough, there on his hip was a small bruise about the size of a pencil eraser surrounding a tiny puncture, probably from a hypodermic dart. I gently slid my fingers over the area, feeling for abnormalities beneath the skin but not finding any. Whoever had removed the projectile had gotten it out intact, minimizing the risk of infection. Bonus. Before I stood to check myself for injuries, I surrendered to the desire to brush one tiny kiss over the injured area, lying to myself that he wouldn’t feel it.
I sat Sebastian on the rickety cot in the corner of our large cell, encouraging him to tell me the story of the first time he’d been kidnapped as I turned to investigate our surroundings. Beyond the cot and portable bucket toilet, the space was empty.
“So, by the time I woke up, I didn’t even have a toothbrush!” Sebastian finished the story of how his bag of belongings had been lost in the first attack. “It wouldn’t have bothered me as much if my books hadn’t been in it.”
“Books?” I picked up on the carefully hidden sadness in his voice. “What books?”
“Oh, I had a few,” Sebastian said with a shrug. “The one I was the saddest to lose was White Fang.” He laughed a little. “I know, stupid.”
I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. “Not sure why you’d say that. It’s a great story.”
