Again, silence.
Regan shifted on the table, her skin prickling.She felt odd.Like she was standing too close to an immense electrical charge.A biting metallic taste coated her tongue, sharp and bitter.Her nipples pinched into harder, puckered tips, pushing at the sheet draped over her.Squirming twists of heat unfurled low in the pit of her stomach and she dragged in a hitching breath, pulse pounding in her throat.“Please…” She gave the woman beside her a beseeching stare, hating herself for it.“Please, what did you inject into me?”
The cloth continued to pat at her shoulder, cool and damp, and ripples of delicious chills ran across Regan’s skin.Blue eyes studied her, and once more, even as her body reacted, Regan couldn’t miss the apprehension in their clear, direct depths.The woman was troubled about something.“The wound will heal,” she said softly.“Despite the amount of blood, the bullet was shallow.I removed it in the van.”She lifted the cloth from Regan’s shoulder and touched the flesh there with gentle fingers.
Ribbons of delicate pleasure spiraled out from the contact.Made Regan’s breasts swell with a base response.
“It seems to have an aphrodisiac affect, doesn’t it, Yolanda.”
Icy alarm rolled through Regan as a gravelly male voice filled the room.She turned her head, staring at the short man with the gleaming scalp and amber eyes crossing the floor toward her.“You’re a dreadful host, Epoc,” she stated with a sarcastic reproaching tone, trying to ignore the sinful sensations licking up her limbs from the cold, hard manacles.“I’ve been here for ages and no one’s offered me a drink.”
His shining golden gaze bored into her, making her flesh crawl.“Regan Thomas, animal-rights activist and all-round annoying female.You’ve made this day quite entertaining.”A wide smile stretched his mouth and his stare grew malevolent.“Hasn’t she, McCoy.”
Regan’s heart froze.Oh, no.
She twisted her head, trying to see the man Epoc spoke to.Overwhelming dread and hate crashed into her.She didnotwant to be trapped on her back.She couldn’t be trapped on her back.Not with that bastard walking toward her.Her blood roared through her veins and she tugged at the restraints on her wrists.Exquisite ribbons of slicing pain shot up her arms, made her nipples pinch harder again.The sheet slithered across her body, and Regan’s flesh—fuelled by whatever Yolanda had pumped into her—responded, rippling into tiny bumps of delicious pleasure.Shame and rage consumed her.“Come near me, McCoy and I’ll rip your balls off, you bastard!”she snarled, twisting her head from side to side, trying to find him.If he touched her now, with the shit in her veins perverting her system…
Epoc smirked.“I don’t think she’s that happy to see you, McCoy.”He pressed his hand to Regan’s shoulder, forcing her shoulder blade to the metal table and her pussy constricted at the chill of the surface on her hot flesh.“Do not worry yourself, Ms.Thomas.McCoy will not touch you unless I say he can.”He drew small circles on her skin with the tip of a finger, sending shards of sinful sensations down into her breasts.Amber eyes locked on hers.“Believe me, he has been reprimanded for his inappropriate behavior at the farm.”
“And I should believe you because?”
“Because I am the Alpha of this clan.And as such, my word is law.Yolanda can vouch for that.She was meant to bring your brother in at sunset for…Ah, ‘questioning’ but failed to do so.”He lifted his head and studied the blonde standing beside the table.“She was punished for failing to follow my orders.”
Regan watched Yolanda’s high cheeks fill with pink heat before the woman dropped her stare from Epoc to the floor.
“But never mind,” he continued, returning his attention to Regan.“It is of no consequence.Fortunately for her she delivered you instead.A much more valuable subject.”His hand lifted slightly from her shoulder and smoothed along the line of her collarbone, her body thrumming with a charged electrical current at the contact.“Such lovely bone structure,” he murmured, his stare following the path of his tracing fingers.“So delicate.Fragile.”He flicked his gaze back to her face.“Surely theOnchúpiece of filth told you how order is kept in our kind?The Alpha has the right to anything in the clan.”He dropped his head lower to hers, his lips almost touching her cheekbone as he stared into her eyes.“Whatever I want is mine.”
Pussy clenching, stomach churning, Regan spat at him.
A shocked gasp cut the air and from the corner of her eye, Regan saw Yolanda take a step back, looking more uncomfortable than before.Epoc however, only chuckled, slowly lifting his hand to wipe the spittle from his face.“Now, now, Ms.Thomas,” he smirked, straightening at the hip.“I thought you were an intelligent, articulate woman?”He stared at her for a moment, before—abruptly—cold anger twisted his expression and he grabbed a fistful of the sheet covering her body and yanked it away.
“You stink of O’Connell, Ms.Thomas,” he snarled, drying his hand on the bunched strip of material.“His mark lingers on your flesh like a stain.”Dropping the sheet, he razed her naked limbs with a golden-yellow stare, teeth glinting in the light as he sneered his appreciation.“I must admit though, now I see you stripped, I understand the Irishconriocht’sattraction.For a human you are quite—” He placed a pointed finger on Regan’s chest and ran it slowly down to her navel in a lazy line, “—delectable.”
Regan jerked away from his touch, the table refusing to let her move far.Shivers of traitorous response trickled through her body, radiating from the still-felt contact of Epoc finger, and she choked back a sob of disgust.“The Lord help you, Epoc,” she growled.“If you’re ever stupid enough to let me off this table…”
Epoc laughed, removing his hand and looking to his right.“Remember how O’Connell reacted when he smelt you on his precious sister, McCoy?How he lost control?”
“Yes, Epoc.”
McCoy’s voice reverberated above Regan’s head and she forced it back as far as she could.Nothing.Her mouth went dry.Wherever he was, he was still too far away for her to see.
Epoc returned his hand to Regan’s stomach, his fingertips brushing over the soft edge of her pubic hairline.“I wonder how he will react when he smellsmeonthisbitch?”
Regan’s stomach lurched.“Get your fucking hand off me!”She bucked her hips, panic biting into her anger, desperate to be free of the restraints and Epoc’s vile touch.
Savage amber eyes fixed on her.“No.”He rammed his hand down hard, flattening her ass to the table, plunging his fingers between her spread thighs.“Do you know what my mating with you will do to O’Connell, Ms.Thomas?It will destroy him.After he’s finished tearing your brother limb from limb he will come to save you, the noble bastard he is.When he comes for you—and he will come for you—he will smell my mark on your flesh.”
Epoc’s eyes flickered and he laughed lowly.“He will smell my seed as it dribbles from your cunt and he will lose control.He will become more than a wolf.He will become a creature of myth.A creature of incomparable strength.A creature more powerful than any in existence.”He dropped his head to hers, his eyes slitted.“And when that happens, when that last little link to his humanity is destroyed, I will immobilize him and cage him and drain every last drop of hiscroífrom his body and make it my own.”He pressed his lips to her ear, his breath hot and wet on her skin.“The last of theOnchúdevoured.Rendered an empty shell.By me.”
The mansion loomed before them, huge and imposing.
Rubbing at his wrist where the manacle from the hobby farm had been, Declan stared up at it, counting the number of windows blazing with light and the number shrouded in darkness.He studied the immediate area.Night claimed most of it, the low mottled glow of expensive garden lighting the only relief from its concealing blackness.The breeze cooling his skin only moments earlier now pushed against him, aggressive and insistent.A bad omen.Declan scowled.If he were a superstitious man, he’d be worried.
“Best entry point?”Peter whispered beside him, drawing his mind from the changing weather.
Declan frowned.“South.Under those low branches of the fig tree growing on the fence line.”
Peter nodded, and even in the darkness Declan saw his face tense and his grip tighten on his gun.
