Bound By The Night: Dark Heat / Dark Dreams / Dark Fantasy

He was silent for a moment, thinking. “You really believe all this stuff about things that go bump in the night.”

“I believe in things that go bump in the sunlight, too.”

He glanced at her to see if she was making a sexy innuendo, but all she gave him was that same blank, assessing look that was starting to make him crazy enough to want to do something to wipe it off her face. He frowned and scooped up another of the chocolate mini doughnuts from the box he’d put out. They were fat coated in fat with another layer of fat on them, but he needed the calories, or else he was definitely going to give Ms. Blackship a surprise she was not going to like.

Her gaze followed the movement of his hand to the box, then to his mouth. Heat filtered through him at the way her eyes lit up, just the barest hint, and the way the tip of her tongue crept out to dimple her top lip.

She caught him looking. “You don’t believe in any of this stuff. I know.”

Jordan shook his head. “I work with real animals. Real things. You’re asking me to believe that some kind of monster is coming out of the bayou and slaughtering them? I’d be more likely to believe some kind of poachers—”

“Except poachers would take the animals alive. If they were going to steal and resell the animals, they’d want them alive. Even if they only wanted the pelts,” she added, “they wouldn’t slaughter them on-site.”

“No,” he admitted grudgingly. “I’ve been thinking about it, and you’re right.”

She leaned forward a little. “DiNero believes it. That’s why he called the Crew.”

“Then I guess that’s all it matters, huh?” He leaned back.

Monica smiled a little. “Yeah. I guess it does.”

They sat in silence for a minute or so that should’ve been awkward but was only quiet. It had been a long time since he’d sat with a woman this way, without idle chatter and inane small talk, stupid words to cover up the fact both of them were thinking only of how to get in each other’s pants with the least amount of effort. He couldn’t stop thinking about her flavor.

“Look,” Monica said abruptly. “About last night.”

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No. We do. I don’t want you to think—”

“I don’t think anything,” Jordan interrupted. “We’re both adults. It happened.”

Monica shook her head. “But you didn’t like it.”

“I didn’t—” Jordan cut himself off. “What the hell?”

She laughed gently, tipping her face up. “I mean you didn’t like that it happened. Not that you didn’t like...it.”

Jordan scowled. “It was unexpected. That’s all.”

“It won’t happen again.”

That did not actually make him feel any better. If anything, the thought that he would never again be inside her tightened a knot in his lower gut. He didn’t have words for her, though, just a low grunt.

“I am sorry,” Monica said. “You were there, and I needed someone.”

Jordan gave her a long, steady look. “Gee, way to make a fella feel special.”

Monica ducked her head, looking embarrassed for a second, before popping up with the first genuine, full-fledged grin he’d seen on her. It lit her entire face. She was pretty, but that smile, that fucking smile... She was beautiful.

He kissed her.

He could have stopped himself. Years of therapy, of learning self-control, of discipline, of fighting the hunger—he could’ve done anything but kiss her. She was in his arms the second after that. She opened for him immediately. Her arms went around his neck, her fingers threading through his hair.

He picked her up as easily as he would a bag of feathers. She moaned softly into his mouth. The hum of it sent an arc of electric desire straight to his already rock-hard cock. He settled her on the table and pushed himself between her legs. She moaned again when he pressed his erection against her. She wore a flowing pair of thin batik-printed pants that provided little barrier, but his denim jeans were majorly cock-blocking him.

In seconds, without breaking away from her mouth, he’d yanked open his fly and pressed himself against her again. For a moment, they were at an impasse, but then Monica lifted herself up, fiddled with something at her hip and released a tie he hadn’t noticed before. The pants opened somehow in that magic way of women’s clothing he’d never understand. She wasn’t naked beneath, but a good tug tore her panties away. She cried out, a sharp sound that mimicked pain—except Jordan knew the sound of pain.

He was inside her in the time it took to breathe once, twice. She cried out again, and this time, there was a tinge of true pain in the sound. He wanted to slam deep inside her but eased out, only to have her grab him by the hips and pull him back.

“Look at me,” she demanded in a low, urgent voice.

He did and lost himself in her gaze. She took his hand and slid it between them to get his thumb against her clit. She was slick, and his thumb slid easily against her. She bucked and gripped his hips again. Her back arched. Her mouth opened.

“Fuck me,” she whispered. Then louder. “Please, fuck me.”

The table creaked as they rocked. The hunger built inside him, and the only way to slake it was to take her. Her mouth. The heat between her legs.

“Mine,” Jordan heard himself say but as though from far away.

He felt it when she came, her body clutching his and forcing him over the edge into an orgasm so powerful that he saw gold stars flickering around the edges of his vision. He captured her mouth once more, the kiss at first fierce in the last few ripples of his climax, then softening.

In the silence that followed, he heard her breathing shift. He looked into her eyes again, not sure what he expected to see there. Or what he wanted to see.

Monica curled her fingers in the front of his shirt and pulled him to her to brush his lips with hers. “Jordan.”

That was all she said. One word, his name, a wealth of meaning in the two syllables, if only he could figure out what it was. Or if he wanted to.

They disengaged. She tidied herself, and he did the same. Neither speaking. She didn’t need to ask him where the powder room was, since the layout of their bungalows was the same. By the time she came out, he’d changed into his running clothes.

“Oh,” she said.

“I need to go for a run.”

“Jordan...”

“What?” he asked roughly.

“What just happened?”

“You ought to know,” he told her. “You were there.”

“That’s not what I mean, and I’m sure you know it.”

“What can I say?” he said with a shrug. “I needed someone. You were there.”

Chapter 9

Bastard, Monica thought, even though she knew she’d deserved it. Why did she seem to pick only the men who got bent out of shape about what could be pure and simple passion if only they’d let it? She was still bruised and tingling from the ravishment Jordan had so delightfully provided on his dining room table only an hour or so before, but though her body was sated, her mind was anything but. She’d tried to sleep but couldn’t, and for once, not because she was afraid of the nightmares.

She’d been watching from the window to catch a glimpse of him coming back, but so far, nothing. Instead, she sat on her uncomfortable couch and made more lists. She’d signed in to the Crew database again to compare what she’d been able to find out with what others had logged in their experiences. So far, not much was making sense. Then again, not much ever did.

Dark had fallen, and with her window cracked, she could hear the familiar far-off noises of the animals in their habitats and night-active insects. Low-grade anxiety plagued her. A crackle of tension, as though there was an oncoming storm. Or maybe it was simply that she’d been here two days already and hadn’t figured out what she was looking for.

Or she was fooling herself, she admitted reluctantly, and her need to pace was directly related to the man who still hadn’t come back from his run.

Jordan Leone was trouble. Bad news. Which was probably why she wanted him again, Monica thought with a sigh and a smile so twisted it almost hurt. She rubbed at her face and tried to shake off the lingering feeling of his touch, but all she could think about was the way his mouth tasted.

She wasn’t going to accomplish anything this way. No amount of note taking or database studying could help her if she didn’t get out there in the field and do her own research. DiNero had hired her for a job, and she meant to do it—because the sooner she found out what had been killing his animals, the sooner she could get out of here and away from Jordan.

She put on a pair of thick khaki work pants with a lot of pockets and her heavy waterproof hiking boots, laced tight over thick socks. Her knife went on her belt, along with several others in different utility pouches. She tucked a notepad and pen sealed inside a plastic waterproof pouch into a pocket. She added a flashlight and a package of matches, both waterproof, and a small wax candle. A couple granola bars and a bottle of water went in another. They weighed her down, especially the water, but she’d spent forty-eight hours in a pitch-black cave, desperate enough to drink just about anything; she never went on any scouting mission without at least a minimum of supplies.

Finally, she pulled her hair into a tight tail at the base of her neck, threw on a baseball cap and shrugged into a denim jacket. She’d be sweating in seconds the moment she stepped outside, but the protection for her arms and upper body would be worth it. She didn’t have a map of the menagerie, but DiNero had laid it out to be easily navigated, so it wasn’t as if she had to figure out a maze. All she had to do was follow the paths.

She knew how to move quietly, though she wasn’t trying to be sneaky. She paused at the first cage she came to, peeking inside at the flashing eyes of the silver fox. It yipped softly at her and came close to the bars of the cage, but Monica didn’t reach to pet it. She crooned to it gently, though, watching the fox’s ears flick forward and back.

“You’re okay, pretty girl,” Monica said and moved on.

She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, exactly, just that she’d exhausted her resources and needed to come at this from a different angle. She’d worked on a team once that had set a bait trap, something she hesitated to do because it meant sacrificing an innocent living creature. She didn’t think DiNero would go for it anyway, at least not with one of his pets. Which meant what, she thought as she walked, waiting for another attack?

Fortifying the walls could work to prevent another slaughter, but it was no guarantee. It also meant they’d never find out what had been doing it, unless the thing showed up someplace else...like a playground, Monica thought with a shudder. Sour bile painted her tongue at the thought of a case where the Crew had successfully managed to chase off a Chimera that had been repeatedly ransacking a poultry-processing plant, only to have the thing show up in the backyard of a nearby day-care center. She hadn’t been on that team, but everyone had heard about it. The news had said it was a pit-bull attack.

That was why, she thought as she moved on, people like Jordan didn’t believe.

Following the curving brick path, she caught sight of DiNero’s house. Lights blazing. The sounds of a party inside. She hadn’t been invited, didn’t care. She paused, though, to admire the mansion and wonder what it was like to have so much money you could drop a few grand without a second thought. Most of what DiNero was paying her went back to the Crew to fund travel and other expenses, but she got her fair share. It wouldn’t buy her a mansion but it was enough, as Carl would’ve said, to keep her in Cheetos and beer.

For a moment, grief rose in her throat, choking her. Her husband had been full of sayings like that. Most of them had made her laugh, even when his tendency to try to make everything a joke was making her angry. Suddenly, fiercely, but not unexpectedly, she missed him with a deep and wretched longing that would slaughter her faster than any monster ever could—if she succumbed to it.

There, right there, she almost did. She almost went to her knees on the bricks and wept. It was too hard, sometimes, to keep herself from giving in to sorrow. She had ways to manage the terror that came from the dreams that were really memories, but this...oh, this was something else, and nothing could make it pass but time.

Monica did not go to her knees, though she did close her eyes against the burning slide of tears. At the taste of salt, she let out a low, shuddering sigh. She rode the pain for a moment or two before steeling herself and shaking it off.

Carl had died, and nothing could bring him back. The most she could do was honor him by doing her best to prevent more death. And that was exactly what she intended to do here.

Chapter 10

Jordan had lapped the entire perimeter of DiNero’s estate, eyes open for any signs of destruction in the wall but finding none. He’d exhausted himself, sweating, panting and finally aching, before he slowed to a walk. The night air was thick and humid, but he sucked it in greedily. No scent of anything weird, just the familiar mingled smells of the animals and, from farther off, dinner coming from DiNero’s house. The guy was having another party, which meant that sooner or later Jordan could expect a call to give a tour. DiNero loved showing off his pets.

For now, though, Jordan walked to clear his head and soothe his muscles. He wanted a hot shower and something to eat but didn’t dare go back just yet. He’d managed, barely, to fend off the hunger he’d tried to satiate with Monica.

Monica.

Damn, the woman had managed to get under his skin. He’d been stupid, he knew that, but no matter what she said, he was only human. Not even his twisted, tangled combination of DNA could make him less than that.

Still, there was shame, instilled in him for as long as he could remember by parents who’d wanted anything but this for their only son. They’d never tried to make him embarrassed about what he’d inherited; if anything, their staunch and devout insistence that he could learn to control his “condition” had been meant to make him feel better about it. But all they’d ever managed to do was repeatedly underline how different he was. How he could try and try, but he would never be the “same.”

That made him want to run again, but there was no getting away from the past. He’d learned that long ago. No way to run away from himself. The best he could do was learn to control it, the way his parents had taught him. To keep the hunger at bay.

And still he felt it constantly, always under the surface. Waiting to rise to something as simple as a steak or a beautiful woman or a thousand other things that tempted him to give in to his baser impulses. Not human, Monica had said, but she had no idea.

No matter what happened to him, Jordan thought grimly, he was always a man. Nothing could take that away from him. He wouldn’t let it.

For a moment, he leaned against the wall to feel the heat left from the earlier sunshine. It felt good, heat upon heat. It slowed things down. Made him languorous rather than agitated. He let himself press against it, then took a seat in the soft grass DiNero had spent a fortune to grow and maintain. If there was one benefit to his condition, it was that the night bugs left him alone.

If he stayed here a little longer, maybe she’d be asleep by the time he got back. Her windows would be dark. He wouldn’t be tempted to go in and see her... Jordan’s eyes drifted closed.

* * *

“Maybe we’ll be okay,” his mother said to his father when she thought Jordan couldn’t hear. “His birthday was last week. He’s fourteen now. Surely if it was going to happen, we’d know about it by now.”

Jordan had been sneaking into the kitchen for a late-night snack, his rumbling stomach making it impossible to sleep. Summer, school out, nothing but the possibilities of a whole three months of freedom ahead of him. He had plans with Trent and Delonn tomorrow, video games and a bike ride to the gas station, where they might try to talk to some girls. Maybe. At the sound of his parents’ hushed whispers from the back porch, though, he stopped. He hadn’t turned on the light, so they had no idea he was there.

“It’s going to be all right, bébé,” his father said.

Jordan froze. Dad never called Mom that unless they were arguing about something and he was trying to make up to her. Had his parents been fighting? The soft sound of sniffling made his stomach twist. Mom was crying?

“I just want him to be all right, Marc. I’m so worried...”

His father made a shushing sound. “I know. Me, too.”

“We should have been more careful.” Now his mother sounded fierce, angry. “We knew the risks. We were stupid. Arrogant and reckless!”

“Hush, bébé, don’t. You’re going to make yourself sick.”

“I am sick,” his mother said. “Sick with worry. Jordan’s the one who will pay the price for us being careless... My sweet boy. Oh God, Marc, what will we do if he has it?”

“We’ll love him anyway,” his father said. “What else could we do?”

The sound of his mother’s sobs should’ve chased away any lingering hunger, but Jordan’s stomach only ached more. What were they talking about? If he had what?

Last year, Penny Devereux had been diagnosed with leukemia. She’d had to miss almost the entire school year, and when she’d finally come back, she’d worn a scarf to cover her bald head. She’d been thin and pale, and she still laughed a lot, but she wasn’t quite the same.

His parents had gone silent, but Jordan caught a whiff of smoke. That was bad. His mother only lit up when she was superstressed. She’d been trying to quit. Now she was smoking, right there with his dad, who hated it. Something was very wrong.

It didn’t stop him from going to the fridge, though. It was as though a phantom hand pulled him, actually, an impulse he couldn’t fight. He was so hungry he thought he might faint from it, that and the anxiety from overhearing what he knew they didn’t want him to know.

He’d come down hoping to snag a piece of leftover birthday cake or some of his mom’s homemade tapioca pudding, but what his hands pulled from the fridge’s bottom shelf was the plastic-wrapped platter of uncooked burgers his mom had put together for tomorrow’s dinner. Without thinking, Jordan tore the plastic off. Handfuls of soft ground beef went in his mouth. He barely chewed, shoving the food past his lips and licking his fingers. He couldn’t get enough.

The lights came on. His mother cried out. Jordan turned, as guilty and embarrassed as if she’d walked in on him in the shower or doing what he’d just discovered he could do under the tent of his sheets late at night. No, this was somehow worse, because somehow he knew it was related to what his parents had been saying.

Something was wrong with him.

“Put that down!” his mother cried, but she wasn’t angry, as she ought to have been. Fear had widened her eyes. He could hear it in her voice.

He could smell it on her.

“Jordan, give me that.” Dad was calmer, pushing past Mom, who clung to the doorway and burst into tears.

No. Mine. The thoughts rose unbidden, and though Jordan would never have dreamed of disobeying his father, he backed up still clutching the platter. His mouth hurt. He tasted blood, and not from the meat but from his own gums. He ran his tongue along his teeth and felt the burn and sting of a wound opening—he’d cut it on something sharp.

His own teeth.

Mine.

The thought rose again, but this time, he tossed the platter to the floor. Raw meat splatted on the linoleum, and he backed up with his hands in front of him. There was more pain. He clenched his fists. More cuts, fingernails long, sharp. There was blood.

He would carry the scars on his palms for the rest of his life.

“You’re going to be okay, son. It’s all going to be all right,” his father said, but the look on his face told Jordan that nothing was going to be all right.

Not ever again.

* * *

Jordan woke with a startled gasp, hands in front of him. He’d clenched his fists and winced automatically at the expected sting of his nails pressing his flesh, but the years of self-discipline had worked. He wasn’t going to run off into the night and start making mayhem.

Still, he got to his feet with the memory of those long-ago burgers coating the inside of his mouth. He spat, then again, but he could still taste them. He still wanted them. He would always want them, the way he’d always want to run and punch and break and devour.

With a low groan, he closed his eyes and breathed deep. He focused. Not full-on meditation, which he did every day, but still a forced pattern of breaths that was supposed to relax him. A minute passed. He opened his eyes.

At fourteen, everything had changed for him. His parents, recessive carriers of a set of genes that had combined in him to make him different, had never planned to have children. And if he’d been a girl, he’d never have ended up this way, since only males manifested the condition.

Monica had said werewolves did not exist, but Jordan could’ve told her otherwise.

Chapter 11

Monica had just decided to turn back and head for home when the first muttered cackling reached her ears. DiNero kept a bunch of peacocks that were allowed to roam freely over the estate. They weren’t particularly exotic, not compared to the big cats or rare Russian foxes, but they were pretty. And they screamed, Monica discovered when the sound rose.

She didn’t think twice but ran toward it, changing direction when another scream came. Her boots pounded the bricks, but then she dodged off the path and ran through the grass, past several habitats and into darkness. There was light from the house in the distance but she had to blink rapidly to try to get her night vision working. It didn’t happen fast enough. She tripped over something and went sprawling.

It was a dead peahen, its throat slashed and long runnels carved into its body. Just beyond it lay another, a carcass rather than a bird, most of it missing. Monica rolled with a small groan and pushed up from her hands and knees, already expecting something to rush at her from the darkness.

Instead, she heard another chattering set of screams from the distance. She didn’t want to run with her knife in her hands—that was a good way to end up stabbing herself. The best she could do was hope that whatever was killing the birds wouldn’t see her before she saw it.

The menagerie hadn’t been set up in grids or blocks, so she had to circle around one of the habitats, this one with a tall, domed cage. Inside it, small gray monkeys screamed and chattered. None of them appeared hurt and she couldn’t see any breaks in their cage, so she kept going. She was heading for the exterior wall, heart racing, when something hurtled at her out of the darkness.

Something growling. Something with eyes that flashed red and sharp teeth that snapped at the air in front of her, coming so close she felt the breeze of it on her eyelashes. Claws raked her side, pulling the blow at the last second so she could roll away with her shirt flapping in shreds. Pain stung her, but she was still able to get her hands up to push away the thing on top of her.

Too dark here to see more than shadows. All she could do was twist and turn, getting an arm up to keep the snapping jaws from getting at her throat. Monica screamed, anticipating the crunch of teeth on her forearm, but it didn’t come. She kicked upward and out, connecting.

The thing, which smelled of grass and dirt, growled but didn’t retreat. It fell on top of her again, crushing her into the ground. She felt hair and limbs and another press of teeth, but by then she’d fought her knife free of the belt sheath. No hesitation, Monica slashed upward. Her aim was off, but she still connected. Her knife stuck and she pulled it free. This time, the thing howled and backed off.