Rapture - Jacquelyn Frank Shadowdwellers

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drooling blood all over the place, and she had learned the hard way that bleeding on things was frowned upon.

      She barely noticed the sound of receding feet, but she did hear the echoing clack of a shutting door that told her she was in a hell of a big room. She still couldn’t move, so she was fairly close to the angry male above her when he crouched down. She saw him looming near her in silhouette only, details blurred completely away. She heard the creaking sound of leather from his clothing, and the telltale tap of wood against the floor. Hollow wood, with something inside it.

      A sword. The threatened katana, no doubt. But on the plus side, she hadn’t heard the sound of drawn steel, so she still had time to get her act together if she was lucky. Daenaira tried again to move, and again remained in a motionless pile.

      She felt the heat of him as he leaned over her, reaching across her back. Dae should have kept still, just like she always should keep still and never seemed to manage it, but instinct made her grab the arm of the hand about to touch her, her nails gouging deeply into—

      Holy Light, she thought with a mental gasp, is all of that muscle?

      It was more like flesh made steel! She could hardly get her hand around the width of that thick bicep. Gods help her if he was left-handed, because if what she was feeling wasn’t his sword arm, she was completely screwed.

      To her never-ending surprise, she felt his opposite hand come to rest on the one she was digging into him. Winifred liked to cut Dae’s nails off when she was out cold after a battle. She must have forgotten, because Dae made pretty good purchase. The thing was, instead of ripping her away from him, he simply held her fingers under his, keeping her from stripping his flesh but tolerating her injury to him.

      This guy could be a bigger degenerate than she had anticipated. If he liked getting hurt…

      She took note of the thick, hard calluses on the hand covering hers. There was years’ worth of hard work at something; it was not soft and fat like her relatives’ had been. Not in the least. Yet, she slowly became cognizant of the gentleness of his touch against her fingers. She suspected a trick, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it was. Eventually she just let go, collapsing into an exhausted pile of panting, dizzy flesh. As if she’d never even touched him, he continued to reach for her, cupping her shoulder in his wide palm. Slowly he rolled her toward him, letting her flop loosely onto her back.

      On the plus side, she could make out that he was in a low squat, his knees wide apart enough to give her a great shot at his vulnerable testicles.

      “I am sorry for this,” he said, the large voice spinning away into a kindness she could almost believe because it was so vastly opposite to the tone of earlier. “That will not happen again.”

      Wanna bet? She wanted to sneer at him, but her lip hurt an awful lot. Just wait until she got a second wind. All kinds of shit would be happening again.

      Meanwhile, she was pretty much as dangerous as a ball of fluff under the furniture right then. Still, there was that rather attractive testicular target within reach. It could be fun. At the very least it could get her belted into unconsciousness. That’d buy her a few more hours, and she usually healed pretty fast, just like any other ’Dweller could. Provided she could go a few hours without shock therapy, that is. It tended to jar her healing molecules all out of whack or something.

      She felt his hand slide up from her shoulder to her throat. Dae swallowed, feeling his fingers on the gold collar to the hurish. Not that she was a treasured pet or anything; the fortified gold was just the best conductor of electricity around. The built-in remote circuitry also had a delightful feature that humans used to keep their dogs within the bounds of an electrified fence—except it was jacked up to less than humane standards. Of course, humans called it something else. Humans didn’t even know Shadowdwellers existed, never mind that they shared technology. Well, lightless technology at least.

      She felt him probing at the collar, trying to turn it or have it give way a bit more, she supposed. But she was swollen around it now, not that there was any leeway to begin with.

      “What is this? Why do you wear your jewelry so tightly?”

      She laughed, a sloppy snort that conveyed she was much less than amused. Her contempt mixed with her fury and the impotence of the moment, making things increasingly dangerous for the idiot touching her. The higher her temper spiked, the stronger she would feel. It was probably an adrenaline thing, but whatever worked…

      “Please answer me when I ask you a question.”

      “Fuck you. I’m not your parrot, your dog, or anything else.”

      Daenaira had never learned when to keep her mouth shut, either. Apparently, she had a sucky learning curve. She felt those fingers come up to close around her face, his heated body closing in as he leaned closer and turned her malfunctioning eyes up to his.

      “I do not consider you any of those things,” he told her carefully, “but I do expect a level of respect in my house, girl.”

      His house. So he was her new owner after all. She had suspected as much, considering the way he had spoken earlier and the haste with which the other two men had left the room.

      It didn’t matter. He could be the president of the United States for all she cared. While humans found that to be an important person, Shadowdwellers did not. This male might scare the hell out of his other servants, but she was a horse of a different color.

      She smiled.

      Then she spat in his face.

      How’s that for respect, asshole?

      She wished she could have seen it. She knew she was bleeding really badly, too, because she was constantly swallowing the stuff. Dae would have paid good money to see some aristocratic bituth amec sprayed in red spit, and here the opportunity was, completely free. Served him right anyway. What kind of idiot would lean face-to-face with her after watching her kick his lackeys’ asses all over the place? Now she was thinking she had to take that testicle shot just on principle. Then again, why blow all her tricks at once?

      “That,” he said very slowly, “was not only rude, but quite unhygienic.”

      Unhygienic? Was he kidding?

      “Yeah? I’ve also been known to pee myself on command.” She curled the less swollen side of her lip. “Might want to keep that in mind.”

      To her surprise, she heard him chuckle. And it wasn’t some snide or superior mocking laugh either, but a rather genuine, good-natured sort of thing.

      “I thank you for the warning. With consideration like that, I am certain we can work up to respect.”

      Then she felt him move to slide his hands under her back and her knees. Before she could respond, he had risen to his full height and was carrying her high against a chest made of chiseled rock. Dreading what would happen next, she tensed for any possibility. She was already in trouble, she knew, because he wasn’t the least bit afraid of her. It had taken some time, but Winifred and Friedlow had learned a healthy fear of their caged pet, and she had worked it every chance she could to keep herself reasonably safe and alive. She had no idea how she could work the same effect on a man who seemed so blasé about owning a slave who threatened to leak on him like a baby doll. Also, there was the part where she knew she weighed a good sixty-five kilos, yet he was sweeping her up without so much as a grunt of effort. The muscle closed around her in the form of his chest, astoundingly broad shoulders, and those fearfully thickly developed biceps. There was no give on him anywhere. His belly was hard and flat against her round hip, and as he crossed the floor in a crisp, booted stride, he never so much as shuffled a foot under her added weight.

      She was in big trouble. She knew it with that sinking surety she got in her gut right before the most dramatic events in her pathetic life took place. Daenaira was oriented to the room as she knew it so far, though, and she was positive he wasn’t heading back toward the bed where this had all begun. However, without knowing what else was around her in the vast room, she couldn’t say for certain if that was a good thing. She did understand

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