The insanity was the raw, undeniable reaction to Salvatore’s presence.
Frigging hell.
Caine had warned her that Salvatore was a powerful beast. Werewolves didn’t have hereditary royalty. They fought and schemed and bullied their way to the top. Like Top Model, only with a lot more blood and less boobs.
What Caine hadn’t mentioned was that Salvatore was drop-dead, mouthwateringly gorgeous.
A shudder shook her at the thought of his lean, darkly handsome face and eyes like liquid gold. His features were pure Latin, with a long aquiline nose and full lips. His hair was a rich wave of raven satin that flowed just past his shoulders. And his body…yum. Even beneath the filthy suit, she could tell it was lean and hard in all the right places.
Still, she’d seen handsome men before.
Caine was no slouch in the looks department.
So why hadn’t any of them made her blood sizzle and her palms sweat?
It was like he possessed some sort of electric charge that was the precise current to push her buttons.
All her buttons.
She knocked her head against the wall, telling herself to stop being an idiot.
So, Salvatore had an animal magnetism. No doubt being the king gave him an extra umph or something. That didn’t mean she was about to forget the fact that the bastard had killed her sisters.
Or that he’d been hunting her for years.
Damn his black soul.
She wished he’d never shown up, she told herself sternly. But now that she had him caged, she wanted answers.
Hiding her unease behind a mocking smile, Harley pushed open the door and stepped inside.
The basement was divided in half, one side being a high-tech lab where Caine practiced his scientific voodoo, and this side being an equally high-tech prison. Usually the three silver cages were used for curs who were stupid enough to piss off Caine, but over the past months Caine had installed the triggered traps in the yard to discourage intruders.
Her mouth went dry as she spotted Salvatore standing in the middle of the closest silver cage.
If he was dangerous before, now he was nothing less than feral.
The golden eyes glowed with a tangible heat, his lips curled to reveal the white teeth that could grow to lethal fangs in the blink of an eye.
“Let me out of here,” he demanded, his voice thick.
Harley forced her reluctant feet forward, refusing to be unnerved by the choking power that filled the room. God Almighty, she’d never felt anything like it.
“But I just went to so much effort to get you in there,” she taunted. “Well, maybe it wasn’t so much effort. Like all men, you see a woman and assume you naturally have the upper hand.”
Salvatore stilled, his fury morphing into something far more dangerous. With a slow glide, his gaze seared over her body, taking his sweet time in memorizing her every curve before lifting back to her face.
“Let me guess, you’re a woman who likes to be on top?”
“Always.”
“Come in here and I can show you the benefits of being on the bottom.”
A disturbing shiver raced through her body. “Being royalty really has gone to your head if you think a lame-ass line like that would ever work on a woman with half a brain.”
“Then there must be thousands of women with half a brain,” he drawled.
“The plastic blow-up kinds don’t count.”
“Cara, I could make you roll over and beg.”
Harley tilted her chin. Damn, what was it about this Were?
She should be getting a gun and shooting him in the head, not imagining his precise technique of getting her to roll over and beg.
“I’d rather do the gargoyle.”
Salvatore tilted back his head and delicately sniffed the air. He chuckled.
“Liar.”
Shit. Harley abruptly turned on her heel and studied the numerous torture devises hung on the cement wall.
“You said you’ve been searching for me,” she rasped.
“Si.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a very special Were.”
“Special?” Her sharp bark of laughter echoed eerily through the room. “Don’t you mean defective?”
“You’re perfect,” he smoothly countered, his voice brushing over her skin like warm velvet. “Just as you were intended to be.”
She abruptly turned back to stab him with a furious scowl. “As my sisters were before you killed them?”
Salvatore flinched, feeling as if he’d just taken a punch to the gut.
He’d been accused of a number of despicable things, many of them true. But this…
“Dio,” Salvatore breathed. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Did you think I didn’t know you hunted down my sisters and murdered them in cold blood?”
Salvatore’s lips curled in a humorless smile, his shock being replaced by a grim comprehension. He’d wondered why Harley was treating him as the enemy rather than being desperate to flee Caine’s clutches.
“Clever bastard,” he muttered, stepping close enough to the silver bars to feel the painful prickles crawling over his skin. Weres were deathly allergic to silver. In fact, it was one of the few things that could actually kill a pureblood. Silver through the heart, or decapitation. “I’ll admit there have been any number of occasions Darcy and Regan have inspired thoughts of homicide, but I’ve risked my life to protect them, even after they were stupid enough to choose vampires to act as their guardians. The only danger to your sisters is Caine.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lying.”
“If you don’t believe me, then let me go and I’ll take you to them. Darcy is in Chicago with Styx and Regan was headed there to join her, the last I heard. I’m certain by now Jagr’s hot on her trail. Besotted idiot.”
“Yeah, right.” She folded her arms over her chest, but Salvatore didn’t miss the uncertainty that flashed through her eyes. Her faith in Caine wasn’t absolute. “I suppose you also have a bridge you’re trying to unload? I’m not buying.”
“I have no reason to lie.”
“Are you frigging kidding me?” She deliberately glanced over her shoulder at the splendid collection of whips, daggers, swords, and even a good old-fashioned mace. “You have every reason to lie.”
“Use your brains, Harley. If I wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Her lips tightened in annoyance. She couldn’t deny the truth. If he’d attacked to kill, she wouldn’t be standing there.
“You murdered my sisters.”
“Why the hell would I murder pureblooded females I invested millions of dollars and decades of my life to produce?”
“Because you didn’t want the Weres to know their king had failed in his Frankenstein experiments. You had to get rid of the evidence.”
Salvatore had intended to kill Caine before ever arriving at the estate. Now he intended to kill him slowly.
With as much pain as inhumanly possible.
“My only failure was allowing you to be stolen from the nursery. You…” His gaze skimmed over her beautiful, heart-shaped face, his body humming with a constant awareness. “Are flawless.”
“Bullshit.” Her expression hardened. “I can’t shift.”
Her smoldering frustration filled the air. Ah. Now at least now he understood a portion of her thorny personality.
“Is that why you overcompensate? Because you can’t shift?”
Lifting her hand, she flipped him off. “Overcompensate this.”
Salvatore chuckled. It was insanity. He’d allowed his hormones to overcome his common sense, and now he was locked in the cage of his archenemy with no immediate hope of escape. He should be infuriated. He should be using his powers to attempt to bend the female to his will.
Instead, he was hot and bothered and barely able to think of anything beyond this female who was swiftly becoming an obsession.
“To keep you from shifting was precisely the reason for my Frankenstein experiments, as you call them. Female Weres have lost their ability to suppress their shifts during the full moon. It has made it nearly impossible for pregnant Weres to carry their young to full term.” He caught and held her gaze. “We are vanishing, Harley, and you hold the hope for our future.”
She licked her lips, caught between the urge to tell him to go to hell and a grudging need to know more.
“So you’re saying you cooked me and my sisters up in your lab to save the Were species?”
“You were genetically altered, si.”
“And my sisters? Are they out producing the children you’re so desperate to have?”
“Regan was unfortunately barren, although it hardly matters since she was busy falling in love with a leech the last time I saw her. And Darcy…” Salvatore grimaced. “She was a disappointment as well.”
“Why?”
“She had the same pathetic taste for the living challenged.”
Her brows lifted. “I assume you mean a vampire?”
“Not just any vampire.” There was an edge to his voice. That happened a lot when the walking dead entered the conversation. “She mated with the Anasso, King of Vampires. May his cold soul rot in hell.”
