SIXTEEN

Regin’s legendary temper? Redlined.

Chase stared down at her in confusion. “Hold on tight? What does that mean?”

“It means that you don’t touch my things!” Her leg shot up between his own, her boot connecting with his ballocks.

“Ah! You fuckin’ bitch!” he yelled, fighting to stay upright. “You’re goin’ to pay for that!” He lumbered forward. “You have no idea what you’re rousing.”

“Sure I do! A berserker.” As she jogged back, she gave a single jerk on her arm, dislocating the same shoulder as yesterday. Before he could reach her, she’d hopped over her bound wrists like a jump rope. “Because that’s what you are!”

He swung a wild punch.

She leapt back, dodging his fist by millimeters. While he reeled from the swing-and-miss, she readied for another attack, ramming her shoulder into the side of a bookcase. Her shoulder joint rocked into place with an audible pop.

Again he charged. She feinted and spun around behind him, swinging her joined fists at his kidney. But the collar made her slower, weaker. He was able to seize her arm and spin her around with one hand, his other drawn back in a fist.

She lifted her chin, and Chase hesitated—

She took advantage, snapping her head forward, knocking him in the Adam’s apple. Then she swooped down, swinging her leg against his ankles, dropping him to his back.

He shot to his feet, faced off against her. “No more mercy for ye, Valkyrie.” Holding nothing back, he launched a haymaker at her head.

She ducked and laughed. “That accent you work so hard to hide is coming out! Are ye feckin’ Oirish this time? Eh, boyo?” She leapt atop his desk, punting the side of his head. “Those swords are mine! Touch them, and I’ll use ’em to slice off your nutsack! For a coin purse!”

When she reared back for another kick, he caught her ankle, yanked. She crashed to the floor.

With a yell, Chase lunged over her, pinning her bound wrists over her head, his hips forcing her thighs apart.

She felt him harden in a rush, even after she’d battered his balls. “Oh, boy! Little Declan’s excited to see me! Only little Declan’s not little at all. The more things change …”

When she wriggled beneath him, his jaw slackened, his lids growing heavy. She’d merely meant to tease him, but this heated contact began to affect her as well.

The enticing ridges of his body, his clean scent, the delicious pressure of his thick shaft against her …

She gazed up at his steely-gray eyes and found them so familiar.

Then he shook his head. “Enough! Where do you think you would go if you could best me?”

“I wasn’t escaping yet.”

He levered himself up on his elbows. “If not an escape attempt, then what was this?”

“A warning not to hurt my swag. Or an icebreaker, considering you’re on top of me and we’re both hot and bothered. Now, let’s kiss and make up.”

The Valkyrie was panting, her breasts pressing against his chest. Her lips were parted, full and beckoning.

“Kiss you?” As he waited for revulsion to seize him, he found himself wondering how she would react. Would she moan into his mouth?

“It will help you remember me. Kiss me. Come on, you know you want to so bad. You want me so bad.”

“Never.” Bloody get off her, get away from her. But he needed to be above her like this, to master her, overpower her.

“Never? That boner of yours just called you a liar.”

“You little bitch.” He ground it between her legs, wanting to hurt her.

Lightning struck just outside. Her silvery eyes went wide. “Again.”

Temptress, his mind screamed. She was beguiling him—

She twisted her hips beneath him, rubbing her sex along his length.

He hissed in a breath, rocking against her in answer. Christ, it feels so good. “You’d let me fuck you right here, wouldn’t you? Take you on the floor like a common whore.”

“Another couple of thrusts like that, Chase, and I’ll have to demand it.” She arched her back.

Her shirt was riding up, revealing the beginning swell of her breasts. Her nipples were still covered, but they’d puckered against the material. Want to see them.

An involuntary thrust of his hips made her breasts bounce, uncovering more glowing skin. Almost to her nipples.

His cock was throbbing. When he rocked it between her thighs, the pressure made him grit his teeth with both pleasure and pain. With another couple of thrusts, he’d come atop her; at that moment, he wanted to.

It’d been ages since he’d looked down at a woman like this. He cast his mind back, trying to remember the last time. …

The night of his torture.

At once, fury drowned out his lust. He shoved himself off her. “Do not touch me again, detrus. Never touch me.” He ran his hand over his face, then returned to his desk to call for Vincente. “Come remove her.”

Apparently unaffected, she rose. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I should be going.” She feigned a yawn. “You’ve gotta head back to work and I’ve gotta head to jail. Big night for me. I’m planning to shiv someone for a bar of soap. I think we might have enough time for a quickie, though.”

He cast her a withering look.

“Nothing can stop us from sleeping together. We’re like magnets pulled to each other.”

That was the thing about magnets—they didn’t get to choose what they were attracted to. “Valkyrie, you’re never going to have sex again. Not before you’re executed.”

“Way to kill the mood there, Paddy.” She sidled closer, gazing up at him. “Now, Chase, I hope you won’t let this spat color your judgment about me. I’m usually good times. In fact, if you keep the terms of our deal, maybe I’ll tell you the dirty details of how you claimed my virginity in a berserkrage. How you tore off my dress and tossed me on a bed of furs to do things to me that I couldn’t even have imagined.”

“You’ll tell me a story and I’ll spare you? You think I don’t see what you’re doing? I’ve read Arabian Nights.”

“Call me Scheherazade, baby! Actually, she’s one tricksy bitch. Who, by the way, still owes me twenty gold pieces and a pound of sesame.” The Valkyrie had inched even closer until he could perceive the heat from her body, that addictive electricity. “You know I’m giving you good information. We could continue later, and I’d promise to behave for you. Or be your common whore. Gentleman’s choice.”

Declan recalled Webb’s missive. If I can’t torture her, then I have no choice but to see her again. “I thought it was forbidden among your kind to talk to outsiders?”

“You are one of us.”

“Can you possibly comprehend how much that insults me?”

“The truth cuts like a knife, boyo.”

Vincente arrived, showing no reaction to the fact that the Valkyrie’s cuffs were now in front of her—or that she was blowing Declan a kiss good-bye.

“Take her from here.”

Without a word, the man escorted her out. But then, it wasn’t Vincente’s place to react, to do anything more than follow commands. And the man owed him.

Months ago, Declan had caught him making repeated contact with a particular succubus. Since the Order provided no nourishment for her kind, she’d been withering away from sexual hunger—using everything in her power to lure him to free her. So she could rape the man and feed.

Instead of erasing Vincente’s memory, Declan had held the lapse over the man’s head, ensuring his loyalty. At the time, he’d marveled that Vincente would risk his career over a female—much less a detrus.

Now I was just rutting over a Valkyrie, desperate to see her breasts.

When the door closed behind Vincente and his prisoner, Declan strode into his bathroom to stare at the mirror. Christ, were his eyes lighter?

No, she’s got me imagining things. She’s a detrus—everything about her is foul, wrong.

Yet still he was hard for her. He waited for the strain to hit him full-force, would relish the misery as an earned punishment.

Waiting …

Just thinking about taking her would be enough to send that old anxiety skyrocketing. So he envisioned ripping her jeans down to her knees and shoving his cock into her tight little quim.

Waiting …

Nothing? He was tense because he needed to fuck, but there was no more anxiety than usual.

In fact … it’d lessened.

He choked back a crazed laugh. For whatever reason, be it entrancement or not, the strain had all but disappeared.

Right time, right place, right … girl? Except for the fact that she wasn’t human! No, she was a murderer and a blood foe who would run screaming the minute she saw his unclothed body.

Not to mention that he was duty-bound to imprison and eventually execute her.

His shaft didn’t seem to care about all that. He scowled down at it. If he did stroke off now, then she would win. He refused. She was one of them. An abomination.

They lure mortal men from their purpose. From my purpose. To help him remember it, he tore off his sweater, baring his ruined chest.

Those creatures had peeled away strips of his flesh not at random, but in deliberate circles and lines. The resulting wounds had been too narrow for grafts. Instead, the surgeon had stitched the skin directly together. In time, the scar tissue had grown raised.

Yet even this sickening sight couldn’t quell his hard-on. He knew of only one thing that could.

He hastened to his bed, to his case, readying a syringe.

When he’d started injecting this medicine a decade ago, he’d made an effort to be dignified, treating it like an insulin shot. He would ease the needle in, pressing the plunger leisurely.

To somehow differentiate it from what he’d done in Belfast’s back alleys.

Now he shot up like a junkie desperate for a fix.

His lids grew heavy with pleasure. His mind was just wasted enough for him to ignore the continued ache in his ballocks, and soon he slept, quickly slipping into dreams. …