Bound Guardian Angel (48 page)

“Master, I—”

“Do you need me, slave?”

Trace’s chest rose and fell heavily. “Yes,
Master. I need you.”

“Will you open yourself to me if I service
you?”

Silence.

Micah bent forward and grabbed Trace under
his chin, cranking his head back so they were nose to nose. “Will
you open yourself to me?”

Moisture glistened in Trace’s eyes, but he
held Micah’s gaze like a champ.

Trace took a trembling breath. On the
exhale, he said, “I’ll try.”

“Not good enough, Trace.”

“Micah—”

Micah released Trace’s chin and slapped him
as he straightened. “I am not Micah to you, slave. I am Master. You
call me Master until you either safeword out or I decide our
session is over. Do you understand?”

“Yes . . . Master.” Trace’s
voice was whisper quiet.

Micah hated seeing him so emotionally beaten
down, but his instincts told him the only way to break through
Trace’s walls was to break him completely. That until Trace’s
spirit broke, Micah wouldn’t be able to get inside. And until he
got inside, he wouldn’t be able to help him. And helping Trace was
his number one priority, especially since Trace had almost suffered
a nuclear meltdown in his kitchen less than five minutes ago.

“Get up, slave.” He snapped his fingers and
took a step back.

Trace did as commanded.

“We’re going to my dungeon”—Micah clutched
the back of Trace’s neck and pulled him close until their foreheads
touched—“and we’re not coming back up until you let me in here.”
Micah tapped the side of Trace’s head. “If I have to keep you down
there for a week, I will, but you will let me in.” He searched
Trace’s eyes. “Do you want to know why?”

“Why, Master?”

He squeezed the back of Trace’s neck and
drew Trace’s head down to rest on his shoulder. He kissed Trace’s
scalp as he wrapped his other arm around him, hugging him hard.
“Because I love you too much to let you suffer this alone any
longer, Trace.”

He would save Trace now or die trying.

Chapter 25

Cordray swung by her mansion in the city, showered,
and then headed back out to feed. She needed blood. Not only had
her lip still not healed, but her hangover was lingering longer
than it should. She was totally depleted.

With the after-work crowd giving way to the
dinner crowd, enough people milled around the Loop to provide
plenty of options as she searched for a donor. Anyone in a group
was out. No families or couples, either. She needed someone who was
alone, which was a lot harder to find than it sounded. Not very
many people ventured into downtown Chicago at night by
themselves.

Turning into a parking garage, she circled
through the levels. Parking garages were excellent places to find
donors, especially at this time of day. The nine-to-fivers were
already gone, leaving the structures with a lot less foot traffic,
but she could usually find a healthy, overachieving CEO who had
worked late.

And bingo. There was one now.

Her Ducati’s engine purred as she rolled to
a stop and removed her helmet.

“Excuse me,” she said to the buff
fortysomething strolling unaware toward her. He had his brown
leather briefcase in one hand and his smartphone in the other as he
used his thumb to scroll through his messages.

He looked up. The skin around his eyes
pinched as he realized she was talking to him. He gave her the
once-over and frowned. Without replying, he continued walking,
lowering his gaze to his phone’s screen again, pretending he hadn’t
heard her.

These hoity-toity types were all the same.
They thought they were too good for people who had a little ink in
their skin and streaks of blue in their hair.

She hopped off her Ducati, scanned the rest
of the parking level to make sure no one was around, and started
after him.

“You lookin’ for a good time?” she said.

“No,” he barked over his shoulder.

“Good. Neither am I.” She gripped his arm
and swung him into the shadows as her fangs distended.

He began to protest, but she pulled him into
compulsion a split second before she sank her fangs into the side
of his neck.

Aaaahhhh, blood. Sweet, life-giving blood.
As it poured down her throat and broke into her system, she felt
her body instantly brighten. The last of her hangover faded, and
her energy spiked.

If only she were drinking from Trace.

What would his blood do to her? How would it
taste? Like power and sex?

The muscles between her legs clenched
greedily at the thought.

Every molecule in her body begged for her to
return to the ranch so she could see him, and yet her brain still
resisted.

This was what body-numbing heartbreak did to
you. It clouded your emotions and instilled fear in your soul. It
shattered the mechanism inside you that created hope, plunging you
into hopelessness.

She wanted to believe she was tough enough
to kick fear in the ass, but her fear was proving to be a powerful
foe.

She finished feeding, sealed the bite mark,
and wiped the encounter from the man’s memory.

He robotically, if not a little unsteadily,
walked away.

The man’s blood had revived her body, but
her emotions still felt like a carcass being fought over by two
lions. Talk about your bloody games of tug-of-war. Her heart was
smack in the middle of a titanic battle between rival gods.

As she settled on the seat of her Ducati and
kicked up the kickstand with her left heel, a tremor broke inside
her heart. A tiny jolt of fear.

Trace.

Another vibration of panic stirred inside
her.

Something was wrong with Trace. He was
hurting. He was in trouble.

Frowning, she tried to shake off the fear
vibrating inside her. Could this just be an overactive imagination?
A side effect of finally quenching her need for blood on the heels
of telling Sam she was in love with Trace?

Whatever it was, her instincts told her she
needed to get to him. Now.

And strangely enough, she could sense
exactly where he was.

Revving the Ducati’s engine, she leaned into
the handlebars and lifted her feet off the ground as the motorcycle
shot forward.

Back on the street, she blasted off in the
direction of Micah’s house.

Chapter 26

Trace lay on a giant, narrow slab of cypress. The
wood was strong as stone, which was good, because if Trace lost his
shit again—which was a distinct possibility—he needed to know the
table wouldn’t break.

The chains securing his wrists and ankles,
on the other hand . . .? Yeah, those he would be
able to snap as easily as chicken bones.

His chest still ached like a motherfucker,
but at least he no longer felt like he was on a final countdown to
detonation. The agony that had nearly cost him his dearest
friends—and their neighborhood—a few minutes ago still simmered
inside his soul, but, at least for the moment, they weren’t in
immediate danger.

Warm fingers caressed his palm, and he
curled his hand around Sam’s. She stood silently at his side, her
gaze filled with concern and compassion as Micah busied himself
somewhere out of his periphery.

Micah had made him take off his shirt, but
he still wore pants. Not that it would have mattered if he’d been
naked. Nudity wasn’t something to be ashamed of in this house. Not
with all the exhibitionist three-ways he’d had with them.

His mind flashed to Cordray.

The thought of her name alone made the
pounding in his chest intensify.

He groaned, and Sam’s hand tightened around
his.

Being around Cordray was like being in the
presence of an aphrodisiac. Just the sound of her voice was enough
to make his pulse quicken. He longed to smell her dark scent. To
touch her black, silky hair. To taste her skin the way he’d tasted
her lips last night.

He closed his eyes and saw her face. She was
a vision. Her body a temple. He wanted to outline every one of her
tattoos with his tongue. Ink covered both of her arms, her hands,
her neck. Did she have tattoos elsewhere? Did she have them on her
stomach? Her hips? Her legs? Her breasts? He wanted to taste them
all.

His breathing deepened. His cock stiffened.
The ache in his chest ebbed.

Thinking about Cordray was a good thing.
Very good. His body liked it.
He
liked it.

“Open your eyes.” Micah’s strong, commanding
voice bit into his fantasy, and his eyelids flashed open.

Only to come face to face with his greatest
fear.

Micah waved a flaming baton in front of him,
it’s blue flame deceptively serene. Trace knew the damage fire
could do. He knew it all too well. Maybe it looked pretty—benign
even—but that shit was just smoke and mirrors hiding the danger
lurking in the shadows.

His heart hammered.

His body trembled.

Perspiration broke over his chest and
stomach.

Micah wore a glove on his left hand and
reached to the side to grab a second baton, but this one wasn’t
lit. He tucked it between the third and fourth fingers of the same
hand holding the flaming baton, angling each away from the other
the way an xylophone player holds a pair of mallets in one
hand.

“What happened upstairs—the way you reacted
to the flambé— gave me an idea.” Micah eyed Trace’s stomach as he
smoothed his gloved hand over his skin.

Trace was practically panting now, his
exhales coming in abrupt, urgent puffs.
“M-master . . . please . . .”

“You’re afraid of fire, aren’t you,
Trace?”

He gulped, and his dry tongue stuck to the
roof of his mouth, almost making him gag.

“Answer me.” Micah bobbed his head toward
Sam, who drew her hand out of Trace’s and took a step back.

“Y-yes, Master.”

As long as the fire was small and contained
or he was able to get away, it was all good. But chain him to a
table so he had no control and couldn’t flee, and then wave a
burning cotton ball in front of him? Forget about it. Even the
smallest, most innocuous flame became an inferno. One that made him
feel like he was stuck inside a burning building with no way
out.

As his agonizing past erupted inside his
mind, an almost equally destructive detonation of emotional and
sensual overload gripped him. Every sense was heightened. Every
nervous response magnified. Things that would have been merely a
nuisance a month ago were now either festering sores or cause for
cosmic levels of rapture.

Cordray, for example. Less than three weeks
ago, she’d been an annoyance. Now she was an addiction. Even now,
with terror-inducing flames dancing in front of his face, the
thought of her beneath him as he took pleasure from her body
rocketed a sense of calm through his blood.

He was a study in extremes. While more fear
than he’d ever known threatened to consume him, a pleasant calm
more refreshing than anything he’d ever experienced coursed through
his blood and maintained balance.

But as Micah brushed the unlit cotton ball
over a patch of his bare skin, the scales tipped in favor of
fear.

The unlit baton was wet, and it smelled of
alcohol. Micah was rubbing alcohol on him. And now he was lowering
the flaming ball of cotton toward his skin.

Surely, Micah didn’t intend to light him on
fire!

The chains securing his wrists and ankles
rattled as he pulled on them, his body straining.

Must get away. Must . . .
save . . . myself.

The flame tapped the wet spot on Trace’s
stomach, and Trace nearly wet himself as a blood-curdling scream
launched out of his throat then went into lockdown as his esophagus
constricted. Blue flames danced over his skin like ghostly
tendrils. Just as he began to feel the heat, Micah swiped his
gloved hand over the patch of skin, extinguishing the flame.

Trace let out a gasp of relief, his muscles
briefly relaxing until Micah wiped another patch of skin with the
alcohol swab. Before Trace knew what was happening, Micah lit him
on fire again.

This time, the scream dislodged from his
throat and shredded his vocal chords, his eyes wide with fear as
the flames flickered like a fiery Grim Reaper over his abdomen.

But this Reaper was merely a puppet. A
marionette controlled by a grand master. It rose to life at Micah’s
command, and it perished the same way.

Again, Micah brushed his gloved hand over
the flames, putting them out just as the heat reached his skin
through the vapor barrier.

Trace braced for the next hit, but Micah
hesitated.

“Do you want me to stop?” Micah lifted his
chin, his shoulders stiff. The black Under Armour shirt he was
wearing stretched over his pecs and revealed the ridges in his
abdomen. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead.

“Y-yes, Master.” He wanted more than
anything for him to stop.

“Then open your mind to me. Let me in, and
I’ll stop. No more fire. No more fear.”

Fear. The great motivator. And yet Trace
couldn’t loosen the hold on his thoughts. He still couldn’t let
Micah in. His hopes caved as Micah’s back straightened, and he
began rubbing the alcohol-soaked ball over his skin again, this
time creating a larger patch to burn.

Panic surged through his blood once more.
The lit baton lowered. The moment it contacted the vapor, flames
erupted over his chest. He could feel its heat on his face. Could
smell its acrid odor.

He abruptly cried out, and then his eyes
rolled back as he sucked in his breath, seeing his mother in his
mind’s eye. The smell of burning skin filled his nose. The image of
her tied to a stake, her skin blackened in patches, sprang to life.
Memories flooded him. Painful memories of death and
destruction.

He was no longer in Micah’s dungeon. He was
a young boy, watching from his hiding place in the bushes as the
angry townspeople tied his mother to a cross then dragged her
across the yard, shouting and chanting that she was a witch. A
demon’s mistress. Satan’s spawn. They held torches and waved them
at her, lighting her clothes and hair on fire.