Angel/Hiss (Bayou Heat Box Set Book 7) (6 page)

Stanton grimaced. Okay. He couldn’t deny her accusation. He might not be the one ultimately in charge, but he was far from innocent.

“You’re right. I sold my soul.” His jaw tightened. “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had regrets.”

Chelsea heaved a sigh, her expression softening with regret. “Too late.”

Stanton reached to lightly cup her scarred cheek. “Is it?”

“What?”

“Is it too late?”

She carefully inspected his taut features, searching for…something.

“Have you left your beloved master?” she at last demanded.

His heart fractured. It was the only thing she’d ever asked of him. And the one thing he could never give her.

“No. I can’t,” he muttered, wishing she could understand. “I owe him too much to walk away.”

Her lips flattened. It was an old argument that had torn them apart.

“What do you owe him?”

“I was starving in the street,” he said, leaving out the nastier parts of his childhood. Like the bastard who’d pimped him out from the age of five. And the younger brother he’d watched beaten to death by a local gang. “Without my master I would have died.”

She released an explosive breath, refusing to accept his belief that he owed his master his unwavering loyalty.

“Foster parents do that every day without expectation of their children becoming their devoted slaves.”

“He did more than save me,” he insisted, his thumb rubbing her full bottom lip. “He educated me and gave me a life of luxury.”

“And that’s so important to you?”

Her simple question squeezed the air from his lungs. Until Chelsea, everything had been easy.

His master told him what needed to be done, and he did it. No fuss. No muss.

He didn’t have to consider tedious things like right or wrong. Or the pain he was causing others.

“It was.” His fingers tightened on her cheek, an acute longing twisting his gut. “Now…”

“Now what?” she prompted when his words trailed away.

“Now I fear my purpose in life was nothing more than an illusion.”

Her hand lifted to lie against his chest, the light touch sending jolts of pleasure through him.

“Locke?”

His lips twitched. He loved that she always called him by his last name. Even when she was wrapped in his arms.

“What am I going to do with you?” he muttered.

***

Angel considered himself a civilized male.

He might be Pantera, but he refused to be ruled by his primitive instincts. Instead he used cold logic to rule his life. Even his skill as a Healer was used in combination with hard science and human technology.

But pacing the cage he felt anything but civilized.

Maybe he should have listened to Raphael. When Angel had made a hurried call to the Wildlands, the older male had insisted he make his escape and wait for Parish and his Hunters to arrive so they could round up the strange collection of humans.

Angel, however, found himself unable to leave.

He was waiting for…what?

The question was churning through his mind when there was the sound of footsteps and a human male with tousled black hair and eyes that were puma gold stepped into the room. Angel instantly moved toward the door of the cage, his senses absorbing the male’s peculiar scent. He was human. But there was a distinct musk that was pure cat.

“Who are you?” Angel demanded.

“Tarin.” Warily crossing the room, the male bent down to shove a tray of food beneath the bars. “I brought you breakfast.”

Angel’s stomach rumbled. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Seven or eight hours?

His true hunger, however, wasn’t for food.

“Where’s Indy?” he sharply demanded.

In an effort to hide his nerves, Tarin wiped his hands down the front of his jeans that were nearly as threadbare as his New York Giants sweatshirt.

“She’s eating with Willa.”

His lips twisted. “Coward.”

Tarin frowned, misreading Angel’s annoyance that the female was trying to avoid him.

“I hope you won’t judge her too harshly.”

Angel narrowed his gaze. “I admire your loyalty, but what happens between Indy and myself is no one’s business.”

The male scowled, easily picking up on Angel’s possessive tone.

“Indy will go to any lengths to save one of her kids.”

Angel sucked in a sharp breath. “Willa’s…?”

“Not her biological child,” Tarin swiftly denied. “But Indy has some sort of savior complex that drives her to risk her idiotic neck over and over when she knows someone is in danger.”

An odd combination of pride and gut-clenching fear raced through Angel at the thought of the female’s daring rescue missions.

“She helped you escape?” he demanded.

“Yes.” Tarin nodded. “I was a cavy in the Benson horror show.”

With an effort Angel squashed the thought of Indy deliberately putting herself in danger. It was too…disturbing. Instead he concentrated on the young male who had firsthand knowledge of Locke’s lab.

“What did they do to you?”

Tarin stiffened, his face tight with remembered pain. “I was given transfusions.”

“With Pantera blood?”

“Yeah.”

Angel frowned. Because of Lydia they knew that the Haymore Center had been used to impregnate human women with Pantera sperm. But they hadn’t realized there’d been secret experimentations with injecting humans with blood, bone marrow, and the Goddess knew what else.

“Did your captors say why?”

For a long, tense moment Angel thought the younger male might refuse to answer. Then, with a restless shrug, he paced across the floor.

“They would injure me and then give me the blood to see if it would help me heal.”

“Shit,” Angel breathed, comprehension slamming into him with the force of a freight train.

Their enemies had been experimenting with Pantera blood to determine if they could use it for their own gain. Why hadn’t the Pantera suspected that from the start?

“Did it accelerate your healing?”

Tarin continued to pace, his face averted as if he was ashamed of what the humans had done to him.

“It cured the diseases they infected me with and most of the physical wounds they inflicted.”

A fiery hatred scorched through Angel. What sort of twisted sicko would kidnap vulnerable children and abuse them as if they were no more than caged rodents?

“Those bastards,” he snarled, the human part of him as anxious as his cat to spill blood. Locke and his followers were evil. Pure and simple. “I’ll kill them.”

Tarin halted, turning to meet Angel’s burning gaze.

“Indy already did,” the younger male informed him. “Or at least the two guards who got their jollies by slicing me open and seeing how long they could make me suffer before giving me the blood.” Tarin shuddered, his eyes glowing gold. “I knew one day they’d go too far. That I’d die before they could heal me.” He held up his hand as Angel’s lips parted to interrupt. “And then Indy came,” he said, his devotion to the courageous female etched on his face. “She took two bullets before she got me out of there, but she didn’t complain once.”

Angel’s mouth went dry, his cat roaring in fury. Indy had been shot. She might have died before he ever met her.

Unacceptable.

Clearly she needed someone to protect her.

“You don’t have to worry,” he assured his captor. “My family is going to track them down and destroy each and every one of them.”

Tarin didn’t look particularly impressed by the promise.

“That’s fine, but don’t forget it wasn’t your family who got us out of the labs or captured a full-grown Pantera just because she was worried about Willa,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “That was all Indy.”

CHAPTER 4

Indy prided herself on her courage.

Her mother had broken her heart. Her captors had broken her body. But by god, no one was going to break her spirit.

Or at least that’s what she’d always told herself.

She couldn’t, however, deny that it was pure cowardice that’d kept her away from the Pantera currently residing in the locker room.

It wasn’t that she feared for her safety. He was, after all, safely locked in a cage. He couldn’t physically hurt her. But he disturbed her in a way that was downright embarrassing.

He was her prisoner. A tool to help Willa.

She wasn’t supposed to be lusting over him like an overly hormonal teenager.

Unfortunately, her body didn’t agree. Even after she’d left him in the locker room she could catch the enticing scent of his musk clinging to her body, as if he’d managed to mark her on some primitive level. And worse, when she’d stretched out on her narrow cot to try and get an hour of much needed sleep, her dreams had been consumed by X-rated fantasies of the gorgeous male.

Which was why she’d sent the breakfast tray with Tarin instead of facing the prisoner who was forcing her to confront needs she’d managed to keep buried for years.

Now entering the locker room to see Tarin’s eyes glowing with suppressed emotions, she felt a stab of guilt. Dammit, she should never have exposed the young man to the full-blooded Pantera.

“Caleb’s looking for you, Tarin,” she said in gentle tones. “I think he had a bad morning.”

Tarin instantly turned to send her a worried glance. “He can feel the Pantera.”

Angel made a sound of shock. “What did you say?”

Tarin turned to meet Angel’s disbelieving gaze. “Caleb said it’s like being near a tuning fork that keeps vibrating deep inside him.”

“Take him to Nadia,” Indy commanded. The young woman could soothe most aches and pains. “Maybe she can help.”

Tarin’s expression hardened. “Indy, you shouldn’t be alone with—”

“I’m not going to do anything to hurt her,” Angel abruptly intruded into the younger male’s protest. “I swear.”

“Go on, Tarin,” Indy urged, glaring at her prisoner. She didn’t need him making worthless promises. “I can take care of myself.”

With a grudging nod Tarin headed out of the locker room, the sound of his footsteps echoing through the heavy silence.

Indy’s attention never wavered from the large, painfully beautiful male who was watching her with a small, disturbingly smug smile.

“So you think you can take care of yourself?”

Indy jutted her chin. Okay, he was edible. And her body was tingling with a treacherous heat. But she didn’t let anyone treat her like she was some helpless bimbo.

“Yes.”

His smile widened. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Stepping forward he grasped the bars of the cage and shoved the door open.

Indy blinked. Then blinked again. That shouldn’t be possible. The cages were specifically built to hold Pantera.

Had the fire somehow altered the malachite in the bars? Or had she simply gotten ahold of a defective cage?

The inane thoughts were shattered as she belatedly realized that she had a full-grown Pantera male stalking toward her with grim intent.

Oh…shit.

With a muffled cry, Indy turned and darted toward the door. She was too late. A step from escape she felt herself being scooped off the ground and tossed over Angel’s broad shoulder.

Furious with her stupidity in letting down her guard, Indy beat her fists against his back. It didn’t even occur to her to scream. There was no way she was putting any of the others in danger.

She’d already done quite enough…thank you very fucking much.

Intent on thumping her hands against his rock-hard muscles, she didn’t pay attention to where they were headed. Not until she heard a door slam and lock before he was lowering her to her feet.

A hasty glance revealed they were in a small office that had remarkably avoided the worst of the hurricane damage. The windows were intact, along with a heavy desk and two chairs and a row of file cabinets. The walls were peeling, but the linoleum floor had only small cracks.

Most importantly, it had only one exit.

And a very large, very dangerous Pantera was blocking it.

Indy scrambled backward. Screw her pride. Right now all that mattered was getting some distance between her and the male she’d kidnapped and held prisoner.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

Angel leaned against the closed door, folding his arms over his chest. Then, lifting his hands, he slowly peeled off the thin surgical gloves that the bastard had no doubt stolen from the nurse’s office.

Shit.

That’s how he managed to endure touching the malachite.

“We’re going to talk.”

“Okay.”

She forced a smile to her lips even as her hand crept behind her. She’d stuffed her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. If she could get it pulled out far enough she could call 911…

There was a muttered curse before Angel was moving toward her with a blinding speed. Indy barely had time to process the fact he was standing directly in front of her before she felt the phone being snatched out of her hand and tossed against the wall with enough force to shatter it into a hundred pieces.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Angel growled.

Indy snapped her head up, her fear forgotten as a burst of fury raced through her.

“You’re pissing me off,” she snapped.