Chapter 2

"KEEP SCREAMING." JOSHUA’S voice was barely audible. "Then slowly stop."

Keri's heart thundered in her chest, but she complied. She let out a series of blood-curdling shrieks that gradually faded to whimpers, then silence. The sound echoed off the dank stone walls, amplifying her very real terror. As her voice died away, Joshua pressed a finger to his lips, mouthing the words "Play dead."

She sank to the disgusting floor and watched Joshua do the same. For several agonizing minutes, they remained motionless. Keri's muscles screamed in protest as she lay awkwardly against her restraints, but she willed herself to stay still. She was acutely aware of Joshua's presence mere feet away. His stillness was unnatural, predatory. Even weakened, he radiated danger. He was fascinating, and it took every bit of her self-control not to pepper him with questions. If she survived this, it would make a great story — assuming she didn’t get thrown into the looney bin for reporting that vampires were real.

Finally, the sound of approaching footsteps broke the silence. Keri's breath caught in her throat, and she closed her eyes and forced herself to appear limp and lifeless.

"I’m tired of all these experiments. You’d think we’d have perfected the serum by now," a gruff voice said.

"Don’t let Anatole hear you say that,” a second voice warned. “Besides, it’s a good way to get rid of our enemies, like Nicolau here. I can’t wait to see him turned inside out.”

A dark chuckle. "And if the experiment fails, we can still turn the human and try again with her. It’s a win-win."

Was that what had happened to Chrissy? Had she been a willing part of this, or was she one of the humans that they turned in order to “try again” with?

"Think it worked?" the gruff voice asked from just outside the cell.

"Should have," the other replied. "Boss said the drug was potent stuff, and Nicolau was starving for blood."

Keri's mind raced. What kind of drug had they pumped her up with, and what were they expecting it to do to Joshua?

She expected to hear the cell door opening, but instead, there was only the sound of shuffling feet. They were being observed, she realized with a chill.

"Looks like it did the trick," the first guard observed. "Nicolau is out like a light, and the girl's catatonic and paralyzed."

I was? Keri resisted the urge to wiggle her fingers and toes just in case.

"Good," his companion replied. "Now for the next step."

Their footsteps receded down the hallway, leaving Keri and Joshua alone once more. Keri counted to sixty in her head before daring to open her eyes.

Joshua was already alert, his unnaturally bright eyes scanning the hallway. A smile played at his lips, revealing the barest hint of fang."Well done," he murmured. "You might have missed your calling as an actress."

"So what's the plan?" Keri whispered, her voice hoarse from the screaming. "Get me out of these cuffs, and then you can bend the bars and we can make a break for it?"

Joshua's laugh was low and devoid of humor. "Easier said than done. This entire cell is built to contain my kind."

Keri felt a flicker of fear at the implications of his words. If vampires found it difficult to escape, what chance did she have?

"We could try to trick them into opening the door and then overpower them," she suggested halfheartedly, knowing it was a desperate long shot.

"Even if we could, it wouldn't matter. The cell is warded against vampires. I couldn't leave even if the door was wide open."

"Warded?" Keri repeated. "Like... magic?"

A humorless chuckle escaped Joshua's lips. "Is that really so hard to believe?"

Keri opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. He had a point. If vampires were real, why not magic?

"So we can't break out. But there has to be some way to signal for help, right? Don't you have friends or allies who might come looking for you?"

A shadow passed over Joshua's face, his expression darkening. For a moment, Keri glimpsed the ruthless killer beneath the veneer of civility. "The Vasiles have powerful enemies, yes. But I doubt any of them would risk open war to save one imprisoned assassin."

"What about your family?" Keri pressed.

"Enough," Joshua snapped, his eyes flashing dangerously. The sudden surge of power in his voice made Keri flinch. "My past is none of your concern. Focus on the present."

Keri slumped. She was trapped in a den of vampires, imprisoned with one of the deadliest assassins in the underworld—who couldn’t do a damned thing to save them.

"I don't suppose you have any vampire superpowers that could get us out of here?" she asked, only half-joking.

Joshua's lips quirked in a humorless smile. "I'm afraid Hollywood has greatly exaggerated our abilities. And whatever strength I had has been diminished by my time here. Until I feed again."

She shuddered as she remembered his earlier words about "fresh prey." How long before his hunger overcame whatever tenuous alliance they had formed? “Can you feed on a vampire? Maybe I can trick them into coming in here, and you can...you know.” She gnashed her teeth at him.

“I could, but how would you get them to cross the vampire ward and be trapped in the cell with us?”

“Right.” Keri scowled at him. “I don’t see you coming up with any ideas. Do you smell that?”

It smelled like freshly baked cookies, a summer breeze, and then her favorite men’s cologne. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”

Joshua stiffened. His nostrils flared as he scented the air like a predator.

“I’m not sure whether to be hungry or horny?” she said. “What’s that smell?”

“That, it seems, is the next step.”

“Death by air freshener? Why wouldn’t they use sewage or old fish instead?”

"It’s not air freshener,” he murmured, a look of realization slowly dawning on his face. "They're pumping pheromones into the cell."

"Pheromones?" Keri repeated, confusion giving way to alarm. "Why?"

But even as she asked, she felt it — a warm, unfamiliar sensation washing over her. She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly hyper-aware of Joshua's presence. She remembered part of what she had overheard.

“And the human test subjects?"

"Responding as expected. The mating drive is almost impossible to resist."

Their eyes met, and she was struck by how utterly captivating he looked in the dim light, his chiseled features almost glowing with preternatural beauty. Had he always been this handsome?

Joshua's gaze smoldered with barely restrained hunger as he drank in the sight of her. Keri's skin prickled with goosebumps, her body responding to his intensity even as her mind screamed danger.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“What?” he snapped.

“Horny is winning out over hungry.”

Then she told him about the snippet of conversation she had heard before she had been knocked out.

“Breeding stock,” he muttered. “Mating drive.”

"I don’t like this," Keri managed, even as her body betrayed her with a rush of unwanted desire.

"Agreed," Joshua said, his voice strained. "They're trying to manipulate us, push us together."

Keri nodded, trying to focus on the implications rather than the way Joshua's lips moved as he spoke. "But why? What do they gain by this?"

"I have a theory," Joshua admitted. "But it’s evil, even for the Vasiles. We’re only this clear-headed because I didn’t drink from you.”

Keri nodded again, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate. The pheromones seemed to be growing stronger, clouding her mind with a haze of desire.

She tugged at her restraints, desperate for some kind of distraction. "These cuffs," she said. "There has to be a way to get them off."

Joshua's eyes flickered to her wrists, then quickly away. When he spoke, his voice was tight with barely contained emotion — hunger? Desire? Rage? Keri couldn't tell, and that terrified her even more.

“We need a distraction. Tell me about yourself,” she said desperately.

“No.”

Keri flinched at the venom in his voice but pressed on. "Look, we're trapped in a cell with no way out, being drugged with... lust pheromones or whatever these are. If we're going to survive this, we need information. I need information."

“I’m not the subject of an article you are writing,” he gritted out.

“Work with me here. I’m just trying not to jump your bones right now.” The itchy neediness was embarrassing as well as uncomfortable.

For a long moment, Joshua simply stared at her, his expression unreadable. Keri held her breath, acutely aware of how easily he could hurt her, pheromones or no.

“I’m an assassin.”

“I know. I’ve seen surveillance photos of you. I thought vampires couldn’t be recorded.” Her nipples tightened and she was getting uncomfortably wet, especially when his eyes dropped to her chest.

“I wanted to be seen.”

“Why?”

“I like to feed off of terror as well as blood.”

“Charming.”

He gave a half shrug. “You asked.”

“What did you do to piss off the Vasiles?”

“How did you come to be here?” he countered.

She guessed two could play at that game, but he seemed to be managing his arousal better than she was.

“My friend Chrissy. She was attacked. Murdered. Drained dry. And then her body disappeared from the morgue.” It was hard to talk. All she wanted to do was rub up against him like a cat in heat.

“She wasn’t the first,” he said, rubbing his hand over his jaw and looking away from her.

“Did you kill them?” she asked meekly.

His head whipped back to her. “Of course not. I’m not that sloppy.”

“Of course not,” she repeated, staring at his mouth. She wanted to kiss him. Shaking her head to clear it, she realized that the pheromone scent was getting more intense. “Chrissy came to me as a vampire and told me that the Vasile family was behind her murder. She couldn’t go to the cops because, well, she was dead, and she was afraid of what they would do to her. She said she had proof, but I had to go with her to the warehouse on Eighth Street to see it for myself.”

“So you went with a newly turned vampire, alone?”

She shuddered. His voice felt like a caress against her skin. “Hindsight being twenty-twenty, not my brightest move. Anyway, Chrissy disappeared, but I did get to hear that small conversation I told you about before I was knocked out.”

The mating drive is almost impossible to resist.

Oh shit.

“She did her job like a good little thrall,” he said.

“We were friends. Why would she set me up?”

“She might not have had a choice. Newly created vampires are susceptible to mind control from the family line that turned them.”

A wave of dizziness washed over her. The pheromones were growing stronger, more insistent. She could feel her resolve weakening, her body crying out for... something. Someone.

“What about you? Why are you here?” Keri forced herself to concentrate.

“I was sent to kill Anatole Vasile.”

He was the head of the crime family. Or, she guessed, vampire clan.

“Why?”

“He was sloppy in obtaining new vampires.”

The murders.

“When I failed, my clan couldn’t acknowledge my mission or there would be war. Vasile missed his chance to kill me when I was captured. If he had killed me in battle, it would have been justified. If he kills me as his prisoner, it’s war."

"Why didn’t he kill you?"

"I would imagine because he needed someone like me as a lab rat," Joshua said grimly.

That explained where the bloodless bodies might have gone to. They weren’t just stolen out of the morgue. They were new vampires that the Vasile could use to experiment on.

A chill ran down Keri's spine. "So Chrissy is an experiment, too?”

“It certainly sounds like it.”

“What are they creating here?"

Joshua shook his head. "I don't know. But I imagine it’s got something to do with...” He gestured vaguely at the air around them. "...this. And now, it seems, we've become their latest test subjects."

"We have to stop them," she said.

"We’ve already thrown a wrench into their plans by not cooperating."

Her gaze locked with Joshua's, and she saw the same hunger she felt reflected in his eyes.

"We need a plan," Keri managed, her voice husky with unwanted desire. "Before we lose control."

Joshua nodded, his jaw clenched tight. "We need to understand what they're doing to us. Why do they want us to fuck so badly."

Keri flinched at the word fuck and grew impossibly wetter. “Internet porn?” she joked weakly.

He snorted. “This is hardly the ideal setting for it.”

"I wouldn’t know. I’m not a connoisseur of those things." Keri asked, trying desperately to focus on the conversation and not how Joshua's muscles rippled as he shifted position.

“Oh, the things I could teach you,” he purred, tracing a finger down her cheek.

Her eyes half closed, and she shuddered.

A dangerous glint entered Joshua's eyes. "We could give them what they want. Let them think their experiment is working."

She swallowed hard. “It’s just sex, right?”

“As long as I don’t bite you, I’ll be safe from the drug’s effects.”

She trembled.

“But as tempting as ravishing you would be, that’s not what I’m offering.”

Disappointment flashed through her, which was ridiculous. She was being compelled, having basically been given a vampire roofie. She should be grateful that Joshua wasn’t using this as an opportunity to bang her like a bongo drum. But damn, she could imagine how good that would feel. It had been a while since she had anything between her legs that didn’t run on batteries.

“What then?” she breathed, licking her dry lips.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Keri's heart pounded in her chest, equal parts fear and residual desire coursing through her veins. The intensity of his gaze made her skin prickle. She was acutely aware of every inch between them, of the raw power coiled in his frame. Ally or not, she was trapped in a cell with a predator who saw her as potential prey.

"We make them believe we succumbed. And when they let their guard down..."

"We get our answers," Keri finished.

Joshua nodded, a grim smile playing at his lips. "Precisely.”

As if on cue, the scent of pheromones intensified, flooding the cell with a heady, intoxicating aroma. Keri's body betrayed her with a rush of desire, even as her mind screamed danger. She watched Joshua's nostrils flare, his pupils dilating as he drank in the scent of her growing arousal.

“How do we do that?”

“We wait it out,” he growled, his voice rough with barely contained hunger.

“I’m not sure I can do that,” she said.

He moved so fast she didn’t have time to gasp. Grabbing the chain between her manacled wrists, he put her hands over her head and held them in place.

“You don’t have a choice, now.”