Page 14 of Lost and Bound
When I finally lifted my face from my hands, all my panic had drained away, replaced withpurpose. It burned, a good burn, like the useless parts of me, the frightened and pathetic parts, were withering away to ash and leaving only the undamaged core of me behind.
He hadn’t sat back down again, still poised to move—which kept me wary. But I ignored that.
“Hypothetically,” I said, craning my neck to look up at his impassive face, “if you got out. Out of the chain and the collar, out of this cell—”
“I won’t,” he growled.
“Hypothetically! Christ, bear with me a second.” He frowned at me but kept his mouth shut. “Thankyou. If you got out. What would you do?”
His instant answer made my heart leap. “Rip them to shreds,” he said. “Limb from limb. All of them. Burn this fucking place to the ground.”
I could picture it, so clearly. The screams, the fountains of blood, the limbs flying through the air. Flames leaping up from the lab, consuming everything in their path. The bald guard who’d tased me and beaten me and dragged me to and from the lab to be tortured over and over again, crumpled and gray on the floor in a pool of crimson.
It made me smile.
Revenge. I might not live to see it, but I could bring it about. I could die knowing I’d made it possible, that they’d all die because I’d made the right fucking decision for once in my life.
What was left of it, anyway. My last few minutes, and they’dmatter.
I looked up. He still stood there, waiting. Watching me.
“I’ll do it,” I said, with only the faintest little hitch in my voice. “But I have some conditions.”
His brow furrowed. “Do what?”
I drew a deep breath. “Mate with you. Let you mate me. Drain me. Use me to escape.”
I thought he’d been standing still before, but he went so motionless he looked like a statue. “Why?”
Did I owe him an explanation? No, definitely not. He’d owe me, when this was done. But I might as well tell him. Maybe Ian and Matt would want to hear it.
“I haven’t had a lot of choices for a long time. And when I did, I always chose wrong.” My throat clicked as I swallowed. “I get one last choice. I don’t want to die scared, and in fucking pain, and with no one knowing what happened to me. Most of all I don’t want to die for nothing. If we mate, and you drain me, and you pull everything you can through the bond, until you’re strong enough to break the collar. I might survive it, right? I could survive it, bonded to you.”
I’d meant to sound confident, but it came out plaintive. Like I was begging for him to agree with me.
He didn’t. A muscle ticked in the angle of his jaw. “Probably not.”
I agreed with him, actually, deep down. But it didn’t make any difference. My mind was made up.
“I want to do it anyway.”
A look I couldn’t completely interpret crossed his face, a shadow of something like grief or regret. For the barest second, his eyes flickered.
“You said you had conditions.”
I blew out a long, long breath. That was tacit agreement. “Three.” I stopped, considered the last two years, the way I’d felt day after day, endless hour after hour, the isolation and the blood-chilling loneliness, and the likelihood that he’d be the last person to ever touch me. Not to mention the mechanics of mating, and one very important sexual act I’d never participated in.
I said, “No, four.” He nodded at me. “First. You have to go find my cousins. I mean, if I don’t survive,” I added, in a pointless sop to the idea that I might live through this. “Ian and Matt Armitage. Matt’s the leader of our pack, or he was a couple of years ago. Near Laceyville, in northern California. Tell them I’m dead, so they don’t wonder.” If they even gave a shit, which I doubted at this point. But at least they’dknow.
I couldn’t go on for a second, vivid images assaulting me of my cellmate showing up at my home without me, telling Ian he’d killed me without a trace of emotion.
“What else?”
I shook my head to clear it. “Second,” I said a little hoarsely, “you have to do what you said. Kill them all. No mercy.”
That earned me a quick, flashing smile, a baring of his teeth that might’ve had me cringing back against the wall if I hadn’t already been pressed to it. “That doesn’t need to be a condition.”
“Good. Third, I have a request about how we—do it. The mating. And fourth, you’ll—look, I know you think this won’t work. For me, anyway. And I can live with that.” I couldn’t help laughing. It came out a rusty croak. “See what I did there? Anyway, I get it. But try, okay? If you can do it without killing me, I want you to try. I want your word. Swear to me.”
