Page 1 of Trapped for Her Blood
Chapter One
Ember
“Go! Now!”The naked man glares and then turns from me. I’ve never seen a man so enormous. He’s over seven feet tall with the rest of him proportional, and my heart is beating so quickly it’s hard to breathe.
Was he really just a bear? Or am I delirious from my fatigue, thirst and fear.
Under the torchlight glowing at the side of the cave, the man’s body is a living embodiment of trapped power. His expansive back a tangle of hard disks and ropes bound together to form something both majestic and scary, and in spite of the scars that rake across its expanse, his back is also breathtakingly beautiful.
He stretches his arms ahead of him and then pulls back his elbows, and his huge shoulder blades shift and change the shape of him, muscles rippling over massive bones. He twists and shifts, as if his back, as if the entirety of his gigantic body is stiff.
As he walks slowly away from me, my attention’s drawn lower to the flexing mounds of his ass and then to his legs, like massive, knotted cables of steel.
“I said go!” he yells, facing away, his deep, thick voice reverberating off the walls to penetrate my body.
Shivering in the cold damp air, I wait in silence, hoping he’ll change his mind. I’m not sure I could move if I tried anyway, and the options outside this cave seem far worse than whatever he might do to me if I stay.
“Where are we?” I ask, appealing to the kindness I feel sure is inside him. Even as a bear, he saved me from freezing to death by warming me with his body.
Turning quickly toward me, he raises his arms overhead.
I gasp.
His chest is even more impressive than his back, equally muscular with a t-shaped arrangement of hair, and his hands mimic claws as he stomps forward. A roar scrapes up from inside him, a sound so loud it shakes my body. His face contorts into a ferocious expression and his thick mane of hair falls forward. It’s no longer hard to remember he just transformed from a bear.
My back slams into the rock behind me and my gaze takes him in, pausing at the long, thick cock hanging from a thicket of dark hair. Then, as if that part of him senses my attention, it twitches and expands, growing even more prominent and threatening.
I really can’t breathe now.
He stops before reaching me, but maintains his threatening pose.
I focus on his eyes, so golden and shining, like they’re lit from within. They’re a sharp contrast to his thick, tangled hair and tanned chest, enhanced by glistening curls of hair that catch the light and remind me of the warmth of his body when he held me.
Bear or man, he probably committed some horrible crime to get him locked up down here. Yet as ferocious as he seems, his gold eyes are full of sadness, more like despair, and I feel sure that he doesn’t want to hurt me—not in his heart.
Wishful thinking is all that I’ve got.
“Please.” Hands lifted, palms forward, I take a small step toward him. “I have nowhere else to go.”
His gaze meets mine and we stare into each other’s eyes.
The strands of long thick hair falling across his face can’t possibly mask the brightness of his eyes, or the pain deep inside them.
Courage rising, I move forward again, then again, each tiny step shortening the space between us by one or two inches. And as frightened as I am, as foolish as it seems to be heading toward this massive and naked man—who has more than once warned me to go—my need to survive trumps my fear.
As a bear he held me, I remind myself, hoping he remembers that too.
My body’s craving warmth again and hungers to press against the heat of his expansive chest, which seems to grow by several inches with each breath.
His arms, still raised, are so muscular and lean that veins rise from under his skin like they’re trying to escape, but I keep my main focus on his eyes. I need to focus on his humanity so I can forget the danger manifest in his body and the malice demonstrated in his near constant growl.
As I approach, he remains still—or at least his legs don’t move, but each breath yields so much change in the shape of him, expanding and contracting, like he’s in constant motion, like he’s the edge of an ocean ebbing and flowing as I draw near.
Tension electrifies the air between us, and his posture grows even more menacing. His muscles seem to grow tighter and harder—and yet his eyes…he almost looks scared of me.
Less than two feet away, his presence fills my head with smoke and pine, and something else. His musk is familiar, the same scent he had as a bear, and the sense memory of how he held me is comforting, even though logic says I should feel terror.
I’m so cold, close enough now to touch him, and my fingers tingle, wanting to slide into the hair on his chest. I lean slightly, almost desperate to rest my head against him like a heated fur rug.
