Page 21 of Marked
My length beads inside my pants.
Her full breasts and ass seem to haunt me as all the blood in my veins rushes to my groin. “Fuck me,” I moan, the words a hard pant.
It’s been months since the last soft female warmed my bed. It’s nother, it’s a dry spell. Simple.
You can do this, Wade.Get it to-fucking-gether.
I walk down the hall and head to the manor’s front desk. The dome’s protective shield blocks out the morning and heavy-duty blinds are in place, keeping the house in a perpetual state of twilight. Maximus bustles around, straightening chairs within an inch of their life.
He looks up as I near. “Master Wade? You should have retired by now.”
As though his words are the key to my ultimate vertical repast, my body tingles. A firm reminder that daylight is right outside. “Headed there now.” He bows, white fluffy hair swaying with the motion. “The girl, Lilah … anything she needs ... make sure she gets it, yeah?”
Another bow. “Of course, my lord.”
I offer him a tight smile and head back upstairs.
The manor is chill, quiet, with the hour. Most of us keep a nocturnal schedule thanks to the shit we deal with. Why the world’s lowlifes want to do business under the cover of darkness ...
Hell, it’s fine with me regardless. Saves me from one hell of a sunburn.
Not that my kind normally has a problem with sunshine. But you can only take so many lives, innocent or otherwise, until it starts to fuck with you on some level. Seventy-five years ago, when I signed up to join this circus, no one mentioned the aftereffects. The weight that you carry every fucking day.
There is too much blood on my hands. Too many rogue supes killed, too many donors drained in an effort to survive my transition. All during a time when it was like the dark ages for our kind. After the war ...
I shut it down. Those are years I don’t want to revisit. Years of war, death, and memories ofher.
Scrubbing my face, I haul myself down the hall and push through the heavy doors into the colony house. I snag a bottle of whiskey from the bar and slip to the back of the stairwell. The tunnel is wide open and the almost musky fragrance of the basement level wafts up to me. My prison until sundown.
Just because my fucking mind hates me, it throws up Lilah pacing next to me in the suite, her little bare feet silent on the carpet and those chestnut waves flowing around her face.
Twenty-one.
She’s a fucking kid compared to me. Innocent and too damn good. It makes my gums ache, her sweetness. But her temper makes something else ache too.
Her humanity shines from her like an angel’s grace. It’s a frailty... a weakness. The poor kid has no idea what is really out there. How many true monsters lurk in places she can’t see, with faces that look as normal as hers or mine.
And I have to get a lead from her somehow. I have to bring her deeper into this hell in order to stop one of the worst monsters of our time.
I take a swig from the bottle and head down into the bowels of the earth. Yeah. This is going to be a shit show of epic proportions just like it was before. I just fucking know it.
***
Something heavy slams and my eyes spring wide. The dream shatters, leaving Lilah’s soft scent in my nose and my body primed and ready to go.
“Hey, Cap. You take a siesta with your five-fingered girlfriend and her friendwhiskeyagain?” Tanner’s voice echoes like steel picks in my skull.
I hold up a hand, middle finger straight and proud over the back of the downstairs couch. But he’s right. The last vestige of sleep fades away on an exhale of whiskey and air. I sit up, head pounding. The empty bottle crashes to the floor beside me, and I stare at it through a haze.
After chugging half the fucking bottle on the way down the stairs, the couch seemed like a good place to prop my boots up. Don’t remember staying though.
Gage crouches in front of me, tall glass of almost pink hued water in hand. “Fuck. You look like shit,” he says. “Do you feel like it too?”
I take the glass and guzzle half. Nothing like O+ to start the day. “I’m fucking beautiful, man.”
“Good. We got a lead on Vic’s office.”
I drain the glass and hand it back as I rise to my feet. Everything stays remotely in place. “Gear up then, men.”
