“Well, well, I am surprised,” Ryan murmured.
Chapter Sixteen
“You must have guessed,” Jenna purred, her voice still carrying a harsh edge. She knelt upright on the fur-covered bed. She was naked, and licked the tip of a finger before running the nail down her body, between her breasts and down to her pubis.
“You must have guessed it was me who wanted to see you…and why,” she added, fixing Ryan with her raven-black and infinitely deep eyes.
Despite himself, Ryan could feel her mind start to encroach on him, tendrils wisping around the edges of his consciousness.
“No, I came to see Alien. Mebbe find out something about Dean,” he said, trying to block his mind and stop her seeing that he was lying. He had suspected a setup of some kind. But why Jenna? He had a notion, but what exactly was it that she wanted?
The small and exquisitely shaped woman licked her lips and smiled, taking a step toward him.
“You’re not very good at hiding your thoughts, sweetie. More of a man of action, I would have said. You know damned well why I want you, and that’s why I’ve got your son. He has potential, but I think you would be better.”
She was now standing in front of the one-eyed man, who felt as though his limbs had become blobs of mercury, unable to move and infinitely heavy. She trailed the fingers of one hand delicately over his face, running a nail edge down his puckered scar with a tenderness that belied all he knew of her.
“You must have gathered that I have my own plans. You and your people could be a part of that. You and your son can be my concubines and you my right hand. And that old man seems to know much of the predark ways. He could be very useful, very interesting.”
She now stood on tiptoe so that her face was against Ryan’s. He could feel her mind snaking and coiling around his own, trying to bend his will to hers. Was this how she snared Harvey? Ryan wanted her, could feel the stirrings of lust despite his revulsion at all he knew or surmised about her. And she had Dean—she had admitted this. What had she done with his son?
Ryan used this spark to fight back against her. She brushed her lips against his, and he could smell the musky sexual odor of her body. It filled his lungs and seemed to spread around his body in the same way that her mind spread around his consciousness.
She began to kiss him, her tongue probing and licking, nibbling at his mouth. He felt her hands start to rove across his body, fingers searching for openings in his clothing. She was using every sensual trick she knew to break down his defenses.
To a casual onlooker, it wouldn’t have seemed so, but Ryan was fighting one of the most important battles of his life. He knew that if he gave in to her, then he would be enslaved and his friends doomed. He had been here before. Countess Katya Beausoleil, the sadistic baron who had wanted to keep him as her personal stud, and who had perished when they plunged into a raging river. Her enchantments had been subtler, and he had resisted those.
Ryan pulled his head away from hers, a jerky, hesitant movement slowed by the lack of control he now seemed to have over his own body.
“No. You won’t—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish. While he had been struggling mentally, he had been unable to hear the approach from behind…
“SOMETIMES I WISH I’d stayed at Brody’s,” Dean muttered as he bit into his lip. His mouth ran salty with his own blood, but the distraction of the pain was working. Muscles that screamed for freedom of movement or rest were once again blanked out enough to allow him to carry on.
The air duct had run for what seemed like miles, but in all probability was only a few hundred feet, in a straight line before turning sharply to the left. The concrete inside the duct was rough and unfinished, snaring Dean’s clothes and scratching at the area of exposed skin on his shins between his boots and the hem of his pants. Under his shirt, his back became raw and bruised from rubbing on the concrete ceiling of the narrow duct.