Beast Read online

  Kaja frowned. She seemed to be trying to figure something out. “The First told you to leave. Do you not fear the First?”

  Meg had the audacity to grin. “Fear Dante? Only if I were a cat. Or a bottle of Scotch. He can tear through that, if you know what I mean.”

  Kaja shook her head. “I do not.”

  Meg sighed and stepped back. “I know. I’ll see you in the morning, Kaja. If you need anything, we’ll be in the tent next door. Good night.”

  Kaja let the towel drop the minute the others were gone. There was no exhibitionism in it. She just seemed comfortable with her nudity. Dante wasn’t comfortable with his own state of dress. His cock was trying to tunnel out of his pants.

  “You should beat them more often,” Kaja said. “I do not think they properly fear you.” She leaned over and sniffed at the Scotch. She wrinkled her nose and moved to the water, drinking it down.

  He couldn’t help but laugh at the suggestion. He also couldn’t help but notice that he was alone with a naked female whom he was practically obligated to fuck. He’d signed papers promising to fuck her and fuck her often.

  “Beck, Ci, and Meggie are family, sweetheart. I scarcely think I’ll be beating on them anytime soon.” He turned and pushed the pants off his hips. He tossed them to the side, but the clever nanites readjusted themselves, folding the pants neatly in a square.

  Kaja stepped back. “The coverings are magic.”

  It was going to be fun to show Kaja his plane. “I’m sure they seem that way to you. Would you believe me if I told you they’re really tiny machines that a rival corporation makes? We tried to make our own at Dellacorp. They developed their own intelligence and attacked the people wearing them. That was a lawsuit, let me tell you.”

  Kaja stared at the pants. “What is a machine?”

  Dante decided to leave that part of her education for another time. He sank down into the tub, hoping the heat would wilt his raging erection a little bit. He found it necessary to talk through his fangs. The damn things wouldn’t go away. “Don’t worry about it. Come here, Kaja.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She gingerly stepped into the tub and placed herself between his legs with her back to his front. She leaned back and sighed. “I like the warmth. It is very cold where I come from.”

  Her shoulders rubbed against his chest, and her little ass nestled against his cock. Nope, the heat wasn’t helping one little bit. His cock was long and thick against her skin.

  “Kaja, this home you were taken from, do you want to go back?” He needed to ease his conscience a little. If she had a home and a husband, maybe he should think about asking Beck to help her find her way back. His cock protested.

  “No,” she said quietly. “I do not wish to go home. I do not really have a home.”

  “Why do you call me First?” He was curious. “Is that what you call the leader of your people?”

  He didn’t mention that he wasn’t the leader of anything, really. Or had that changed? When he thought about it, he was kind of the leader of her.

  “The First is the most important,” Kaja explained. She spoke slowly, as though measuring each word. “He is First among the pack, though his mate is usually First among the women. He selects a strong mate. Because they are First, they get the best of the meat and the warmest place to sleep. The Second gets the next best, you understand?”

  “Yes,” he replied. He let his hands cup her shoulders, reveling in the smooth skin. He breathed in her scent now. Her head rested close to his face. Now she smelled of citrus and soap. It was the same thing Meg used, but it smelled different on Kaja. “So, does everyone have a number? What number were you, sweetheart?”

  He felt her deflate. “I had no number. I was not allowed to ever move up, so I did not need a number.”

  “What do you mean?” Dante felt a righteous indignation starting.

  “My father, he attempted to become First. He lost. The pack executed my brothers and my father. My mother died while birthing me. I was alone. I was female. They allowed me to live, but I had no real place in the pack.”

  Her words were even, as though she was working hard to cover her emotions, but Dante could feel her hurt. He thought about the strange connection he’d felt to the female from the moment he’d seen her. He didn’t like the restless feeling it gave him. He preferred to think about screwing her. That didn’t bring forth any odd, protective instincts in him. He understood sex, but he felt the need to set the ground rules first.

  Kaja was smart. She would understand the bargain he wished to make with her. They could be partners.

  “I’m sorry about that, Kaja. I don’t pretend to understand your people, though I suppose my people are just as brutal in a way.” When a rival corporation went under, no one came out to help the family. He recalled a man he’d gone to school with. He’d had a bad run and ended up moving down from the penthouse almost to the street. Dante was sure no one he knew had spoken to the man again. They weren’t so different.

  She sighed and wriggled against him. “Now I am here. Stellan was right. It is good that I left my home. I will be your mate. I will make sure you have the finest meat and the nicest bed to nest in. I think the fat one will make a good feast. I will catch him for you tomorrow.”

  Dante stopped. “Are you talking about Rhys?”

  “I do not know his name. He is small and vicious, but has much meat on him. Now that I am out of that odd cage, I will surely be able to catch him for our meal.”

  “Whoa, sweetheart. You can’t eat the gnomes,” Dante explained quickly. She turned her head to face him and seemed very confused. “The gnomes are our friends. We can’t eat them.” She still looked unsure. He decided to follow some of Beck’s advice. He allowed his voice to deepen. “You will not eat anything that talks back, Kaja.”

  Her lower lip pouted sweetly, but she nodded. “Yes, I understand. I do not see why, though. They do not even have fangs or claws. It would be easy to…”

  “I said no, Kaja,” Dante replied firmly. He pulled her back into his arms. He rather liked being forceful with her. It was nice to have someone take him seriously for a change. He let his arms drift around her torso. She needed to fatten up a bit, but she was a lovely armful all the same. She relaxed against him as his palms found her round breasts. She gasped a little as his thumbs drifted over her nipples. “Kaja, did you have a lover?”

  She seemed very distracted by his fingers plucking at her nipples, but managed to answer. “Only one. Only the Second ever managed to catch me and hold me down for the mating, though he required help. I eluded the rest.”

  Dante’s hands stopped, but only briefly. He was rapidly discovering a distaste for whatever plane she had come from. “Do you intend to run from me, sweetheart?”

  He wouldn’t allow it.

  Her sigh was happy. “Oh, no. You have claimed me. You use my name. I eluded the others because they did not intend to claim me. They wanted to use me and then move on.”

  A nasty feeling hit Dante square in the gut. He was using her, but she was going to use him, too. She would get something out of their little arrangement. “Look, Kaja, maybe we should talk about things for a moment. We might have very different ideas about how this whole mating thing works. We’re married, in a sense, but we should keep it light, you know? Married people on my world don’t necessarily stay together forever.”

  She sat up suddenly and turned. Dante was surprised at the loss he felt. Her eyes were wary now and steady on his face. “Say what you need to say, Dante.”

  He swallowed a hefty amount of Scotch. Kaja might be uneducated, but she was far from stupid. He thought briefly about lying, but he owed her the truth. “Look, I was ordered by my father to find a consort. You’re the first one I saw, so I bought you. The truth of the matter is I don’t really want to be married. I don’t see the advantage.”

  Her face went strangely blank. “You do not wish to mate with me.”

  That wasn’t exactly correct, as his dick
would attest. “I would love to fuck you, sweetheart. We just don’t know each other well enough for me to think I’ll never, ever want to fuck anyone else. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that I will. I’ve never been very good at keeping it in my pants, so to speak.” He gave her a little smile, trying to coax one out of her. “It doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. We’ll be married, but we can do as we like. I need for you to live at home with me for a while, but after that I’ll buy you someplace nice.”

  It was a good plan. There were still places on his plane that were wild. Once his father decided to scoot his unsuitable daughter-in-law out of the family, Dante would be allowed to buy some land and settle her there. He could still visit. They were married, after all. Besides, if she was on the surface, there would be very little chance of her encountering another royal who might decide to take his chances with adultery. Dante found he didn’t like the idea of his wife fucking around. “There are some really nice places. Most of Canada is still a brutal hellhole, excuse me, lovely wilderness. We can get you a nice cabin up there.”

  She stood suddenly and grasped the towel.

  “Hey,” Dante protested, pulling at her hand. “I thought we were talking.”

  “I am tired. It has been a very long day,” Kaja said without a hint of emotion. “Which corner is mine?”

  “What do you mean which corner? There’s a perfectly fine bed here, Kaja.”

  She shook her head. “I am not First. You will have the bed, and I will find a corner. I prefer a corner.”

  He had a sudden flash of intuition. She preferred a corner because she would only have to protect her front. He got the feeling Kaja slept with one eye open. He sighed inwardly. He’d made a mess of this. He should have been less honest. It would have been kinder. He could have eased Kaja into the life he wanted, but no, he’d bungled it. “You sleep with me, Kaja. I am your husband.”

  She shook her head. There was a wealth of sorrow in the gesture. “No, you are like the rest. You would use me and cast me aside when you are finished. I cannot risk it. If a pup were to be born, she would be outcast, too.”

  Dante stilled. He hadn’t even thought about children. The women on his plane used birth control until such time as they desired children. He had never had to think about it. Kaja wasn’t on anything. If he had slept with her, he could have made her pregnant. If he wasn’t ready to be a husband, he was really unready to be a father.

  She wrapped the towel around her middle. Her eyes studied him, and he had a bad feeling she could almost read his mind. “See, you do not wish for my pups.” She stepped out of the tub. “I will speak with your Second. I will go to these woods of his and be alone. I will cause no trouble.”

  Dante was on his feet in an instant. He didn’t care about his nudity. He wasn’t about to let her run off to some faery forest. “You are not going anywhere with my cousin. I bought you, and you’re coming home with me. I’m sorry I’m not Prince Charming, but we’ll find our way. If, and it’s a mighty big if, you become pregnant, I would never deny our child. Our child would be a royal. He would have the best of everything. He would not be outcast.”

  He would attempt to avoid it, of course. He doubted he could live apart from her if they made a baby. He wouldn’t have his child grow up in the wild, and he couldn’t imagine having to separate a child from his mother. Kaja would just have to adapt. He reached out and grasped her hand. He was surprised to find it was shaking. “Kaja? Are you all right? Sweetheart, you’re burning up.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. Her knees buckled, and Dante had to catch her. Her eyes went to the glass of water.

  Rhys had said he put the medication the demon gave for her in the water. Damn it. He should have made it clear he didn’t want her drugged.

  Kaja began to shake all over.

  Dante carried her to the bed and thought maybe he would let her eat Rhys after all.

  Chapter Five

  “Son of a bitch,” Dante cursed as the computer reported on the “medicine” the demon had given to the gnomes. “It’s colloidal silver and a freaking aphrodisiac.”

  The gnome paled, his ruddy cheeks turning stark white in a second. “I did not know that was in the solution. I was just told that it would keep her weak. She was very frightening, even in a weakened state. If I had allowed her to achieve her full strength, I feared she would kill us all. I was only following instructions. I certainly didn’t know it contained silver.”

  Beck stood over the gnome. His massive frame seemed to be a weapon of intimidation. The gnome practically cowered as Beck spoke. “If Dante had fed from her, he could have died. Vampires are allergic to silver.”

  Dante looked down at the readout from his tablet again. He forced himself to take a deep breath. If he had followed his instincts, he would have taken Kaja that way. The instinct to feed from her immediately had been almost overwhelming. In the past, he had always considered it an intimate act he wasn’t interested in. He’d never taken a female that way, never sunk his fangs into a living creature and fed. He realized his father fed from his mother, and that Susan fed from Colin, but he didn’t find it intriguing. It was brutal and primal, and made him squeamish. It had, until he’d placed his fangs on the back of Kaja’s neck. She glowed, and he knew she would taste sweet. She belonged to him. Her blood belonged to him.

  Dante shook off that dark thought. He wasn’t some Neanderthal seeking out the blood of those around him, keeping virtual harems of females to feed him. He was modern. He got his nutrition from meal pills.

  “I am sorry, Your Highness,” the gnome was saying. His head was down in supplication. “The demon told me it would keep her quiet. Given the fact that she was terrifying on the drug, I did not want to see her without it. I thought it best to keep giving it to her as I was instructed. The Planeswalker warned she could escape if I did not make sure to keep it in her system.”

  Dante glanced at Kaja. She was curled up on the bed the gnomes had brought in for them. It was the equivalent of a very nice pallet. If he’d been thinking, he would have brought his own equipment. Then Kaja could have a proper bed to cry on.

  “I need to change,” she whimpered over and over again.

  He sat beside and ran a hand through her clean hair. Someone had really done a number on her. “No, you don’t, sweetheart. You’re fine the way you are.”

  “Please let me change,” she begged. Her clear blue eyes were narrowed in pain.

  “Don’t you feed my consort that shit again,” Dante said, turning back to the gnome because he just couldn’t stand to see her in pain. He felt utterly useless. If he’d been at home, he would have doctors to care for her. Here, there was nothing. She shook and seemed to be running a fever.

  The gnome looked to Beck. “Sire, this is not a good plan.”

  Dante stood and showed his full fangs to the little Fae. He enjoyed the gnome’s wide eyes. “Kaja is not married to Beckett. He has no authority over her. I own her, and you will follow my instructions. If I discover you have drugged my consort in any fashion, I’ll drain you. Do you understand me?”

  He might not feed from living creatures, but he would make an exception in the gnome’s case if the little bugger didn’t follow instructions.

  The gnome quaked and averted his eyes. Dante noticed the gnome’s wife, Cara, enter. She went to the bed and covered Kaja’s forehead with a cool rag. “Yes, sir. We will leave the care of your consort to you, Mr. Dellacourt.”

  Dante was satisfied with the gentle way Cara was treating Kaja. But he wasn’t about to treat her husband in the same fashion. There was more than just the silver in Kaja’s system. “Now, explain to me why you fed my consort an aphrodisiac.”

  The gnome swallowed several times.

  “Answer him,” Beck ordered.

  “I wanted the sale to go through,” Rhys replied.

  “Bastard,” Cara spat even as she rubbed her small hands across Kaja’s back. Dante was very grateful to the female gnome. It was obvi
ous to him that Cara had been kind to his consort. Kaja wouldn’t allow Rhys near her, but she clung to Cara’s hand.

  “How could you?” Cara asked. She seemed to wait for Rhys to explain. When he didn’t, she took over, turning her head to lock eyes with Dante. “If you bedded down with the consort tonight, you wouldn’t be able to revoke the sale in the morning. You have a night to decide, but if penetration occurs, the sale and marriage are final by Fae laws.”

  “Get out,” Dante snarled. He longed to wrap a hand around that gnome’s throat and squeeze.

  The Fae still looked to his king. Beck stared down at him. “I would go if I were you. We will discuss your methods in the morning, Rhys. You have contracts with the demon clan, but you are still my subject. You are still bound by my laws. Cara, can you take care of the woman?”

  The blonde gnome nodded as her husband retreated. “I will aid the vampire. The silver should be out of her system by morning. She was to be given the elixir every morning and every evening. The demon said it would keep the change from happening.”

  Dante exchanged a glance with his cousin. He was certain they were both thinking the same thing. They had dealt with a creature that had two faces not six months before. “Is she a hag?”

  Cara shot him a dirty look. “Of course not. Have you ever heard of a hag who could serve as a consort?”

  “No,” Dante replied. “But then consorts don’t change forms. How do I know this isn’t a trick of Torin’s?”

  Torin was dead set on killing Beck and Cian. He’d sent a hag to do the job last time. He might think to try it again. The thought of Kaja being one of Torin’s goons unsettled him.

  “I gave her a purgative when she came here,” Cara said. “I give it to all the females to make sure they are free of any spells or hexes. There was not a hint of magic on her.” She looked thoughtfully at the woman in her charge. “I would say she is a shape-shifter of some sort, but she isn’t Fae. The demon said she came from a far-off plane. The females there must be consorts as well.”