Siren Awakened Read online

  “Selena,” he whispered in a voice that almost sounded distraught. It was all I could do to keep my face impassive.

  He stood up abruptly, his chair crashing to the ground behind him, garnering even more stares. “I’ll give you more time, but I’m warning you, I don’t have much patience left. You’re mine, and there’s nothing that anyone can do about that, including you.”

  He stalked off, rage emanating off of him, making everyone he passed shrivel in fear. There was a burnt smell in the air, like his usually delicious sex smell had been scorched by his rage.

  The smell in the air could have been from my fury as well. The doors of the cafeteria slamming behind him did nothing to calm me down.

  How dare he? How dare all of them!

  So many stares finally became suffocating, and now it was my turn to burst out of my seat and practically sprint out of the room.

  I’d made it halfway down the hall when I heard my name called.

  “Selena!”

  It was Laz.

  I sighed and slowed down as I heard his footsteps in the hallway behind me get closer.

  I felt his soft touch on my shoulder. It was a little amazing to me that a creature that held so much power could somehow be so gentle with me.

  I turned to look at him, studying his gorgeous, concerned face.

  I didn’t want gentle right now.

  What I wanted was a distraction.

  And I’d bet that Laz was just the distraction I needed.

  “Sel—” he began. But I was done talking.

  I grabbed his face and then smashed my lips against his, briefly noting the look of shock and then lust on his face right before our lips touched.

  It took a second for him to return my kiss. He made a slight groaning sound, and then he deepened the kiss. I used my tongue to trace his lips before wrapping my arms around his neck. Laz’s tongue moved against mine, teasing but persistent. I opened wider for him, tasting chocolate and caramel…and something else. Something rich and masculine. Something all Lazarus.

  He groaned again, his hands moving behind my head and up into my hair. He fisted it, gently tugging my head back and kissing me harder. He took control of the kiss then…and me, using his hands in my hair to move me where he wanted. Laz dropped one hand down to cup my ass before easily lifting me. I instinctively wrapped my legs around his waist, feeling him hard against me.

  He carried me down the hallway without stopping.

  Laz opened a door and strode into what looked like one of the shower rooms and set me down just inside the door. He pushed me up against it. I looked up into his face and felt something flicker in my chest, forgetting for a second this was just a release. There weren’t any emotions involved.

  No one would hear us in the tiled room. Shower schedules were strictly adhered to here. I didn’t even know how we’d managed to get in here. Apparently, Laz had the same ability as the others to work around the rules of the prison.

  Ugh. The others. I wouldn’t think about them. I wouldn’t.

  Laz was too busy undressing to notice my distraction. As he untucked the navy prison top from his pants, I caught a glimpse of his muscular abdomen before he let it drop. My breathing roughened when he removed his shirt, exposing his stomach, arms, and chest. Laz had the kind of body that looked capable of inflicting pain and pleasure equally. His scattered tattoos made him look like a cage fighter who could demolish half the men in the room but still has enough stamina afterward to satisfy a woman in bed better than they’d ever had it. His muscles shifted with every breath, like they could break free of his skin at any moment. He intimidated and aroused me all at once.

  For a moment, my thoughts flicked to what it would look like for Alaric and Lazarus to go at it in the cage.

  Stop it, I reminded myself.

  “Strip,” he said. His tone warned me not to protest, and I didn’t want to. Before I could think any more, I slipped off my shirt and pulled on the drawstring of my pants, letting them slide down over my hips to pool at my feet, completely exposing my body to him. I pressed my palms against the door behind me so I wouldn’t be tempted to cover myself.

  Laz paused in the act of pulling off his pants, his black eyes seeming to darken even more. I found myself entranced as I stared at them. His gaze traveled down my body, and every inch of my skin heated, as if it were his hand caressing me and not just his eyes.

  “Baby, I wish I had enough self-control to taste every inch of you.” He pushed his pants and boxer briefs down his legs, stepped out of them, and moved toward me so fast, I gasped. Back pressed against the door, I let my gaze drop to the hand gripping his heavy erection, stroking it from root to head.

  “Are you wet enough for me, Selena?”

  Before I could answer, he guided his cock between my slightly parted thighs and through my cleft, dragging the head achingly slow through my wetness. He growled near the top of my head, circling my clit until I felt like I was going to scream. But he pulled himself away just as quickly, making me whimper in protest.

  Then he dropped his hands to my ass and lifted me against him, lodging me between his body and the door.

  “Wrap your legs around my waist.” He groaned when I did as he commanded, cradling his erection against me. “I can’t do anything but hard and fast. Do you understand? I want you too much.”

  “Yes,” I whimpered. “Please.”

  He pushed inside me then with such force, the door behind me shook on its hinges. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I cried out, the sound mingling with his strangled groan. Pain sliced through me, sharp and quick. He was big, bigger than the others. I hadn’t thought that was possible.

  Clinging to his shoulders, I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the discomfort to subside as our harsh breathing echoed through the still room. Laz froze against me, chest heaving, and my eyes opened to meet his.

  His gaze held an unspoken question.

  “Please,” I gasped. “I don’t want you to stop.”

  His voice sounded strangled. “I don’t think I could.”

  His already-stiff muscles bunched under my fingers as I stroked his neck and shoulders. Having Lazarus stop now would drive me off the deep end.

  I laid kisses along his collarbone and his neck, entreating him to continue. Despite the sting I’d experienced when he first thrust into me, the way his erection filled me felt perfect now.

  Pain always brought the most perfect pleasure.

  Impaled by his hips against the hard surface of the door, I shifted slightly in an effort to assuage the building ache.

  “Hold still.” Punctuating his order, Laz’s hips drove me into the door once more with a powerful thrust. “Fuck. Fuck. Just give me a fucking minute.”

  “No. I can’t. Lazarus…please.”

  My thoughts had scattered with the movement of him inside me, and disjointed words began to fall from my lips.

  The pain remained, but I could manage it since it was paired with the promise of something I knew would be pleasurable. I was already sensitive down there, and I knew that if I could just move a certain way against him, I could use his body to find the release I was desperate for.

  Ignoring his request to remain still, I circled my hips over Laz’s, moaning without restraint when that needy part of me slid against the smooth base of his erection buried deep inside me. I tightened my thighs around him and worked my lower body into a rhythm, concentrating on finding my pleasure as fast as possible.

  I felt wild. Desperate. Needy. For him. For this.

  I wanted to slow down and savor the moment, but my body wouldn’t allow it. Only a few more grinds of my hips… My head fell back on my shoulders, anticipating my climax. Laz’s hands gripped my bottom, his fingers digging in painfully. The friction I craved disappeared, and I moaned in protest, pulling on his hair in frustration.

  “No, no, my little siren. That’s not how this is going to go. We’ve barely gotten started.”

  Holding my body still against him
, Lazarus dipped his head and took one of my nipples in his mouth and drew on it greedily. Hot pleasure shot through me, spreading through my belly and lower. I needed to move. I had to. But he wouldn’t allow it.

  After licking and sucking my nipple to a peak, he moved to my other breast and gave it the same torturous yet reverent treatment. I moved restlessly against the hard surface of the door, needing him to stop. Needing him to never stop. Lazarus raised his head, his heated eyes landing on my lips and staying there, pupils dilating. His breathing escalated with each passing second.

  “Give me your mouth. I want your mouth.” I pressed my forehead against his, suddenly feeling uneasy about kissing him any more. Isn’t that what Julia Roberts said in Pretty Woman, that you shouldn’t kiss anyone because it was too intimate?

  Before I could think any harder on it, his lips fell on mine with a growl, biting, soothing, and licking. Our tongues met and tangled furiously. He forced my mouth open over and over again, demanding to be let inside. Head slanting right, then left, I let the kiss consume me, never once thinking to come up for air. As he dominated my mouth, any lingering pain disappeared, replaced with single-minded need. He felt hot and thick inside me, and my body relaxed to accommodate his size.

  At some point during the kiss, Laz braced one arm against the door, wrapped the other around my waist, and mercifully, finally began moving me up and down his rigid length, slowly torturing my slick, sensitive flesh. The pace grew faster and more determined, until I was practically bouncing up and down on him.

  Laz’s mouth never left mine, absorbing my cries with his tongue and lips. Without warning, the pressure building inside me burst, and an immense wave of pleasure washed over me. I broke the kiss and screamed, dimly aware that Lazarus was watching me come apart in his arms as I rode out my orgasm with the use of his still-thrusting body.

  When I’d finished, Lazarus buried his face in my neck with a groan. “Fuck, I’m ruined. You’ve ruined me, baby.”

  With one final thrust of his hips, he found his release. He tried to muffle his shouts against my damp skin, but they couldn’t be contained, and I was too slack with pleasure to do anything but listen to the expletives he chanted against my ear.

  When we finally got our breathing under control, he shifted my body around so that he could loop his arms under my knees. He gathered me against his chest, carried me towards the sinks, and then sat me down on the counter.

  Please, let them just have been cleaned.

  Body limp, I watched as he grabbed a towel and dampened it before he kneeled in front of me and pressed the warm cloth between my legs. I watched through half-closed eyes as he ran the cloth along my inner thighs and back up. When he’d finished his task, he tossed the cloth in one of the hampers that lined the walls and then began trailing kisses down my stomach.

  My eyes flew open as the intense sensations I’d just experienced rushed back to the surface. “You know this means nothing, right?” I moaned as his warm breath drifted over me.

  “Whatever you say, baby. Just let me kiss you better.” Then he quickly and powerfully licked me to a second orgasm. And this time, he didn’t bother to muffle my scream.

  Awkwardness set in the second the euphoria from my third orgasm started to fade. The man was a god with his tongue, but his gaze, as he helped me get dressed, was too intimate. The way he softly put my hair behind my ear and then allowed his hand to linger on my cheek.

  How good it felt to have him touch me like that…

  No, no, no. That was not what this was.

  I quickly yanked my pants back up and stepped away from him.

  “Thanks for the fuck,” I told him coarsely, ignoring the way his eyes shimmered in displeasure at my words.

  “No problem,” he said casually. I didn’t miss the heat in his gaze as I shimmied my top on. Hellhounds were evidently very expressive.

  “So, what was that?” he finally asked after we’d both finished dressing.

  “I just needed to blow off some steam,” I told him, only lying a little bit.

  “Right,” he said again, his body getting stiff, his voice laced with annoyance.

  “I’ve got to go, dinner duty,” I lied as I practically sprinted away.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it of whatever spell that orgasm he’d just given me was.

  That had to be the reason for this weird feeling in my chest.

  His orgasm had done something to me.

  It felt like his gaze was on me the entire way back to my cell.

  And I didn’t feel any better than I had before.

  If anything, I felt worse.

  As I lay on my cot, a burning sensation started up around my ankle. The same sensation I’d felt before.

  Just like everything else about tonight, I ignored it. And what it possibly meant.

  I had a feeling it wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter 5

  “Get up,” a voice barked at me, waking me up from a night of terrible sleep.

  I blearily opened my eyes to the sight of a guard leering at me from the other side of the bars.

  “You’ve been summoned by the warden,” he told me, and any residual tiredness I was feeling flew away. It had been a while since the warden had called for me, and it was never a good thing when he wanted me.

  The guard wasn’t as much of an asshole as some of the others around here, and he turned his back while I slipped into my uniform. He didn’t say anything as he frog marched me down the hall. We were there far faster than I would have preferred. He walked off with a muttered, “Good luck,” and then it was just me standing in the entryway of the warden’s office, dread curling in my gut.

  “Are you going to stand there all day?” the warden growled. I took a deep breath and stepped into his office.

  The warden was sitting in his desk chair, sipping a steaming red liquid from a glass cup. He didn’t bother looking at me as I hesitantly walked towards the office. His focus was on the wall in front of him.

  He wasn’t in a good mood, that much was obvious. My nerves spiked even more.

  “Well, sit down,” he said exasperatedly, gesturing to the chair in front of him like I should have read his mind. I slid into the chair, sitting on the very end of it, like somehow, I’d be able to make a quick escape if things went south.

  The warden finally flashed his gaze at me. “Today’s your lucky day, siren. I’m going to give you your power back.”

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Well, just for a week.” He pursed his lips. “And that’s always subject to change.”

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered, my heart hammering a thousand beats a minute as I leaned towards him.

  “I need a favor. And you’ll need your power for it. I see this as a win-win situation.”

  My mouth opened and then closed. I didn’t see anything that was in the winning column for me. Just a taste of having my power back might be enough to finally make me crack. It had finally begun to fade, that memory of what those few hours had been like before Julian took it all.

  I had no desire to be reminded of it again and start the whole process over again. A week might do me in.

  “I apologize if I made it seem like you had a choice in this.” He smiled and then took a long sip of his still steaming drink. “Your master will be here in five minutes. After I give you your power back, you’re going to get to spend some quality time with him. I don’t care how you do it, but you will convince him to give me the rw nw prt m hrw,” he told me, his voice growing angrier.

  I searched my memory, trying to remember why whatever strange name he’d just said sounded so familiar.

  “The Book of the Dead?” I asked slowly, remembering such a book in Julian’s vault.

  “Very good,” he said appraisingly, his gaze dancing over me. He gestured to the shelves around the room, all of them holding artifacts that were the stuff of legends. “You might have noticed I’m a bit of a collector. Julian promised me the book in ex
change for some information from one of the shifter prisoners that his clan frequently quarrels with. While I fulfilled my end of the bargain, your illustrious master did not.”

  My spine hackled as again, he used the word “master.” I wanted to scream that he’d never been my master, but I managed to keep my mouth closed.

  The warden smirked like he knew exactly what I was thinking and relished my anger. Bastard.

  He pulled out a pocket watch and glanced at it. “We’d better get going,” he remarked before setting his drink down and striding towards the shelf where the glowing orb that held my power was kept.

  The temperature in the room seemed to skyrocket as he picked it up casually before walking back towards me.

  I couldn’t breathe as I stared at it longingly. A part of me lay in there, and without it, I would never feel whole again.

  “Go ahead, Selena. Reach out and touch it. Call it to you,” he murmured, excitement gleaming in his eyes.

  I dragged my gaze away from it to stare at the warden suspiciously. “This isn’t some kind of joke?” I asked.

  “Would I do that to you?” he answered, pretending to sound hurt.

  That just pissed me off so I reached out and grabbed the orb.

  Liquid lightning shot through my veins. My skin buzzed with energy as glowing light was sucked into my skin. How had I been living without this? It was like I’d been walking around half-dead ever since it was taken, and I just hadn’t realized it before now. I felt…invigorated. Like I could do anything.

  “Your power suits you.” The warden’s voice was like a dash of cold water. It sliced through my euphoria, and I was forced to come back to reality. I’d forgotten for a moment where I was.

  Before I got a chance to say anything, a knock sounded on the door.

  “Ah, that would be the guard telling us that our friend is here.”

  My power lashed out, striking at him like a whip. The warden held up a hand, and a sizzling power filled the room.

  “Now, now. Let’s be a good little siren,” he said, as if I’d thrown confetti at him instead of trying to attack him.