Wild, Wicked & Wanton Read online

  She had yet to figure out where she was going, but at the moment, she didn’t care. All she knew was that someone, some woman who had probably also woken up to find herself in this dark and frightening place, had just belted out a screech of terror. Or pain. Or both.

  There was no way she was going to sit around and wait for the same thing -- whatever might have inspired that scream -- to happen to her too.

  Something was very wrong here. Wrong with this place. Wrong with the man behind her… who wasn’t really chasing her, more following at a casual stroll.

  Sure he was beyond sexy, but he had to be bent. Missing a few screws. A few cards shy of a full deck. And a half dozen or so other clichés. He’d kidnapped her! Why? How?

  What had happened in her room?

  The kiss. That had to be it. He’d slipped her a drug when he’d kissed her. Maybe he’d pushed a capsule into her mouth. Or spit some kind of liquid. Or injected something. That’s why she’d gotten so dizzy. She’d probably passed out.

  Who knew how long she’d been unconscious?

  Gosh, he could’ve smuggled her out of the state, or even the country. Maybe he’d sold her to some Arab guy in the desert, to become part of a harem… or maybe he was a vampire and he’d taken her to his castle in Romania? Or she could’ve been stolen by aliens and taken as a sex slave on another planet?

  If she was really open-minded, all of those possibilities were believable. Heck, she’d read at least a dozen novels about those very scenarios the last few months, including Bastien and Xander’s story. They’d kidnapped their bride and taken her to their world in an alternate dimension.

  Of course, she knew those were just stories. Fiction. That kind of thing didn’t happen in real life… right? Right!

  As she rounded a corner at the end of the hallway, she realized why her kidnapper had not bothered to run.

  Dead end.

  Trapped.

  Did she bother even trying to fight off the man slowly prowling closer, dark eyes glittering, muscles bunching and rippling? She was no match for him. His body was obscenely powerful. She wasn’t particularly clever either, not devious enough to trick him into releasing her. Not to mention, she had no idea where she was.

  No car. No money. How would she get home?

  Placating the man and biding time was probably the wisest move. Although the memory of that terror-filled scream made her doubt her decision from the moment it was made. Really, what other choice did she have, though?

  How she wished she’d taken a self-defense class!

  Shaking, both from the cold sweat pouring from her skin, and from terror, she watched him warily, trying to read his face, his eyes, his posture. Strange, none of them seemed to be saying the same thing.

  Talk about sending mixed signals.

  His expression was stern, like he was ticked off. His posture tight, like he was prepared for battle. But his eyes… she couldn’t precisely interpret what she saw in them, but she felt calmer, reassured, as she looked into them.

  “There is no escape. Come.” He motioned back in the direction from which she’d run, then, obviously under the assumption she’d follow him, he started back down the corridor.

  Hey!

  Come? What was up with that? What did he think she was? A dog? Fetch. Sit. Lie down. If that was what he was thinking, he’d have a surprise coming.

  She stood in place, arms crossed, hip thrust out, and watched him retreat. A girl who pretty much saw the good in every situation and was rarely ever riled, Maggie didn’t get upset or insulted easily. But the way he’d talked to her just then. So cold and distant. And the attitude he’d shown, how he’d assumed she’d just merrily skip back down the hallway because he’d barked a command at her like she was an animal…

  She didn’t take that kind of treatment anymore, oh no, she did not.

  Someone had better start talking. Quickly. Or… or something dramatic and very bad was going to happen.

  Who was she kidding?

  The kidnapping, cold-talking jerk hadn’t bothered to check and see if she was following. He’d simply walked away. To somewhere down there. In the dark.

  Why didn’t he turn on the fricking lights?

  Cursing the cheapskate who might not think twice about flying to another country to kidnap an innocent woman but was too cheap to turn on a few lights, Maggie grumbled her way down the hall until she reached the open door and her room-slash-prison-cell.

  He stood inside, looking expectedly at the doorway, as she strolled in. Wary, she checked his eyes. Did she still see a touch of humanity there? Or were they empty and cold?

  No, that was definitely humanity. Warmth. Kindness? Patience?

  She heaved a sigh of relief and shuffled past him. “Look, I have no idea what’s going on or what I’m doing here, or even where here is, but I think you owe me --”

  “We owe you nothing,” he stated flatly.

  “Uh…” His rude, abrupt response -- so like Jack -- threw her off kilter for a moment. She wasn’t used to people talking to her like she wasn’t worthy of their time anymore. For the most part, thanks to her friendly, easy-going nature, even strangers treated her pretty well. What was with this guy? Please tell me I haven’t been kidnapped by another Jack. “Give me my clothes.”

  More silence.

  She narrowed her eyes, simultaneously sending him a threatening vibe and taking a good, long look at him. His garments fit him perfectly -- something a guy built like that wouldn’t get from clothes bought off the rack. The slacks, shirt and sweater were obviously expensive. Custom tailored? His hands -- strong but also manicured -- were most definitely lacking any calluses, which meant the muscles she had so admired earlier had to come from pumping iron, versus hard, physical work.

  Her conclusion -- he was rich and used to wielding power. He had an air of authority about him she couldn’t help but respect. Even though his rude and unjust treatment was making her angrier by the second.

  “You will get clothes if I determine you need them,” he stated.

  “What? What!” Now, she was getting seriously pissed. “First, that’s just… wrong! Even ax murderers in prison get clothes. Second, I’m freezing. And third, it’s humiliating standing here buck naked with you looking at me like… that…” Her words got stuck behind an enormous boulder that had somehow rammed itself in her throat. Eyes burning, she swallowed several times.

  No, she was not going to cry! No, no, no! She hated how easily she cried. Crying was weak.

  But all this brought back terrible memories.

  His expression softened slightly. Gaze diverted, he huffed a heavy sigh, raked the fingers of both hands through his hair and mumbled something under his breath.

  A handful of blinks dispersed the tears gathering in her eyes. She hugged herself harder, and dug deep inside, drawing upon the well of strength she’d built up over the past few months.

  “You will become accustomed to our ways with time.”

  What exactly did he mean by that? An assumption sort of came with that statement, the conclusion that she’d be around long enough to become “accustomed to their ways.” That simply wasn’t possible. She’d lose everything she’d worked so hard to accomplish. No. Making this place her permanent home was definitely not an option. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “You have no choice.” There was no apology in his voice. No regret. And no invitation to argue. He motioned to the hallway. “As I said before, there is no escape, no route back to your world.”

  Her world? This was getting weirder by the minute. “If this isn’t my ‘world’, what is it? Where am I?”

  “You are in Alyria, the Realm of the Twelfth Knight Brotherhood.”

  A blaze of heat shot up her spine. Goose flesh spread across her back and shoulders. She knew that place. But it wasn’t possible for her to travel to Alyria. Alyria wasn’t a real city. It came from her favorite book, Bastien and Xander’s story.

  While she struggled to make sense o
f a situation that made absolutely no sense, he reached into his pocket. Stepping closer, he turned his fist over and unfurled his fingers. On his flattened hand lay a stunning choker. About an inch thick, it was fashioned from diagonally criss-crossed wires, white gold, she guessed. And at the center of each cross, was a single diamond. From the bottom center hung a pendant with an enormous red tiger eye.

  She knew that collar. It too was from the book, Captured by the Knight. Although, it was far more beautiful in real life than it had been in her imagination.

  Still struggling to grasp what all of these similarities meant, she stood as still as possible while her captor, who had yet to tell her his name, bent closer, reaching around her neck to fasten the choker. His fingers brushed her nape as he secured it, eliciting a tremor -- despite her confusion. His breath tickled her ear, giving rise to a second shudder. He pressed a kiss to the crook of her shoulder and she gasped.

  “You belong to us.” He stared into her eyes as he murmured the words, lifting a hand to cup her cheek.

  “Who are you?” She studied his face, noticing every detail. The mole next to his right eye. The cleft in his chin. The line of his jaw.

  She knew the answer before he spoke it, even though the man she’d pictured in her head and the one gracing the book’s cover had looked nothing like the one standing before her now.

  Bastien? Was it possible? Had she somehow been pulled into her favorite book?

  That absolutely insane possibility did explain one thing -- why she’d reacted the way she had to him, despite the way he’d treated her. The Twelfth Knights’ bodies produced a chemical -- something like a pheromone -- that ignited their mate’s libido and eased her fear. A bride of the Twelfth Knights could no more resist the pheromone’s effect than she could stop adrenaline from raising her heart rate and dilating her pupils.

  So she wasn’t too-stupid-to-live. Ha!

  But how exactly could a real person be pulled into a book? Magic? Magic didn’t exist. And even if it was possible, why?

  Most importantly, if the impossible had happened, was there any way to go home? Any way to reverse the spell that had brought her here?

  She wasn’t ready to live her fantasy. In her head, it was cool. But… but she’d been quite content with her real life. She liked her job, her boss, her apartment. Sure, her love life could have used a little boost, but whose couldn’t? And no, her life had never been full of action and intrigue, the kind of life she’d once pictured herself having. Didn’t matter. She was happy because she was free.

  Fantasy, or more specifically the escape she sought through her books, was just a diversion from the day-to-day. She didn’t need more than that.

  “I am your Master,” he said, interrupting the storm of thoughts raging in her head. “I am Bastien Lennox.”

  He then went about proving beyond any reasonable doubt that Bastien Lennox, the hero from her favorite romance novel, was as real as any man she’d ever met. And that, despite all scientific arguments against -- including that conservation of matter law she’d learned in high school chemistry class -- it was entirely possible for a two hundred and fifty-ish pound man to physically change into a six hundred fifty-ish pound beast.

  * * *

  “What are you doing here?” Arion Calder asked Xander Kendrick, his superior, as he strode into the room. “You have a newly acquired bride, you lucky bastard, and yet you’re here with us?”

  “I heard the rumors. Is it true?” Ignoring Arion’s jibe, Xander dropped into a chair and switched on one of the monitors, anxious to read the report. His job as the head of security for Alyria, and most importantly, protector of its secrets, was one he took seriously. He had no choice. Should their existence be revealed to the humans, the life they had known for centuries would cease.

  “It’s no more serious than normal.” Arion shrugged nonchalantly as he switched channels on his monitor, switching from a view of a human city roadway to that of an Alyrian building. “Something was published in one of their newspapers. But the paper in question isn’t known for publishing verifiable fact.”

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s the third article in six months. Never before have we seen that kind of exposure in the human world.” His mind on the threat to their safety, his fingers typed his security password, giving him access to even their most highly protected files. “Who is the author? Were all three articles written by the same person, was it Cheryl something? Has anyone discovered her source?”

  “We have been following the situation closely, but have yet to discover where she’s getting her information.”

  “How many details has she revealed?” He punched up the last article on file and started skimming.

  This was bad. Very bad.

  She cited the names of several Twelfth Knights and had a rough description of the portal, as well as a list of the last three brides to have been claimed by the Brotherhood.

  How had she learned so much?

  Their computer systems, while far more advanced than the humans’, could not access all systems and data on the humans’ Internet. The humans’ antiquated programming created incompatibility issues Xander had not bothered to address before because, until now, he’d been able to do his job with the information he could access.

  Someone had found a way, however, to take advantage of this vulnerability. He guessed it was someone on this side of the portal. It could very well be someone in his department.

  His gaze swept the room. On this shift, there was Arion, a friend since they’d been cubs, and two others, Cy Parnell and Galen Radcliff. Due to the highly sensitive nature of their work, the security staff was intentionally kept small, making it less likely for information to fall into the wrong hands. He’d personally conducted the interviews and background checks on all three men who worked this shift. He hadn’t found a single blemish on any of their records. Not even going back several generations.

  Second shift, however, had been hired by his predecessor. He had no concrete reason to suspect the leak was one of them, but since he was confident in his ability to trust the men he’d hired, it made the most sense.

  What didn’t make sense was the motivation. Who would want to risk the end of the Brotherhood and why? The human world was nothing compared to theirs. It wasn’t like whoever was responsible would wish to endure that kind of barbaric existence. The diseases that ran rampant among the humans were enough to make the average Twelfth Knight shudder with horror. On top of the many diseases, it was filthy, polluted beyond hope. The earth. The water. The air.

  By bringing their brides to Alyria, they were showing great mercy. In the human world, at best a woman might hope to live to see one hundred winter solstices. In Alyria, they lived ten times as long. And aged ten times slower.

  There had yet to be a bride who didn’t eventually come to appreciate the kindness their clean and disease-free world showed to them, and the length of time their beauty remained.

  There was a price to pay to protect their world. But pay it, they would. Gladly. The results made it worthwhile.

  His mind still puzzling over the motivation anyone would have for putting the future of the Brotherhood, and thus Alyria, in peril, Xander set to work at the tedious task of writing the code that would sometime soon -- or so he hoped -- enable him free access to the human Internet. He feared there wasn’t enough time to complete the task before the humans would discover the truth about the Twelfth Knights, cease publishing their stories, thereby cutting them off from their world forever. Or, alternately, rush into their world when the portal opened next, bringing with them disease, pollution and crime.

  In the meantime, he had to trust that Bastien would oversee the initial training of their new bride. Such a pleasant task, as he understood it. A shame he couldn’t be there too.

  Chapter 3

  Holy shit! That’s a real fucking tiger. A huge tiger. With enormous -- and very sharp -- teeth. Long claws… and Bastien’s wicked-cool eyes?

  A scream we
dged in her throat, Maggie staggered backward.

  Reading about men who turned into animals, or even watching Van Helsing and Harry Potter movies a bazillion times, hadn’t prepared her for the shock of witnessing an actual, real, in-the-flesh man morph into a beast.

  Oh. My. God.

  She blinked. Then blinked again. Was she hallucinating? Or could it be some kind of trick?

  The tiger’s lip pulled into a feline snarl. A low warning rumble froze her in place.

  No, that couldn’t possibly be an illusion.

  Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Terror’s icy fingers crept up her spine, making her quake. The fierce predator prowled closer, closer, his nose in the air. She heard him inhaling, sniffing the air like a beast that had caught a whiff of some succulent treat.

  His eyes focused on her.

  Eek. She was the treat!

  If only she had a raw steak right now. Or a garbage bag full of catnip. She’d give a few nonessential body parts to have either right now. She cursed the fact that she’d never owned a pet. What was the rule with cats? Look them in the eye? Or avoid it?

  Think, girl, think!

  Those teeth were mighty sharp. A bite would hurt something fierce. She was a wimp when it came to pain, the reason why she’d never gotten her ears pierced. Those fangs made needles look like tiny splinters.

  Her knees rubbery, her feet heavy, she slowly backed up a few more steps. Of course, being a hunter by nature, the animal wasted no time closing the distance between them again. He stood so close, his breath feathered over her abdomen. She looked longingly across the room.

  The door was clear over there. If she made a run for it, she’d never make it before Bastien the tiger gobbled her up. He’d probably have her gone in a couple bites.