.jpg)
The pressure in Sevastyan’s chest was like a great stone pressing down on him. Mitya had no more of an idea of how to have a relationship than he did. They were the most dysfunctional family there was.
“Does Ania know?”
“That you’re my brother, not my cousin?” Mitya scowled at him. “I don’t hide anything from Ania that I don’t have to. Especially when it comes to my family. Of course she knows. She loves you, even if you’re as fucked-up as hell and you order us all around.”
Sevastyan’s phone buzzed and he pulled it free of his pocket just as strobes flashed a warning through the office. He glanced down at the warning text on his phone. “Take Ania and get to the safe room. I’ll keep you informed. The cameras should be working so you should have live feed, both visual and audio. Don’t come out for any reason. I’ve got this.”
He turned away and then stopped, not turning back. “Something happens to me, you take care of her. Flambé. You make certain she’s safe and happy, Mitya. Give me your word.”
“You have it, Sevastyan.”
15
SEVASTYAN texted one-handed to alert Kirill and Matvei that Rolan’s first wave of attackers were making their move. He wanted them inside the house and to double-check that the house was locked down with Flambé inside. He texted Flambé next.
Trouble starting here, baby. Rolan is bringing it. Stay inside and be safe.
He waited, his heart beating hard. He shouldn’t have left her behind.
Am inside our room. Will be fine. You be safe, Sevastyan.
At least she’d given him that much. He hurried to the control room where two relatively new employees manned the screens. Both were Evangeline’s brothers. Ambroise Tregre served in the Navy and was an up-and-coming artist. He seemed a dreamer, a man Sevastyan would have thought useless when it came to security, but Tregre never forgot a single detail once he saw something. He had a photographic memory. More, he was astonishing with computers.
Christophe Tregre, after a stint in the service, had trained with an elite unit of Drake’s in the Borneo rain forest but returned to ensure his younger brother and sister were safe from his treacherous father and uncle. He then began training in the security force under Timur. He had excellent fighting skills, but not as much experience as Sevastyan would like. He was Fyodor’s brother-in-law, which meant he was sacred. Family. Sevastyan wasn’t going to put him at risk if he could help it. Christophe was a strategist, a good one. So, he was in the control room.
Sevastyan leaned over his shoulder. “What are we looking at? Rolan wouldn’t throw his best men at us yet. He’s testing us.”
“He’s testing us with some pretty heavy numbers,” Christophe replied. “He’s got five teams coming in. The way they’re moving, they look like shifters to me. Where would he manage to get that many?”
“Mercenaries. Rolan has money. He can pay top dollar.” Sevastyan should know, he’d helped to earn it. He kept his eyes glued to the screens. One team was moving in the trees, running along the branches, still in human form, but Christophe was right, they were too sure-footed in the trees carrying their weapons to be anything but shifters. “He must have been in Houston to pick them up off ships coming in. These men aren’t from around here. He’s recruited them from other places.”
Sevastyan studied the shifters moving in the trees. They ran along the branches almost without looking. These men had honed their skills in the rain forests. He texted Kyanite Boston, a man who had spent several years with Drake Donovan in the rain forest rescuing kidnapping victims. Kyanite came immediately, slipping into the control room silently, coming to stand to the side of him to look at the same screen.
“You recognize any of them?”
In the dark, it might be considered impossible, but leopards recognized one another and often shifters did as well, just by movement. By body language. They might be a good distance away, but Sevastyan could see these men were professionals. It wouldn’t be long before most of them were dead, but he wanted to know where they came from. Where Rolan was recruiting.
Kyanite nodded slowly. “Worked with two of them when I was down in Panama. They kept to themselves. Good trackers, both of them. The other three are from Borneo. They were from a lair several miles from the one Drake grew up in. Sorry to see them here, but not too surprised.”
Rolan knew about the shifters training in the rain forests. The internet made advertising so easy these days. Shifters wanted work. Action. They were predators and living in cities didn’t appeal to most of them. They were born to hunt so quite a few preferred mercenary work.
Sevastyan turned his attention to the team coming from the main road straight to the front of the house. Team two was coming on foot, spreading out, five men, using the low shrubbery for cover as they approached the house. That looked like the easiest entry point, when it was actually the most dangerous of all.
He’d designed the renovations himself when Mitya had moved in. The roof lines on the house and garages were completely made over, giving him places for his snipers to have higher ground but also cover when they needed it. He’d set his snipers at various locations and they were just waiting for his word to take out the first wave of Rolan’s men.
Team three came in from Sevastyan’s property, using a fast-moving truck without lights and then abandoning that before running to converge with the others, making their way on the ground through the thicker woods Flambé’s father had planted years earlier.
Team four came in from the opposite side, running also to cover the distance. They had the battlegrounds to cover, where Sevastyan trained his men daily in simulated wars, in hand-to-hand combat, in taking apart bombs. He left nothing to chance with Mitya’s security, and that included keeping the leopards in fighting condition. The open fields were there for a reason. There were gently rolling hills, downed trees and shallow caves dug out so his men could train for every possibility. Sevastyan and his men knew every inch of those acres where they trained.
The last team had the responsibility of covering the others, hanging back to be in position to break into the house and kill Sevastyan and Mitya when the others made their entry. Sevastyan shook his head. Rolan had always insisted he could plan his battles. He’d always sucked at it. Even at fourteen and fifteen, Sevastyan had listened and then changed everything the moment he’d left Rolan with the others to actually go into combat. The men had learned to listen to him instead of Rolan. It was what had kept them alive.
“Do you have sights on team five and team one?” Sevastyan asked. He narrowed his gaze, looking closer at the screen, trying to peer behind those members of team five in the trees. Was something moving?
“That’s affirmative,” Logan Shields responded. “Give us the go.”
“It’s a go,” Sevastyan confirmed. He didn’t look to see if his snipers took out their ten intended victims. He looked beyond the five mercenaries dropping like stones in the trees to the shadows suddenly going still behind them. Something was definitely there, but he couldn’t make it out. Suddenly, he was uneasy.
“Christophe, can you bring up the images in the trees team five was in? Right behind them, following them on the branches. Ambroise, you’re very quiet over there. Did you see anything?”
“I don’t see anything,” Christophe said, leaning forward, forcing the screen image larger and larger until it was nothing but gray pixels. He turned in his seat to look at Sevastyan. “All five team members went down hard. Those were kill shots.”
Sevastyan ignored that. He knew his snipers had scored kill shots. That wasn’t the point. The point was, someone besides Rolan had put together this assault on Mitya’s home and team five weren’t the only ones in those trees.
“Bring up team one again now. The earlier screens of them.” He’d been looking at the men. Seeing what they wanted him to see. Seeing what he expected to see. Thinking he was the smartest damn man in the room. Those men were a sacrifice, pawns to test his defenses. He’d known that, but h
e hadn’t known they would already be utilizing what they learned. They knew the snipers were on the roof of the house, but now they knew they were on the garages.
“Hurry, Christophe. Ambroise, answer me. What the fuck am I missing? What’s out there? What’s behind these men coming at us?”
“Leopards,” Ambroise whispered. “An entire army of leopards and they’re coming right at us fast.”
FLAMBÉ paced back and forth, restless, trying desperately to figure out what to do. She had made up her mind to leave the moment Shanty and her three children arrived. She would ensure the woman was in the program and then she’d make use of her own underground for the domestic violence shifter victims. She’d have to shut it down as soon as she entered it. No one else could ever know about it or use it again.
Sevastyan and Shturm were far too dangerous. Far too intelligent. And she was way too susceptible to the man. Flamme had proved herself to be too susceptible to the leopard. If she actually decided to make a run for it, she couldn’t look back because she’d change her mind.
Every muscle in her body hurt. She knew why. She hadn’t had sex with Sevastyan. She’d ignored him and in doing so, ignored her own needs. The buildup of hormones between Flamme and her was getting scary. Her skin felt hot to the touch. She felt as if she were burning from the inside out.
Suppressing her leopard was getting much more difficult. When she was alone, she allowed her to come close to the surface, but it hurt, and every single time the pain only got worse. Flambé thought that, with time, she’d get used to the feel of her surfacing, but that hadn’t happened. Her nerve endings seemed much more inflamed. The sensations burned through her body like a blowtorch, taking her breath, robbing her of her ability to think. She couldn’t bear the feel of fabric against her skin, so she stripped, tearing at her clothes and flinging them aside, grateful that no one could get into the master bedroom.
Naked, she paced faster, desperate to outrun the horrible way her skin burned and itched. Strands of hair fell, snaking down from the messy knot she’d hastily twisted on top of her head, snaking down across her bare back and sliding across her buttocks. She had to bite back a scream as a thousand tongues licked at her skin, points of white-hot flames flicking at her on the end of each of them. Tears tracked down her face as she caught at the ponytail and desperately tried to re-loop, pulling the thick strands back up off her skin.
This was so much worse than it ever had been. “Flamme, he isn’t here. Shturm isn’t here. You can’t rise when he isn’t here.” She made it a mantra. No leopard could rise without their mate around, right? That had to be right. She was beginning to think she wouldn’t be able to control the situation. She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She hadn’t asked enough questions.
Her breath came in ragged sobs, her lungs heaving. The burning between her legs grew and grew until it felt like a blowtorch. The terrible knots in her stomach, that pressure inside, coiled tighter and tighter until she thought she might die.
Hands shaking, she looked around the room helplessly, desperate enough to call him. Sevastyan. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be like the others. She wouldn’t put herself in the hands of a man. She’d never seen it work out. Not once. She didn’t know a single decent man. A shifter. They were all horrible. They all cheated. Were abusive. In the end he would hurt her. But this . . .
She forced herself to the window, looking out over the trees and shrubs, the beauty she’d helped to create. He’d acted as if he’d actually been so proud of her. She’d seen it on his face. It was difficult to hide the truth from a leopard. There was so much about Sevastyan she didn’t understand. She wanted him to be real, but if she was wrong, she wouldn’t just pay with her life, she would pay with Flamme’s life as well. She’d sworn to protect her leopard.
She pressed up against the coolness of the glass, her breasts on fire, her nipples two pinpoints of flames. She thought the cold would help, but it was so much worse, almost as if the cold were really hot wax poured over her breasts instead of cold. She cried out and jerked back, stumbling toward the bed.
She needed relief. She had to have some relief. In her closet, that huge monstrosity of a room that passed for a closet, she had a drawer where she kept a variety of feminine toys. When she had forced herself to stay away from the bars, she had used the toys to try to give herself at least a little respite. Hopefully, they would help.
Her skin lifted, a wave moving so that deep inside molten heat expanded and contracted like the inside of a volcano, as if it was breathing in and out, right before its final explosion. The feeling set every cell in her body, every nerve ending on fire. Between her legs and in her deepest core, she burned so hot she thought she’d go insane.
She could barely keep her feet as she made her way to the closet and yanked open the door. It was absurd to have such a large area to store clothes. It was bigger than her little studio. Sometimes, when she woke in the middle of the night, she thought to sneak into it and sleep, but she knew if she moved, she’d wake Sevastyan.
In any case, when she woke, she was instantly aware of his body curved around hers, large and hot. He was always hot. He took up so much space. He had a way of tucking his cock tight against her. He was mostly hard, even in his sleep, and she wanted to turn and take him in her mouth, feel the weight of him on her tongue. See how long it would take before he took control from her.
She groaned. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about his cock, not when her entire body was hurting so bad and poor Flamme was so close and was as desperate for her mate as Flambé was. Yanking several toys from the lower drawer, she stumbled back to the bed, knelt on the floor and turned on the Rabbit. She was already so slick.
She found herself chanting Sevastyan’s name and forced herself to stop. This had to work. She bent over the side of the bed and the moment she did, her breasts pushed into the duvet, the material making her cry out, and then sob. She pushed the toy into her and held it tight against her clit, her knuckles against the mattress to help hold it in place.
It was the biggest mistake of her life. A blaze of fiery agony shot through her and then pulsed and pulsed, refusing to relent even when she threw the toy across the room. Her leopard pushed closer to the surface and Flambé’s body contorted unexpectedly, her arms and legs joints cracking. Through it all, terrible sensations of electrical shocks snapped over her skin while lightning seemed to strike deep in her inflamed sex over and over, hitting hard, scoring deeper burns with each strike.
She had to call him. She had to. She had no choice. Sevastyan and Shturm had to get to them and hopefully know what to do. She crawled blindly around the room on her hands and knees for a few minutes, tears making it impossible to see, while she searched for her cell phone. Thunder roared in her ears and chaos reigned in her head so it was impossible to think clearly. She couldn’t remember where it was. The sexual agony in her body didn’t let up for a moment as she hoped it would while she hunted along throughout the room on her hands and knees. Finally, out of sheer blind luck, she put her hand on it.
She texted Sevastyan immediately. Need you now. You have to come.
She waited, sweat pouring off her body. It seemed like hours, when she knew it wasn’t, while she waited. She just needed reassurance that he was there and that he’d hurry to her. That he wouldn’t waste any time. She’d never asked him for anything. He’d know. He’d come.
What’s wrong?
She blinked several times to try to bring the words into focus. It wasn’t what she expected, but then she didn’t really know what to expect. Two tears splashed onto her screen, turning it watery. She kept breathing, trying not to scream, trying not to rip at her own skin with her fingernails. The pain was excruciating.
Flamme rising. I can’t stop her. You have to come. He would come. He would have to. If not for her, he would do it for his leopard. Shturm would never go without his female. She had felt the male’s possessive attitude so many times. His im
patience. His demands. He had wanted Flamme to emerge, and when she hadn’t, he had been up-set. Sevastyan would bring the male. They would come. Flambé rested her forehead on the floor, sobbing. Trying to control the terrible pain, trying to get on top of it.
The wait seemed like forever again. Too long. It shouldn’t take that long for him to type On my way. Right? It shouldn’t. On her hands and knees, bottom in the air, she rocked her body back and forth. This was the worst. How did anyone survive? A heat could last seven days. Longer. Was it like this the entire time? She would never last. Never. Could one just take pills and knock themselves out? Why hadn’t she thought of that earlier and why wasn’t he answering her?
Flambé, follow my instructions carefully. Get to the garage, to the Jeep and drive into the tunnel. You know where the entrance is. You have to get to me.
She stared in horror at the instructions, not believing what she was seeing. He wanted her to go to Mitya’s home in her present state, desperate for sex, where every leopard on that odious man’s estate would know she was there for Sevastyan to service her? And if she would actually do that, which she wouldn’t, how could she possibly get there? He had no idea the state she was in. It was impossible. She couldn’t even see straight, let alone drive a car.
She pressed her forehead harder into the floor. So much for believing that Sevastyan was going to ever choose her over his cousin. Why the hell did she think for one moment to believe any damn thing he said? Her body twisted. Contorted. She fell sideways onto the floor. The burn on her skin was unimaginable, unlike anything she’d ever felt. It had to stop. She had to find a way to make it stop.
The image of two male leopards rose in her mind. They were downstairs in her house right now with no knowledge of what was happening in the master bedroom. If she went down to them, there would be no way they could resist her. No way their leopards could resist Flamme. Mitya had all but told them she was nothing but a sex object to Sevastyan, a toy. For all she knew, he had told them he shared her. He shared the women in the club.