kissed-by-moonlight by Rakhibul hasan (ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📕

are somewhere in between. Some heavy petting and soulful glances, but no slide into home plate. Not yet anyway.”

 

“We’re not like that,” I said, stiff-lipped and angry. “He’s not like that.”

 

“Maybe he isn’t. But you are, aren’t you Miss Conners? You understand how this game is played don’t you? When a man wants something from you, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep you around until he gets it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a ring on your finger or his dick in your mouth. Or both. Sure, Gabriel’s part wolf, but on the inside, at the core where it counts, he’s a man.” All congeniality melted from his face. “And for better or worse, you seem to be the one he’s set his sights on.”

 

“Even if that were true,” I began, keeping my words slow and careful, “why would it matter to you?”

 

“Here’s the thing. Some of my colleagues believe that Gabriel is a lost cause. That we should cut our losses and hand him over to our lab technicians for research. Others, myself included, think

 

differently. We believe that with the right motivation, Gabriel can still prove to be an invaluable asset to the U.S. Government.” The look he leveled on me made me feel very small, very fragile, and I shivered. “We just need to find out what makes him tick. What gets his hackles up.”

 

A low rumble filled the air and my heart sunk. It was Gabriel, and I didn’t have to turn my head to know his eyes had begun to burn like amber fire. Liam grinned at me.

 

“That’s where you come in, Miss Conners.”

 

Then, before I could so much as flinch, Marcus was on me. Hand wrapped around my throat, he swung me out and away from the wall so quickly that my feet barely touched the ground. Then, lifting me up, he slammed me down into the unforgiving concrete and pressed his knee into my chest to hold me still.

 

Not like I was going anywhere, slamming me into the floor had pretty much knocked loose all my sass, as well as a large portion of my consciousness. I lay beneath Marcus, brain throbbing and blackness edging my vision while my lungs struggled to keep me breathing.

 

“Are you all right, Miss Conners?”

 

I couldn’t see Gabriel, but something told me that if I could just play it off, maybe we’d be all right.

 

“Never better,” I gasped, enjoying the way anger darkened both of their faces. “I always imagined that this is what summer in the Hamptons would be like.”

 

Ok, so maybe I had a little sass left.

 

Snarling, Marcus pressed his knee deeper into my chest, bones ground against one another and the pressure built to something excruciating and panic inducing. I felt like the walls were closing in, like I was going to be crushed, and it killed a small part of me not to allow the instinct to panic like an animal free reign.

 

Instead, I bit my lip until I tasted blood and waited for unconsciousness to take me. When he saw what I was doing, Liam waved for Marcus to let up. The Were hesitated for a fraction of a second before complying, long enough for me to know that he wasn’t as obedient as Liam would try and have me believe.

 

“Let me try,” Liam said, just as calm as ever. Marcus placed his hand around my throat, a collar that trapped me as effectively as steel, while Liam straddled my waist. My breathing hitched, and my eyes flew to the ceiling. Unwilling to watch what he was about to do once I saw him pull the knife from a sheath at his side.

 

“I used to deal with prisoners like you all the time,” I found myself focusing more on the sound the blade made as he slid it across the floor at my side than what he was actually saying.

 

“They thought they were special. Individuals. But they weren’t. When they’re fighting for something they truly believe in, you’d be surprised just how many people can withstand torture.” Using his free hand, he began to inch my shirt up a little bit at a time. “They weren’t particularly strong-minded, or strong-willed for that matter,” he confided, his fingertips like ice against my adrenaline fueled skin. “They weren’t martyrs or heroes, and they hadn’t gone through any training designed to resist what we threw at them. What made them so hard to break, was the stubborn belief that they were right. That what they did, what they suffered for, was right.”

 

He seemed confused by the very idea, even now. From the corner of my eye the knife glinted beneath the overhead light, and on the inside I started to cry.

 

“In the end, they all learned the same lesson.” He leaned over me, and whispered against the shell of my ear. “Pain, Miss Conners, is pain. And if you aren’t careful, it becomes all you are and all you will ever be.”

 

Then he cut me.

 

He sliced into the meaty part of my stomach, and then pressed his fingers deep into the open, dripping wound he left behind.

 

I screamed, and Gabriel finally lost it.

 

It had been important to make it through this. To show that they couldn’t use me against him. I knew once I heard the sound of screaming metal from his cell after Liam hurt me that we had both failed this little test miserably.

 

He didn’t howl this time. In fact, he didn’t make any noise at all. The first indication any of us had that he’d broken free of his chains at all was the tap, tap, tap of his nails against the glass. Together, we looked towards the sound.

 

Gabriel stood in his cell, manacles still tight around his throat and wrists just as they should be. The only problem was that the chains were no longer connected to the wall, and Gabriel was flush against the glass, his eyes burning a deep, putrid, yellow-like sickness or poison, and his nails scraping along the surface of the glass as if he could cut his way through, but wanted to play with us all first.

 

He grinned at us, a maniacal, mad-looking smile that somehow revealed rows and rows of glistening fangs, and his head canted to one side. It was stupid, but my heart actually clenched at the familiar gesture, even as he blew gently against the glass and wrote three lines in the steaming cloud of condensation he left behind:

 

 

 

 

Little Pigs

 

Little Pigs

 

Let me—

 

 

 

“—come in,” Liam finished reading aloud and no sooner had he done so than the lights flickered in both cells. When we next looked, Gabriel had disappeared, leaving nothing but his sing-song request to echo mockingly in our minds.

 

Then I realized something.

 

I was shivering like a leaf in the wind, as terrified as Marcus and Liam, when I should be remembering one very important fact:

 

I wasn’t dinner. I was his mate. The wolf wasn’t coming to get me; he was coming because of me. I was the only one in this little trio exempt from the ass whooping that was about to go down.

 

It was hard to do, but somehow I managed to relax.

 

“Where the hell did he go?” Liam whispered. Marcus didn’t bother answering, instead stepping back from me and eyeing the glass with a curled lip. I followed his gaze and felt something twist in my gut. The words written on the window seemed to be smoking, and for a moment I was confused by what I saw.

 

Then I realized why it was so strange. One by one, each letter Gabriel had written was disappearing into smoke. Smoke that drifted in the air on my side of the cell rather than his. Soon all three of us were surrounded by it, a thick vapor, a warm fog that seemed to breathe. I felt as if I was surrounded by something living, and I realized that the room was growing darker, lights straining to retain their brilliance beneath the weight of the fog that just seemed to grow thicker and thicker.

 

The lights flickered. Off and then on again, and I saw it. A hunched figure in the corner behind Marcus, eyes still shining a putrid yellow. He was barely discernible through the fog, but his focus was unwavering as he watched his foster brother. I couldn’t say that he was more animal than man in that moment. I’d never seen an animal whose bones stretched the confines of their skin, or whose limbs seemed disjointed, as if they were used to be bigger, used to being more.

 

No, I couldn’t say he was an animal. That would have been too tame a word for the thing that was carefully stalking the two men in the room with me. Getting closer and closer with every flicker of the lights, like some nightmare crawling freely through the world.

 

The last image I saw before closing my eyes was of Gabriel finally rising from his crouch. He rose up behind Liam, a huge black shadow that seemed to touch the ceiling, indistinct around the

 

edges. His gaze was an empty abyss, and when he opened his jaws and breathed death against the back of Liam’s neck it was darkness that brushed against the unsuspecting man’s skin. Gabriel breathed the darkness in, it seeped from his skin, he was made of it, black smoke held together more by an idea than reality.

 

I think I whimpered before my eyes snapped shut. My entire body trembled as I lay there, waiting. Too hurt to rise to my feet and too frightened to push the issue. But the scream I’d been expecting never happened. Instead, when I opened one eye to update my brain on what was happening, I saw Gabriel looking over at me. He still stood behind Liam, but he no longer hovered over him as if he were about to unhinge his jaw and swallow him whole. The other men hadn’t noticed him yet, as if they were unable to see or feel the threat he represented.

 

But I saw him just fine.

 

I saw his eyes flicker with humanity, the Gabriel I knew shining through. Saw his body condense and reform into something sane and right. The whole time he was bringing himself back, he watched me, until finally he stood there, naked and tired, guilt written all over his face and amber eyes wary.

 

Then and only then did he lift whatever power had been shielding him from the others. Liam and Marcus “discovered” him at the same time, and it was all the Agent could do to keep Marcus from attacking his former Alpha with claws and teeth.

 

“We had a deal,” Liam hissed, shoving Marcus away and resting his hand on the butt of the gun that rested in his shoulder holster. “You hand over Evans, and we help you gain control over your little pack. Well, congrats. You’re Alpha now, but that means that Evans is ours. You lay a paw on him and we wipe you all out.”

 

“What about your research?” Marcus snarled, eyes still trained on Gabriel as he brushed past the two arguing men to come to me. “What about your werewolf army?”

 

Liam shrugged. “Turns out we don’t need that many of you alive after all. Amazing how frugal budget cuts can encourage you to be.”

 

By this time Gabriel was at my side and I sighed as he knelt at my hip. His head lowered, and for a crazed moment I thought he was going to go all Hannibal Lector on me.

 

But no.

 

Not exactly anyway.

 

Instead of teeth I felt his tongue against the wound Liam had made. As I lay there, he began to lick the blood away and beneath the rough glide of his tongue I felt the skin begin to knit back together.

 

This whole Mate thing?

 

Best health plan ever.

 

All too soon the feel of his mouth, the feel of his tongue, and the burning promise of his breath against the sensitive skin of my stomach had my mind wandering to other things. It