She shuddered. Was she some kind of perverted blood bank for these creeps?
Her fingers pushed beneath the stiffened cloth. Gritting her teeth, she pulled her shirt away from the wounds. Immediately, fresh blood ran down her chest.
The world spun for a moment, but she breathed deep to clear her head. How long had she been lying here? Bites from people were the worst. The bacteria in a human mouth—Jessie shuddered at the thought. She needed to get it clean.
The cold radiated off the concrete, and it even permeated through the mattress beneath her. Jessie untangled herself from the blanket and swiveled on her butt so that her feet touched the floor.
Whatever they’d drugged her with had left her with a thundering headache. Injecting people with drugs was dangerous as hell. People ended up dead because of that kind of crap.
Suddenly, she was frigging mad. These bastards could have killed her. Now they had her locked up in what—a storage container? If they thought she was going to lie here in a quivering heap, they were sadly mistaken.
Jessie pushed herself upright. Resolve was one thing, but her bodywasquivering. Avoiding the heap bit might be more difficult than she expected. She swayed her way to the single door—locked, of course—and started pounding and yelling.
“Hey! You out there! I need an effing bathroom!”
When twenty minutes of hammering on the door yielded no response, Jessie returned to the bed. She stared at the bucket. Surely they didn’t intend for her to use that as a toilet?
Ten minutes later, she contemplated using it as a toilet. Were they watching the room? Her eyes focused on a recessed light that wasn’t lit. It wasn’t lit because it wasn’t a light. It was a camera. She stalked to stand below it, put her hands on her hips, and glared upward.
“Look, I don’t know who the hell you are or what you think you’re doing, but if I don’t get this bite washed, it will definitely get infected. Then I’ll be not only pissed, but pissed and sick as well. I doubt having me die of sepsis is high on your list of preferable scenarios. So I need clean, hot water and some antiseptic solution. Sooner rather than later. Chop, chop, Mr. Vampire. Get to it.”
Nothing.
Then, something. A sound at the door.
It opened, and the psycho from the hospital stood there. Even bigger and nastier than she remembered, his close-set, pale eyes scanned her as though stripping the clothes from her body. Definite vamp-cult-vibes radiated from this asshole, and some of her resolve evaporated. Be damned if she was going to show it.
“You’re a noisy one,” he said. “Am I going to have trouble with you?” He slowly, and deliberately, licked his lips.
Jessie swallowed. The guy was intimidating as hell. And those eyes were the cold, hungry eyes of a predator.
But no way he was going to eat her. Right? She took a deep breath and reached for her anger. “Look, I don’t know who you are, or what you think you are doing, but I need to clean this wound, or it will get infected.”
He tilted his head to regard her, eyeing her like a puzzled dog. “What makes you think I care?”
“You took the trouble to bring me here. Can’t believe it was just to watch me die. You could have killed me in the parking lot.”
The gold eyes narrowed.
A deep voice rumbled from the hall. “Dammit, Troy. Just take her to the bathroom.”
“The bucket is more entertaining.” Troy responded without turning his head.
“She has to get through the next month. If it gets infected before then, we’ve done all this for nothing.”
As she absorbed that peculiar revelation—why did she have to get through the next month?—a form loomed behind Troy. Jessie’s eyes widened.
This new guy made Troy look like a toy doll. Thick hair as black as night fell past shoulders that bulged through the tee shirt he wore. His bare arms were huge, ridged with muscle and dusted with dark hair. Her eyes skittered up them to his face, and her heart froze.
The eyes gleamed gold. Not pale brown, but gold. Metallic, even. His features were sculpted like a Greek statue. As she stared, he grinned at her, revealing big, white teeth with noticeable, pointed canines.
He was an Adonis, maybe, but a flawed one. When he smiled, one side of his face barely moved. It was puckered with a horrible scar that ran from over one eyebrow, across the cheek beneath.
The scar...
No. It couldn’t be.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “I’d like to sink my fangs into more of you.” His eyes raked her body. “My teeth, and something else. You are tasty all over.”
