LYNDI
Lies.
A sadistic twinkle gleams in his gemstone eyes as I step backward into the dark hall. All I want to do is go, but knowing the stairs are close behind, I stop. My heart races as he seizes the opportunity to lunge at me. Instantly, his big, strong hands are grasping my arms tightly as I twist to escape.
He chuckles as I kick at his leg. “Let go!”
Unrelenting, he peers down at me, making my spine tingle with anger and fear. “What the hell do you want from me?” I spit out.
“Mm, still deciding. I’ll tell you soon enough,” he says as if I have no choice in the matter. I yank harder this time, and my arms burn under the reinforced strength of his grip.
“Fucking psycho!” I yell at him, but he is unmoved. As if made of stone, his pale face is frozen in shadow, accentuating the long angles of his chiseled bones. His wavy brown hair has fallen over his face, and he leers at me with one burning, green eye rimmed in black shadow. It’s like the falcon eye of Horus scorching my soul from above.
“The truth hurts,” he says flatly.
“You’re crazy!”
“What did you expect, Lynds?” he shrugs, his voice in my head…
I warned you.
“Just let me…” I try to twist away, but he tugs me into his hard body, a shock of heat flashing through me just as my phone rings. “I…need to answer,” I hiss into his chest.
“You have red in your hair,” he muses, releasing one of my arms to touch my head. I jerk my arm upward, hitting his hand away, and the violent sensation of our skin slapping sends adrenaline barreling through me. “Enough, Xavier!” I can’t take this.
I’m just getting started, he hisses in my mind, snatching my hand and firmly clasping my wrist. His eyes gleam darkly as I struggle to get away. He seems to like it when I fight, so I won’t give him the satisfaction. I freeze, relaxing my body.
“Are you done now?” he asks.
“Are you?”
“I should be,” he whispers with this quizzical expression. Like a stunned spectator, I’ve no time to react as his mouth lowers to mine, taking my breath away. His kiss isn’t angry, and I’m not disgusted like I should be. Slowly, seductively, he works my mouth like a master. The fucking demon tastes as good as he looks—dangerously intoxicating. His kiss feels like consumption, a slow, devouring hunger making me wet where I’ve yet to be penetrated by another. God, am I this desperate? This must stop—
“Mm,” he mutters, and somehow I feel the vibration of his words between my thighs, tickling my pussy. “I can’t…” I mutter as his arms wrap me so possessively that I feel he’ll never let me go. Part of me doesn’t want him to. A dizzying thought washes through me, like I’m his prisoner now, trapped in this mansion forever, like a—
RING! RING! My phone starts up again.
But I ignore it. Against the will of my befuddled mind, a familiar longing builds inside me as he sucks on my tongue, cupping my sex with his hand. Oh. God. That feels too good. He presses our bodies tight together, his hardened bulge hitting my lower belly. He lifts me, my legs wrapping around his waist for support as he slams forward. A moan escapes my lips, and I get lost for a moment as he thrusts the bulk of his cock against my clit, making me ache with guilty need. I knock my head back, and a cold chill comes over me just as I hear a female voice in my ear… “Mm. Isn’t he delish?” she whispers, this flutter of icy breath on my lips, a faint flowery taste mixing in.
“What the?” My eyes shoot open in shock.
“Fucking ghost!” Xavier lowers me to the ground with a growl—not a human imitating a dog kind of growl, but like an actual dog separated from its bone!
I scan the room, seeing no female to match the voice. But I heard her. Tasted her while I was up against the wall.
“Who was that?”
“Nobody,” Xavier hisses. He wipes his wet mouth with the back of his hand, jaw slack. His canine teeth look longer and sharper than before, and his eyes emanate a feral glow in the low light. The man is…
“Supernatural,” comes the female voice again, further away now. She giggles, drifting as though her back is turned.
Where the hell is the body to match the voice?
“Fuck off, ghost-girl,” snarls Xavier, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, the sharp tips of his canines protruding between closed lips.
I blink my eyes. My freaked-out instincts agree with the ghost or whatever the hell that was. Everything about this place is supernatural, including Xavier.
“You mean…” The blood leaves my face as the shock of the moment begins to settle in, knocking the wind from me. I open my mouth to speak, but words take a moment to come. “A real…ghost?”
Xavier huffs mockingly. “Answer your phone.”
The ringing stops as I pull my phone from my pocket, and I pause on his strange image—the blood on his mouth, the dots of light in his eyes—recalling what he said about my father. Lies!
“Everything about this place is messed up,” I say, hurrying away from this man and this crazy moment that should have never happened.
“You’re not wrong,” he says from behind.
I stop, looking back at him. “It’s not true about Damon. If those dragons are full of drugs, he didn’t know. He didn’t know there was a key.”
He shakes his head reproachfully. “You are pathetically naive. And Damon is a fucking liar.”
I shake my head angrily, not wanting to believe it. Then I remember what Xavier said back in the room, a thickening plot shaping in my mind as I connect the dots. He said I’m leverage. This is about Damon.
“Mr. Layne?” calls a voice from the hall, which I recognize as Jasmine.
“Time to get out of here, princess,” quips Xavier, the lights flicking on as he enters the hall.
Relieved, he’s letting me go, I glance at my beeping phone. It’s Amy texting an emergency symbol. Either she’s being dramatic, or something is wrong.
“Finally!” she yells over a noisy crowd as I descend the stairs, ignoring Jasmine’s disapproving expression when she sees me.
“What’s wrong, Amy?”
“Have you seen Katie?”
“No, I’ve been—“
“She’s missing!”
The fear in Amy’s voice fills me with alarm.
“She has to be somewhere,” I say. “I’ll help look."
“Not that simple. We got separated in the dungeon. She got through VIP; we didn’t. There was a creepy guy following her.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know. You’re a special guest here. Can you ask somebody?”
My eyes flick to Xavier, his muscular arms crossed while he speaks with his PA.
“Enough,” he says to Jasmine, dismissing her before she disappears into an elevator.
“My friend is missing," I say, feeling stupid.
“Define missing,” he smirks on cue.
"They can't find her."
“It’s a big place. There are many private rooms. Maybe she’s lost on purpose.”
“No. They were planning to stay together. She’s in the downstairs VIP.”
“If she's in the dungeons, it could take a while," he shrugs.
"Dungeons?"
The look in his eyes darkens like a warning. Maybe Katie is in danger. Fear spreads through me as I recall the news stories about missing or dead people associated with Layne Manor.
"This is your home, Xavier. Please, help?" I plead.
XAVIER
"Follow me," I begrudge, leading Lyndi down the dark corridor toward my secret passageway.
It's not that I feel sympathetic for her. That's not why I've offered to help locate her stupid, groupie friend — I don’t know what Jax sees in Katie, but we’ve never shared the same taste in women.
I'm helping because it just happens to be a full moon. Bad things can happen on full moon nights. Or good things, depending on your perspective.
I enjoy the sound of her nervously shuffling footsteps as I lead her to a shortcut to the underground, an old smuggler’s tunnel system on which the original mansion was built.
“It’s pitch black,” she complains, fumbling with her phone. I forget that not everybody can see well in the dark.
I grab her hand when she trips, leading deeper into the passageway to the old tunnels which serve as the Lair’s exclusive, after-hours dig where I’m expected to appear for VIP members—management's way of whoring me out to fans. I usually skip out, but… Katie may have wandered too far below, and I don’t want blood on my hands. Not again. The thought of it tingles my spine; my wolf’s hackles rise.
Speaking of…
Fucking ghost-girl. How the hell could Lyndi hear her, feel her even? It’s no fucking wonder I avoid the West Wing!
Most guests barely notice the phantom footsteps, attributing the rattling of shudders and doors to their imaginations. Nobody ever claims to hear her speak, to feel her touch. Not even the avid ghost hunters who have stayed at the mansion.
But when my mouth was busy corrupting Damon’s daughter, and the fiend decided to join in, Lyndi’s eyes popped open, pupils dilated, her every sense attuned to the presence that haunts these halls.
Lyndi is receptive. Empathic even. From the first time I laid eyes on her, not only was she easy to tap into, but she was highly responsive to my dragon’s ability, my subtle voice in her mind.
Yet my voice didn’t register in the background of her subconscious, as with other normie non-shifters. I was at the forefront, and she was lucidly aware, eyes locked with mine, listening as if I were speaking to her aloud.
The unsettling part was when she heard my thoughts against my will. Highly unusual, especially for her kind. But that’s not what bothers me most.
It’s her ability to hear the ghost that complicates things.
Making Lyndi no longer mere leverage but a liability. I can’t have her communicating with an entity privy to the mansion’s dark secrets.
I used to think of ghost-girl as a victim, but I don’t think that anymore. She was crazy while living; she’s even crazier now that she’s dead. Sometimes, it feels as if this groupie/stalker of a fan purposely died here as a communion, forever tying herself to the place she haunted while living.
But I’ve no time for this kind of bullshit.
Especially with Father still in Europe, I’m expected to keep the fort running in his stead. Keeping secrets dead and buried is usually his shit-show to manage, most of which he’s brought upon himself. As for the dead girl, that’s a whole other can of worms.
Dropping Lyndi’s hand, I stop at the black door and enter the keycode before motioning her inside, the clatter of voices and music thrumming within.
When she hesitates, I put my hand on her shoulder. “The entrance is down the hall.” She shudders under my touch, instigating me to pull her closer.
“What are you—“
Her soft lips yield to mine, my tongue penetrating her delicious mouth as she momentarily surrenders. I wrap my arms around her waist, and she pushes against my chest.
“I…have to go,” she says breathlessly.
“Go find your friend, but I want to see you before the night’s over. We need to chat.”
“You mean about Damon?”
Leverage, she thinks, rolling the word in her mind, puzzling over it.
I subtly nod, my eyes dipping briefly to her lips, her sweet taste lingering on my tongue.
She tucks in her bottom lip, suddenly distracted by her ringing phone.
I’m only minimally worried on her behalf. When a groupie goes missing here, that usually means she’s holed up with a musician in one of the tunnel’s many well-appointed enclaves.
But then again, it is a hunter’s moon tonight. Anything could happen. So I motion the nearest bouncer to help her, but then I grab her hand as she heads off, pulling her back with my mouth to her ear. “Go solve the great mystery, Lyndi. But don’t forget your curfew.”
She spins around. “Curfew? The contract didn’t—“
“Fuck the contract. My rule.”
“What? You’re seriously enforcing a curfew on me?”
“That’s right. I expect you to return to your magical princess room by midnight.”
“Or else I lose a glass slipper?”
“Wrong princess. You’re more the pretty, overly curious peasant girl searching for something better, but all she finds is a dark cell.”
“And you’re the beast,” she mutters, jerking her hand away.
She isn’t wrong.
Not a fairy tale kind of beast. I’m much worse.
Then what are you, Xavier?
I’m a soul-sucking demon—don’t you forget it.
I can almost feel the shiver down her spine as my words creep into the private corners of her mind.