I’d never been bitten by a vampire before.
I didn’t want to start that habit now, either.
That eyebrow of his remained arched, his patience hanging on by a thin wire.
He wanted me to fight him? Fine. I was the one with a weapon, not him. And his hands were busy propping him up against the wall in his human-formed cage.
I lashed out with the blade, only to have him jump backward a beat ahead of me reaching my target. The end of my knife only grazed his bare abdomen, his lips pulling into a feral smile.
“Good choice,” he praised. “More.”
This man was insane.
Certifiably nuts.
Maybe the whole royal thing was a lie? Some fucked-up fantasy he’d created for himself in the middle of wherever the hell we were located. The geography I understood was region based; they didn’t explain where the breeding camps or other destinations were. Just the regions and capitals.
Ryder fell into a crouch, his expression inviting me to play.
Rather than turn him down, I went for it. If I could injure him even a little, it’d provide me with an opportunity to escape. And if nothing else, it would tell me what I was up against.
I considered throwing my dagger at him—I’d taken an entire course on knife fighting—but I didn’t want to lose my only weapon.
Instead, I darted around him, trying to reach his back, but he spun with me, reached out, and snagged my wrist. I whirled in an attempt to escape him, my instincts taking over. Except his grasp caused me to twist in a way that forced me to drop my knife.
Fuck.
I should have thrown it.
Alas, there was no time to correct the error. Ryder was already coming for me, trying to find a way to subdue me.
He brought my arm up behind my back, but I used the momentum to my advantage to spin and tried to take out his knee. Ryder dodged me, his counterattack hitting me square in the sternum.
Shit, he’s fast.
Silas had been my primary opponent at the university. Sometimes Rae. And neither of them had anything on Ryder.
He moved with a precision I would have admired had I not been the subject he sought to cut down.
I escaped his hold once more and ran toward the weapons rack. He chuckled behind me, then cursed when I found a pair of throwing stars. I aimed both at his torso, only to watch him avoid them with a crazy backbend that should not have been possible.
It shocked me so completely that I stopped moving, just to be yanked down onto the mat a second later by his much stronger body. I tried to dislodge him in the way I’d been trained, but he captured my wrists in one hand and pulled them over my head. Then he put his opposite palm at my throat, his gaze thoughtful as I squirmed beneath him.
“That was cheating,” he informed me, his breathing far more even than my own. “I gave you one knife. You lost it.”
I inhaled a gulp of air before replying, “You didn’t say I couldn’t grab more.”
His lips curled. “I suppose I didn’t.” He cocked his head to the side, his thumb brushing the pulse on my neck. “That wasn’t a horrible performance, Willow. Better than I anticipated, actually.”
That didn’t appear to be much of a compliment. Not that a compliment was warranted. How long had I lasted against him? One minute? Maybe two?
I nearly growled in frustration.
Then his hips settled between mine, and my frustration morphed into something else entirely. Heat spread through my veins from the point where our groins touched, my heart hammering an unsteady beat in my chest.
He has me pinned in a helpless state with no option but to comply.
And he’s turned on.
My throat went dry with the realization. I’m completely at his mercy.
“You need to eat more, Willow.” His dark eyes radiated with a hunger that rivaled his growing arousal below. “It’ll help with proper muscle growth and fill out your curves.” His gaze dropped to my mouth, and then lower to the fabric covering my heaving chest.
I wore his clothes—a plain white shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. Neither left much to the imagination, especially as I felt myself dampening at the apex between my thighs.
He’s a hunter, I thought, inhaling sharply. A vampire. A predator encased in a mirage of perfection.
And right now, all that perfection was pressed up against me, his muscles resembling a brick wall above me.
His dark eyes finally returned to mine, the knowledge in his depths stealing my ability to think. He could smell my reaction to him. He could feel it with his thumb against my pulse. He knew he had the upper hand in every way.
I was lost to his superiority.
No was a word I could never utter in his presence. Not without experiencing swift punishment.
Yet a part of me had to admit that I wouldn’t refuse him for more than just societal reasons. His presence endangered my senses, making it difficult to think.
Which was why it took me a moment to register the alarm sounding around us. The blaring siren barely penetrated my thoughts until Ryder leapt to his feet to stalk over to one of his security panels.
He had one in every room, including his guest suite upstairs. I’d tried to play with the one in my temporary room yesterday, but I couldn’t activate it. Which told me they only responded to him.
“Hmm,” he murmured, scanning the security images populating his wide screen. “We have company.” He looked at me. “Do you know how to use a gun?”
“No.” Humans weren’t allowed to handle weapons of that nature, only combat-style tools like batons and swords. That seemed like something he should know, in addition to several other things.
“We’ll rectify that later,” he said, typing in a code on his panel that caused the wall to part beside it.
My eyes widened at the adjoining room Ryder had just revealed. It was a giant armory. His hammer paled in comparison to all this, telling me he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said there were better weapons upstairs.
Because wow.
The large room boasted several rows of knives, guns, grenades, and a variety of other items. Ryder turned left out of my view.
I forced myself up onto my feet, my intention to follow him, except the panel caught my attention. Yellowish-orange silhouettes painted the purple-shaded background. It reminded me of the thermal scanners I’d studied in my university security course. The purpose of the class had been to demonstrate all the ways humans were observed and “protected.” Really, it was a way to deter us from escaping. Or that was how Rae, Silas, and I had interpreted it, anyway.
“How many?” Ryder asked from the other room. When I glanced at him, I found him watching me from the threshold. He didn’t seem to care that I’d checked out the footage. If anything, he appeared pleased by it.
“Nine,” I replied, assuming he wanted me to tell him how many yellowish-orange blobs were on the screens he’d left up on the panel.
“Twelve,” he corrected, disappearing back into his armory. “But you were close,” he called back to me.
I frowned at the screen. “Where are the other three?”
“They’re coming in from the west,” he replied from the other room.
“The west?” I repeated, trying to figure out which monitor showed that. There were six up on the screen, all angled at different parts of his property.
“Upper right corner,” he said as he returned with a gun in his hand. He used it to tap the image on the panel before securing it in his belt, where he had two others tucked away.