Born in Chains (Men in Chains) Read Online Free Page A

away.
    With the blood-chain in place, Adrien wouldn’t be able to move but a few feet away from her.
    Oh, God, she was now bound to a vampire.
    But her reasons, yes, her reasons were worth anything that happened from this point forward.

 
    CHAPTER 2
     
    Adrien hurt deep into his body, as though the electricity from the Tasers had taken the recent torture and driven it into his bones. He’d finally left the cavern for the first time in a year, and though he had been completely incapacitated with manacles and chains, the guards had still fired half a dozen Tasers at him repeatedly.
    His fellow vampires.
    The guards weren’t even humans.
    As his consciousness returned, he realized he sat in a tub of warm water that felt damn good on his aching, whipped body. He couldn’t imagine what he smelled like. After that many months in a closed environment, he’d lost the ability to smell what had essentially become a cesspool.
    His neck hurt. His head rested on the thin metal lip of the tub but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it, probably because of the semi-paralysis that still kept him immobile. Damn, those Tasers had hurt.
    He drew in a deep breath and recognized the human scent from earlier, from the one determined to get the extinction weapon.
    He shifted in her direction and stared at her from beneath hooded lids. She knelt beside the tub, watching him. He’d been without sex for a year, and without a decent draught of blood. The woman would serve his needs just fine.
    His nostrils flared as he smelled her sex and her blood, both scents beating at his body, firing his appetites.
    “Adrien, can you hear me?”
    He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
    “My name is Lily. Lily Haven. I’ve already put the bonding chain on you. Can you feel it?”
    When he didn’t answer right away, she picked up his hand and pressed it against his neck, and he felt the thin loops as well as a vibration beneath his fingers. “You’ve bound me.”
    “I have.”
    His anger returned: Even though the wrought-iron manacles were gone he was still a prisoner, just a different kind. And bound to a human.
    He glared at her, letting her feel his anger.
    This time, she touched the chain at her throat. “So much rage.”
    “Yes, at the very least, rage.”
    “I didn’t want this.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
    “But you’ll be well paid for your trouble.”
    At that, she released a sigh. “Yes. I will.”
    He continued to hold her gaze, to let her feel that he didn’t intend to go easy on her, that she wouldn’t be enjoying her time with him, and that if it came to it, he’d destroy the weapon before he let her have it.
    Her chin dipped several times in succession as though she understood his thoughts. Maybe she did, because he could feel her easily through the chains as well—he knew that she feared him but was determined to do whatever needed to be done to fulfill her mission.
    And she was a locator, rare in either the vampire or the human world. But how had either Kiernan or Daniel found her? He’d heard of this kind of ability, and that it could only work if paired with a vampire of sufficient power. Through the blood-chain, she’d be able to access his power, draw it into her, and eventually gain the skill of connecting with anything she wanted to find.
    In this case, a weapon to destroy his kind.
    That anger toward the vampire world radiated from her didn’t surprise him. The worlds had begun to clash, and it was getting harder and harder to keep the vampire world a secret.
    And somehow she had run head-on into either Kiernan or Daniel, a deal had been struck probably involving a small fortune, and now she was here.
    Yet really angry, as though some injustice had been done to her. That was the surprise: that she would be using Kiernan to gain a fortune, yet be almost as angry as he was by the arrangement.
    Now, there was a mystery to solve.
    Because she was so physically close, however, a more urgent problem surfaced