Velvet Cataclysm: Princes of the Underground, Book 1 Read online

  Then she was sinking her nails into his shoulders and shuddering in orgasm.

  Her vitessence thundered into him like a tidal wave. His head flung back. His grunts mixed with Christina’s whimpers of release. Her pussy milked the hypersensitive head of his cock. He snarled, his fangs fully bared, and leaned over her, held spellbound by the pulse throbbing at her throat.

  He flexed his ass muscles in preparation to fully pierce succulent female flesh, but at the same moment, his tension amplified for another reason.

  “Shhh…quiet yourself, beauty,” he whispered harshly, silencing Christina’s mewls of anguished pleasure. She opened her eyes sluggishly and slowed in the eye-crossing little thrusts of her hips as she tried to seat his cock farther in her.

  A second later someone pounded on the office door. With supreme effort, Saint drew in his incisors until they only barely protruded past his other teeth.

  “Give me a minute, Aidan. Wait for me in the dayroom,” he called over his shoulder, ascendancy flavoring his tone with authority.

  “Okay,” the boy replied from the other side of the door. Saint listened to the sound of Aidan’s fading tread with a potent mixture of gratitude and regret. He met Christina’s wide-eyed stare and withdrew his cock from her warm clasp.

  Every nerve in his body screamed in protest at the cruelty of the resulting pain.

  Her hands tightened in anguish on Saint’s shoulders when he separated himself from her.

  “How…how did you know it was Aidan?” Her voice sounded hoarse, like she hadn’t used it in a week. It was the white-hot blaze of pure pleasure that had scored her throat, undoubtedly, just like it had the rest of her body.

  Saint didn’t respond. Her senses swam in a thick haze of arousal. He straightened and her eyes sprang wide. He’d shoved his jeans down to his thighs. Christina had frequently admired—well, salivated, in fact—over the manner in which Saint filled out his jeans. Seeing his full glory revealed left her brain vibrating with stunned lust. His long, beautifully shaped, golden-hued cock flushed with arousal was one thing. But his penis was erotically highlighted by a leather thong that encircled his lower hips and both thighs, just below his round, shaved testicles. She caught a glimpse of two leather straps tied tightly against his muscular left leg, a thin sheath of sorts, strapped to his outer thigh.

  It figured. Saint couldn’t just wear a pair of boxers like most guys.

  He pulled his jeans over his hips, inserting his swollen cock down his right pant leg with a grimace. Reality crashed in on her as she watched him fasten his button-fly, wincing as he did so.

  “You called him here with your mind,” she whispered incredulously. “You wanted Aidan to interrupt us…to interrupt this,” she said as she nodded to the juncture of her naked, spread thighs. His eyes flashed dangerously when he glanced to where she referred.

  He turned his back to her.

  Turned his back on her, Christina realized. A band seemed to pull tight around her chest, constricting her breath. Her lungs burned.

  “Get dressed and meet us out in the dayroom,” he ordered briskly.

  But Christina remained spread-eagled and aghast for several seconds after he left. No human could engage in something so intimate and then just blithely turn and walk away.

  Of course, Saint wasn’t human, was he?

  She blinked several times and looked around her office. The image of Saint’s retreating back was superimposed on everything she saw.

  Chapter Five

  The first thing Christina heard, aside from a commercial for car insurance blaring on the television, was the sound of her son’s voice.

  Aidan had grown like a well-watered weed for the past six months. Christina was distantly surprised to see that the top of his head reached just below Saint’s shoulders. It seemed like yesterday Saint towered over the boy like a giant would a munchkin. Aidan had grown up instead of out. She worried about his skinniness, even though she knew it was normal for boys to get that lanky, stretched appearance as adolescence loomed.

  His thinness confused her all the more because she’d been flabbergasted by the amount of food the kid had been putting away for the past six months. Aidan’s voice hadn’t yet begun to crack and deepen like some of his eleven-year-old friends’ had. Still, the coming of his manhood seemed to surround Aidan like a hazy glow before a fierce dawn.

  She heard Aidan scold Saint. “Why did you have to go and have a fight with her? Now she’ll never let us stay at Whitby!”

  “Sorry,” Saint said in his deep, resonant rumble.

  “I’ll say you are.”

  Both males looked around at the sound of her voice. Given the perversity of her mood, it gratified her to see that Aidan looked nearly as furious with Saint at that moment as she did. It’d confused her in the past sometimes, how she’d never become jealous while standing at the kitchen sink, doing the dishes and watching through the window as Saint and Aidan tossed a baseball in the yard, talking in brief bursts of what appeared to be some kind of mysterious, earnest male code that she couldn’t quite break.

  How could they say so little and make it look like so much?

  Yeah, Saint and Aidan had always had a bond she couldn’t touch. So the bunching of Aidan’s dark brown eyebrows and accusatory stare at Saint especially gratified her at that moment.

  “Mom, Saint didn’t mean it. He didn’t know what he was saying,” Aidan stated immediately upon seeing her. He stepped toward her, his hands outstretched in a soothing gesture. “Saint wants us to stay at Whitby as much as I want to stay there. I’m sure he’ll apologize for whatever he said or did.”

  Christina put out her arms toward her son, hating to see the wild, desperate look in his eyes. She threw Saint an acidic look that clearly told him, this is all your fault! His expression remained stony as he returned her stare, but she saw a muscle in his jaw leap with tension. Aidan remained by his friend and hero’s side, despite Christina’s beckoning gestures.

  “Come on, Aidan. We’ll go home in a while.”

  “To Whitby?” Aidan asked, his handsome, thin face transforming with triumph. His aquamarine eyes—a mixture of the sea and sky combined—gleamed hopefully.

  “Yes. It’s our home for now. It will be until the lease starts on the apartment in Old Town in two weeks. I’ve explained all of that to you,” Christina said neutrally.

  Her son’s scowl cut right through her.

  “Aww, Mom. Old Town sucks.”

  “Please don’t use language like that, Aidan,” Christina said, crossing her arms below her breasts.

  “Where am I going to be able to skateboard? And Scepter is going to hate being caged up in an apartment!”

  Christina’s shoulders sagged. Aidan hadn’t brought up this particular detail since she’d showed him the apartment yesterday and picked up the lease from the landlord. She’d been so busy enumerating all the advantages of moving and calming Aidan’s doubts that the volatile topic of Scepter hadn’t yet come up. She glanced at Saint nervously, wishing like hell it hadn’t come up in front of his brooding, disapproving presence.

  “Honey, we’ll talk about this when we get home. I have some things I still need to do here at work. Maybe you can just watch television for a while and—”

  “Mom?”

  Christina mentally groaned when she saw the tightening of Aidan’s focus on her. If only her son hadn’t been born with her ability to read people…

  “Scepter is going to be able to come with us if we move, isn’t he?”

  Christina clenched her back teeth when she saw Saint’s eyebrows go up in a wry expression, as though he couldn’t wait to hear her answer to this.

  “Aidan…Scepter is half-wild. It’d be cruel to force him away from the woods at Whitby.”

  “I’m not going, then,” Aidan said staunchly, crossing his arms across his thin chest in a stubborn gesture that was the mirror image of Christina’s own. “There’s no way I’m leaving Scepter.”

  “We’ll
talk more about it on the way home.”

  Aidan’s mouth twisted into a frown, but he must have recognized the finality in Christina’s tone. “Can’t Saint take me home on his bike?”

  “No.”

  Both males’ eyebrows cocked up at her harshness.

  “We’ll take the ‘L’ home after I’m finished working. Saint indicated he was in a big hurry to be somewhere else. We wouldn’t want to keep him,” Christina explained through stiff lips. She was quite proud of the fact that she’d controlled her anger at being abandoned in the middle of impulsive, hot sex sufficiently enough to sound only sarcastic instead of wildly furious.

  Which she was.

  Christina guessed it was true what they said. Hell hath no fury and all that crap.

  Christina and Aidan paused in front of the Racine entrance to the “L” later that evening when they heard someone calling Christina’s name.

  “Christina! Wait up.”

  Christina was both glad and concerned to see that it was Alison Myers rushing up to meet her and Aidan. She hadn’t been able to locate the girl following Saint’s interruption of their conversation. Her roommate, Mirella, had told Christina that Alison had been to their room, but only to hastily grab her backpack and guitar. Christina’s concern had escalated when Mirella held up a record album.

  “Check it out, Christina. The Pretenders on vinyl.”

  “Isn’t that Alison’s?” Christina had asked.

  “Yeah. She gave it to me before she left. Can you believe it? It’s a collector’s item,” Mirella had replied, awe spicing her tone. “Alison worships Chrissie Hynd. The Pretenders are her favorite.”

  The back of Christina’s neck had prickled. The fact that Alison’d given Mirella the much-loved album was downright alarming. Years of experience working with disturbed adolescents and young adults told her it was a common gesture to give away cherished items before a suicide attempt. But Alison had been so adamant she wasn’t suicidal, and Christina had sensed the truth behind her words.

  She’d waited as long as possible for Alison to return home, but she couldn’t keep Aidan at Altgeld House all night, especially when he had a baseball game in Evanston early in the morning. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a qualified staff, after all. She’d informed her night manager, Marianna, to page her without hesitation if there was any problem with Alison tonight or over the weekend.

  Now the girl had finally shown up, but not to the safety of Altgeld House. Alison’s guitar was strapped to her back and she looked as though she had every intention of getting on the “L” with them.

  “Alison, I’m glad to see you,” she told the young woman who jogged toward them.

  “Yeah, you too. I know it’s stupid, but I get a little nervous riding the ‘L’ by myself at night. Stupid, considering what I do, huh? Hey.” Alison cuffed Aidan’s head fondly with an open palm and ruffled his hair. Aidan smiled and blushed. Christina suspected her son had a bit of a crush on the girl. Alison grinned back.

  For whatever reason, no matter how scarred and hardened a soul was, they found a soft spot in their heart for Aidan. All youth possessed a special spark, but Aidan had a steady, life-affirming flame that never seemed to waver. It was a fact of life Christina had long ago ceased to question.

  “You’re not going out to play when it’s so late, are you?” Christina asked, referring to Alison’s profession as a busker. The girl must do pretty well street entertaining, because she had never failed to make her small donation to Altgeld House for food and sundries. When Christina had discovered Alison was performing her music at various subway stops and on Michigan Avenue without a city permit, she’d insisted upon purchasing her one from the Altgeld House funds. Alison had been disdainful of the mark of legitimacy at first, but Christina noticed she wore the permit proudly on a string around her neck at the moment. “I’m not so sure that’s a wise idea, Alison. You remember the doors lock at Altgeld House at eleven-thirty?”

  “I know, I know. But it’s not even nine o’clock yet. I’ll be able to get in over an hour at the Clark and Division stop. Good bucks from all those people coming down to party on Rush Street.” She must have noticed Christina’s doubtful expression. “Entertaining is what I do, Christina. And you can’t lock somebody up for having a borderline personality disorder, you know.”

  Christina gave a disbelieving look before she saw the gleam of amusement in the girl’s eyes. She shook her head and chuckled. Leave it to Alison to tease about something as serious as her psychiatric diagnosis in the middle of a disagreement.

  Christina couldn’t lock up her charges, no matter how concerned about their safety she was. She was hamstringed by any number of legalities. Alison was an adult and she lived at Altgeld voluntarily. Her wrist cutting had been alarming, but the wounds were superficial. The girl’s psychiatrist and Christina agreed that, while worrisome, given Alison’s history, her behavior didn’t warrant hospitalization at this time. Alison wasn’t suicidal. She had a long history of self-mutilation, but no obvious attempts at suicide.

  “Promise me you’ll get back in plenty of time, Alison.”

  Alison shrugged and flipped her raven hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, sure. No biggie.”

  The girl flung her arm across Aidan’s shoulder and guided him over to the iron turnabout that led to the trains. “Hey, Aidan, you ever been to any shows at the Metro? Dude, you got to go,” she admonished when Aidan shook his head, wide-eyed. “Awesome venue.”

  Christina gave a frustrated sigh, recognizing her dismissal as she followed her son and Alison while they animatedly discussed live music.

  Ten minutes later, all three of them stood to get off at the Monroe Street subway stop. Christina hadn’t really noticed how empty the train was as they traveled downtown and Aidan and Alison talked about everything from the best skateboarding parks in the city to tattoos—Christina giving Aidan a forbidding glance at the latter topic, which Aidan chose to ignore. Once the well-lit train rumbled away, however, Christina noticed they were the only three passengers to have gotten off at the stop.

  She squinted as she glanced warily around the dim, empty platform.

  “Some of the lights have been broken,” Christina said, noticing the glass scattered across the painted concrete of the platform. She reached out to Aidan, putting a protective hand on his back. She peered north down the subway tunnel toward the Madison Street stop. Although there were usually at least a few emergency lights glowing along the subway tunnel, nothing penetrated the thick shadows tonight.

  A shiver squirmed down her spine.

  Someone was watching them. She suddenly knew it as sure as she knew her own name.

  “Come on, you two. Let’s go,” she said, doing her best to sound normal despite her rising anxiety. She urged the two young people toward the escalators that led to the block-long underground corridor connecting the Blue Line to the Red Line.

  “Ah, crap. Why’s the up escalator always out when the down always works?” Aidan grumbled as he noticed that the escalator in the distance was at a standstill.

  “Hey, Christina. You know that guy that was in your office very well?” Alison asked, apropos of nothing. Christina sensed the intensity behind the girl’s question, even though she seemed so casual asking it.

  “You mean Saint?” Aidan asked. “My mom and I know him really well. You should listen to him, Alison.”

  Despite her sudden haste to get off the subway platform, Christina’s feet faltered when she heard the very non-childlike tone of Aidan’s voice. Her eleven-year-old pinned Alison with a preternaturally alert stare. She opened her mouth to ask Aidan about his strange steadfastness when something made her turn around.

  Dread sank in her chest when she saw several silent figures emerging from the restricted area at the north side of the platform. The shadows seemed to cling to the figures like claws until they finally separated into long black coats that fluttered in the still air.

  “Come on. I’ll race you two to
the top of the escalator,” Christina challenged, her voice surprisingly steady.

  There was enough of a kid left in Alison to make her dark blue eyes sparkle with mischief when they met Aidan’s. They began to run, their high-pitched cries of excitement bouncing off the walls of the subway tunnel, Alison’s guitar case thumping against her back as she ran. Christina unglued her gaze from the four dark, approaching figures when they, too, began to run.

  She raced after Aidan and Alison.

  “Keep going!” she yelled when she saw the two young people pull up short at the bottom of the escalator. Christina bumped into Alison’s guitar case as she skidded to a halt. She looked between Aidan’s and Alison’s shoulders and saw why they’d stopped so abruptly.

  “Saint?” she asked incredulously.

  “No,” Aidan said.

  “Teslar,” Alison murmured in a shaky voice. The girl tried to step forward, but Christina restrained her with a hand on her shoulder.

  He sprawled on the immobile escalator as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Supple black leather pants gleamed in the dim light when he pushed himself to a standing position, his movement graceful and sinuous as a panther.

  Christina realized her mistake even before Aidan had corrected her. This man—this creature—was far, far from being Saint. His face may have been Saint’s, but his luxurious mane of blondish-brown hair hung down his shoulders and back. While Saint wore a neatly trimmed goatee that was a shade darker than the burnished hair on his head, this man was clean-shaven. He wore a pair of circular, mirrored sunglasses that hid his eyes.

  Christina saw the reflection of Aidan’s pale, frightened face in them.

  “Well, well, well. What have we here?”

  His voice was very much like Saint’s—resonant, rich, and mesmerizing. She felt his eyes on her even through the dark glasses.

  Heat bloomed beneath the surface of her skin.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw three males and one female standing behind them. All of them studied her with a glazed, manic expression in their eyes, each more rabid looking than the next. Two of the males had long, lethal-looking incisors protruding between their leering lips. The tallest male had a sculpted, classically handsome face and fashionably cut, mussed chestnut brown hair, but his eyes possessed the filmy quality of a corpse. The female’s face was hideously pockmarked with circular, unhealed sores.