The Link That Binds Read online

  “Dude,” Jace hesitated, “you do know I’m a shifter right? Aspirins won’t do shit except to give me a bigger meal than I’ve had for about four days.”

  “Right, forgot about that… I’ll have Trey make you a club sandwich,” Link told him, apparently thinking it would be better to keep the cat fed for the duration of his stay. Jace was relieved Link had no intentions of starving him. So was the leopard.

  “Or… you could just let me out of this damn cage and I can go make myself a damn sandwich… or a steak… or both,” Jace grumbled.

  Link seemed to actually consider his suggestion for a while. “Sorry, no can do. Mika has some pretty specific orders.”

  The way he spoke made Jace think Mika had made it pretty clear to Link not to let him get away, not without some serious consequences.

  “What the hell does Mika got on you anyway? Can’t just be the psycho drugs you’re distributing to the bastard.”

  Link ignored the question, very obviously thinking it was none of the cat’s business what Mika had on him.

  “Those drugs are for vampires only,” Link stated.

  “Vampires only, huh?” Jace snorted. “Tell that to Leo, you know, the human who got kidnapped and made into a blood slave and then made into a damn junky so that vampires could get high through his blood with your vampire party shots. I can guarantee you those vamp-only drugs of yours are being administered straight into donor veins the second they get hold of them. Leo is still having some nasty side effects to the ordeal. Fuck, not even my detox meds could burn through the shit fast enough and those meds are some potent shit!”

  Link’s attention snapped to Jace and he flinched. He knew Link had seen it himself, a month ago when Mika had brought Leo to the BDSM club and injected the little human, only to have Leo manage to escape.

  The drugs might have been made specifically for supernaturals and never intended for human use, and the fact that Leo wasn’t dead couldn’t be considered anything short of a bloody miracle, but the dangers of the drug, even with Link’s warning, would mean absolutely shit to a guy like Mika. No fucking way Link hadn’t picked up on that from his meetings with the vamp.

  “That was never the intention of the drugs,” he stated before walking over to his computer again, looking through the floppy discs he’d been given.

  “Well, as long as you didn’t intend…” Jace sneered. “Are you a fucking idiot? You’re dealing with vampires, you moron! Do you think they fucking care about your intentions?”

  Link appeared to be ignoring the talkative cat, but Jace sure knew he’d pushed his buttons.

  “You can’t ignore me forever, lover boy! You’re trying to have me exterminated remember… I think that calls for a little attention.” Jace snorted and, noticing the look the man gave him, he continued. “Would you stop fantasizing about me naked and get me the fuck out of this cage already!?”

  Link flinched and Jace knew he’d been straight on the mark. Link probably thought he could read minds, judging by the look he gave him.

  Who could blame him? Jace wasn’t exactly a poster boy for innocence with his ice-blond hair and steely eyes, hell, nobody could resist his charms forever. If Link wanted to entertain indecent thoughts of him, then by all means… Best thing would be to just ignore him and focus on how the hell he’d get out of this stitch, but something told him Link was a guy to keep his eye on. And even if the man tried to ignore him, Jace wouldn’t make that an easy endeavor.

  “Just let me draw some fresh blood,” Link sighed as he came over with a sterile syringe.

  “Are you nuts?!” Jace sneered at him. “You’re trying to find a way to kill me and you want me to fucking help you? You are definitely short a few marbles, you know that?”

  “Do you want to get drugged again?” Link snapped back at him, getting impatient when Jace wouldn’t cooperate.

  “Dude… fuck you!”

  “Fine!” Link sneered. “I’ll go get the tranquilizer gun.”

  Jace wouldn’t let up, but Link seemed adamant on taking those fresh samples.

  Getting the gun, Link filled the chambers with what looked to be a double dose of the tranquilizers they’d used on him before and Jace cringed.

  Again with the damn drugs…

  Sending daggers at Link with his glare, Jace had no doubt that Link knew exactly how pissed off he was at the moment. Momentarily baffled when he saw something remarkably similar to lust pass through Link’s eyes, rage started to fill Jace. He could feel it coloring his face. The fucker kept him in a damn cage and then started with the googly eyes?

  Oh hell no!

  Jace sent him another look, one that if he had his head on straight would have easily been interpreted as a threat to be chopped up into tiny, kibble-sized pieces.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jace practically growled at him. “Your mom didn’t give you enough hugs when you were are child so you decided to join up with a bunch of vampires? Oh, and by the way, do you mind getting your fucking mind out of my boxers?”

  “You don’t know shit about me, kitten.” Link stared down at him as if he was some sub-human mutant with that icy glare of his, his jaw tight, all traces of lust wiped away.

  “I know you’ve joined up with the forces of darkness.” Jace hissed again.

  Link looked to be fighting a quirk of his lips, even despite his irritation. “Forces of darkness? What are you, a Dungeons & Dragons master?”

  “I don’t think this is the time for jokes, you jackass!” Jace said, daring him to make another one when he was trying to find a way to eradicate his entire fucking species.

  A moment of strangled amusement seemed to pass through Link before he raised the gun at him. Jace felt something ache inside of him as the man took aim and he panicked.

  “Wait wait wait!” Jace shrunk back in his cage before Link could pull the trigger. “Don’t shoot, okay? I really don’t want to get drugged again,” he pleaded and he really, really didn’t. Those drugs were far too festive for Jace’s liking.

  Link sighed as he lowered the gun, obviously tired of Jace’s hot and cold attitude of cooperation. Not that Jace was the only one playing the hot and cold game, because Link definitely didn’t play on the straight and narrow on that one.

  Jace watched, relieved as Link put the tranquilizer gun on the table and pulled out the syringe again.

  “Reach your left hand through the bars, please,” Link instructed before warning him, “and don’t even think about trying anything.”

  Grinding his teeth together, Jace did as Link told him, letting his left arm through the bars. He let Link tie a rubber band around his arm and hold him steady as he aimed the needle at a prominent vein. Just when the tip went in, Jace grabbed hold of Link’s shirt and slammed him into the bars, head first. Link fell to the ground with a groan and Jace had his hands in his pockets seconds later, fishing out the keys. Jace let out a slight victory yowl as he got the door open and took off through the pub. Being early in the day the place wasn’t open yet and therefore empty, but before he could reach the exit he got tackled from behind and slammed into the bar. Link had him turned around in a fraction of a second and before he could fight back, slammed his lips to Jace’s.

  * * * *

  Jace was taken off guard when Link thrust his tongue in his mouth and pinned him to the bar… but holy fuck if the man wasn’t a killer kisser. Even to the extent of his cat purring.

  Jace got lost in the moment until the buttons on his shirt popped off when Link yanked it open. Calloused hands roamed his chest, stopping to tease at his rapidly hardening nipples. As one of them was pinched between Link’s fingers, his other hand reached behind Jace to pull them closer, grinding their erections against each other.

  Link used both his hands to grab hold of Jace’s ass and lifted him to sit on top of the bar before he started yanking down Jace’s pants, almost making the shifter yelp out loud in the process. Instead, he got caught in a moan as Link bit into the side of his
neck, a guaranteed hot spot for any shifter, although wolves got rather pissy about it unless done by their mates… actually all shifters tended to get antsy about that…

  “Link,” Jace groaned as his captor got a rough hold on his cock and started a hard pumping motion. “Shit!” Jace yowled as a finger suddenly penetrated him from behind and he arched into Link’s tight grip. His eyes instantly turned into slits and his canines descended as Jace started attacking back, clawing at Link… who was very, very shapely for a human.

  When Link fused their mouths together again, he purred as the larger male pushed against him and thrust his finger deeper, in and out of Jace’s ass. The purring only seemed to spur him on.

  Jace’s hands went to tangle themselves in Link’s hair and he shredded the tie keeping it in pulled back, making it flow around his face.

  When Link added another finger, Jace hissed at the burn. Unfortunately for him, it had been a while and the absence of lube didn’t help, but the slight burn gave way quickly and felt oh so fucking good, “More!” he demanded and Link granted his wish as he added a third finger, the stretch enough to make him cry out as Link nailed his prostate. Too far gone in their kiss, he barely even noticed when Link pulled him closer to the edge of the bar.

  Keening in distress when Link removed the fingers, he growled as Link started to stab at his stretched opening with his own hard shaft. His cat only briefly argued the forced submission before settling down.

  Their positions made it impossible for Jace to get a good look at what Link had to offer him, but from what he could feel, the man was thick. Adding to the fact there was no lube in sight, he knew he was in for a rough ride, but Jace loved it, the sting of penetration making him burn deliciously from deep within. When Link finally breached the ring of muscle, Jace almost came; holding back wasn’t easy as his lover kept pushing in and out to further bury himself inside.

  Link grunted as he rammed himself into Jace’s core, holding a tight grip on the shifter’s hips to prevent him from sliding away from him across the bar.

  Jace was panting and getting closer every damn second Link rutted into him. By now Link had located his prostate and kept nailing it with each thrust as he pounded his ass. Jace knew he’d be sore in the morning, but he just didn’t fucking care. It felt too damn good.

  When Link started roughly stroking his straining erection again to match the pace he had set for his ass, Jace couldn’t hold it anymore and shot all over Link’s hand. In the heat of the moment he couldn’t help but strike at Link’s throat, burying his teeth deep in his neck.

  Holy FUCK in hell, the man tasted good, but the strike he felt in his own neck when Link came, growling, inside of him wasn’t what he’d expected.

  Jace jerked back as the syringe was stabbed into his neck, horror in his eyes at the betrayal. The world dimmed far too quickly and he barely felt it as the bastard pulled out of him and gathered him into his arms. The last he felt before passing out was the cold cement floor beneath his naked ass and a syringe extracting blood from his arm. Jace would see to it that Link paid for this… big time!

  Chapter 3

  Link was aware the moment Jace woke up and had purposely kept his back to the cage. He knew he couldn’t apologize for his behavior earlier and he knew he’d crossed a crucial line, but at least he’d dressed him as well as he could after.

  Jace’s shirt missed a couple of buttons after their encounter, but Link had buttoned it up as best as he could. He hoped what they said, about shifters and vampires not being affected by human STDs, was true because the notion of wearing a condom had been far from his mind when he’d tackled the cat.

  And fuck, Link had always been careful… well, maybe not always, but he felt reasonably safe when it came to those things and who knew where the shifter had been. Jace had this mock innocence about him, but that look of his could turn lewd in a fraction of a second.

  With a swimmer’s build like Jace, Link had strong doubts about the shifter being some wayward virgin. The cat had taken him in like a pro, even without lube. Hell, it was insane how easily he could slide in when Jace felt so fucking tight the rest of the ride.

  Initially he’d been pissed when the cat took off, but the chase had given him a thrill and things had gotten out of hand. There was something about the man that just seemed to trigger his adrenaline, then again; Jace hadn’t exactly fought him off either. The claw-marks on his back and the bite in his neck were pretty much evidence of how Jace had clung to him during the act, pulling him closer than what should have been humanly possible.

  He actually did feel pretty bad for the guy when he’d jammed the needle of tranquilizers in his neck, knocking him out cold, knowing perfectly well Jace hadn’t been kidding when he said he hated what the drugs did to him.

  Still, he needed those samples. No way he’d give Mika what he wanted, but he at least had to make it look like he’d been searching for the poison; or cure as the vampire had called it.

  Several minutes passed without a word from Jace and Link had to admit he was a bit worried when he hadn’t gotten any of the snide remarks he’d grown used to expect from him since the cat arrived… had he passed out again?

  The dose hadn’t been that high, not for a supernatural being like Jace at least. Looking over his shoulder he saw the cat wasn’t even facing him, but he breathed steadily and Link didn’t think he was asleep either.

  “Are you ignoring me?” Link asked with a light tone, hiding his guilt for what had transpired. He saw the cat wince at the sound of his voice, but he never said a word. For some reason the silence bothered him. “Giving me the silent treatment, huh? I told you not to try anything,” he muttered as he turned back to his work.

  It took him a few hours before he did anything, even though he was supposed to be working. He kept looking back over his shoulder, checking on Jace. He thought he’d heard the cat sigh a couple of times, even thought he’d heard him sniffle once, but other than that, Jace hadn’t said a damn thing.

  Link startled as the phone next to him rang and berated himself for being so caught up in the shifter before taking the call.

  “Hello?” he asked with a cold tone, the landline to the back of his club being strictly for business calls.

  “Your time is starting to run out,” an annoyed voice Link recognized as Mika spat out.

  “I’m sorry Mika, but finding a fucking bomb in a sample of blood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Besides, I have to retake the blood tests every two hours because they keep purifying themselves too damn fast after being extracted!” Link spat back out into the phone. And he didn’t even have to lie.

  Whenever he took a sample from Jace, the blood would immediately start to rinse itself of anything that could be interpreted as signs of the otherworldly and he didn’t doubt if a shifter died, his whole body would start the same process.

  When first checking the blood, Link had been amazed to see at least twenty-eight pairs of chromosomes, several of them being completely foreign to Link, and then when rechecking his findings a few minutes later, he only found the normal amount of twenty-three pairings. The perfectly normal genetic structure of a human male.

  He thought he was seeing things until he took a second set of samples after he’d incapacitated Jace at the conclusion of their little display of carnal lust.

  Link could hear Mika hiss over the phone. “I want results, Link, and you have less than twenty hours to get them to me.” His statement was followed by a loud click as Mika hung up on him.

  Sighing, Link knew he would have to take another sample from Jace to get any work done. The cat still hadn’t uttered a word and had kept his back to him the entire time. If the cat didn’t fidget from time to time, he would have started to worry Jace had slipped into a coma or something.

  Hesitating a bit, Link got up and walked over to the cage, which he realized was far too cramped for a man Jace’s size. Hell, even a goddamned beagle would be furious at the limited space.

  �
�Jace,” Link could see the cat tense as he said his name, although he would have certainly heard him approaching. “I’m going to need another sample.”

  Jace didn’t respond, which bothered him. He couldn’t let him escape a second time and they definitely couldn’t repeat their little tryst, even if his cock threatened to perk up at the idea.

  “Come on, are you never gonna get over that little thing?” he asked, suddenly annoyed with the silent shifter. The glare that greeted him, though, almost made him wince.

  “Little thing?! Who the fuck do you think you are, you fucking asshole?!” Jace sneered as he sat up and finally turned to look at him completely. “I’m used to morons doing some pretty fucked up things, but what you did was low, real low! Hell, even Mika would have the decency to drug you before taking advantage, you stupid ass!”

  “Taking advantage?” Link chuckled darkly. “You could have easily gotten away, kitten, but you pulled me in like a cat in heat and I have the marks to prove it.” He ended by lifting up his shirt, showing off his abs where the skin was colored pink by angry scratches.

  Link could have sworn Jace blushed at the sight, remembering how he’d given Link those marks and how very consensual he’d been.

  “Whatever.” Jace caught himself in his blush and snarled before turning his back on Link again. Link knew the cat had to be pissed that he couldn’t shrug off those remarks, seeing as they were true.

  When Link’s mouth had crashed down on Jace’s, he could literally feel the cats need ignite and take over completely. Jace had even bitten him in the heat of the moment, which he guessed had to be some kind of shifter thing, either that or the man simply liked to bite people. Even now, he could see Jace’s fangs descend just barely from under his upper lip at his close proximity.

  Before Jace could protest though, Link grasped his wrist through the bars then slammed on the cold metal of a pair of handcuffs, now keeping Jace locked to the bars of his enforced habitat.