Tall, Dark & Furious (Pyte/Sentinel 6)

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“Where’s your men?” a deep, exotic lilting voice that she could happily listen to all day asked slowly, the words were a bit stressed as though he wasn’t used to speaking, but even that didn’t take away from the immense pleasure she took from listening to him speak even as her head continued to pound in agony. “Answer me, woman,” the voice demanded, sending a tingling sensation throughout her body, which was sadly the most pleasure a man had ever given her.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true, Samantha thought a moment later as she yawned. Bob gave her a great deal of pleasure, but she wasn’t sure that he counted since he required batteries.

“Huh?” Samantha said, not bothering to open her eyes as she tried to hold onto the last tendrils of sleep.

“Where is your father? Husband? Your keeper, woman? Where is the man in your life?” the voice demanded harshly, but it was so damn sexy that she was having trouble getting mad.

She reached up and rubbed her aching head, and for some reason, she thought the action was odd but couldn’t figure out why. “My father died ten years ago. I’m not married and I don’t need a keeper, but don’t tell my brother Nathan that. He thinks that I do.”

“Where is this Nathan?” the voice demanded sharply.

“Somewhere in Europe,” she answered as she slowly opened her eyes.

When she saw the monster staring down at her, she clamped her hands over her mouth to stifle the scream that was threatening to escape since the last thing that she needed was to anger him. No, angering him would be a very bad idea, Samantha thought as he reached down and grabbed her arms and hauled her to her feet.

“You have no man then?” he demanded, as he studied her through a tangle of long gray matted hair.

No, not gray hair, she amended a second later when she caught a whiff of the dirt and dust matting his beard and hair together and sneezed. That seemed to startle a rather frightening growl from him. She tried to move away so that she wouldn’t do it again, but he refused to release her, leaving her with no other choice but to continue sneezing.

“You have no man?” he asked her a little more forcefully as if she wasn’t currently setting a new world record for sneezing and threatening to take her migraine to a whole new level of agony.

She went to answer him only to sneeze again, so she shook her head. She knew that she could have lied, probably should have lied, but for some reason, she didn’t think he’d be all that happy when he discovered that he’d been lied to.

“Good. Then you’re mine,” he said, sounding pleased.

“W-what?” Samantha asked around a sneeze that caused sharp pain to shoot through her throbbing head, unsure that she’d heard him correctly. Actually, she was positive that she’d misheard him thanks to the damn sneezes that refused to stop.

“I’ve decided to keep you,” he said firmly and damn if that sexy accented voice didn’t make her shiver.

“Um,” Samantha started to say only to pause when she swallowed nervously, “when you say, ‘keep me’ what exactly do you mean?” she asked as she chanted, please don’t mean eat me, in her head.

“I mean that I take you as my wife,” he said in a hard tone that brokered no argument as he yanked her towards the small tunnel that led to the basement stairs.

“Wait! Don’t I get a say in this?” she asked, trying to break free, but he simply tightened his grip on her and pushed her forward, sending her stumbling.

She quickly righted herself and kept going, hoping that she could escape him long enough to find a weapon or call for help. When she came to the stone stairs, she broke into a run, praying that she wouldn’t fall and give hi

m a chance to catch her. She made it to the top of the stairs, grabbed the thick wood door and slammed it shut after noting that he was more than halfway down the stairs and didn’t seem to be in a rush.

Her hands trembled as she threw the bolt before she stumbled back away from the door and gave herself a mental kick in the ass to get moving. She rushed over to the counter and started yanking drawers out, desperate for anything that could be used as a weapon. When her hand landed on her grandmother’s old splintered wood rolling pin, a loud crack sounded behind her.

Afraid that she already knew what happened, she slowly turned around and swallowed hard as the monster shoved the broken door out of his way and walked towards her. His eyes shifted to the rolling pin in her hand before moving back to her face. When he was barely two feet away from her, he held out his hand in silent demand.

As she contemplated her chances of taking this thing down with a rolling pin that would most likely break in half on the first hit, her eyes darted past him to the thick door that he’d broken in two right down the middle and then back to him. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the odds of her escaping him weren’t that great, which brought up an interesting question.

“Where are the other men?” Samantha asked, trying not to panic as she reluctantly handed the rolling pin over to him.

He took it and tossed it aside. “Dead,” he said as he took his eyes off her so that he could look around the large outdated kitchen that was going to take a fortune to fix.

“Dead?” she repeated hollowly.

“Yes.”

“D-did you eat them?” she asked, barely above a hoarse whisper. If he said yes, she knew there would be no hope whatsoever in stopping the next blackout. In fact, she would probably welcome it.

He shook his head absently as he took in the refrigerator and stove that didn’t really work anymore. “No, I only drained them.”