Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85108 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85108 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Andi Peterson is an Agent in the Warrior Location Agency—a special unit created to locate and bring back Kindred warriors who have been enslaved or kidnapped. Her partner, Thrax, is a seven-foot tall Pitch-Blood/Dae’mon Kindred Hybrid who is growly and brooding and completely Alpha. Andi never guesses that her partner has a Shadowed Past until the two of them are sent to the Twisted System—a trio of planets where extreme sexual practices are the norm.
On Salacious Delta, they must hunt for a lost warrior who has been kidnapped and taken to a Milking Farm—a cruel facility where males are being held against their will and “milked” for their seed. Under the guise of offering Thrax as a “stud” for the farm, they gain entrance to the hidden operation and make a plan to rescue the warrior and escape.
But what Andi doesn’t know is that Thrax was once a captive himself. Being at the Milking Farm brings back past trauma and torment. When his buried memories comes back to haunt him, can the two of them deal with it together without blowing their cover? Or will Thrax lose himself in the shadows of his past?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
THRAX
“On your knees, maggot! Kneel before me.”
Thrax writhed uneasily, his eyes tightly closed.
“No…” he muttered, squeezing his pillow between his fists. “No!”
“Who said you could look up and meet my gaze? How dare you?”
“Please!” The sheets tangled around his legs as he turned over in bed, trying to wake. But still the dream gripped him like a fist.
“I think you’ve earned yourself a punishment, my beautiful boy. Tell me, what should I do to you? How can I teach you a lesson you won’t forget? Oh, I know…assume the position!”
“NO!” It was a roar, ripped from his throat as he thrashed against the constricting bed clothes.
Suddenly a hand was shaking his shoulder.
“Thrax? Thrax, wake up!”
He threw a blind punch, trying to stop his tormentor but his fist didn’t connect with anything.
“Whoa, there, big guy!” a familiar voice said. “Come on—it’s time to wake up now.”
Finally, the dream lost its grip on him. The face that had haunted him for years faded and Thrax opened his eyes to see the worried face of his partner staring down at him instead.
“Andi?” Her name was a ragged gasp, torn from his lips. “Thank the Goddess!” Relief flooded him and he launched himself at her, enfolding her in a hug so tight it made her squeak.
“Easy now!” she gasped, as Thrax hugged her to him, nearly encompassing her entire curvy body with his much larger frame. “Can’t…breathe…”
“Sorry.” As the last dregs of sleep cleared from his brain, he realized what he was doing. He made himself let her go at once.
“That’s more like it.” Special Agent Andrea Peterson—Andi for short—looked at him with concern. She had long, curly hair that was somewhere between mahogany and auburn, which she generally wore in a loose ponytail, and big brown eyes the color of the Earth liquor called whiskey. She also had the figure of an Elite—a woman the Goddess had blessed with extra full curves.
A smattering of the tiny pigment dots humans called “freckles” across the bridge of her nose and a mouth that had an extra full bottom lip that looked just made for kissing completed his partner’s face. Thrax sometimes wondered if she had any idea how fucking gorgeous she was.
“You okay?” she asked, frowning at him. “You took a swing at me, you know—you’re lucky I have good reflexes.”
“Did I? Fuck—I’m fucking sorry,” Thrax growled. Sitting up on the side of the bed beside her, he ran a hand over his horns. They were short and curved out from either side of his forehead. “Devil horns” Andi affectionately called them. Thrax had them capped with bronze to blunt the points and avoid any accidents.
“That must have been some dream,” she remarked, still studying him. “You nearly squeezed the life out of me when I woke you up. You remember what it was about?”
“Huh? Uh…no.” Thrax shook his head, not meeting her eyes. “Can’t even remember it at all, now that I’m awake,” he added.
Andi stared at him for a minute.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know that? For a seven-foot devil, I mean.”
She liked to tease him about the Dae’mon part of his heritage but Thrax never took any offense. He thought it was funny that his red skin, golden eyes, and horns made him look like the human version of the personification of evil.
Of course, being a Hybrid Kindred, he was only half Dae’mon. The other half was Pitch Blood Kindred and he had the sharp, curving fangs where a human’s canine teeth would have been to prove it.
It was his fangs that Andi was looking at now.
“Hey—those look extra sharp,” she remarked. “Have you had a drink lately? You know how grumpy you get when you’re thirsty and we’re about to go on a long mission—you’d better fuel up.”
“I visited a donor last night,” Thrax growled irritably. “I’m not fucking thirsty.” His fangs were always sharp around his partner—though he couldn’t tell her that—a Blood Kindred’s fangs didn’t get sharp until he found the female he wanted to Bond with. He ran his tongue over one needle point and grimaced as he drew blood.
Like the monster from human mythology called a “vampire,” the Pitch Blood Kindred needed small amounts of blood from a living donor every few days to keep going. Thrax took care of his thirst on a regular basis by visiting paid donors who allowed him to drink from a vein in their wrist for a few credits, but the experience wasn’t a satisfying one. It was fueling up as Andi put it—nothing more.
He wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to sink his fangs into the faint blue vein he could see pulsing just under the surface of his partner’s slender throat. But that kind of intimacy wasn’t part of their partnership—Thrax doubted it ever would be. Andi just didn’t see him in that light—to her he was just her best friend and partner and nothing more. And since he was a Hybrid, and therefore incapable of Bonding a female to him, he didn’t push things.