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Chapter 7

Malcolm

T his time, waking up was even harder. They must have given Malcolm a lot more of whatever they’d injected him with the first time, but he didn’t really remember.

He remembered squeezing out of the ropes, and... had he really jumped out a window? Him? Like some kind of ridiculous fucking action hero? And then cold blue eyes and the barrel of a gun.

It was funny how small the barrel of a gun was, and how big it looked when it was pointed at your face.

And then, somewhere beyond the gun, piercing teal eyes.

The siren.

Who’d probably forgotten all about it and gone back to whatever he’d planned to do that night. He sure wasn’t going to help Malcolm out of this.

No one was.

The room was dark, and he could tell even before he opened his eyes that it was different from the previous place they’d had him. Because the padding under him was even thinner and cheaper feeling, almost like his childhood cot, but it was more than that.

It was absolute silence.

No muffled voices of neighbors, no footsteps in a stairwell nearby, no ice machine in the hall, no hum of cars on the street outside. Once, Malcolm had fucked an audiologist, and the guy had taken him to his office rather than home. They’d fucked in this small, silent, padded room that Malcolm had found a touch unnerving because of the lack of outside sound.

This was like that.

Except that the creak of a floorboard told him this wasn’t some expensive soundproofing. This was placement.

They weren’t in Lyric anymore, and Malcolm was so very screwed.

“Okay little incubus,” a voice said—a voice that screamed danger in all caps with multiple exclamation points. A voice that Malcolm connected with chilly blue eyes and sharks and the barrel of a gun, all before he even opened his eyes to see...

Well hell, his memory of the night was pretty shot, because Malcolm didn’t remember the guy’s face at all. His eyes, those, yeah. He’d never forget those. But he supposed three drinks—four?—and repeated druggings were bound to wreak havoc on a guy’s memory.

This man? He was handsome, in a boring kind of way. The sort of man people would call “conventionally attractive.” The kind of man Malcolm would have fucked, most nights.

But those eyes, and the still sharp memory of a gun barrel put that into perspective.

Malcolm needed to give who he fucked a lot more consideration in the future, he thought.

But then he remembered that he probably didn’t have a future anymore. He was about to be sold to a sex cartel or an old guy with ED or... hell, something worse, if they could find it.

The man lifted his eyebrows, like he was waiting for Malcolm to acknowledge him. Well fuck that. He couldn’t do much to resist this, but he wasn’t going to be a good little boy and do as his kidnapper said. When Malcolm looked at him, then away at the ceiling, he snorted.

“You go ahead and be a brat. No one fucking cares about your shitty personality around here.” Something warm brushed against him and the bed creaked, but he didn’t look. He wouldn’t look. Not at the man who was sitting on the edge of the bed he was tied to. Not at those icy blue eyes. “You can be a little bitch all you want, as long as we get paid.”

What was he supposed to say to that? This man was talking about getting paid for selling him. Prudish, nasty humans always called Malcolm a monster because of the body he’d been born in, because he was an incubus, but this? This was an actual monster. This was a creature who sold people, and shot people, and didn’t give a damn about the swathe of destruction he left behind.

Malcolm was an asshole. He knew that. Maybe he did have a shitty personality—he had to live with himself—and he might be uneducated, but he wasn’t unintelligent.

But more importantly, he wasn’t a monster.

He would never be the kind of person who murdered and sold people into slavery.

“Now this can go one of two ways,” the monster went on, ignoring Malcolm’s feigned disinterest. “You can cause trouble again, and I kill you, and we sell your body for parts. That makes me ten grand, and it’s easy. Or you can be a good little bitch, and we leave you intact and alive, and the boss gives me a nice bonus. I’d be pretty happy about a bonus, but it isn’t gonna stop me from putting one between your eyes if you pull another Houdini, got me?”

Malcolm blinked, but still didn’t glance at him.

The guy chuckled. “Okay princess, you play hard to get. I’m just warning you, if I have to give up a bonus and kill you, I’m gonna be pretty pissed. So if you make me kill you, I’m not gonna make it fast and easy.” He leaned down, whispering the last part in Malcolm’s ear, his breath hot and moist. “I always wondered what it would be like to fuck an incubus. Maybe you’ll make this hard, and I’ll get it in my mind to have a taste.”

At that, Malcolm finally couldn’t hold back the visceral response, shuddering and turning his face away. He would rather have been shot in the face than have sex with this man.

Malcolm had never been the choosiest about who he fucked—humans were food, not friends—but this was something else entirely.

The bastard laughed at that, pushing off the bed and heading over toward the door. “You’ll probably love the life you’re heading for anyway, don’t know why you’re pitching such a fit. Helping a bunch of rich assholes fuck whoever they want? Sounds right up your alley.”

And what did that mean? Helping someone fuck who they wanted? Was it back to his notion of some old guy with ED? Or was it... he shook his head. No.

That guy who had approached him at a club... it had to be almost a month ago, and Malcolm had told him he wasn’t interested in being some asshole fraternity’s date rape drug. Malcolm himself didn’t press on the minds of mortals with his powers until they asked him to, while clear and sober enough to make that request. He sure as hell didn’t force anyone to have sex, not with himself or anyone else.

Maybe his parents had taught him a sum total of one thing: that he was on his own, but that didn’t mean he had never learned what “no” meant. And why fuck someone who didn’t want you, when there was almost certainly someone else who did?

He shook his head.

If it was that. If it was anything like that, well, they were going to have to resort to option A and shoot him, because Malcolm wasn’t going to help some pitiful humans rape each other.