Page 67 of Trapped for Her Blood

“It’s all good, baby.” His eyes flash their blue mischief. “It’s all good.”

“Why are you back?” Zuben asks. “I thought you made a deal with Octavia.”

Ryker’s eyes narrow. “That bitch.”

“You two looked very friendly the last I saw you.” Zuben’s voice is cold. So much for the earlier acceptance.

“Last I heard you were making a deal to gain your freedom, leaving Ember inside here to die.”

“Wait…” Ryker shakes his head. “You left before—” Ryker stops short and then turns to face me. His hand, now fully healed, leaves mine and reaches up to cup my face. “Ember. He must have been listening after they took him away, and he’s not lying. I did try to make a deal. But a deal tosaveyou, not toleaveyou.”

I look deep into his eyes, wanting to believe him.

“Convenient story now you are back down here,” Zuben says. “I assume Octavia rejected the terms of your proposal?”

Ryker bends one of his legs and sits straighter. “More like I rejected hers.”

Zuben’s on the other side of Ryker from me, and I glance around to discover Axe, leaning against a wall of the cave, not far from the edge of the pool. It’s amazing to me how much I can see in here, even though the light coming from high above is faint.

I beckon for Axe to join us, but he shakes his head, and then points to his ear. He’s using his vampiric hearing to listen.

“I am finding your story difficult to believe,” Zuben says, a clear accusation in his voice. “When I left, you and the CEO seemed very…intimate.”

“We’ve got a history,” Ryker says. “You know that.” He turns toward me and shrugs. “She’s in to me.”

“Based on my observations, it is amutualattraction.” Zuben looks at Ryker’s crotch as he says this.

My gaze drifts there too, and I suck in a sharp breath of relief seeing he’s back to normal. Although, even though we spent nearly twenty four hours together mostly naked, I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen him without at least a partial erection.

But even as I think that, his cock starts to grow, and I can’t help but wonder whether it’s because he’s thinking about her, this mysterious Octavia.

I turn back to look at his face.

His gaze lifts from my chest to my eyes, and I feel reassured.

There’s a chance me might be thinking of her, but he isdefinitelythinking of me. I smile softly, and my teeth scrape my lower lip a few times, before I realize I’m doing it.

“If we are to trust you,” Zuben says. “You must fully explain what transpired.”

“Whattranspired.” Ryker chuckles. “OkayReuben.”

Zuben glares.

“Like I’ve already admitted, Octavia and I had a thing back in the day.” He looks into my eyes. “A long,longtime ago.”

I nod.

“I was her first fuck.”

“Liar,” Zuben says. “Psycho told us her history. She’d had at least one other lover before he took her brutally, and his…his penetration of Octavia is what led to her meeting her Maker and becoming a vampire.”

“You’re talking about her virginity as ahuman,” Ryker says, then his eyes open wider, and he turns to Zuben. “That guy, the one who helped cut the silver off me.Thatwas Octavia’s first husband?”

Zuben nods.

Ryker whistles. “Tavi told me she’d ‘dealt with him’.” He makes air quotes. “I figured she’d killed him…” He shakes his head.

“She turned him into a vampire and he was the first prisoner down here,” I tell Ryker. “Octavia planned for him to starve down here alone forever.”