built on the other side of the room. He would be restrained, unable to move, unable to fight. If she touched him, if he smelled her arousal, it would all be over with. The weakness the aphrodisiac produced left him little strength to fight. Muscles were lethargic, lacking power; only his cock would have true strength. If she touched his cock, it would damned well explode in seconds.

Within minutes he was strapped to the crossbar. Arms and legs were buckled down, his waist held tight

to the center of the X, helpless. He howled in fury, the sound primal, enraged. There would be payment for this, he swore as he fought the straps. And it would begin with Charity.

“There he is, Charity.” Bainesmith waved a hand at his nude, bound body. “Get him hard and he can live another day.”

Charity approached him warily as he watched her with raw, unbridled fury. He snarled, the animalistic sound vibrating in his chest and throat as he bared the wicked canines at the side of mouth.

“Don’t attempt it,” he growled at her, ignoring her frightened expression, the wary set of her body.

“Touch me, Charity, and I promise you will pay.”

She stared up at him, her brown eyes somber, moist with emotion. That look speared into his soul and tightened his chest with emotions too unfamiliar to delve into.

“I won’t let you die.” Her hand touched his hard abdomen. “I can’t, Aiden.”

Her touch had his muscles clenching in pleasure. He growled at her again, his teeth snapping together in warning as her hand trailed lower.

“I’ll kill you myself.” She was going to go down on him. He saw the clear intent in her eyes and knew he was doomed.

If her soft mouth touched his cock he would not have the strength to fight her. Already his weakened flesh was stirring, overpowering his control, desperate to tempt her into touching it.

“But at least you’ll live one more day,” she whispered sadly. Her lips touched his abdomen. He felt the fire lick over his body, the desire that simmered in his blood flaming at the moist touch. His cock tingled, pleading to be free of his control. He gritted his teeth, fighting the lust surging through his loins.

“Just one day,” she whispered again against his skin. “That’s all you need, Aiden, just one more day.”

She went to her knees, the wet heat of her mouth covering his cock as he roared out his fury. Her hand cupped his scrotum, messaging it as her tongue stroked over his flexing cock. He couldn’t fight it. Oh God, her mouth was so good.Hot and tight. Her tongue was timid but felt like a whip of fire on his flesh. He felt his erection blooming. His body tightened as he fought it, but he couldn’t fight the drug, and her sweet mouth. As though the moist depths were made for him alone, his cock hardened, lengthened, until she was forced to wrap her hands around the base, covering more than half of the shaft to keep him from strangling her as his hips suddenly bucked, burying the heated length into her mouth. His mind rioted, his body betraying him as deeply as Charity was. He felt his erection surging as the pleasure began to lick over his body. It was extreme, too intense to resist, too heated to fight any longer. He forgot the depraved scientists watching the act, forgot the soldiers and their perverse amusement. Without conscious control he began to fuck her suckling mouth. The restraints did little to hinder the movement of his hips, did nothing to stop his desperate thrusts into the heated warmth between her lips. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to stroke andcaress her. Years of pent up arousal, of hard won control shattered in that instance. He felt his cock convulse, her mouth tighten. His groan was a cry of

tortured pleasure as he felt his seed erupt from the tip.

He blasted into her mouth, his head thrown back, his strangled cry echoing around him as she suckled his seed from him. And still his cock tightened further, a swelling hidden by her hands that increased the ecstasy tearing through his body.

Her hands tightened around the sudden, almost fist sized knot that bloomed within the shaft. She stroked it, her tongue laving the pulsing head of his erection, drawing each violent burst of his semen into the heated depths of her mouth until he felt as though he would go insane from the need to fuck her tight cunt. It was over too soon, yet Aiden knew it had lasted too long. Her hands eased the hard knot but now nothing could ease the drug-induced arousal that filled his body. His cock was still engorged, so hard it hurt, and the need to fuck overcame any other need his mind held. He shuddered as she drew back then. Her lips moist, her gaze silently pleading for forgiveness as the cool air of the Lab replaced the wet heat of her mouth.

Aiden hung limply in the straps, his head lowered as he stared at her kneeling before him. Hatred welled within him, fury igniting every nerve ending in his body as he watched her lick the last remaining evidence of his seed from her mouth.

The betrayal was nearly more than he could bear. It pumped hard and fast through his body, searing nerve endings, tightening muscles. Yet, once stimulated, his cock now refused to return to its limber state, though the desperate swelling beneath her hand subsided. She had betrayed him. The reasons why did not matter.

“You will pay,” he growled. “Somehow, some way, you will pay.”

Her sad little smile was only reinforced by the tears in her eyes. “I already have, Aiden, in ways you will never know.”

And he promised himself, one day, she would pay by his hand.

Chapter One

Six years later

Breed Labs, South America

Escape. It was a litany within her head. The Labs were exploding around her, the mechanical countdown to the final explosion echoing around her with hollow gloom. The backup generators had finally failed;

releasing the lock to the cell she had spent the past months confined in. Charity paid little attention to her nakedness or the burning pain in the soles of her feet as she rushed across the metal floors. The mountain would collapse when the countdown finished, that she knew. She was on the wrong end of the underground compound to even pray for help. She had been kept isolated after she aided the Winged Breeds in their escape attempt.Placed as far away from them as possible in the hopes that should the others be rescued by their brothers, then she, at least, would remain. Chemicals exploded around her, broken electrical lines danced in a mad marionette as she rushed through the cavernous rooms. The adrenaline pumping through her system would only move the latest batch of drugs through her body that much quicker. She knew time was running out for her. When the full force of the artificial hormone hit her, she would be too weak, too helpless to protect or save herself. The air around her heated as the flames became more intense. She could feel her feet burning, blistering from the scalding metal beneath them, and pushed herself to run faster, harder. If she could just reach the escape tunnel in time, then she knew safety would only be moments away. The dim lighting from the battery-powered lamps guided her, the eerie red glow shedding at least partial illumination on the long corridors that led through the Breeding Labs. Yet the faster she ran, the closer the flames and the heat seemed to get.

She fought for breath, feeling the weakness invading her body, knowing that time was something she didn’t have and sure as hell couldn’t steal this time. A ragged scream born of fury escaped her throat. Surely her sacrifices wouldn’t end in her own death, as she had always feared. She was so close, so close to freedom that she could taste it. Feel it.

Shegasped, hope blooming within her as she staggered through the marked exit. The floor was so hot she could feel the knifing pain searing through her ankles as it baked her flesh, but she could feel the cooling breeze on her face.

“Damn you, Aiden,” she cried out the curse. She always cursed him when the fear overwhelmed her. It gave her strength, gave her purpose.

He had left her in those damned Labs six years before. Left her aching, needing as he escaped,hoping he would return for her. For years she had nursed that hope inside her. She had deceived the Council at every turn. Passed information, passed messages, fought for the tortured souls the bastardscreated, and prayed each day that some miracle would occur to halt the genetic experiments. But they never had. And each day she had prayed he would come for her. Until the prayers slowly stopped, the hope strangled away, and she gave up. She gave up, but her body remembered.

The remembrance he had left inside her had been her downfall.Her punishment. He had sworn she would pay, and she had paid in exacting measures over the years. In the last months, the payment had increased until she feared for her very sanity.

Tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision as she struggled through the last tunnel. The countdown was drawing closer to the final number, the final escape. It would be far easier, she thought distantly, to wait it out, to become another casualty to the desperate battle between science and its creations. But some part of her, some last shred of her survival instinct refused to let her surrender. She had to escape. She had to live. Though for what, she was no longer certain.

Finally, blessedly, the deserted opening to the mountain loomed ahead. The drugs were pumping harder through her body now, weakening her legs, sending pain radiating through her abdomen. She clutched her stomach, fighting to ignore the torturous reaction of her body to the chemicals as she burst through the opening and into the clear night air beyond.

Explosions blasted around her as she screamed out in shock, her hands covering her head as debris rained upon her. A blast of heated air threw her to the ground, but she couldn’t stop. She half crawled, half ran to the protection she knew only the jungle could provide. And she kept running. The shelter of the trees cut even the fragile rays of the moon to the dimmest light, making it nearly impossible to see now. Despite the flames behind her, the inferno bursting through the night sky, here darkness reigned. Cool, soothing, the night air whispered around her, safe and sheltering as she pushed herself through the jungle, forcing her body to put as much distance as possible between her and the exploding Labs.

The soft dirt beneath her feet was like daggers through her flesh as she kept moving.Always moving. Escape.Safety. She had fought for years to escape and had been too terrified of what would happen to those she fought to save. She would die, she swore, before she allowed them to take her back this time. She was doomed now. They knew her secrets, knew the changes slowly occurring in her body. She was of little use to herself, and of no use to the Breeds she had tried to save for so long. She stumbled into the jungle, her vision faint now as the drugs filled her body. Pain was a brutal reminder that at least she still lived, though why she fought to do so had become the question of the year. She should have given up months ago, she thought sadly. The brutal testing should have killed her, not to mention the stress of blood loss, and the forced transfusions of blood her body no longer wanted to accept.

She fell to her knees. The pain from the abrupt landing merely blended in with the rest of the agony flaring through. She gasped for breath, whimpering as she struggled to keep moving, crying out as she fought the overriding paranoia that the drugs induced. The sounds of the jungle were too loud; the screech of a bird, the shuffle of the wildlife in the brush. Animals could smell blood. It brought out the scavengers and predators of the night looking for a handy meal. A sobbing laugh escaped her. She would be little more than a diseased snack to any creature unlucky enough to take a bite of her. But she also knew her scent, the smell of her tainted blood, would hold them back. Animals were often much smarter than their human enemies. She couldn’t force herself back to her feet. The weakness of her body was too draining, and it took more strength than she now possessed, so she crawled instead. It eased the pain in her feet, though the fire raging in her womb only grew worse. The incision made in her abdomen that morning was bleeding again. They could never truly halt the bleeding once the drugs were injected inside her. She couldn’t stop the pain, or the need. And in that need she whispered Aiden’s name. When the drugs inside her reached their peak, she knew she screamed it out. Screamed and begged for ease, though none ever came. And the bastards who built on whatever Aiden had done to her so many years ago would only strap her to the metal bed, attach the probes to her body and make their little notes. She hoped they died. She hoped every one of them were in that fucking mountain when it collapsed. Buried in the waste oftheir own evil. A bark of hysterical laughter escaped her at that thought.