“It’s bigger!” she snapped, looking more pissed by the second.

He opened his mouth to answer her, but he really had no idea how he was supposed to respond to that so he just stared at her beautiful ass. It was full and round and definitely not something that he should be looking at or fantasizing about right now. He’d just lost his sister, had f**ked up Cloe’s life and they were in the middle of some f**ked up situation with absolutely no clue on how to fix it.

“Doesn’t it look bigger to you?” she demanded, looking all kids of pissed. She peered over her shoulder to glare down at the offending body part while he tried to come up with some way to tell her that this was the first time that he’d actually seen her ass in all its glory since she’d purposely kept her back to the wall the last time he’d seen her naked.

He cleared his throat, deciding that it was probably best not to remind her of that incident and asked, “Is anything else different?”

“Everything!” she snarled as she turned around and faced him, damn near making his knees buckle

Damn……..

Her br**sts looked fuller, her ni**les larger, darker, her athletic stomach that he’d admired in the pharmacy looked more defined, but no less feminine, the thatch of butterscotch curls between her legs looked silkier, more inviting, her h*ps a bit fuller, her legs looked smoother, toner and damn him if her toes didn’t look cuter.

“It’s Saturday,” she said accusingly, dragging his attention away from the adorable toes and back up to her face and the reminder of what he’d done to her as she glared up at him with shimmering red eyes.

“Okay,” he said, because he had no idea what day it was and absolutely no idea what else he should say.

“I’ve been out cold for three days,” she said, gesturing to her beautiful legs, “and they’re smooth!”

“And that’s a problem because…..?”

“I haven’t shaved since Monday!”

“Still not seeing a problem,” he mumbled, his gaze running over every inch of her.

She opened her mouth, no doubt to point out something else just to confuse him when they heard a throat clearing outside their door.

“It’s the changes,” Ephraim explained from the other side of the door, reminding them both that they weren’t alone. “Your body is at its peak now. It’s part of your natural allure.”

“By making my ass fatter?” she demanded, shaking her head in disgust as she snatched up her towel and stormed back into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her and saving him from having to stumble his way through another apology.

“Poor bastard,” he thought he heard Chris mumble as he pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how in the hell he expected to handle a mate when he’d never been able to handle his sister.

Chapter 24

Manhattan, New York

Later that day………..

“Get that away from me,” Cloe bit out as she glared at the bastard holding a bag of blood out to her.

“You need to drink this,” Chris, aka Kidnapper Number Two, as she liked to think of him, said in clear exasperation as he gave the bag a little shake to entice her.

“And you need to shove that bag up your ass, because I’m not drinking it!” she snapped, having had more than enough of this bullshit for one day.

No, actually that wasn’t true.

When she’d woken up in Christofer’s arms a few hours ago to find a tube shoved down her throat and blood being pumped into her stomach was when she’d finally had enough. All the crap they added afterwards was just icing on the cake that made her already f**ked up life even worse.

Apparently the bastard, Christofer, had not only lost control and gone into bloodlust, meaning the prick hadn’t been able to keep his fangs in his pants, but he’d also managed to turn her into a Pyte. She still wasn’t clear on what that was except for the fact that it wasn’t exactly a vampire and now, she was a monster that needed blood

Anyone else and it would probably feel like they’d won the lottery, but for Cloe it meant that she was the same as the monsters that had destroyed her family now. It made her sick to realize that her very survival depended on drinking human blood like some parasite.

“Alright,” Chris said, tossing the bag of blood across the small space of the cargo van, where they’d tossed her ass in when she’d refused to willingly go with them, to Caine, aka Kidnapper Number Four. “Listen up, cupcake, because I’m only going to explain this to you once. I need to get you into that building,” he said, pointing towards the tinted side windows and the large building they’d been parked in front of for the last half hour.

“I’m not going in there,” she ground out even as she absently wondered when her vision would go back to normal, because this whole seeing everything in shades of red thing was really starting to freak her out a bit.

Ignoring her, as he had been doing for the last six hours, Chris continued. “The plan is to get you inside and up to the penthouse without notice and preferably before the sun sets in twenty minutes. Once inside-”

“I’m. Not. Going. In. There,” she bit out, sick and tired of being ignored and bossed around.

They swore up and down that they weren’t kidnapping her, but every time she tried to leave or asked them to just let her go, they’d refused. She just wanted to go off somewhere by herself and process everything, to mourn Marta, make peace with what happened to her, but they refused to let her do that. She understood their fears, well, most of them, but she wasn’t going to hurt anyone and she sure as hell wasn’t going to go around announcing that she was now a freak of nature. She just….

She just wanted to be left alone.

“Okay,” Chris said, nodding as he pursed his lips up in thought. “Then let me put it this way, I want to get home to my very pregnant mate and children. I can’t do that until I have you and your mate,” he said, gesturing towards Christofer, who was sitting in the back of the van, still staring down at that creased paper in his hands while she tried to secure their freedom and seriously pissing her off, “secured in that building. The longer that you drag your ass and pout, the longer that my mate and children go without my protection,” he snapped, sounding seriously pissed off and startling her, because up to this point he’d been relaxed and even tried to coax a smile from her a time or two.

“Chris,” Ephraim sighed heavily from the front of the van, sounding like an exasperated father dealing with his child, which if everything they’d told her was to be believed was the case.

Chris rubbed his hands over his face as he muttered a, “Sorry.”

“Izzy is only a few weeks away from having twins,” Danni, the only female of the group, explained absently as she pulled out a gun and double checked the barrel. “Prolonged time away from her and their babies turns this big baby into a prick,” she finished, shooting Cloe a wink as the rest of the men, all but Christofer and the man sitting across from her who wouldn’t stop glaring at her, chuckled.

“We’ll explain everything once we get inside,” came the muffled announcement from her left, which had her turning her head to her left and her jaw dropping.