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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.
