Ryland's Sacrifice Read online

  Ryland nodded.

  The man stared at the money for a long time. “It’ll do.”

  Ryland tightened his grip on the notes again. “When I get to the house, I’ll give the money to the driver.”

  The other guy’s lips twitched into a little smile. “Not as stupid as you look.” He nodded his dismissal. “Next Saturday. Same time as before. If you’re late, you don’t get another shot.”

  Ryland nodded. He had the horrible feeling he was stepping into some sort of trap, and an even worse feeling that, even knowing that, he was going to keep right on going regardless.

  “You’re obviously in love with one of them. Means I won’t get a bit of peace until I toss you to the kitty-cats again.”

  Ryland dropped his gaze, but he didn’t bother to argue with the older man’s assessment of the situation. He’d never been a very good liar.

  “Kid?”

  Ryland stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

  “You’re the one who didn’t get driven back here last weekend, right?”

  Ryland nodded.

  Kershaw studied him for a moment before he nodded his dismissal.

  Ryland shook his head as he walked out of the room. Peace and quiet? Right. More like Kershaw didn’t want to risk pissing off the lions if Ryland had been telling the truth about having an arrangement with one of them.

  As Ryland stepped out of the pub, he stood on the pavement looking one way down the quiet road, then the other, as if a flashing neon sign might appear shouting it was this way to the lions’ den.

  No sign appeared, not even a little tiny unlit one.

  Not knowing what else to do with himself, Ryland automatically retraced his steps to the bus stop. As the battered old thing pulled away twenty minutes later, he tried closing his eyes and traveling blind in the hope it might jog some memory over which way his blindfolded ride to the lions had taken him.

  It didn’t help. It just meant that by the time he opened his eyes, everyone else on the bus was giving him funny looks. Sinking down a little in his seat, he tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. It didn’t help. They were still staring at him when he got off the bus at the stop nearest his house.

  He walked as quickly as he could, eager to get the cash tucked away somewhere safe. Fred waved frantically to him through the living room window as he walked up the path, his spiky blond hair fluttering around his head as his movements became more and more dramatic. Ryland hesitated. He never had been good at playing charades and he really wasn’t in the mood.

  If Fred had another man in there, fair enough. Ryland was very happy for him, or at least willing to nod and smile and pretend he was happy for him. But if he thought there was any way in hell he was going to get away with locking out his house-mate so he could have some privacy to get laid—today of all days…

  The waving hands became even more frantic.

  Ryland sighed and walked the last few paces up to the front door. “What’s got into you?” he demanded as Fred rushed into the hall to greet him.

  “You’ve got a visitor,” Fred said. “I’m really sorry. I tried to get rid of him, but he didn’t listen to a word and he really freaked me out, and he said I wasn’t to phone you and warn you he was here, and—”

  Ryland was half way up the stairs before his friend could get out another word. He only knew one man who could put someone into that much of a panic just by turning up and glaring at them. He pushed open his bedroom door, fully expecting to find Arslan and a marked folder full of history essays sitting on his bed.

  “Jason doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  Ryland just stared at the guy who’d let him into Jason’s house. What the hell are you doing here? Get out of my room! The words stayed inside his head. “I haven’t kept him waiting,” he rushed out. “I’ve got until the end of the month to make the first repayment—”

  The guy caught hold of him by the shoulder. “It seems you’ve got a talent you forgot to mention to Jason when he was calculating the interest on your loan.”

  “What are you talking about? Let go of me.” Ryland squirmed within the other man’s grip. His struggles made just as little difference then as they had when he’d been kneeling at Jason’s feet.

  * * * *

  Arslan leaned back in his seat, listening to the idle babbling of the younger lions with half an ear, while he strained to catch the sound of a car pulling into the driveway.

  “What’s put you in such a good mood?” Blaine demanded as he moved to stand foursquare in front of him.

  Arslan raised an eyebrow.

  Blaine didn’t take the least bit of notice. He seemed to sense that the leader of their pride was in a good enough mood to put up with his brattiness for once. Arslan smiled slightly. If he had that good a read on him, maybe the boy was finally starting to learn a little after all.

  Luther came up behind the other lion and wrapped his arms around him. Blaine leaned back and murmured his approval of the way his lover licked his neck.

  “Can’t you two even wait for the damn human to get here?” another lion called across to them. Blaine held two fingers up to the other lion, not even bothering to turn around and glare at them.

  Arslan settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and let them bicker.

  “Figures you would hold up two fingers,” the other lion snickered. “Neither of you can keep a human happy on your own, can you?”

  Luther snarled and leapt at the other lion, knocking him to the ground and rolling around on the rug with him. There were no yowls or real roars. Arslan was content to let them work it out on their own.

  Blaine seemed to reach the same decision. His attention stayed on his leader. “Is there any point in us waiting for the human, or is this sacrifice already claimed?”

  Arslan knew nothing showed in his expression. He was far better at hiding his thoughts than that. But he let a rueful smile slipped through on purpose.

  “Go play with the others,” he told the younger lion. “There’ll be time enough to speak about the sacrifice later.”

  Blaine grinned at the tiny acknowledgement that he had been right to guess why Arslan was so mellow. Arslan let him have his moment to relish his success. The younger lion deserved it. He was showing signs of growing up—even if he hadn’t yet worked out that a man didn’t need the company of another lion to enjoy accepting the submission a human offered him.

  Gravel crunched in the drive. A car engine fell silent outside the house. Arslan forced himself to stay in his seat while Blaine and Luther stopped tumbling with the other lions and rushed out to see what their arrangement with the humans had brought to their door that night.

  Seconds stretched into a lifetime. A naked figure was led into the room. The breath stalled in Arslan’s throat as the young man was nudged onto the rug in front of the fire.

  Pale skin. Blond hair. Lean lines of muscle. An apparently inexhaustible supply of nerves. But it wasn’t the right skin, the right hair, the right nervous energy.

  Luther cleared his throat.

  Arslan’s attention snapped toward him. He waved a hand dismissing his right to have first claim to the stranger.

  Still, no other lion moved closer to the human in their midst. The whole room held its breath. There were few secrets in a pride at the best of times. There wasn’t a man there who’d believe him if he tried to tell them he hadn’t been expecting Ryland to re-join them that night.

  Well aware that every nuance of his reaction was being observed, would be remembered, he turned to Blaine and Luther and calmly nodded for them to play out the game if they had any interest in it.

  Neither needed to be invited twice. They both stepped forward, one behind the bound man, one in front of him. The moment he’d heard them go through the forms of checking that the man knew how to end the game if he no longer wished to play, Arslan turned his attention away from them. Staring blindly at the opposite wall, he mentally scrambled to work out what had gone wrong now.
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  “I’m sorry.”

  Arslan glanced to his left. Kefir occupied the other end of the sofa, curled into a neat little ball, more like a kitten than any lion Arslan had ever known. Concern echoed in the younger lion’s words. Arslan made no comment.

  “He was to become your mate tonight?” Kefir asked softly.

  Arslan clenched his teeth. The youngest lion in his pride hadn’t shown the slightest interest in any of the offerings the humans sent them. As far as Arslan was aware, he hadn’t shown any sort of intimate interest in the other lions either.

  He forced a deep breath into his lungs as he played for time. Leaders led even when it wasn’t convenient. That knowledge had been part of his psyche for so long it was no longer something he even thought about. Leaders taught the lions in their pride the right way to live their lives, and they answered their questions—even when it hurt.

  “It was a possibility,” he finally acknowledged.

  “But not anymore?” Kefir asked.

  Arslan took another deep breath and let it out very slowly, but he already knew what a leader was supposed to say. “Humans are not like us. Allowances must be made for them.” It was almost word for word what an older lion had told him when he was much the same age as Kefir. “They can’t be blamed for not acting like lions—for not acting in a way that a lion might expect.”

  Kefir nodded. He didn’t look entirely convinced. Arslan couldn’t truly blame him. He wasn’t at all sure the words sounded believable on his lips. Talking of waiting was one thing, but the moment the other lions were out of the den at the end of the night and his duties to the pride had been discharged, Arslan’s clothes were on and his car turned toward Ryland’s house.

  The man who opened Ryland’s door was young and blond and similar to Ryland in a great many ways. But he wasn’t Ryland.

  “Is Ryland here?”

  The guy shook his head. The motion was jerky, like a puppet whose strings weren’t quite joined up in the right formation. He appeared to be one step away from a nervous breakdown.

  “Where is he?” Arslan demanded.

  “I—” the guy cleared his throat and apparently put a lot of effort into remembering how not to speak in soprano. “One of your associates collected him on Tuesday.”

  Arslan frowned down at the younger man. “What?”

  “Guy built like a brick wall. Tattoo of a snakey-thing on his arm. Ryland left with him and—”

  “Where?”

  “Didn’t say,” Ryland’s housemate squeaked out.

  “If this is some sort of joke,” Arslan warned.

  Ryland’s housemate wasn’t so full of fear that he was unable to squeeze in a healthy dose of anger, given the right incentive. “You think I’m joking about this? If he doesn’t turn up, who the hell do you think is going to be left telling his family that their son’s disappeared off the face of the earth?” he yelled. “Just because they won’t have anything to do with him, that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to be really pissed off with me for—”

  “Enough!”

  The other man fell silent.

  “Do you know where Ryland is?”

  The guy shook his head. “He left a message saying he was fine and not to worry about him. He didn’t sound fine.”

  Arslan grabbed the younger man’s arm and pushed him back into the house. Spotting a living room, he shoved Ryland’s friend down onto a battered old sofa. “Start again—from the beginning.”

  * * * *

  “I’m sorry I can’t make it to the…to the…” Ryland closed his eyes for a moment. If he said lecture, then it would be obvious he was talking to a professor. “That I can’t make it today, sir. Everything’s fine. I’ll explain it all next time I see you.” He hung up before he could make the mistake of saying more.

  It might have been a slightly more coherent message than the last one he’d left for Arslan. He wasn’t sure any more. He rubbed at his temple. The longer he was staying away from the other man, the fuzzier his thinking seemed to become.

  With every day that passed, it was harder to be conscious of anything except how much he wanted to be back with the professor.

  “If you want some privacy to make another call?” Mark Jefferies offered, looking from him to the phone and back again, sympathy shining in his eyes.

  Ryland shook his head and traced his fingers over the buttons on the phone. “It’s fine. I just wanted to let him know I’m okay.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Ryland met the other man’s eyes once more. “Of course.” He got the distinct impression that Mark didn’t believe a word of it. “I’ll feel a lot better about it once the debt is settled.”

  Mark smiled slightly. “You’re not the only one.”

  Ryland managed to scrape up a smile for the other man.

  Mark sighed and looked back to the door on the far side of the hallway. “Best get back to it before Jason catches us skiving off.”

  With one last glance at the phone, Ryland followed Mark back into the room that had become his new home over the last week.

  He tried to push the professor out of his mind and just get on with it, but he couldn’t help but think of each day he spent away from the other man as a slightly more horrible form of torture than the last.

  * * * *

  “Um, hi. I just… I can explain why I wasn’t there, sir. It’s not… I mean…” The word faded off into a sigh. “Something came up all of a sudden and…it’s all a bit complicated, sir. I’ll explain as soon as I get the chance.”

  Arslan pressed the button on his answer phone. The next message played.

  “I’m sorry I can’t make it to the…to the…” Several seconds of silence played through the speaker. Arslan held his breath, just as he had done every single time he heard the blasted message back, just in case this might be the time when nothing more was said after the hesitation. “That I can’t make it today, sir. Everything’s fine. I’ll explain it all next time I see you.”

  After spending the last two days hunting for the boy and not being able to find either him or anyone who resembled a brick wall with a snake tattoo, the message he’d discovered when he finally checked his answering machine at his office had left a hell of a lot to be desired. The new one that had come through before he’d arrived at the office that morning hadn’t been any better.

  No concrete information. Just a tone of voice that made it clear Ryland was trying to hide his pain from his master, and failing.

  Arslan snarled at the machine, only just resisting the temptation to throw it across the room. It rang, seemingly in fear. Arslan snatched the phone off the hook before the first ring faded from the air.

  It wasn’t Ryland. It wasn’t news about Ryland. Arslan put the phone back in its cradle and ran his hand down his face.

  Flinging himself back into the chair at his desk, he glared at the phone. It didn’t seem to be inclined to ring on command again.

  Two days worth of searching for Ryland had given him the information that the younger man hadn’t been seen at his office in the math department or anywhere around the university since their meeting in Ryland’s office last Tuesday.

  Fred had been ordered to make polite enquiries at his home. He hadn’t panicked and gone to ground there either. The only evidence that suggested Ryland hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth were the three answering machine messages. One message for Fred on the day Ryland disappeared. One for his master, which had come through a few minutes after he’d left for the weekend the previous Friday. And now this one warning his professor not to expect him at the lecture that afternoon.

  The knowledge that his pet had disappeared to an undisclosed location for an unspecified period of time wasn’t a huge improvement on knowing nothing.

  All he was sure of was that Ryland had been alive and reasonably well very early that morning. The fact he was alive provided sufficient relief for Arslan to take a deep breath and repeat the information over once more inside his
head, just for the joy of knowing it.

  The only other detail he was certain of was that someone else had been listening to Ryland’s end of the phone call.

  The professor looked down at his claws. That someone was going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do when Arslan caught hold of them. If there was a single mark on Ryland, no explanation was going to prove sufficient.

  * * * *

  Four days later, Arslan stormed into the lions’ den. The tire treads in the driveway implied that the sacrifice had already been delivered to the pride. The prospect of seeing another beautiful blond boy who wasn’t Ryland standing on the hearth rug did little to make him feel better about the world.

  He faltered and paused on the threshold, so exhausted he wasn’t immediately sure if his mind was playing tricks on him.

  He turned very slowly towards the door leading into the library. The other lions were there, just as he knew they would be. A naked human stood in the middle of them, just as he expected.

  He watched, frozen in place as several the lions circled the young man in their midst. The other lions were so focused on whatever game they were playing, they hadn’t heard him enter the building.

  His roar took them all off guard.

  Chapter Five

  When he launched himself through the doorway, Arslan was entirely human. By the time he landed in the middle of the scattering pride, he was all lion. Shaking out his mane, he impatiently cast aside the torn remnants of his clothes.

  Only one man had remained in place while the others fled.

  Ryland.

  He stood stock still in the middle of the hearth rug, trussed up in the same stupid way the humans always insisted on delivering the sacrifices. It wasn’t so much bravery as a prey’s instinct to freeze when he heard a predator’s roar. Even knowing that, Arslan still found himself feeling proud of his pet for holding his ground when the lions hadn’t.

  As the leader of the pride glared into the corners of the room, none of the younger lions dared to raise their eyes. Not one of them moved. Even Blaine and Luther seemed to have realized they had gone too far this time. Circling Ryland as if he was just any human, surrounding him when they couldn’t have failed to sense his fear…