Stain of Midnight

by Cassandra Moore

  The television in the living room cast anemic light across the walls as they walked in. A poor bastard in too-neat casual clothes tried to convince bleary late viewers of the virtues of owning a set of storage bowls with matched lids. One could attach a sealed container of red wine to a bucking bull, and the bowl wouldn’t leak. If they showed that demonstration, with that smarmy salesman asshole on a bull, I’d buy the set. “Need a new set of bowls, Roswell?”

  “Probably, but I’ll be damned if I buy them from that douchebag.” Cameron snatched up the remote so he could turn the set off. It left them in darkness. He sighed. “That was stupid.”

  “I can get the light. You get Charlie a dish of water.”

  “Just switch that lamp on. Come on, Charlie.”

  The dog trotted after Cameron, tail up. Sonja found the switch on the small reading lamp to turn it on. The pack enforcer had a cozy house that surprised her with its lack of bachelor pad vibe. Comfortable couches with soft upholstery dominated the front room, done up in shades of rich brown. Several woodland scenes displayed a variety of forests, each one with different trees and a unique flavor. Redwoods and oaks, aspens and pines, and one poster of a glorious autumn wood.

  Two pictures of wolves met what Sonja considered a universal quota for lupine art in the werewolf home. But the most striking art was a portrait of Mount Rainier just over the television. Bigger than the TV, too. I wonder which he spends more time looking at.

  Cameron returned to flop down on the nearest couch segment. “That dog is going to piss a river when he’s done drinking. I had to refill the bowl once.”

  “The local trees will hate you. Thanks, Roswell.”

  “No problem. He was a big help tonight.” He caught her gaze. “So were you. Don’t think I didn’t notice. I appreciated it.”

  “Glad to hear it, since I’m not done helping. I’d like to see this through.”

  She expected him to bristle. Instead, he paused, then nodded. “You’re in this as much as I am, Carter. After tonight...”

  The corners of his eyes tightened as his gaze unfocused. She sat down next to him on the couch. “After tonight,” she agreed. After tonight, we’ll share the same nightmares. That’s a bond between us, no matter how we feel. Gently, she rested her hand on his forearm. “It’s okay to not be all right.”

  His attention came back to her. “I have to be all right. They need me to be.”

  “And you will be, when it’s time. Just not at this moment.” She edged closer to ease the awkward reach of her hand to his arm. “Losing someone hurts. For all I’ve learned in my life, that’s the thing I know the best. If you need to talk...”

  The inner struggle played out in his eyes. A desire to push through the pain, to ignore it until it went away, warred with the need to drain the wound in his heart. Tears built within him, but he shoved them deep down where they would fester to fuel his anger. Yet they would hurt him as much as they magnified Kiplinger’s eventual suffering. “Don’t worry about me, Carter. I can deal with this myself.”

  Good try, big guy. “You can,” she agreed. “But you don’t have to. I was there. I know what you’ll see behind your eyes when you close them tonight. The same thing I will.”

  “Like hell you will.” The pushing needled him. Like a beast, he didn’t want anyone to prod where the wound had left him tender. Old reflexes told him to snap, to push her away.

  She kept on. “What? You think just because I’m not one of the pack that I won’t wake up screaming? I knew one of them, you may remember.”

  “You know what I’ll see? I’ll see my friend stepping outside, only to get ambushed by a group of motherfuckers who will rip his heart out. I’ll hear his phone going off inside, over and over, as Dani tries to warn him there’s danger. And it’ll be too late because we were too slow. We got complacent. And I’ll see his face. I’ll see him wondering why no one was there for him.” He leaned his face in close to hers, not even an inch away. “Is that what you’ll see, Carter?”

  “No.” She narrowed her eyes, sharpening her gaze to parry his. “I’ll hear myself telling Jeanne that they’d attacked Moira, so none of the neutrals in Tacoma would be safe. I’ll hear her laughing, telling me I worry too much. Biter and barker business, she’ll say. Half the time, they don’t even remember we exist, she’ll say. And nothing I tell her will change her mind. Then I’ll see her with her chest cavity ripped open. You want to compare battle scars? Try me.”

  A jolt of connection passed through their gazes. They held, tension electric between them. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and edgy energy coursed through her. All night, she had suppressed her own reactions to the scene. Her horror, her anger at the violation of her friends, the sadness at the loss. Emotion seethed within her, too, as did the need to give it an outlet.

  Cameron blinked first. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Fuck you, Roswell,” she said. Then she grabbed the hair on either side of his head and kissed him hard.

  He grabbed a handful of hair on the back of her head with one hand. It pulled her scalp with delicious pain. She could feel the fight in him, the rational thoughts in a losing battle against the animal need she stoked. Then he dragged her toward him with such power she half fell onto his lap. Her nipples perked to firm points as her breasts rubbed against his muscular chest.

  Heat consumed her. The smell of him filled her nose, rich and dominant and very male. Power poured from him to cover her, lupine, virile, irresistible. Moisture rushed between her legs to warm her pussy, and a violent desire flooded every nerve. She wanted him, needed him, needed the release she goaded him toward.

  But she still had to fight it. Challenge him until he couldn’t take anymore. With a snarl, she forced herself up against his surprised resistance. Before he could stop her, she threw her leg over to straddle him. Now, she could feel his cock as it strained against the denim of his pants. It rubbed against her clit through her own jeans, and she gasped at the sensation.

  He growled, long and low. Blue eyes turned to lupine amber as he stared up at her with a gaze that burned hot with desire. His hand untangled from her hair so he could rest it on her hip instead. The other forced its way under her shirt, irritated with the material that blocked their contact. Electricity jolted her when their skin met. Energy flashed through her, and left a searing heat in its wake.

  His cock twitched between her legs. Impatient now, he hauled her shirt up over her head, and her bra along with it. It almost tangled in her hair as it came off, but a quick duck and shimmy saved her. Then his hands were on her, hot and starved for touch. One hand wrapped around near her waist, big enough to span half her lower back with a strong grip that pulled her closer.

  The other hand cupped her breast. He lunged forward to catch her nipple between his lips. She arched her back with a groan as wet heat enveloped the sensitive nub of flesh. Merciless in his need, he swirled his tongue over her hard nipple, lapping at it as if he couldn’t get enough of her taste. He suckled her with a hunger that ignited the same desperate need within her. Her hips wouldn’t stay still. She had to feel his cock grind to her clit in a tease of what she wanted most.

  Desperate to feel more of him, she clutched at the shoulders of his shirt. Hand over hand, she pawed the material up over his back, until she could reach the hem. He snarled as she shoved him back and his hold on her breast slipped away. Amber eyes smoldered as he stared at her. The wolf within her howled its own protest. She pulled his shirt free and threw it across the room.

  Her hands explored his muscled chest, paused to feel his heart as it thudded too fast beneath his ribs. The kiss felt hard enough to bruise, but she couldn’t get enough of it. Of him. Desire drowned out the horrors of the night, the stress and the sorrow and the fear. Losing herself in his touch drove away the cold.

  But that wasn’t all she wanted. Fuck him, fuck Cameron Roswell the stoic, loyal enforcer for making her want him for himself.

  The flash of defiance embolden
ed her. She pushed away again to get at the button of his jeans. Too much material separated her from his flesh. His hands slid over her with urgency, up over her belly to cup her breast, along her collarbone and neck to hold her cheek in his palm. With his skin so close, she couldn’t help but taste it. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons of their jeans as she turned her head to suckle his thumb into her mouth.

  All at once, he moved. Powerful muscles lifted them both off the couch in one smooth motion. She clung to him with her thighs squeezed around his hips, but she didn’t need to for long. He turned to toss her onto her back against the soft sofa cushions. Rough hands pawed at the laces of her shoes to loosen them enough to get them off. They’d barely left her feet before he was yanking her pants off with impatient tugs on the legs. His followed to leave him bare before her, a huge, muscled man, cock at the ready, hard and erect as he stared down at her.

  Then he was on her again, looming over her, shoving her legs apart with his body. Another surge of wetness heated her pussy as he pushed his way between her thighs and laid his massive body over hers. Skin to skin, they burned against each other, and the kiss he demanded took her breath away. As their tongues tangled, she wrapped her legs around his waist to drag him closer.

  The head of his cock nudged against her slick folds. She moaned against his lips as it nudged into her cunt and spread her outer lips with its heat. A shiver chased through him. His gasp turned into a groan as she tilted her hips to take him deeper with the second lunge. Thick, gods, he was thick, spreading her with his girth as she rode his shaft upwards. They cried out together as he rolled his hips forward to drive his cock home.

  Pleasure claimed her as surely as he had. The night’s horrors fell away as they writhed together with frantic, almost violent thrusts. Every stroke filled her completely, her cunt tight around his shaft. Nothing existed but his cock driving into her until it slammed home, and the sound of his rough moans in her ears.

  Release crashed over her with a sudden, searing heat. Bright waves exploded throughout her body, intense almost to the point of pain. For a moment she froze, unable to move for the ferocity of the climax, but he continued to thrust himself into her. Then he roared her name, and heat filled her as his orgasm slammed through him. Then she could move again, bucking up to him to milk him for every twitch of his cock, every ragged tremor that shook him.

  He collapsed against her, breathing hard, body still wracked by the shudders of his release. She flattened her hands against his back as she clung to him, nerves still scorched with her own pleasure. Beneath her hands, his shaking changed, from soft trembles to sharp, ragged tremors. He muffled a sob against her shoulder with a defeated desperation.

  “It’s all right,” she murmured against his hair, as she tightened her arms around him. “Let it go.”

  Another sob shook him. His muscles tightened as he put up one last fight against the tide. Then he dissolved into weeping, face buried in her neck for shelter from his sorrow. He found it there, in the circle of her embrace, bound together by the same nightmares and joined by the losses they’d shared.

  Naked against the darkness, they shed their tears together.

  Chapter Six

  At some point, they’d relocated to the bed. Cameron remembered the trip up the stairs in hazy fragments. A bump against the bannister. The solid thud against a wall when she pressed him there for another long, sensual kiss that had almost turned into more right there in the hallway. Mostly, he remembered the heat of her hands on his skin, the feel of her thighs gripped around his waist, the scent of her arousal as it filled his nose. He remembered feeling alive in defiance of all the death that had surrounded him that night.

  Charlie’s soft whine woke him as a weak glow started to lighten the borders of the bedroom curtains. The dog stood in the doorway to the bedroom, staring with every bit of intensity a dog could muster. When he saw Cameron raise his head, Charlie wagged his tail, took two steps out of the room, then turned around to make sure Cameron would follow. He slipped out of bed and nabbed his robe on the way out the door, careful not to wake the woman in his bed.

  “Water finally catch up with you?” he asked as they headed down the stairs.

  Charlie trotted ahead of him toward the front door.

  Cameron patted his leg so the dog would follow to the back door instead. “Backyard’s better, buddy. Don’t need the neighborhood to see you do your business. You’ve got to learn some modesty.”

  Charlie didn’t look in the least chagrinned. Cameron chuckled and opened the door.

  Dawn hadn’t quite gotten its shit together, but that would happen soon enough. The first bloom of light had graced the eastern sky, a precursor to the true sunrise. Night’s chill still hung in the air, but Cameron didn’t mind. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, to take in the morning. The grief hadn’t left him, but neither had the sense that he should appreciate his own life more in the wake of tragedy. And in the afterglow of...tonight. Last night. Whichever it is at ass-early o’clock. Sex couldn’t solve all his problems, but it could sure as hell adjust his perspective a bit for the better.

  Sex, or the emotional intimacy Sonja had clobbered him with? He hadn’t expected it from her. Not from Sonja Carter, professional badass and licensed purveyor of mercenary detachment. But she was right, damn it. As her dog sniffed the hedges at the edge of the yard for one good enough to lift his leg on, Cameron wondered just how much he had misjudged her. And what he had been missing by dismissing her without even trying to understand.

  Do I get more chances to fix that mistake, or was last night it? He’d never had to broach the topic of what constituted a one-night stand, or the start of a longer affair. She’d said she intended to work with him on the Kiplinger hunt, but that didn’t mean long midnight talks or more romps in the sheets. It meant killing a filthy fucking biter who’d hurt them both without any further involvement implied. So imply it. You have words, you know. Try using them.

  Charlie paused in the middle of the yard with his ears up. Cameron took a deep breath to call him. The scent of vampire hit Cameron’s nose as Charlie growled.

  Cameron had only made the fence line when the first rays of the sun came over the horizon. Then the scent was gone, burned away by the golden light with all its implications. He dashed through the side gate to look but saw no one around. No threats, no hint of an unwelcome visitor. No one to watch me hunting vampires in my robe.

  “Let’s go inside, Charlie,” he murmured to the dog, who bristled beside his new friend. Suddenly, he didn’t like the thought of Sonja sleeping alone upstairs.

  She hadn’t moved when he returned to the bed. The dawn’s growing luminescence lit her face with a soft interplay of light and shadow. As he slipped into bed behind her, he truly looked at her for perhaps the first time. Her smooth, golden olive skin complemented the exquisite lines of her cheekbones and jaw. The full lips he’d tasted just hours before. She was beautiful, and strong, and more arousing than any woman he had known.

  He draped an arm around her. She didn’t need him to protect her. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to do so. She would, he decided, do the same for him. After the whiff of vampire, he didn’t expect to sleep again. So he nestled in behind her and closed his eyes, enjoying her warmth against his chest.

  With her soft breathing to soothe him, he slept after all.

  He woke up to an empty bed. His sheets still rumpled down where Sonja had last slept, but they’d cooled enough for him to tell she’d gotten up some time ago. Wouldn’t be the first time I went to bed with company and woke up alone, he thought. But those times he’d known what he’d awaken to. And those times... Maybe I didn’t care so much about those times. Maybe I didn’t hope they’d still be there when I woke up again.

  Just comfort on a difficult night. That was all it had been. So he tried to tell himself. It didn’t work. With a groan, he shoved the top sheet aside so he could extricate himself from the bedding.


  Soft clicking came from the hallway. As he looked over, a big, furry head peeked around the doorframe. Charlie’s tongue lolled out of his mouth in a happy, canine smile.

  Cameron wanted to loll his tongue out and grin, too. Where there was Charlie, there was Sonja. She hadn’t left after all.

  He pulled on a loose pair of sweats and padded after the dog. They didn’t need to go far. Two doors down, Cameron had turned a spare bedroom into a basic office. Not extensive, just a sturdy, L-shaped wooden desk where he could put his computer and deal with his bills. A couple comfortable chairs, a small loveseat, and a bookcase took up the space along the walls. He spent almost no time in here, since his laptop let him sit on his couch to surf online.

  After seeing Sonja in the office, however, he reconsidered the time he spent in the room. Sunlight from the window spilled over her to make a halo of her dark hair. She’d perched herself against the rounded edge of the desk, backside leaned against it for stability while she stared at a wall. One of his shirts engulfed her, like a cotton tent on her more slender frame, but the drape of the material loved her gorgeous figure. The bottom hem flirted up, revealing the rounded curve of her ass and the smooth top of her thigh.

  Cameron draped his hands in front of him to hide the tent he’d made in the front of his sweats.

  It took a moment to haul his brain around from admiring how she filled out his shirt to following her gaze to see what had her so intent. His lips quirked up. She had plastered the wall opposite her with sticky notes. Yellow ones, and blue ones, with a few pink ones to highlight what he assumed were important points. Her lips pursed as she stared at them, far too absorbed to have heard him come in.

  “I see you’ve made yourself at home enough to steal my office supplies,” he said.

  She glanced over, surprised. Then a smile spread across her lips. “I prefer the term ‘commandeer’.”

  “You would.” That smile of hers didn’t help his trouser situation. Quite the contrary, his cock twitched and stood straighter. “Good thing I don’t mind. You always decorate a man’s wall with sticky notes first thing in the morning?”