Torment: Dark Paranormal Romance (Eclipse Warlocks Book 1)

by Ellie Cassidy

  “I’m not,” he promised, his gaze sinking into me. “I’ve made my peace with it. I don’t need Eclipse magic in my life.”

  But he did need Gideon. They had a bond that was as strong as brothers.

  I brought my lips down, pressing butterfly kisses and the reminder of what he’d be giving up if he changed his mind. “Don’t let Gideon take you away from me.”

  Lex dipped his head back to look at me, his brow puzzling. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s the Moon heir,” I said. “His father is head of the coven. I’m guessing he’s on this council of yours.”

  “It’s Gideon who brought me to Shadow Horn to get me away from the council,” Lex said. “He’d never allow me to risk my life, let alone encourage it.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s one thing to like about him.” Make that two. Gideon was overbearing and arrogant and way too self-assured, but it wasn’t just chest-puffing. He’d always find a way to get what he wanted and in this instance we wanted the same thing.

  “I could make a list, but I’d rather do this,” Lex said and dragged a kiss across my lips.

  “And this,” I murmured, shaping my mouth to his while my hands roamed freely, over his wide shoulders and down his chest.

  He had to keep one arm out to support us. His other hand came around my waist as he deepened the kiss.

  My pulse beat wilder. My fingers found the edge of his t-shirt and slid inside. He was warm skin and rippled muscled and everything I desired. I totally forgot where we were until I felt him harden between my thighs.

  There hadn’t been any other cars parked at the lookout point when we arrived. We’d walked a fair distance along the ridge and hadn’t seen anyone since. Still, I thought of cooling things, I really did. But the hard proof of his arousal was like a door opening to the ache of want building inside me. I wanted his body, but it was so much more than that. I needed this closeness to him, the connection of our souls. With everything else—every other foundation in my life—shifting a little more each day, this felt like the last strip of solid land.

  “I love you,” I whispered breathlessly on his lips.

  His palm flattened across my back, holding me to him as he rolled us over and covered the length of my body with his.

  “I love you.” He pressed up on his elbows to look into my eyes. “I love you so damn much.”

  I rubbed his t-shirt up and he helped me get rid of it, tugging it over his head. His hair fell forward again in choppy waves. Passion burnt to dark caramel in his eyes as he took a moment to look at me, his features softened with all that love he’d just declared.

  My heart melted and my bones hollowed out. I’d thought I knew what loving Lex felt like, but he’d just stripped back another layer.

  I reached around him, my palms splayed across the planes of his back, needing to touch, to taste…I pulled myself up until my lips met his. He pushed his fingers through my hair, anchoring behind my head as he gently lowered us together, his mouth slanting over mine with deep strokes of his tongue.

  I lost track of time as we lay there, tasting and exploring as if the world started and ended with our entwined bodies.

  Nothing else existed.

  He trailed kisses down the column of my throat, scrubbing up my shirt so he could continue down the silken softness of my stomach, scorching a path of blazing heat with his hands and lips.

  We flipped positions and I came over him, my fingertips memorizing the rippled contours of his biceps and chest while my tongue traced the outline of the moon artwork tattooed there.

  When my hand slipped beneath the waistband of his jeans, he laughed gruffly and flipped us again, claiming my mouth with urgency as he dragged the cups of my bra aside to massage delicious sensations into my breasts and gently tease my nipples until they were rock hard.

  I nearly came undone when he took one sensitized nipple in his mouth, his teeth scraping as he sucked, his tongue slightly rough. My back arched off the ground, my hips grinding into him as the threads of intense pleasure heated through me.

  My panties were soaked with want and need long before he reached into his jean pocket for his wallet and cursed. “I haven’t replaced my emergency condom.”

  My fingers fumbled with the catch of his leather belt. “We can do other things.”

  He fell onto his side beside me and took over, stripping off his jeans, then he propped himself on an elbow and hooked a knee between my legs.

  The look in his eyes was dark and stormy as he slowly brought his mouth to mine for a plunging kiss, his exploration unhurried as his touch travelled to the waistband of my shorts and tugged them down.

  I kicked the shorts off and rolled onto a hip, my lips desperately searching for his again while I reached between us and gently palmed him through the material of his boxers, my thumb massaging the base of his erection—velvet heat and throbbing.

  He groaned into my mouth, a sound of raw hunger that fed into my own. My hand brushed away as he pushed me flat onto my back.

  His fingers slid into my panties and dipped inside me.

  “Fuck,” he growled when he discovered how wet I was for him. “Jesus, Sage…” His mouth dragged at my lips as he spoke. “I want to bury my cock in there so damn deep, it never finds its way out again.” He thrust one finger all the way in, out, then a second finger joined in the next thrust. “We don’t need a condom.”

  My blood was on fire, a million hot pulses racing through my veins and burning into my core. I still managed to insist, “Yes, we do.”

  “My seed is bound by magic.” He ripped his fingers out and stretched over me, the weight of his cock hot and heavy on my pulsating core. “I won’t get you pregnant, I swear.”

  I looked into his eyes, my fingers bunching into tight fists against the pre-tide of a freaking orgasm tsunami.

  He shifted, dragging another aching wave of heat and friction between us as he dropped a kiss on my mouth. “Trust me?”

  Magical contraception?

  Why the hell not.

  @hawk

  It feels like I’m stealing time. Hours. Days. It’s a scratch at the back of my mind, a debt collector on the other side of the door.

  I don’t know why. I don’t want to be scared every time something good comes into my life. I’m not. The scratching is.

  Maybe it’s the demon. Demons? How many are out there in our world? Right now? Doing what? I think about that a lot. I think about the hanging body at the lake. That’s the suicide Gideon was referring to. He never said, but I know it is.

  Maybe it’s the shadow chasing at my heels.

  Lex and I were in a comfortable routine. Granted, it had only been a week, but already it felt normal—and anything but boring. He always stayed through the night and didn’t leave until I had to get ready for my shift at the Grill. We cuddled on the sofa and watched TV. I invited Grant for supper and the three of us experimented with cooking a Tandoori curry that turned out delicious. We put on music and danced and worked our way through Lex’s bottle of JB the night Haley came over.

  I was in a good place and determined not to focus on all the uncertainties, both supernatural and otherwise. The shadow nipping at my heels was just the ghosts of my past haunting my present. I kept my eyes trained on the future, which had its own problems.

  It had taken some extreme emotional blackmail to get everyone on board with today’s hike to the waterfall and I hadn’t mentioned it to Lex. He would insist on tagging along, just in case a demon showed up (don’t you freaking love my awesome life?) and as much as I loved Lex, today was strictly about mending old friendships.

  I was going with the whole ‘it’s easier to apologize than ask for permission’ thing. I didn’t feel too bad about it. When it came to lies by omission, I had a long way to go to catch up to Lex.

  So here I was, slapping together sandwiches (I’d ultimately chosen tradition over savory pies) in the kitchen with Haley and looking forward to resolving all our shit rather than worrying
about the fallout with Lex.

  “If Kenzie doesn’t come, I’m out,” Haley muttered as she wrapped a sandwich and shoved it in the backpack.

  I sucked in a breath of inner calm. Despite all my badgering, all I’d gotten from Kenzie was, “I’ll think about it.”

  “She’ll be there,” I said firmly.

  Haley gave me a look. “I don’t even know why she’s mad at us. We were just looking out for her.”

  I opened my mouth to agree. None of us were perfect. But lately, it seemed like Kenzie’s flaws were magnified—in particular, her tendency toward self-indulgence and her casual attitude to sex no matter who got ruined. This rift with her felt like more than just the Grant-Callie-Kenzie fiasco. I barely recognized my friend anymore.

  Thankfully the doorbell cut into my bitch fest before it got started. Not helpful. “I’ll get that.”

  When I opened the door and saw Grant’s ashen face, I pulled him inside. There was a wild look in his eyes. He hadn’t come to make up some excuse to not meet us at the brackens. “What is it?”

  “It’s Brendon.”

  “Brendon Averly?” He was a Black Horn and a total jock, but him and Grant were good friends. “What’s happened?”

  “He’s de—” His voice cracked. “He’s dead. They’re all gone.”

  “What do you mean?” Brendon was dead? That was…that was…I didn’t know. I couldn’t seem to find an emotion for that. It was too dark, too hollow, too impossible. “What do you mean they’re all gone?”

  “Mr and Mrs Averly.” Grant speared a hand through his hair. “His sister, Leslie. There was an accident last night. A collision with an eighteen wheeler. My dad just told me.”

  “Oh my God,” Haley exclaimed from the top of the hallway. “What about Brendon?”

  Grant just looked at her.

  I responded with a dull shake, no—he’s gone too.

  We stood there, silent in our thoughts.

  The emotions gradually clawed their way through my shock. The overwhelming one was depression.

  I wasn’t close to any of the Averlys, but Brendon had there through all my school years. Mr Averly worked at the dealership on the corner of Main and Garland. He’d delivered my car, my seventeenth birthday present from my dad. Leslie was still in middle school, too young to just be gone.

  @hawk

  What is depression?

  A heavy pressing on my chest.

  The weight of that one question that never has an answer.

  Why them? Why now? Why is life so random and unfair?

  Why?

  We were sitting around the kitchen island with our phones, trying to make sense of this in our own ways. Haley was scanning all our social media streams, waiting for the news to break. I suspected Grant was just staring at a blank screen.

  “Shit. Kenzie” She’d be wondering where we were. I opened the messenger app on my phone. “I’ll let her know.”

  Grant’s head bobbed up. “Wait.”

  I waited. “What?”

  “Don’t cancel the hike,” he said. “I think I’d rather— It’s better than sitting around here all day.”

  Haley considered him for a beat and shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. I felt ridiculously tired. Exhausted.

  But Grant was hardest hit by Brendon’s death.

  If he wanted to walk it out, then we would walk it out.

  18

  LEX

  Tracking down a demon was like tracking down patient zero in a silent pandemic. Fucking impossible until the sickness showed its symptoms.

  The Averly family.

  Gideon had picked up the call on the police scanners in the early hours of the morning and he seemed to think they could be our first point of contact tracing. Like most viruses, a demon needed direct contact to Claim a person and he had to be within close proximity to control a mind or feast on a soul.

  If one of the Averly family members were corrupted, then our demon had had an opportunity to get close to them.

  I wasn’t convinced, but Gideon had been up all night compiling fact and theory.

  Why had Mr Averly packed his family into a car in the middle of the night? There was no out of town elderly relative on a deathbed somewhere. Visibility had been clear. The roads were dry. You didn’t just head off an eighteen wheeler.

  “Brendon Averly was at that lake party the night that man hung himself in the woods,” Gideon said as we pulled up at the Averly family home.

  If that was the demon crossing, he would have had to jump into a nearby host. Gideon had already checked out all the kids in the Sheriff’s report. And their families. The demon wasn’t in an Averly body. “So the accident wasn’t the demon jumping hosts again.”

  “That’s a definite no,” Gideon said as he climbed out of the car. “The collision was on the I-20 near Atlanta and this demon is still in town.”

  I jumped out after him and surveyed the wide, leafy suburban street. “Maybe it was just an accident.”

  “Maybe.” Gideon rolled his shoulders back and smirked.

  He was dressed in denim and his leather jacket despite the heat. He’d never call it his hunting outfit but that jacket had seen every demon he’d ever vanquished. He loved the glory of this job.

  He was in his element.

  I just wanted to get rid of a demon and go home to Sage. There was no glory here for me. Never would be. It wasn’t like we could divide and conquer. I couldn’t see the shimmer that exposed a demon and Gideon’s interrogation methods were infallible.

  We crossed the street, eyes on the white picket-fenced garden. “Should we take a look around inside?”

  “Let’s speak to the neighbors first,” Gideon said.

  The door we knocked on was a young mother with a baby on her hip. She peered at us suspiciously. “Yes?”

  Gideon didn’t bother with niceties. He cocked his jaw and hooked her gaze.

  I brought out my phone and stabbed the recording app.

  “What is your name?” Gideon commanded.

  “Elise Palmer,” she replied.

  He went on to extract details of her relationship with the Averly family and any other associations she may be aware of, as well as anyone she’d seen visit the household within the last week.

  When she was done, we had ten names that would explode exponentially into the first contact tree.

  Gideon usually had sophisticated technology and a team of fully invoked warlocks who worked in Crest Holdings’ security division at his disposal for this stage of the investigation.

  Today all he had was me, the tag-along.

  I could swear from here to kingdom come it didn’t bother me, I’d made my peace, but some days it did. The reason I’d given Sage for not searching for my mother wasn’t all lie, and it wasn’t all truth.

  It wasn’t her honor that kept me from going after her, it was mine. She’d taken too much from me when she’d betrayed our coven with a Sun.

  The next house brought a cross reference that grabbed me by the balls. How had I missed this?

  “We’ve got what we need,” I said to Gideon and retreated up the path.

  He continued with his questioning before he joined me. “Tell me.”

  “The man said his daughter volunteers at a Children’s charity with Mrs Averly.” I walked, moving us toward the car as I spoke, my chest thumping with certainty and frustration of how blind I’d been. “Jessica Macleod established a global Children’s Foundation. I’m betting they’re one and the same. She and her husband also own the Snack Hut at the brackens.”

  “Macleod? The big Scottish guy?” Gideon unlocked the car but didn’t get in. He put his elbows on the roof, considering me and where this was going with a thoughtful look. “I’ve cleared him.”

  “You haven’t cleared the wife,” I informed him. “She’s been sick. No one has seen her in weeks. Kenzie mentioned she’d been around to take her chicken soup. What are the chances Jessica Macl
eod has had other visitors as well?”

  Gideon’s smile cracked. “Our demon is a she.”

  Technically an it, but now our demon had a name and a face.

  Arran wasn’t at the Snack Hut. The teenager behind the counter gave us directions to his home, a log cabin not far from the brackens. The short ride was long enough to fuel my frustrated anger.

  Every second counted.

  A second for each day I’d missed the obvious signs. The Averlys would still be alive. Callie wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Sage would never have been put in danger.

  I slammed out of the car the moment Gideon pulled up alongside the tree-lined road.

  He wasn’t impressed. “Easy there, tiger.”

  “It was right in front of my eyes this whole time,” I muttered as I rounded the car.

  Gideon caught me by the arm and shoved me up against the hood. “Listen to me, I’ve been doing this a long time.”

  “And I’m a useless novice.” I jerked my arm free. “We’ve already established that.”

  He blocked my attempt to slip left. “You can’t go through life suspecting everyone and second-guessing every situation. The paranoia will drive you mad. The demon always shows his hand and when he does, we follow the leads. That’s how we do this job.”

  I pulled in a breath that stuck in the back of my throat. “Hindsight is a bitch.”

  “It sure is.” He grinned and stepped out of my face. “You’re not useless, Lex, you got us here.”

  He should have left it there.

  But Gideon never missed an opportunity.

  He lost the grin and dropped a hand on my shoulder. “You haven’t put your magic behind you, you never will. It’s not that simple. It’s not that damn easy.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  His brow drew into a sober line. “I’ve given you the best one you’ll ever get.”

  I swatted his hand from me and looked past him to what I could glimpse of Arran’s log cabin set deep from the road within the thick of woodland. Not a cabin. An elegant sprawl of glass and timber partially camouflaged by its surroundings.