Eighth Grave After Dark

by Darynda Jones

  “No.”

  He raised a brow.

  “Yes. I can’t stop. I’ve read it twenty-seven times in a row.”

  He chuckled. “Do you need to be awakened?”

  “’Parently.”

  “You know, you don’t need a manual for that. I can walk you through it step-by-step.” He ran a finger down the curve of my neck, his heat licking across my skin, soaking into my nightgown.

  “That’s okay,” I said, fighting a grin. “This author covers the basics. Her hero seems very well informed. I think I’m getting the general idea.”

  “But can he do this?” He slid a hand under the covers and over my knee. Separating my legs, he wrapped one of his around one of mine, locking mine apart as he pushed the other knee, distancing them farther. He kissed my shoulder and slid his fingertips over the delicate folds between my legs, parting them, easing inside. His touch was like liquid fire. It rippled over me, settled deep inside, melted me until the warmth pooling in my abdomen ignited. I curled one fist into the sheets and opened even wider, greedy for more.

  “Well, I can’t say,” I said breathlessly. “I’ve never met him. But he seems very capable.”

  “What about this?” He peeled back my nightgown with his free hand and took Danger’s hardened nipple into his mouth. Sucking softly, he did the tongue thing. The fucking tongue thing that set me on fire. He had me squirming in seconds, begging for release as he tasted and teased.

  I reached down and took hold of his rock-hard erection through the pants. He sucked in a soft breath and even through the material I could feel the blood rushing beneath my fingers. I started to turn into him, but he pulled me up from the mattress. Locking me to him from behind, he walked me to the full-length mirror, pushed my gown over my shoulders, and let it drop to the floor.

  When I tried to look down, he wrapped a hand around my throat from behind and forced me to look into the mirror, as though wanting me to see what he saw. But what I saw was a very large, very round woman.

  He must have sensed my misgivings. He tsked softly and placed my hands on the wall on either side of the mirror. Then he pulled a chair over with one foot and lifted one of my legs over the back of it. My toes barely touched the seat and by that point, I was shaking visibly.

  He wrapped a hand around my throat again and whispered into my ear. “Now I’m going to do things to you,” he said, his voice deep and smooth and accented with a brogue, and I realized he was speaking in Manx Gaelic. “Very bad things,” he added, his brogue almost as sexy as he. It set my soul ablaze. “And you’re going to watch.” He cupped Will. Kneaded her. “And you’re going to learn.” He grazed his teeth over my lobe, his warm breath fanning over my cheek. “And you’re going to understand exactly what it is that you do to me.”

  What I did to him? Was he insane? I was just thankful for the wall; otherwise, I doubted I could have stood as his erection slid between my legs, so hard it pulsed there. I started to reach under and take hold of it, but he quickly set my hand back on the wall.

  “Not yet,” he warned, giving my wrist a firm squeeze.

  Then he did the strangest thing. He pulled back my hair, sweeping it into one hand so he could caress my face with the other. He watched me in the mirror, and while I got the feeling he wanted me to see what he saw, all I could look at was him. His eyes shimmering beneath his long lashes. His mouth full and parted ever so slightly. His jaw strong.

  He dropped my hair and moved to my shoulders. Ran his fingertips over them until he came from behind and cupped Danger and Will. Massaged as he nibbled on my neck. Skimmed his fingertips over their peaks, causing a spasm of pleasure to shoot to my core.

  But everywhere he touched, he left a scalding heat, and I realized he was doing it on purpose. He could control his heat, at least to some degree.

  I needed to see. I needed to watch him from the other side. From the supernatural side. And while I had yet to master the leap from one plane to the other, I released the breath from my lungs, relaxed my body, and concentrated until I saw the flames that forever engulfed him. I’d seen them a couple of times before, but never like this. While normally he had blue flames licking along his skin as though he himself were an accelerant, this time he glowed with a bright orange fire. And everywhere he touched, every part of me he stroked, he left a trail of flames in his wake.

  I watched mesmerized as the prince of the underworld set me ablaze. Literally.

  His hands brushed over my belly, infusing his warmth deep inside me, and my legs started to give beneath my weight. I lay my head back against his shoulder as he found the cusp between my thighs again. Holding me to him with one arm, he breached the folds, brushing softly, stroking until the tinder he’d ignited in my abdomen blazed to life. I clawed at his arm, wanting more, but once again he placed my hand back on the wall.

  Then he was gone.

  I opened my eyes and he was on his knees in front of me. My nails dug into the plaster when he opened me further and branded me with a fiery kiss. I gasped. Pleasure pulsed through me as his tongue caused stinging tendrils to swirl inside me like a dust devil struggling to become a tornado. I sought that peak, but I didn’t have to look hard. He grazed his teeth along the sensitive apex, then feathered his tongue in sweet, short sweeps, stoking the embers, coaxing me closer and closer until a riptide of raw lust engulfed me. The orgasm rocketed through me, sending out pulsating swells of unimaginable pleasure to every nerve in my body. I plunged my fingers into his hair and held him to me as the tidal wave rose to exquisite peaks, then ebbed slowly, the sharp contractions tapering off.

  With the release of all that energy, I almost fell against the mirror, but Reyes was behind me at once, his quest only just beginning when he pushed his pants over his hips and entered me from behind in one long thrust. A twinge of delight leapt inside me as the orgasm that had yet to ebb entirely reignited.

  He captured my gaze in the mirror, daring me to watch, his eyes sparkling with unspent passion.

  And how could I not? He was magnificent. His muscles strained against the T-shirt he wore as he buried himself again and again.

  He pulled me back against him, locking me there as he whispered into my ear. “Come with me again,” he said in the same Gaelic brogue, the fires around him fueled by the friction our bodies created. “See what you do to me, my ghraih.” My love.

  I focused on him as his powerful strokes fanned the flames around him. His brows furrowed, his expression one of almost agony as his own climax neared. He braced one hand on the wall, clenched his jaw. His breathing grew labored as a biting pleasure brushed over my skin, nipping and scratching in rapturous delight. He thrust harder, an exquisite hunger swelling inside me, as though he could siphon the pleasure from the very marrow of my bones.

  I felt it the moment he erupted inside me. He groaned as his orgasm crested, as it surged from him and into me, and then I saw it. I saw him. He exploded into a sea of flames. They consumed him and engulfed me in a torrent so savage, so volatile, I wondered if I would survive.

  The air left the room, and my lungs seized. My eyes rolled back as wave after wave of scalding fire crashed into me. The desire was overwhelming and earth shattering and wonderful.

  * * *

  I tumbled to earth slowly and blinked back to this plane. Disentangling myself, I turned to him and focused on his impossibly handsome face.

  He still had a hand braced on the wall, struggling to catch his breath as one final spasm shuddered through him. Then he stepped closer until he had me pressed into the cool mirror. He placed his forehead on the hand braced against the wall and wrapped an arm around me.

  “You saw?” he asked, and I felt the tiniest ripple of insecurity radiate out of him.

  “I saw. It was amazing.”

  He wasn’t so sure. Doubt settled deep in his core. I stroked his back to assure him that everything I saw, everything he showed me was incredible, but I realized his shirt was wet. Very wet. Too wet.

  I lifte
d my hand and gasped. It was covered in blood.

  Pushing him off me, I stepped away to see what had happened, but he quickly turned until he was facing me again.

  “Reyes, you’re bleeding,” I said, trying to turn his body.

  He steeled himself, his jaw working, his gaze hard as he stared down at me. He hadn’t expected me to notice anything amiss.

  “That’s why you’re wearing a shirt.” It suddenly made sense. That little niggling in the back of my mind as he’d made love to me half dressed. That just didn’t happen often. “Take it off.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, jerking the pajama pants into place and tying them.

  I did the same. I picked up my nightgown and slipped it over my head. “Wonderful. Then show me.”

  “Dutch,” he said as though in warning, turning to face me when I tried to come around again.

  But I saw the long streaks of blood in the mirror. Slashes that started at one shoulder, cut across his back, and ended under his rib cage. Claw slashes that only a bear or a hellhound could inflict.

  I erupted in anger. “Take off your shirt or I’ll take it off for you.”

  He knew I could. He knew I could completely incapacitate him with one word. But instead of the explosion I’d expected, he stilled. His lids narrowed, but not out of anger. An emotion more like pride spilled out of him. One corner of his sensual mouth tilted up, but he shook his head nonetheless. “No. You’ve seen enough over the past few months. I won’t have you exposed to the depths of my stupidity.”

  The anger inside me dissipated immediately. “Mr. Farrow,” I said, twirling my finger, instructing him to turn around, “the depths of your stupidity are the least of my concerns.”

  With a resigned sigh, he lifted the shirt over his head, his muscles bunching as he did so, and turned to face the mirror. And that was when I decided to take up gardening as I planted my face in the floor behind him.

  * * *

  “It’s hormones,” I said when Osh brought me a glass of water.

  He had apparently been headed to the bathroom for a shower when he heard a thunderous crack and the ground shook beneath his feet—his words. Surely my fall wasn’t that thunderous.

  “I just got light-headed.”

  He winked at me, his signature top hat back in place, since the wedding festivities were over. Reyes held a cold rag to my temple, his expression severe. I’d scared him. I’d scared me too, but not for my own sake.

  “I fell on Beep.” I poked my belly, hoping she’d respond. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “Better than you, loca.” Angel had dropped in, too, because I needed to be insulted as well as disoriented and humiliated.

  “Angel Garza,” I said, pointing at him threateningly. “I can do things now. Scary things.”

  He raised his hands, the boyish grin he wore perforating my heart.

  “Duct tape?” I asked Osh.

  He raised it, then tore off a strip to tape up Reyes’s back. He’d been wearing duct tape under the dark gray T-shirt he had on earlier. I knew I’d seen odd lines across his back. But, thinking he’d healed for the most part, he peeled it off when he took a shower. He was wrong. His back bore two long slashes across it with four gashes each. One set extended from his shoulder to just under his rib cage. The other across the small of his back. The hellhounds’ claws were like razor blades and the cuts were bone deep. Which would explain my sudden but blessedly short departure from reality.

  “I think if I were you,” Angel said to Reyes, “I’d stop trying to cuddle with hellhounds.”

  Reyes shot him a glare that didn’t even faze him. Normally, Angel was scared to death of my husband. Clearly, they’d grown close enough in the last few months to give Angel’s mouth free rein.

  “If this happened yesterday,” I said as Reyes bit down, steeling himself against the pain of Osh’s administrations, “why are you not healing faster?”

  Osh answered for him. “Because he’s not sleeping. He hasn’t been in stasis for months.”

  “Reyes,” I said, drawing his gaze, “you have to sleep. Why aren’t you sleeping? Eight months? How is that even possible?”

  Osh applied one final piece of duct tape, then slapped it into place, causing a muted groan to escape his patient. “Good as new,” he said. Then he grew serious. “But if this gets nasty, he’ll be no use to us in this condition.” He winked at me before grabbing his supplies and leaving.

  “I’ll be around,” Angel said. “Just shout if you need me.”

  “Why?” I asked before he could disappear.

  “Why?”

  “Why are you here? What are you two up to?”

  I didn’t miss the warning glare that Reyes flashed him. He chewed on his lower lip, and said, “I’m just looking out for you.”

  Before I could push the subject, he vanished.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and focused on my husband. “Why are you not sleeping?” I asked him, deciding to address his health instead of my curiosity about what Reyes had been up to with Angel.

  He eased onto the bed, his large frame taking up most of its surface. “I can’t let my guard down.”

  “Reyes,” I said, straddling his hips, not an easy feat in my current state, “Osh was right. If you don’t sleep, you won’t be able to bring your A-game should things go south out here. It’s like we’re in a pot of hot water and someone is slowly turning up the heat. We can’t stay out here forever. The hounds will figure out a way in. I can feel it.”

  His mouth widened into an appreciative grin when I crawled onto him, as though completely dismissing everything I’d just said. He rested his hands on my hips. “I’m learning about them,” he said at last.

  I leaned over him, tucked a lock of hair over his ear, ran my fingers along the outline of his lips. “About who?”

  “The hounds. I’m learning how to fight them.”

  I bolted upright. “Is that why you continued to antagonize them even after you realized the holy ground wouldn’t kill them?”

  He lifted a playful brow. “Antagonize them?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Something like that.”

  “But you’re stopping, right? You said you’re stopping.”

  “I’m stopping.”

  I lay down beside him. “What happened when you pulled them onto holy ground? I mean, did they writhe in agony?” I bounced up. “Did they smoke like the ground was burning the flesh off their bodies?”

  He tucked an arm behind his head in thought. “That’s just it,” he said, his voice curious. “It didn’t seem to faze them at all.”

  “I don’t understand. The consecrated soil didn’t hurt them?”

  He shook his head. “Not even a little.”

  * * *

  I lay awake, listening to Reyes’s even breathing, but I now knew he was faking it. Had been faking it for eight months. My right foot was more asleep than he was. His revelation about the hellhounds kept my mind racing in overdrive. If the ground didn’t hurt them, then why weren’t they crossing it to rip out our throats? Maybe it did hurt them, just not visibly. They were freaking hard to see. Perhaps they were more focused on tearing my husband apart.

  Or maybe they were simply waiting, patrolling the border to keep tabs on us. But why? What could they be waiting on?

  My phone rang, but due to the limited number of electrical outlets in the room, Piper, my phone, was way across the other side. True, the room was tiny, but I’d still have to get out of bed to answer her summons.

  I tried to roll out of Reyes’s arms. He tightened his hold. I tried to lift an arm off me, but he clasped his fingers, essentially locking me in.

  “Reyes,” I said, stifling a giggle, “I know you’re awake. You can give up the game.”

  “Never,” he said into his pillow.

  I laughed and leaned all my weight forward until he finally let go. By the time I got to Piper, my voice mail had picked up. It was Uncle Bob, so I put on my robe
, tiptoed out of the room, and called him right back.

  “Are you still at work?” I asked him, looking at the clock before I closed the door to a pretend sleeping Reyes. It was 1:32 A.M.

  “We found him,” he said, his voice hurried. “You won’t believe this. He works for the Vatican.”

  “No,” I said, adding a flare of astonishment to my voice.

  “Freaking hell, Charley, did you already know that? Are you the one who called in with the tip?”

  “No.” Though I sounded super convincing, Ubie didn’t buy it.

  “Charley—”

  “I suspected. It’s a long story. So, what’s going on?”

  “We can’t hold him, hon. He says he had nothing to do with the murder. Says your dad was following him, not the other way around. But we do have enough to charge him with stalking if you will press charges. Just say the word, pumpkin.”

  “Does he know anything about Dad’s murder?”

  Uncle Bob let out a long breath. “He says no. Says your dad threatened him if he didn’t stop following you, then that’s the last he saw of him.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because, he wasn’t just following me. Look at the pictures in his apartment.”

  “What pictures? There aren’t any.”

  Damn it. He got rid of the evidence. Must have sent it all back to his boss at the Vatican. “He had pictures of Dad on his wall.”

  “You’ve been stuck at that convent for eight months. How do you know that?”

  “I’ve been working with someone on it.”

  “Even after I asked you not to?”

  “Kind of. He had pictures of Dad.”

  “Well, we got nothing now. And because he checks out, I can’t hold him.”

  An idea hit me hard. As well as the corner of a hutch as I tried to traverse the house in the dark. I walked into the living room to hang with Mr. Wong.

  “Put him on the phone,” I said.

  “Charley, I can’t do that.”

  “Tell him who you’re talking to and tell him Father Glenn sends his love.” I’d suspected he knew Father Glenn, a man I’d helped with a nest of demons a few months ago, for a while now. He was the one who told me about the file the Vatican had on me. I wondered if they were connected somehow.