Hearts of Darkness

by Kira Brady

  “And I will keep that promise.” Rudrick let his hand caress the bars lazily. “Neither I, nor my men, will harm her. I leave that to you.”

  “Let’s make a deal. What do you want?”

  “I want you to let go,” Rudrick said. “Let go of that vaunted self-control and embrace your inner beast. The Raven Lord is wrong about you. You can never be Kivati. You have irrevocably split your animal totem and your human spirit, making both of you weak. Stop fighting it, and be who you are. You are a killer. You will never be anything else. And why should you be? You excel at killing.”

  “I’ll . . . I’ll serve you,” Hart spoke the words he had promised himself never to utter again. To put himself back into servitude when he had just earned his freedom—it was too painful to contemplate. But he did, for Kayla’s sake. She didn’t deserve this.

  “Now that groveling thing is really tiring.” Rudrick yawned. “We’ll chat again in the morning.”

  “No!” Hart banged on the iron bars, frantically trying to get out. “No.”

  “Good night, sweet Kayla,” Rudrick called over his shoulder as he ushered his men up the stairs in front of him. He left a single gaslight burning. “Say hi to your dear sister for me on the other side.”

  “No! Rudrick, you bastard! Don’t do this! The Kivati are sworn to protect!” Hart yelled until his voice was hoarse, and his fingers were raw from tearing at the bars.

  But Rudrick wasn’t coming back.

  The night was silent. The wind whistled in the empty street outside. The world held its breath as the full moon hung a hairbreadth below the horizon. Electricity charged the air. The Aether hummed. He could feel it flickering and snapping over his skin, calling forth the Change that would make him a beast. Ravenous. Bloodthirsty.

  Kayla made a noise behind him. It was just a small noise, barely audible. The swoosh of cotton against her bare skin and the shuffle of her bare feet on the concrete floor. Her scent invaded his nostrils, pulling him like an alcoholic to the bottle. He turned, slowly, shakily, and pressed his back against the cold steel bars.

  “Are you all right?”

  Was he all right? Here she was roughed up, knocked around, locked up, and she was worried about him. He swallowed. “I’m a werewolf,” he said simply. “I . . . have no control over it.”

  “I see.” Her eyes were huge.

  “I would give anything . . .” His voice broke. “You were better off with Norgard. I . . . it’s all my fault—”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Rudrick swore—you what?”

  “I forgive you,” she repeated.

  “You don’t understand,” he said, searching her face, willing her to listen. “The beast, he doesn’t understand logic or reason. He only follows instinct. And he wants you. Terribly.”

  “Do you?”

  “What?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She was so calm, so matter-of-fact, when she should have been bawling her eyes out. She should have been screaming. Anything but that calm acceptance. She forgave him?

  He would never forgive himself.

  “Do you, Hart, want me?”

  He couldn’t speak. His heart was lodged firmly in his throat.

  “Because I want you.” She lifted her elegant hands and pushed the top button of the flannel shirt through the buttonhole. “And I’m not going to be another black stain on your conscience.” Another button followed the first, exposing a thin sliver of smooth latte skin.

  He reached out to stop her fingers. The temptation was too much. “I won’t be able to stop myself—”

  “So don’t.” She shook off his hand and unfastened another button. “If I’m about to die, as you say I am, I’m not going to waste my last few minutes withholding from myself something I desperately want.”

  She wanted him? Desperately?

  “I’m not going to waste a moment longer arguing with myself about all the reasons you and I won’t work.” A slight tremor ran through her hands.

  He could see a thin strip of beautifully exposed skin from her chin to her small oval belly button. His eyes fixated on it.

  “Or thinking about all the reasons I should stay far away from a bad boy who will only break my heart.” She opened the flannel. Her full breasts hung free. Paler than the skin of her hands, the milky orbs glowed in the dim gaslight.

  He thought his heart had stopped beating. After a moment he could feel it again, louder, faster. Lust roared in his veins to rival the moon’s pull.

  “I’m going to take this moment as the gift it is,” she said.

  She kissed him, or he kissed her. It didn’t matter which. All that mattered was that they were kissing, and it was electric. Her lips were as soft as they looked, but, oh, so much sweeter than he had remembered. She made a little moan in the back of her throat. He thought he would die from wanting her.

  He traced his fingers up and down her back beneath the flannel, trying to touch every inch of her. Her skin was smoother than silk, but wonderfully warm. Her small hands slipped beneath his shirt and burned like a brand. He loved that she touched him, willingly, and she seemed to get as much satisfaction touching him as he did touching her.

  But then she grabbed his wrists and moved his hands from her back to place them firmly on her breasts.

  He almost fainted. Big, strong mercenary that he was, he almost fainted at the soft fullness of this small, fierce woman. He wasn’t so lucky. He couldn’t be so lucky. Nothing in his life had been good enough to make him worthy to touch her.

  He tasted her nipples, pulling first one taut peak and then the other into his mouth. She fisted her hands in his hair and pushed her chest forward against his tongue. He moaned his satisfaction. She was delicious. Up close, her skin smelled strongly of lilac and something intimately her, uniquely Kayla. His woman.

  He wanted to go slow. He couldn’t. Her scent called to the beast, but soothed it too. It rubbed itself again his skin, trying to get closer to her.

  She fumbled with his shirt, and he helped her peel it off and over his head. He spread it out on the ground with her flannel to make a softer place to lie.

  He kissed her again, holding himself back so as not to scare her. The slow simmer was building. She opened her lips and explored his mouth with her tongue. He wanted to howl with pleasure. He let himself go, plunging his tongue into her and tasting her fully. She was fire and flame, and he was melting.

  He needed to taste every inch of her, from her delicate earlobes to the tender backs of her knees to her ticklish toes and everything in between.

  “Hart?” she whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  She laughed softly. “I like that about you. You never make promises you don’t intend to keep. You don’t sugarcoat or use throwaway terms of endearment you don’t mean. You’re raw and real. What you see is what you get.”

  He was startled. “I’m not good at this,” he admitted. “I never . . .” He gestured to the attraction sparking between them, to the shirt spread on the floor. “I haven’t much experience. I didn’t want to lose control. It’s dangerous.”

  She covered his mouth with her fingers. “You are good at this.” She kissed him, as if to prove her point. When she pulled back, her face was blissful. “Mmmm, yes. You are very good at this.”

  “Well, honey pie, I can try.” He stripped his jeans off and placed them on their little makeshift bed. “And practice makes perfect.”

  The smile she gave him lit up the room. “I guess it does, baby cakes.”

  He chuckled.

  “I’m not, you know,” she said shyly, “very good at this either. I haven’t had much . . .”

  “Practice?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “Practice.”

  “Darlin’, that is a situation I can surely help with.”

  “I hope so.” She pulled him down with her and kissed him soundly. Tentatively, her fingers slid beneath the waistband of his boxers.

  It was agony, wanting her . . . needing her to tou
ch him. They were close, her lush breasts pressed against his chest, but not close enough. He made short work of her sweatpants, and then they were skin to skin, only the thin cotton of her panties and his boxers lay between him and ecstasy.

  She made him happy, he realized. Relaxed. At ease with a world that had always frustrated him. Anger was his constant companion, but she made that emotion slide right off his shoulders like shedding a heavy coat. Her laughter was a soothing balm to his soul, her touch a magic charm that whistled away his demons. He would do anything for this woman. He would rather die than hurt her.

  He broke away. “Kayla, we don’t have to do this. If I run at the wall hard enough maybe I could knock myself out and—”

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  He did. He kissed her eyelids and down her nose, scattered kisses across her wide cheekbones and licked the edges of her sensitive ears. Her small hands on his ass drove him on.

  The beast demanded he flip her over and mount her from behind. It wanted to overpower her and claim her irrevocably. Hart fought to remain human. He was so afraid of hurting her. He was hard as a rock against her thigh, and the painful pleasure of it almost took him over the edge.

  Every touch of her skin was a gift. Every caress was a taste of salvation. Every breathy moan damned him further to hell.

  His skin tingled, restless with the moon’s pull. He kissed her, hungrily, skating that thin edge of madness. The Aether roiled around him. The moon magic floated on its shimmering waves, sparking against him like static electricity. The blood hunger caused his canines to rip through his gums.

  He tried to pull back from her. “I can’t control it—”

  “Then don’t.” She bit his lip.

  The sensitive nerve endings on his inner lip exploded, and he almost did too. The world danced around him in flashing colors. He could feel the moon calling to him, and his Wolf reveled in it. Fur rippled beneath his skin.

  “Stay with me, Hart.” Kayla’s hand grasped him firmly, an anchor in the chaos.

  Waves of power emanated from her warm fingers, subtle but unmistakable. Her eyes caught his, and he lost himself in those pools of chocolate. The flecks of gold in her irises seemed to grow. They flickered in time to the power coming from her hand.

  His body returned to fully human, but the Wolf still called for blood. Somehow, miraculously, she kept the Change at bay.

  “How?” The word barely made it out of his hoarse throat.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. “It’s never been so strong before, but still . . .” She licked her lips. “I feel like I’m on the edge of a great precipice. There is so much power building, waiting to scoop me up and carry me into the darkness. I’m terrified.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, trying to tell her without words that he would catch her no matter what.

  She reached between them and wrapped her small fingers around his shaft. His body shook with the effort to hold the Wolf back. He could feel it tearing at his insides, clawing and scraping at his skin to be let out. Every stroke of her fingers distracted it from trying to escape. It wanted to devour her, but it wanted her to keep touching it more.

  He couldn’t hold on any longer.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “You.”

  She let her legs fall open and welcomed his hard length into the cradle of her thighs. He growled and surged forward.

  Her small gasp and the immediate scent of blood made his eyes roll back in his head.

  “Oh, Lady be.” He breathed heavily, trying to hold still. His muscles trembled. “Sorry.”

  “Move,” she told him. She thrust her hips forward, and he felt another inch give way into her liquid heat.

  It was only a tiny bit of blood, but her sacrificed innocence held enough magic to sate the bloodlust that accompanied the moon madness. He’d never felt anything like it. Thick and sweet, just a little spicy, like the woman herself. He thrust in and out, coating himself with her magic. He couldn’t get enough.

  Her moans drove him on. The Wolf fell into step within him, acquiescing to his control and his guidance. Both man and beast were one for the first time in memory. Both striving for one goal: to drown in this woman until they found salvation.

  Pleasure rose up, a wave of shimmering light. Hart refused to come without her. He reached between them and rubbed her clit. She came calling his name, and he followed quickly after.

  They collapsed. His lungs burned as if he had run a marathon. He could still feel the pull of the moon, but it was controllable, no longer the mad fury that raked him across the coals.

  He had barely shut his eyes before the beast reared its head again. His lunar mistress could not be denied.

  Kayla rocked her hips forward. The new strength of her healing gift filled her with a soft glow and gave her the confidence to take control. The first push of Hart inside her had broken more than a piece of skin; a mental block had fallen away too, revealing a sparkling new world when she closed her eyes. The shadows and light she had sensed before were now crystal clear. Electric currents of gold and silver flowed beneath her and Hart’s translucent skin.

  Hart might think his soul was doomed, but she could see it glowed softly. She wanted to reach out and stroke it.

  A second, smaller light whipped around Hart’s larger one. If she glanced at it out of the corners of her eye, she could almost see paws, sharp teeth, and a tail. It was playful, but hungry. How would it feel to have two souls living inside her? The Wolf’s energy rose, pulled by the moon and by Kayla’s own pulsing light. It sensed her, as she sensed it. It bashed itself against the cage of Hart’s skin. She sent soothing waves over the Wolf with her gift, but it needed more.

  She rocked her hips against his.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, concerned for her well-being first. “You must be sore.”

  In response, she sucked his nipple into her mouth.

  “Oh, Lady,” he moaned. He kissed her brow and rolled them over so that she was on top.

  She sat up, straddling his hips.

  A shaft of moonlight slipped through a small window high in the wall and landed on her naked torso. In her new Other sight it looked like dust made of diamonds. It was a living force that settled on her skin and Hart’s upturned face, making them both glitter with magic light.

  She reached down and took Hart’s hands, guiding them to cover her breasts. His face softened in wonder. She was aware of his heart beating, and she settled into a rhythm to match. The soreness between her thighs quickly melted to delicious pleasure. The sparkling lights inside their bodies brightened with each thrust. The lights rose through their skin and twisted together, wrapping around each other like thick ropes.

  Their bodies grew slick. Hart moved his hands from her breasts down her hips and around to grip her ass. He kneaded her, urging her onward, and she increased the pace.

  Inside Hart, the Wolf lunged toward the moonlight. Kayla wanted to reach inside his skin and soothe it. Their souls intertwined, but they did not meld. She needed more of him. More skin. More touch. More taste.

  “Give me your mouth,” she said. She pressed her breasts against his chest, raising her ass into the firm grip of his capable fingers. His mouth tasted like fire beneath hers. His tongue filled her with the same motion of his cock.

  Again and again he filled her, until she didn’t know where he ended and she began.

  The moonlight heightened their pleasure, adding its fire to their souls until they were consumed with it.

  He brought her screaming over the edge, waves of pleasure cascading one after the other. He filled her with passion until she was blind with light. Every muscle exhausted. Every nerve raw.

  Kayla collapsed on Hart’s chest. His heart pounded in her ear. He ran a hand gently over her hair and back. It was a wonder he could still move. She couldn’t.

  In that other vision, the lights inside him stopped dancing and settled peacefully. The Wolf was finally sated, no longer victim to
the demanding moon.

  She closed her eyes and faded into oblivion.

  Chapter 16

  Hart slept little. The moon madness drove him into Kayla’s sweet heat every hour. He needed her like he needed air to breathe. For the first time since puberty, he was able to stay human and sane on the night of the full moon. Kayla was to thank for that. She was his salvation. No matter the hour, she always welcomed him into her body. He couldn’t imagine how sore she must be, especially given her inexperience, and yet she roused with a smile and open arms.

  If anything her soul seemed to grow stronger with every round. Her moans and her passion peaked. Confidence and power filled her supple limbs as he positioned her, behind and beneath and every which way till Sunday.

  Through the night her eyes changed. The golden flecks multiplied until they overcame the brown, a hundred different shades of gold: tawny and amber, saffron and flax.

  He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t deserve her, not her body, or her trust, or her brightly burning soul, but now that he had her he wasn’t going to give her up. Not now. Not ever.

  By the morning light he could barely walk. Kayla was refreshed, bright-eyed, and ready to go another round. He sat propped against the wall so that he had a clear view of the basement stairs beyond the iron bars, Kayla cuddled in his lap.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you last night,” he told her.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “After the first little bit, hurt was not what I was feeling.”

  His fingers followed the flush as it spread up her delicate neck and across her cheekbones. He couldn’t stop touching her. Mine, the Wolf rumbled, but it was sated and calm knowing the man would protect what was theirs. Kayla had settled something inside him, like adjusting two puzzle pieces to make them fit. It was disconcerting, this peace that allowed both souls to coexist. No longer adversaries. Neither fighting for dominance. How long would it last? “How did you do it?”

  “I don’t know. I can see lights inside you, two souls intertwined, and I can add my light. It sounds silly, but—”