Dark Secrets

by Madeline Pryce

  I spread my legs and Micah stepped forward to fit his hips into the V of my thighs. His cock was soft and warm against my tender sex. For once, him not being aroused comforted me.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist, keeping as much of our bodies together as possible. Water dripped from his hair, down his neck and chest. My heart kicked up its tempo as I drank him in.

  Some part of me envied Hannah for getting a choice in who she shared a bed with. But the other part of me, the one that stared into Micah’s blue-green eyes and got lost, knew on some fundamental level that I’d have picked him anyway. Dante might be attractive and alpha to his core, but Micah was dark, brooding and fierce. He was rough and callous, the kind of abrasiveness I needed in my life.

  Micah pressed his lips to mine in a slow, tender kiss and soothed my wounded soul in a way vampire abilities couldn’t heal. I leaned into him, our mouths opening, tongues sliding against one another in a gentle caress. He drank from me, giving as much as he took.

  Micah pulled away and rested his forehead to mine, the pattering of the shower lulling me. “I haven’t exactly been a prince either. I shouldn’t have kept that shit with my mom a secret. I knew it. Eli warned me. Dante warned me. The longer I kept it, the worse I felt. My mom was raped, Ella—what does that make me? I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”

  I stroked his cheek, my hand scraping over stubble. “What happened to your mom wasn’t your fault, Micah. I can understand why you might want to keep that to yourself. Next time just tell me you need time, and I swear I’ll do my best to give you privacy. I was more hurt that you pushed me away and kept me at arm’s length. Then you mentioned the cheating and this blonde bimbo popped in my head…and yeah. I wasn’t thinking rationally. I’ve grown dependent on you and it’s not healthy. I’ve been a hot mess since that crap with Hannah happened—emotional, moody and I don’t know, just off somehow.”

  “Are you going to punch me if I ask if you’re about to go on the rag or some shit?”

  The rag? Seriously. Only a man would say that.

  I slapped his chest. “You’re an ass.”

  He caught my hand and drew my palm to his lips. “I’ll take that as a yes. And we’re still learning how the bond works—don’t be so hard on yourself. Things between us have moved at warp speed. Sometimes it’s hard to navigate the line where I end and you begin.”

  My heart skipped a beat and I pulled back, dropped my legs from around his waist. A hard knot formed in the pit of my stomach.

  “Do you want out?” I hated the way my voice trembled.

  Even as he caught my thigh and wrapped it back up around him, he was shaking his head. “Hell no. I love you, Ella. Do I wish things were different? Sure. We might not have chosen this, but don’t think for one second I regret our relationship or having you by my side. Oh, and for the record, just so we’re clear, I didn’t cheat on you. Eli informs me I don’t even look at other women, which he says is weird.”

  Half of my mouth quirked up. “You don’t even look a little?”

  “Nope. They aren’t you. They don’t have your eyes, your smile, your voice. No other woman compares, not then, not now, not in a hundred and fifty years—if I live that long, Castro seems to think I’ll be immortal.”

  The last wall between us crumbled down. I’d known it, in my heart, but his words, the sincerity in his eyes, were what I needed to hear.

  The blonde in my head died a slow, painful death. There was lots of writhing agony involved.

  “I knew—on some level—you didn’t cheat on me.” I trailed my hands over his wet, muscular shoulders and up his neck until I cupped the back of his head. I toyed with the hair at his nape and guided his head to mine. I tugged on his lower lip with my teeth before sealing our mouths together.

  He stroked his tongue into my mouth, teasing me with slow, wet strokes. I moaned into him and wiggled closer. Between us, his cock stiffened. He tore from my mouth and licked a hot line from my jaw to my neck, lapping at the water running over us. I arched against him and rubbed my tummy against the erection jutting between us.

  Micah cupped my breast—the one covered in our mating marks—and teased my tender nipple. My eyes fluttered shut and I pressed my chest into his palm, silently asking for more. He plucked the bud, sending bolts of sensation through me, and I moaned.

  “I missed you so damn much.” He spoke against my throat and worked his way down my neck.

  He used his tongue to trace a path over the delicate lines of my crimson tattoo. I leaned my back against the wall when he bent and scraped his teeth across my nipple.

  Holy shit that felt good.

  “Mmm,” I groaned and closed my eyes, concentrating on the hot, delicious slide of his tongue, the way he suckled me. Every pull sent a burst of pleasure to my clit.

  He alternated breasts, giving each one equal attention until I thought I might come from his mouth alone. Micah curved the hand he had on the outside of my thigh and spread me open. He cupped my pussy, rubbing me while he moved from one breast to the other. Pleasure surged and I writhed, unable to stay still. I flexed my fingers against his shoulder, nails digging into skin.

  Micah pulled from my breast and nipped the side of my neck as if to remind me of his mark there. He pushed two fingers inside my sex, curving them in and out gently. I opened my eyes to find him looking at me, his gaze full of hunger and want.

  “I love seeing you like this,” he whispered, his voice a rough rasp against my senses. “Open, vulnerable. Sexy as fuck.”

  “Show me.” I leaned forward to capture his mouth.

  Our tongues touched and forced a wave of red-hot need to spiral through me. He replaced his fingers with his shaft and slowly pushed into my core. The mechanics were the same as earlier, but there was something so different this time. His heat surrounded me, seeping in from where we touched. As he filled me, he looked deep into my eyes and let me see everything he was.

  The man. The demon. My mate.

  Mine.

  The mark on my shoulder and breast heated—a silent reaffirmation of our connection. He drew out of my body and pushed inside with a smooth, slow slide that stole my breath. Our mouths met and he grabbed my hands, interlocking our fingers. He pinned my arms to the slick wall above my head as he made love to me. With every thrust, he rolled his hips, a sexy rhythm that had me clenching.

  “You’re mine, Ella,” he said between hot, drugging kisses.

  “Always,” I murmured.

  He pulled back. His face darkened with possession. “Julian tries to kiss you again, I swear on everything that is holy I’m gonna shoot him in the face.”

  A soft laugh left my chest. That sound, the little freedom, loosened something deep inside—the guilt I’d been harboring eased. “Just make sure you do it when I’m not around so I don’t get in the way.”

  Remorse filled his eyes and he instantly stilled. Damn. I was a bitch to be so careless with my words. I knew the guilt he carried inside. During a fight between Julian and Micah a few months ago, my lover had aimed a stake at my sire’s heart. Some freakish vampire instinct had me phazing between the two men and I had taken the blow meant for Julian. Micah couldn’t stand the fact that he’d hurt me, or that he’d had to pull the wood out of my shoulder after my skin had healed around it.

  “Sorry,” I said softly and stroked the wet strands of hair from his face. “I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

  He brushed his fingers against my shoulder, any evidence that I’d been hurt gone. “Don’t be. It’s a good reminder. I hurt you once. I won’t do it again.”

  “I love you, Micah.”

  “I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

  We made soft, slow love in the shower, pushing and pulling, milking every last drop of pleasure there was. When the water cooled, the heat radiating from Micah warmed me. Nothing mattered except him and me. He held me tight, his thrusts speeding when he approached his climax.

  The protective walls he s
urrounded himself with fell, leaving his soul bare. Heat rushed through me and I cried out. Pleasure mounted and coiled. I came in an explosion of bliss that decimated the world around me. An onslaught of thoughts and emotions hit me, his and mine, mixed. I tried to pull back—tried not to get sucked into the vortex—but I was too raw to shield either one of us.

  I knew in that instant all of the reasons Micah had kept his distance from me. He’d been trying to shelter me from the truth, the depth of his love, the lengths he was willing to go to in order to keep me by his side.

  Micah was going to kill Richard McGregor and he didn’t want me to live with the guilt of yet one more death.

  Tears filled my eyes and I clutched him closer, hoping he felt how very much I adored him. Right or wrong, I loved him even more for wanting—no, needing—to protect me at all costs.

  What kind of a person did that make me?

  A survivor.

  I pulled away from his thoughts as Micah cried out against me, shifting his hold from my hands to my hips where he clutched me close and kept pounding. I opened my eyes, enjoyed the sight of him losing control as he rode out the cresting waves of his pleasure.

  I scratched my nails down his back. The rich scent of blood filled the air and coaxed my fangs free.

  “Fuck, yes,” he gasped.

  Micah threw his head back, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. His mouth parted open as he closed his eyes tighter. He came deep inside me, hot semen flooding my womb, marking me. In that moment, he’d never looked more feral, or more masculine.

  I stroked a hand down his chest and pulled my lower lip between my teeth while I waited for him to come back to me.

  He thrust twice more, wringing out the last facets of his orgasm before he stilled and drew my cheek against his pounding chest. He pulled in one deep breath after another. I shut off the shower and Micah slid me from the shelf. He wrapped an arm around my waist to keep us locked together.

  Dripping wet, he carried us from the bathroom and into the wide-open space of the bedroom, settling me on the four-poster bed that dominated the space we’d claimed as our own. Cool air drifted over my skin from an open window, the subtle flapping of drapes a familiar, comforting noise. I shivered.

  “Cold?” he asked, laying down next to me.

  I curled into him, sighing at the instant surrounding of heat. “A little.”

  He pulled the blankets at the end of the bed over our bodies and tucked me into his side. In the complete dark, we lay curled around each other, my head on his chest and his fingers dancing through my wet, tangled hair. I was seconds away from either purring or falling into a deep coma-like sleep.

  Micah’s voice was raspier in the darkness. “I know the timing sucks, but we need to head up to Albany as soon as the sun sets.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Yeah. We need to scope out the hospital she’s being held at and see how many guards they’ve got on the facility. We’ll have to figure out the best way to get in and get her out. Castro gave me the blueprints for the building—seems pretty straight forward.”

  I closed my eyes tight and tried not to think about my uncle lying in a hospital bed. “What do we do about Roy? I can’t just leave him…”

  “He’ll be in an induced coma. I know you don’t want to leave him, but we’re running out of time. Your trial is in a few days and if we can present my mother—get her to testify about my genetics, well, they won’t be able to ignore her. Did you know my mom’s uncle is on the council?”

  “Cornelius Reynard, right?”

  “Yes. He isn’t a fan of Richard either. This is our best shot to both clear your name and bring their attention to what’s been going on. It has to be stopped. Dante and Eli will come with us. Hannah will want to help too. I think we should let her—she’s a part of our world, like it or not.”

  I played my fingers through the soft, springy hair on his chest and knew he was right. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “She can take care of herself, and you know Dante and Eli won’t let anyone or anything harm her.”

  Resigned to the fact that I was no longer my sister’s sole protector, I nodded and snuggled in closer. It was as solid a plan as we were going to get.

  “Are you nervous about seeing her?” I asked and decided not to bring up the fact I knew he was plotting Richard’s death.

  His deep, heavy sigh told me he knew exactly who “her” was. “Yes. No. I don’t know how to feel. I thought she was dead. It’s hard to reconcile that she isn’t, that the reason why I’m alive today is because she was raped. I’m probably the last person she’s going to want to see after being back in that place.”

  I rolled over on top of Micah so I could look down at him.

  “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it together.”

  Micah cupped my face and stroked my cheek with his thumb. “Together. Now, let’s get some sleep while we can. I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard in my life, I’m about to pass out any second—which is normally your job after sex.” As he spoke, he guided me back to the mattress.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled our mingled scents.

  Micah’s voice jarred me back to consciousness the second I’d started to drift. “As much as the break sucked, I think not coming for two weeks just caused me to have the best orgasm of my life.”

  I popped my eyes open and lifted up on my elbow to study his face. His eyes were closed, his mouth parted. He chest rattled as if he were seconds away from snoring.

  “Wait a second.”

  “Sleeping now,” he grumbled.

  “You didn’t come for two weeks, you didn’t even jack off?”

  He opened one eye and peered at me. In long, lazy strokes, he rubbed my back. “No. Did you?”

  “FYI, girls don’t jack off.”

  He opened the other eye. “Smart-ass. You know what I meant.”

  I grinned at him, feeling lighter than I had in weeks. “To answer your question, yes, like every day. I’m used to a steady string of orgasms. Just because you took away the goods didn’t mean I had to go without. Not having it just made me want it even more.”

  Heat filled his eyes and his caress shifted into something more, something with purpose. He rolled me beneath him and drew his hips against mine. Between us, his cock pulsed.

  “That is so fucking hot, do you know that?”

  I licked his lip. “How hot?”

  He cupped my ass and drew me against the hard length of his erection. “Hot enough that neither one of us is getting any sleep. Just thinking about you with your fingers buried in your pussy, your hips rocking as you get yourself off…fuck.”

  He pressed his mouth against my neck, teeth nipping as he sucked on the flesh. When he clamped down, I dug my nails into his ass and gripped him close, pushing my throat farther into his mouth.

  “Sleeping is overrated,” I purred and gave into my mate.

  “You bet your sweet ass it is.”

  Chapter Eight

  Wind swept through the forest with such force, the Jeep swerved to the left. Barren limbs scratched against the exterior of the SUV and sent a line of goose bumps trailing down the back of my neck. After a nearly silent five-hour drive up to Albany, the noise was too loud. I gripped the steering wheel tighter as our destination came into view through a gap in the thick trees. Sweat slicked my palms, making my grip slippery. Under my hands, thin wisps of curling smoke rose, dancing in front of my vision.

  I let go of the wheel and stretched my fingers, a poor attempt to pull back the waves of anger threatening to consume me. Through the bug-splattered windshield I stared at the place that housed my mother—a woman I’d been told had taken her own life.

  I’d been raised on bullshit lies.

  Resentment filled me and I clenched my jaw, fought to stay inside the vehicle when all I really wanted to do was rush in guns a-blazin’. Emotion made you weak and sloppy, a lesson I’d learned after years of Richard’s abuse. If I wanted to get my mo
ther out alive, I needed to think smart and push back all the crap swirling around in my head.

  Chain-link fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the wide, L-shaped two-story concrete structure. Hospital my ass. This place was a fucking prison. Guards stationed in towers, one at each corner, aimed rifles into the dark forest that isolated the institution from the main roads.

  I watched for movement, studying the layout and trying to compare it against the blueprints I’d studied after Ella had succumbed to unconsciousness after we’d fucked for nearly four hours straight. Two guards dressed in army fatigues patrolled the grounds and I wondered if there were more stationed on the sides we couldn’t see from our vantage point.

  They walked in a specific, straight-backed rhythm I pegged as paramilitary. I had visions of breaking their necks, of feeling their bones snap under my hands. I licked my lips and hated the savage pleasure surging to the surface.

  Do it. The voice inside my head was dark and twisted, the words jumbled in a way I didn’t think anyone except me could have understood. Blast a hole in the side of the building and stroll inside. We own them. They can’t touch you.

  I shook the thoughts away and wrestled my demon into submission. The hard ball in my gut burned brighter.

  “What the hell is this place?” The sexy rasp of Ella’s voice drew me from the dark and I looked to her.

  We should still be naked in bed, tangled in each other and drunk on pleasure. The taste I’d gotten earlier wasn’t enough to slake me, would never be enough to satisfy my craving for her.

  Hannah, a ball of fucking sunshine and roses, leaned forward from where she was sandwiched between Dante and Eli in the backseat. Her blonde hair was bright in the interior of the car, a spot of light in the darkness. She tugged on Ella’s ponytail before resting her chin on the headrest.

  “This place looks like a jail.”

  If I could trust what was going to come out of my mouth, I would have agreed. Instead, I returned my sight to the hospital. Was this where I’d been born? Who was my father? Why the fuck had Richard lied?