Beyond the Dark

by Angela Knight

  “Then hide her.” Jonas shrugged. “And hide her well, wolf, because if she even breathes the truth of tonight’s events, I’ll make sure she never takes another breath.”

  JONAS watched, several hours later, as Matthias loaded his conscious, bound and gagged little burden into the folded-back front seat, secured her into place, and drove away.

  He leaned against the outside of the van and grinned, hell if he could help it. Sometimes, his people just amazed him, especially those who hadn’t yet heard the truth of the mating heat, or the first signs of it.

  Common sense was the first casualty to the heat, and he almost regretted letting the Wolf Breed drive away to parts unknown. It would have been fun as hell to watch.

  “He’s gonna mate her,” Simon drawled from inside the van. “That look in his eye was impossible to mistake. I thought he was going to rip my throat out when I suggested breaking her neck.”

  “He came close.” Jonas smirked.

  “You should have warned him,” Lawe sighed.

  “You should have had him dragged back to Sanctuary for those stupid tests,” Rule snarled. “If they don’t find a cure for that shit, I’m never going to fuck again. It’s starting to give me the jeebies.”

  Jonas chuckled. “We need to understand it, you can forget about curing it. Besides, Ely and the Wolf Breed scientists have enough victims. No sense in adding a new pair to the mix.”

  “And if he can’t convince her to keep her mouth shut?” Simon voiced the question rolling around in Jonas’s head. He grimaced at the thought of the answer to it.

  “Track him,” he ordered the other man. “If he can’t convince her not to talk, then we’ll have to.”

  Permanently if necessary. He’d hate it. It would sicken his soul, but he had done worse to see to the Breeds’ survival, and he was certain he would do so again. Shedding innocent blood would add to the nightmares, though, and that he wasn’t anticipating. As far as Jonas was concerned, he had enough nightmares to fight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She should have changed out of the short black skirt and white blouse she wore to work. She should have worn jeans. Pants, anything but the leg-flattering little skirt she was so fond of. Because it was now around her thighs. So indecently around her thighs that Grace felt herself flushing.

  And while she was considering her recent mistakes, she should have let someone know she had returned. Checked in. Put off dealing with Albrecht’s complaints. Anything but what she had ended up doing.

  But she just had to come back for that stupid little bathing suit she had stuffed in the pocket of her jacket. And when she had, Mr. Albrecht’s message had been flashing on her machine. Irate. Demanding action over some slight by the staff.

  She had listened to the message, erased it, because she was anal about stuff like that, and then had gone to Albrecht’s suite. That had been her biggest mistake.

  The door had been slightly open, but Albrecht was known for that kind of absentmindedness. He was so arrogantly certain no one would dare attack him under the eagle eye of the security cameras that he ignored every precaution. Security had warned him repeatedly that they could not ensure his safety if he didn’t stop leaving the suite door open. Normally, one of the security personnel contacted his bodyguards in the other room and had them do it. Tonight, security hadn’t taken care of it. Which meant they were updating the security system. Which meant the damned system, as well as the backup, was off-line. Which meant no one knew what the fuck had happened to her!

  Ten minutes. The system had been off-line for ten freaking stupid minutes, and one of their most influential residents was dead.

  It didn’t matter that he was an asshole. He was still dead. And Matthias had killed him.

  Her breath hitched as she battled the tears filling her eyes. The man she had fallen in love with was a killer.

  She glanced over at him.

  His expression was imposing in the low lights from the dash. The wicked scar that slashed over his forehead, across his eye, then to the center of his cheek was hidden from her view. His profile revealed only the dark curve and slash of arrogant bones, the arch of black brows. Thick, coarse black hair, as dark as night, flowed down his neck and was caught at the nape of his neck with some sort of elastic band.

  Broad shoulders and a body so tight and hard it gave a girl damp panties. He was dressed in his customary black leather pants, shit-kicker boots, a T-shirt, and black leather jacket.

  The gloves he had worn on his hands had been black as well. They were gone now.

  And to top it all off, he was a Wolf Breed. Powerful, charismatic, scarred, and dangerous. All the things that made a girl’s heart go thump in the night.

  And he was a killer.

  She flinched as his hand moved, then drew in a shaky breath as the gag was removed from her mouth. He didn’t stop to untie her, or to release the restraints holding her to the lowered seat. But at least she could speak now.

  “Just how damned stupid are you?” The words broke past her lips before she could think. “You should have killed me back at the hotel, because I swear to God I’m going to watch you fry.”

  She tried to tear herself loose, jerking and writhing against the bonds furiously.

  “Keep it up, and I’m going to see more than just those pretty thighs, Grace.” His husky voice had her stilling, her gaze jerking to where he was glancing at her thighs before looking down her body.

  “Oh yeah, as if you haven’t already made certain you could see more,” she yelled, flushing at the knowledge that her skirt had ridden to the crotch of her panties. Her damp panties. “What are you going to do now, rape me before you kill me?”

  He stared down at her with whiskey colored eyes. Those eyes almost mesmerized her.

  “If I intended to kill you, I wouldn’t rape you first,” he promised her mockingly. “Somehow, that just reeks of foul play.”

  “And murder doesn’t?” She gasped in outrage.

  “Albrecht was a member of the Genetics Council.” The sound of his voice, low, husky, nearing another of those dangerous growls she had heard just before he grabbed her, had her flinching. “That wasn’t a murder, Grace, it was an act of mercy.”

  She stared back at him in shock.

  “He was a mean old man,” she admitted in disbelief. “But he couldn’t have been part of the Genetics Council any longer. He was so absentminded he forgot to close his stupid doors. If he had been a member, he had likely forgotten it by now. Which makes it murder.”

  She hated liars.

  “You were using me all along.” Fury filled her at the thought. “Was the mugging a setup, too? A way to get on the stupid manager’s good side? Is that what it was? And here I didn’t even get a mercy fuck for my trouble.”

  He hadn’t wanted to be seen with her, she had thought it was because of her plain looks. He said it was because he was a Breed, he didn’t want to see her hurt. It hadn’t been. It had been because right there in her living room, shoved into her little bookcase, was all the information he would have needed to get to Albrecht.

  But how had they known when the security would be off-line? And was it just Matthias, or were there others?

  “I have your luggage in the back,” he told her, obviously gritting his teeth. “Your car has been taken care of.”

  “Should I thank you?”

  He ignored her again.

  “I liked the thought of joining you at the cabin. I checked the place out last week. It’s a nice little place. I thought I’d escort you up there, maybe stay a while. Discuss some things with you.”

  Her breath stilled in her lungs. The cabin was by a lake. He could drown her there, and no one would ever know what had happened to her.

  He was going to kill her. She had been falling in love with the man who was going to murder her. Now this was just a hellacious ending to a perfectly fucked up love life.

  Her father had been right all along. Grace had finally jumped into something that wa
s going to get her killed. He had been predicting it since she was four and she climbed her first tree. Now, it seemed it was going to happen.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Grace.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s why I’m trussed up like a Christmas turkey and heading to a conveniently out-of-the-way cabin.” She had to fight pack her tears. “Does that mean you’re going to just kill me fast?”

  Oh man, she had really stepped into it this time. Wasn’t she the one wishing for adventure, just a few months ago? Surely she wasn’t the one that had taken one look at Matthias after he rescued her from a mugging and thought he was some kind of dark, sexy knight. He wasn’t a knight, he was a monster.

  Yeah. He wasn’t going to hurt her. He was just going to let her waltz right into the police department and identify him as Albrecht’s assassin and wish her good luck with the future. Uh huh. She could see that happening.

  “Damn, you’re melodramatic, do you know that?” He slanted her a look from the corner of those sexy, exotic eyes of his, and her stomach clutched at the look.

  He looked at her like that a lot. Like a man with sex on his mind, but he had yet to touch her, to kiss her. That look was as much a lie as everything else about him had ever been.

  “I tend to get that way when I see harmless old men assassinated and I get kidnapped. It has a decidedly melodramatic effect on my life, Matthias.”

  He glanced at her again. But not at her face. Once more, his gaze slid to her thighs.

  “Yeah, I can see where that would be upsetting.” His gaze finally slid to her face. “But I said I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Like you said my mugger was gutter trash,” she retorted. “Tell me Matthias, was that a setup?”

  He jerked his head to face forward, his expression tightening, as she stomped her feet into the floor of the vehicle.

  “Damn you. Damn you. Damn you.” The curses were throttled screams, as she then slammed her head back against her seat. “Let me go! Just let me go, so I can kill you myself.”

  She had been terrified. Terrified and so damned grateful to the man who had saved her that she had overlooked every sign that he was trouble. And the signs were there. The diamond glittering in his left ear. The scar on his face. The tattoo she had glimpsed on his bicep, the nipple ring, the faint outline of which she had seen beneath his T-shirt.

  He looked like a thug, but he carried himself with such supreme confidence, such arrogance, that every stupid feminine instinct she had possessed had been drawn to him.

  “Your mugger is gutter trash,” he finally muttered.

  “So you didn’t set that up?”

  “I didn’t set it up.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Was it set up for you?”

  “I had to find a way to make you trust me, quickly,” he admitted. “That was the only way.”

  Anger vied with fear. Damn him, there wasn’t a chance he could let her live. She might as well go down letting him know exactly what she thought of him. She’d already watched him blow another man’s head off. It wasn’t like it could get much worse.

  “You lied to me.” She gritted her teeth in fury, surprised at how much it hurt.

  “I didn’t lie to you, Grace,” he finally sighed. “I stretched a few truths and didn’t tell you exactly why I was there.”

  “You used me to kill a man.”

  “I rid the world of a monster, and I’ll prove it to you,” he said. “What you do after that, is up to you.”

  “And if I go straight to the police?” Of course she would go straight to the police. Was there any question of it?

  “Then I’ll do everything in my power to protect you.” The regret that shimmered in his voice had her chest tightening. “But once I’m behind bars, others will kill you. I won’t be able to save you then.”

  He was lying to her again, of course.

  “Grace. Give me a chance.” His hand lowered from the steering wheel to her knee. The shock of his calloused, scarred hand against her bare flesh for the first time sent a riot of sensation cascading through her.

  It was his hand, for God’s sake. On her knee. It wasn’t like it was tucked between her thighs.

  “I gave you a chance.” She tried to jerk away from him, but his hand only tightened, holding her bound legs in place. “And look where it got me. More lies. And more threats. No thank you, Matthias, I think I’ve trusted you too much already.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Matthias felt his fingers tighten on the fragile width of her knee and forced himself to relax. He wouldn’t hurt her, and he didn’t want to frighten her further.

  Already the scent of her fear was nearly overpowering the soft, subtle scent of the arousal that filled her each time he was near her.

  It was one of the reasons he had rarely touched her over the past weeks. He had kept his distance as much as possible, knowing that until he had dealt with Albrecht, he didn’t have the time to deal with what he knew was coming with Grace.

  Jonas thought it was such a closely guarded secret that Wolfe Gunnar, the leader of the Wolf Packs, adhered to the strict order of silence on the subject of mating heat. But Wolfe wasn’t a fool. He knew his enforcers were a danger to themselves if they weren’t aware of what could happen at the most unlikely moment.

  Matthias knew what mating heat was, just as he knew that Grace was his mate.

  The glands beneath his tongue had been sensitive for weeks, and he could feel them becoming swollen tonight. Those glands were filling with a mating aphrodisiac, a hormone that would push sensuality, sexuality, into the bounds of extremity.

  It would affect Grace worse than it would affect him. She would be unable to deny her natural response to him, unable to hide from it. She would be as helpless within it as he would be once he began touching her.

  The fine, almost imperceptible little hairs along his body were prickling with another hormone, one more subtle, but no less intense. His cock was rock hard. His balls were drawn tight. And he had learned in the past week that jacking off only made it worse. There would be no satisfaction until he found his release within the snug depths of Grace’s body.

  And there the problems would truly begin. If what Wolfe, Jacob, and Aiden had explained to their enforcers months ago were true, then during his mating with Grace, he would become more of an animal than he could have ever imagined.

  Even now, as his fingers lingered on the flesh of her knee, he found a pleasure in that small touch that he had never known before. Even in the midst of the most sexual acts he had performed during his sexual training in the labs, he hadn’t felt such pleasure as he did now in simply touching.

  He was one of the younger Breeds. Barely thirty, but he hadn’t escaped that phase of training. Not that the scientists had included sexual training for any pleasurable benefits. As in everything else, even that phase of training had held more sinister purposes.

  When entranced by their lover, a man or a woman could be convinced to trade their soul for the love of the one capable of giving them such extreme pleasure. Powerful figures could be blackmailed, the sons and daughters of such figures could be used for information. Wives could be seduced, husbands could be tempted. It was all the same to the council. Every weakness could be exploited.

  In the years since his release, Matthias had never used the talent he had found to please a woman, to betray one. Until Grace, he had refused to involve any woman in the dangerous, bloody life he led.

  He was an assassin. The council had taught him how to be an assassin. He carried the scars from his failed attempts during training, and he carried the marks of his successes since his escape.

  He didn’t kill for money, and he didn’t kill from hatred or greed. He killed for mercy. He killed to make the world a safer place, not just for his own species, but for the humans as well.

  Council members, scientists, trainers, and soldiers—many had been released once they were revealed. If they were smart, they lived the rest of their lives without picking up the
ir old ties. If they weren’t, then Matthias or one of his kind made house calls. And there were many who eagerly, if more secretly, renewed those old ties.

  He had gotten lucky with Albrecht, though. He was impossible to forget. And Matthias just happened to have been at the right place at the right time, before the Breed rescues ten years before. He had seen Albrecht with several scientists, heard the scientists refer to him as “director.” Only council members were given that distinction.

  Matthias had remembered, and he had given the bastard a chance. A chance Albrecht had deliberately ignored. The proof of that was in the bloody, broken bodies of the mated Breed pairs he had managed to capture over the past years. Young Breeds, independent. Rather than seeking the Wolf or Lion Breed compounds when mating heat overtook them, they had tried to figure it out on their own. And they had died in the effort.

  The horrifying evidence that Albrecht was once again experimenting with Breeds was too much to ignore, and Matthias had been called in.

  He had used Grace to make his house call, and gaining her forgiveness wouldn’t be easy.

  “Where are we?” she finally asked wearily, staring up at the ceiling of the SUV, trying to hide her response to his touch.

  “We’re about two hours from your cabin,” he told her softly, enjoying the feel of her satiny knee and the flesh in the curve of her leg against his fingertips.

  “You researched me well then,” she said, fighting to control her breathing.

  The scent of her arousal was growing. The glands in his tongue were thickening. He should stop touching her, he should place both hands on the steering wheel and concentrate on driving the vehicle rather than driving them both crazy with lust.

  “I researched you for months,” he admitted. “I followed you at night when you jogged and tracked your movements otherwise. You were under surveillance for nearly six months.”