by Marie Hall
She’d lost so much. Everything. And maybe it was stupid to have done it, but somehow, without her even realizing it, she’d begun to trust this man. The man whose eyes had been pumped full of terror when he’d found she’d stabbed herself in George’s cave, the man who’d brought down that hideous deer just to make her eat something. It’d meant something, or at least she’d hoped so. Stupid her. Trusting was what always got her people killed. It was why they always scurried and hid like rats.
Mila had dared to live, and it had cost her everything.
Where there’d been coldness before, now his eyes seemed perplexed and at a complete loss.
“I did not have sex with the shadow,” he finally answered, so low she had to strain to hear him.
She sniffed. “It doesn’t matter.”
He dropped his hands, his look growing earnest. “What is this about, O’Fallen?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she bit the corner of her lip.
“O’Fallen?”
“Will you stop calling me that!” And that was all she could say, because her eyes were starting to tear up; there was heat building behind them, and if she didn’t leave, he’d see it. He’d be witness to her misery, her fears, and she couldn’t have that because it showed weakness. Gave him something else to exploit.
“Mila!” he barked at her back, but she was halfway to the bank and she wasn’t stopping.
Jumping out of the water, landing gracefully onto a patch of grass, she ran. He might be faster than her, but she was plenty fast in her own right. Wind rushed through her ears as her legs chewed up the ground.
She’d barely contained her tears in front of him, but they were falling freely now. Trees passed in a blur. She knew it was only a matter of time till he caught her. This was never about running away, it was just about getting some time to herself.
Mila didn’t hear the snapping of twigs, or the rustling of leaves behind her. He wasn’t following.
Exhaustion claimed her. A settling in the bones type of weariness that made her finally stumble to her knees and drop to the soft grass beneath, crying. She released it. Everything. She had to, so she could move on.
One thing her gran had always told her: don’t try to outrun the pain or the past, let it come, let the tears flow, and then let it go.
This was her way of finally letting it go. The impossible wish that somehow she could roll back time long enough for her not to die, not to be caught by those vampires, that none of this had ever happened, the pain of being a monster she never wanted to be, of being stuck with a man she didn’t know, didn’t really like. Of all the crazy emotions that made her feel things her brain didn’t want. Pain, passion, lust, need, hate. That wasn’t her. Before this, she’d been a good person. Quiet and shy, but good.
Now she barely recognized herself. Who was she? A vampire? A shifter? What?
“Woman.” His voice was so low, so heartfelt, that the tears came harder.
Tucking her face into her knees, she shook her head, grateful for her long hair shielding her face. “Go away, Frenzy. I don’t want to fight anymore.”
“I did not have sex with that thing. You have to know that.”
Wiping a tear with the back of her hand, she sniffed and noticed he’d taken the time to redress. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”
“Then what is this?” She felt his movement, felt his hot gaze boring into her skull. Knew that if she didn’t look up he’d just continue to stay where he was.
Gritting her teeth, she peeked at him. “This is me having my first freak-out since this all went down. Do you think for a second any of what happened has been easy on me, Frenzy? Knowing you don’t want the hassle of ‘saving me’”—she finger quoted—“that one second I feel the very life slip out of my body, and the next I’m waking up and nothing makes sense anymore. The world I thought I knew, the one I’d lived in for thirty-two years, no longer makes sense.”
His lips twitched, as if he were grappling with some sort of emotion, before finally huffing loudly and tucking a stray curl of hair behind her ear. “I’m as lost as you, woman. This isn’t easy for me either. I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Keep you safe.” His voice was whisper soft, the world felt suddenly pregnant with expectation. “All we do is quarrel, and it makes me…”
Rubbing her nose, she looked at him completely. “What?”
Running fingers through his hair, he shrugged. “I’ve been alone for years. I’ve not been around mortals for centuries.”
“But I thought you were a grim reaper? Your job is to carry souls of mortals to the afterlife, right?” She cocked her head.
Folding his arms across his knees, he nodded. “It is.” He sighed. “You want to know a truth, O’Fallen?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to remind him yet again that her name was Mila, not O’Fallen, but it really didn’t matter. They were finally talking and she realized she needed to hear these things, because if she was going to trust herself to this man, she needed to know why.
Just then an image came to her. Odd, because since her death she hadn’t had a vision. A part of her wondered if perhaps she’d lost her abilities since her monstrous ones had manifested themselves.
It was Frenzy. But he wasn’t dressed as he was now. In fact, he was dressed as if from a completely different era.
Wearing a navy coat that came to his waist with long tails that dangled to the backs of his cream-trousered knees. There were gold chains dangling from his pockets and in his hand he held an elegant-looking top hat. His shock of red hair was caught back with a black silk hair bow.
She had no idea which decade he was in, but it looked old. Very historic.
One thing she immediately noted about him. There was no hardness in his eyes. He was smiling, laughing even. Bent over a mantel, reading by firelight to a woman dressed in a provocative red gown with white lace decorating the tops of her modest breasts.
Her face was plain. Her mouth was a little too thin, her nose a little too sharp, and she was covered in freckles. The most arresting feature on her was her eyes.
Eyes eerily similar to Mila’s own.
Almond-shaped, with long fanning black lashes. Molten-amber colored. The way they stared at Frenzy, as if he was her world. Eyes were the window to the soul. You could read the truth of a person in their gaze. Whether they laughed often, or cried much. Whether they’d seen the worst of life, or were accustomed to the frivolity of wealth and good fortune.
The woman’s eyes sparkled, danced as they snaked down Frenzy’s fine masculine form. There was hunger, laughter, desire so sharp Mila inhaled a breath at the honesty of it.
Frenzy stared at her with the same level of need. While his beauty definitely outranked hers, he didn’t see her that way. To him, they were equals.
But then the scene shifted and she was no longer viewing the world through Frenzy’s eyes, she was in the woman’s.
It wasn’t often Mila could witness the thoughts of a ghost; generally she needed to be within the vicinity of the person to see their life. But it wasn’t usual for her to witness the past either. Only on rare occasions.
But Frenzy was an immortal whose past was intricately entwined with his future.
The woman’s name had been Adrianna. She was naked in a room with only a four-poster bed and white fluttering curtains. Moonlight sliced across her body. A dark shadow stood to the side.
Her porcelain skin gleamed as she writhed and moaned on the mattress, the masses of her dark hair the only coverings she wore draped across her breasts. She was waiting for her lover, playing with herself, getting ready for him. She’d convince him to marry her this time; she loved him. Soon her belly would be full of his child. He’d have no other option. He’d save her from being forced to marry the ancient Lord Abernathy.
Finally she spotted the shadow and jumped, springing to a sitting position, wrapping the sheet firmly around her body. “You scared me, lover.” T
hen relaxing, she spread her arms, dropping the sheet and running a hand down the vee of her breasts.
But when the man stepped into moonlight and she got a good look at his face, she knew it was not Frenzy. The features were blurred and hard to make out, but the hair was blond, not the fiery red of her fallen angel.
Then he was upon her and there was blood. So much blood…
Jerking, Mila’s eyes opened wide and she stared at Frenzy with her heart trapped in her throat. He was talking, saying things she could hardly understand. Hand trembling, she planted her palm against her breast, feeling the echoing beat of fear and Adrianna’s adrenaline still pumping through her.
“…Do you understand now?”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, mouth tasting dry and parched, she shook her head. She’d not caught any of what he’d said. His hands were on her shoulders and he was looking at her strangely, eyes roaming all across her face.
“What’s happened?”
Her eyes jerked to his. “What do you mean?”
“I was talking to you, but it was as if you weren’t there. You were staring through me and now your pulse is beating out of control. Did you see something?”
Uncanny how he’d jump to that conclusion. He barely knew her. How much could she trust him?
“Tell me,” he softly urged.
There were few times in her life when she’d shared a vision, and even when she did, she didn’t give a complete accounting, only what needed to be known. This wasn’t even a future she’d seen, but a past.
A past involving a woman with her eyes. A woman he’d obviously adored, a woman who’d maybe loved him back, but loved more what he could do for her. She bit the inside of her cheek.
Shrugging out of his grip, she took a step back, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear. Something about the two visions she’d seen made her think this woman had meant a lot to Frenzy. In all likelihood, she could be the very reason why he was now so hostile to mortals.
His lover had been brutally executed. Garroted. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“You can tell me.” He said it again, so softly. So gently.
And it made her angry.
Furious.
Mila had always prided herself on containing her emotions, letting few see how she really felt. Because revealing too much made a person vulnerable. All her life she’d been running, forced to keep one step ahead. She’d screwed up so bad. Ruined it all because she’d allowed a moment of weakness in. But since dying, she’d lost her ability to remain neutral, to keep a lid on it. What she felt, she did, and she couldn’t stop herself.
“Leave me alone,” she hissed. “Just leave me alone.” She didn’t need his sympathy or understanding. Why was he trying to change the way they played this game now? She knew where she stood with him.
Whether he copped to it or not, he was her captor. Point. Blank. Period. He wouldn’t help her die. All her life all she’d done was run and hide. And now death would be more of the same.
He looked as if she’d smacked him. Nose curling, upper lip pulling back, it was obvious she’d pissed him off.
Well, good.
So was she.
“I’m tired of all this shit!” she screamed. “Tired of running, tired of this life. Why keep me like this? You coming to me, trying to gain my sympathy; stop it!”
She tried to turn away from him. To run off again, it was fruitless and pointless, but it was all she knew.
“I’m not trying to gain anything!” he snapped. “You think I wanted this? I didn’t. But we’re stuck together.”
“Why won’t you just leave me to die? You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to keep me safe. Just let me go, Frenzy. Let me go.” Her eyes burned, but she’d be damned if she cried again.
She was done being weak, done feeling sorry for herself. Holding her head high, she challenged him, never blinking or swerving from his cold, hard gaze.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?”
There was no point in answering; he obviously wasn’t wanting one anyway.
“Grow up, O’Fallen. This is the real world.” He gestured around the empty field. “This is it. It doesn’t get better. There is no white knight to rescue you. Death doesn’t come for us all.” His smile was pure malice, full of teeth and sarcasm. “Get one thing through your fool skull right now: you and me, we’re in this together. I didn’t get a choice in this matter either. You were the last person,” he emphasized, “in the world I would ever have wanted to tie myself to. But I’m mature enough to understand there is no getting out. We either fix this, or we make our eternity a living hell.”
His words shook her, brought the blasted tears out. Because he was freaking right. And she hated that he was. Hated that if she said otherwise it would just be her acting like an immature little baby. No matter how much she wanted to go back to what she once was, that night with the vampires had happened.
The vampires turned her.
A shifter had bitten her.
She craved food with an almost constant obsession.
A shadow wanted to suck out her soul.
And she was so sexually infatuated by a man she loathed, that it culminated in her slapping the hell out of him. His cheek flared red, and his eyes grew wide and filled with fury.
Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her to him, hard. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because you make me…God!” she screamed, then grabbed the back of his skull and mashed her lips to his.
It wasn’t gentle or exploratory. The kiss was about domination. She poured all her hate and loss of dreams, everything she’d ever clung to. Every illusion that so long as she did what she was told things would turn out okay for her, it all went into him.
Lifting her up, forcing her to wrap her legs around his waist, he shoved just as much of his passion back into her. She felt it in the way his teeth knocked with hers, the way his hands gripped so tight, bordering on the edge of pain. Their tongues dueled and she was so aware of it all.
Aware of the way her nipples puckered as they grazed the cool silk of his shirt. The kiss was potent and hard, lips and teeth nipping and grazing, sucking on the flesh of her neck, her jaw. Then he was back on her mouth, rolling her bottom lip between his, tasting and sucking on it.
Heat centered between her thighs, made her ache and need and want so damn bad. Because nothing made sense anymore, this life didn’t make sense. Except this…the way he ground his erection into her, the way he growled in the back of his throat, how he consumed her…this was the only thing making sense.
Then he was slamming her against a tree, and her skin should have shredded the way he kept pressing her against the bark, but it didn’t hurt. There was a sharp burst of pleasure at the almost-pain.
“Make me forget, Frenzy,” she panted, clawing at his skull, running her fingers through his hair.
He tugged on her hair, causing her to inhale sharply at the burst of pain. “You’re a crazy wench,” he growled, and she nodded.
Because that’s exactly what she felt like. Lost, confused, and scared.
“Take me now,” she hissed, running her fingers frantically down the buttons of his shirt, popping them off one by one.
Pulling back just enough so that she could take the shirt off of him, Mila helped him tear it off. Then her hands were on his belt buckle.
“Nothing makes any kind of damn sense to me anymore. Make this go away, Frenzy. Make it go away,” she said, then, frustrated that the belt wouldn’t come off as easily as the buttons, she growled and snapped the buckle off.
He glanced down then back at her. His eyes were still angry, but they were also full of something else too.
Fire.
“O’Fallen,” he growled, and then yanked the broken belt off, moving her hands away when she tried to unzip his pants. “I’ve got it.”
Was it just her imagination or had his voice shook a little?
She bit her knuckle, panting heavily and completely unafraid
that they were out in the wild, exposed to the sun and the wind. That anyone could see her if they wanted to. The sun was beating down all around them. The tree barely had enough branches to afford any kind of shade. There wasn’t even a single cloud in the sky.
Everyone and everything wanted her, and her life just didn’t make sense anymore. None of this did. She should be scared, but she wasn’t. She was angry and horny and there was only one cure right now.
The moment his pants slipped down she grabbed hold of his hard length. He was enormous, bigger than any man she’d ever had, and for a second she could hardly breathe trying to imagine shoving that inside of her.
“Can you take me, O’Fallen?” He grunted, and the sound of it was almost painful to hear, like he was barely leashed. She had a feeling that if she said no, he’d freak. She’d pushed him too far. She knew that.
It was the Irish in her, too feisty for her own good. Her mum had always said that. Nostrils flaring, she turned to him and, staring deep into his eyes, she massaged his cock. “I’m not scared.”
He licked his lips, and her stomach bottomed out because she now knew what those lips tasted like. How much fuller the bottom one was than the top one. How touching it was like taking a sip of fine brandy, drugging and intoxicating.
Framing her face with his hands, he forced her to keep his gaze. “Hold on to my neck,” he ordered.
And for once she didn’t fight him, because somehow this was bringing her back. All the fights and battle of wills they’d engaged in, it’d all been leading up to this moment. She’d known it, and deep down he must have known it too. They’d been a powder keg just waiting for a spark to set them off.