He closed his eyes and a tear slipped down from the corner of his lashes. He shifted his left arm out from behind his head and threw it across his eyes, hiding them from her. Elissa tightened her grip on his hand, her heart aching for him. Her anger rose too. Payne had done nothing wrong and his parents must have felt his fear and confusion, but they had done nothing to reassure him. His father had paraded him in front of the family, shaming him and making him feel as though he was an outsider, an object to stare at with disgust. He had degraded his own son, the boy he had claimed to love.
“When my father looked at me at last, there had been only coldness in his eyes. I turned to my mother but she refused to look at me, even when I fell on my knees and begged her.”
Mother earth, what cruelty they had inflicted upon him, their boy who had looked up to them and loved them with all of his heart. He had only wanted their love in return, just as they had given it to him unconditionally before his markings had surfaced. Payne’s fingers squeezed hers, hurting her. She didn’t let her pain show. He needed to hold on to her and she wouldn’t deny him anything that would comfort him. He could break her fingers and she still wouldn’t let go of his hand. She wouldn’t let him suffer alone. Not as his parents had.
“My father ordered that I be taken out of his sight. Someone took me away. I don’t remember who. I only remember the shame that burned in me and the way everyone whispered as I passed, staring at me and my cursed markings.”
He lifted his arm and looked at her. He looked so lost and broken that she wanted to touch his cheek, needed him to know that she was here with him and that she felt for him. She managed to hold her tongue and keep still, knowing that he needed to keep going now that he had started.
“My mother tried to convince my father that she hadn’t cheated on him with another male. I heard them arguing all the time over the coming weeks. They would fall silent whenever they saw me, and would turn away, neither of them willing to listen to me. In the end, they made me remain in my quarters. I lost everything. My family turned their backs on me one by one, shunning me. My father probably ordered it.”
His gaze roamed back to the canopy above them.
Elissa’s heart went out to him. She couldn’t imagine how he must have felt. Just a boy, scared and uncertain, unsure of what he was and what his markings meant, mistreated by those he loved and relied upon. He had gone from being the centre of his parents’ world to an object of hate and disgust. He had suffered so much, had been treated so poorly, dejected and disgraced, left to struggle with the changes happening in him alone when someone should have been there to hold him and guide him, to love him.
“My father refused to believe my mother because she couldn’t offer solid proof that she hadn’t cheated on him. They argued about me for months, growing more and more distant from each other, and from me. My father moved into the other wing of the mansion, as far from my mother as he could get. He refused to speak to her or me.”
He tensed and stared in silence at the canopy, his eyes blank, as though he was miles away from her. What pain was he reliving now? Tears slipped down his temple into his sandy hair and Elissa couldn’t stop herself anymore. She moved closer to him, rolling so her chest pressed against the side of his torso, and stroked his hair with her left hand while retaining her grip on his right.
His eyes dropped to her and he looked more lost and broken than she had ever seen him.
His voice cracked as he spoke. “My final memory of my mother is of her embracing the sun.”
He swallowed hard and didn’t look as though he could continue. Struggle shone in his eyes and flickered across his face, twisting his handsome visage into a pained grimace. She stroked his hair, gently running her fingers over the tousled sandy spikes, trying to give him some peace in the midst of so much suffering. She wished she had never asked him why he had chosen to call himself Payne or why he felt he deserved to suffer now. She had never meant to inflict this hurt upon him.
It pained her to see her strong, powerful male so hurt and weak, suffering and vulnerable, wrestling with his past and his feelings. It was little wonder he despised his incubus side and couldn’t accept it, and sought pain as a remedy to his desires. He had probably never stopped hurting in the centuries that had likely passed since he had been shunned as a boy. He carried his pain with him, an eternal torment, a poison that bred doubt in his mind, making him believe that no one could feel anything positive towards him. His family had instilled in him a belief that no one could ever love him as he was because he was an abomination, something that should be detested and scorned, not cherished and adored.
She could see that now, and she hated them for it. She wanted to seek out his family and punish them all for the pain that they had inflicted upon an innocent, warping his perspective of the world and causing him to despise himself and his mixed blood.
He sucked in a sharp breath. “I hadn’t been able to sleep and had felt her pause outside my room before moving on down the hallway. I followed her down to the entrance hall and found her standing near the double doors. She looked at me with so much pain in her eyes, so much misery, and then threw open the doors to the garden and let the sunlight stream over her.” His voice hitched and cracked again, and he ground his teeth, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes and his eyebrows knitting tightly. “I tried to stop her but I failed. I was too young. My hands caught fire. I wanted to die in her place... if I couldn’t have that... then I wanted to die with her.”
Tears filled Elissa’s eyes and she sniffed them back, her heart breaking for him. He had clearly adored his mother as much as he had said, and felt responsible for her decision to commit suicide. She stroked his cheek, his cool skin damp with tears beneath her fingers. He had suffered so much because of his mixed genes. She had never anticipated, had never dreamed, that he had been through so much. It was little wonder that he hated his incubus side now and wanted nothing to do with it. She couldn’t blame him for it either. It had stripped away all that he loved and had cherished, and something told Elissa that his suffering hadn’t ended at his mother’s death.
“The next thing I remember is waking in a dark room, in my parents’ bed. I thought perhaps someone had saved my mother and I was resting with her. When my vision cleared, I saw my father lying beside me, his arms swathed in bloodstained bandages.” He closed his eyes again and pinched the bridge of his nose. She gave him a moment to gather himself and brushed her fingers over his hair, letting him know that she was still there for him. “I was covered in bandages too. Every inch of me... all of them stained crimson. I wanted to cry but I stifled my pain and loss. When my father stirred, I expected him to make me leave. Instead, he drew me to him and told me that he had never meant for this to happen. I hated him.”
Understandable. His father had driven his mother to kill herself.
“I hated my father but I blamed myself for her death. I spent years looking for information on fae and searching for a way to clear my mother’s name. When I discovered that my mother’s bloodline had an incubus in it, her father, and that all of the children he had sired with her mother had been female and therefore not incubi, but a carrier of those genes, I grew enraged at my father.” Payne slipped his hand free of hers and wiped his eyes, clearing away his tears. Elissa looked at Payne’s markings nearest his wrist. She didn’t recognise the symbols there, at the top of his lineage. His mother’s name written in the fae tongue? “My mother hadn’t known that she had incubus blood in her. I challenged my father and my father banished me, but not before I fought him. My father swore he never wanted to see me again.”
“What happened?”
“I left and lived in the world alone. I grew up without my family, watching them from a distance. When I had matured and was stronger, I went back to see my family. I needed to know if I could return.” The darkness in his tone said that they had denied him and her heart ached again, a deep throbbing that made her want to wrap her arms around him and hold him,
and whisper that his family should have taken him back. He had only wanted to be with those he loved, even though they had hurt him. “I argued with my father. He blamed me for my mother’s death, accused me of ripping his heart out and destroying him. I countered him, accusing him of being the one who had torn out my heart and destroyed me, humiliated and shattered me. He struck me repeatedly, blaming me all the while, telling me I had killed my mother. I will never forget that night.”
Payne rubbed his right arm and Elissa stared down at it, at the scars that littered his skin. What had his father done to him? It was bad enough that Payne had to live with the scars on his heart and his soul, haunted by his memories, but his father had done something to place scars on his body too, so he could never forget.
“I lost my head. I fought back and shoved him. He fell near the fire, picked up one of the irons and flew at me. I tried to defend myself. He broke my arm with the iron and didn’t stop. He kept hitting me, shattering the bone, breaking through my skin. After the seventh strike, the pain overwhelmed me. I had no control over myself. I attacked and got the poker from my father. The next thing I recall is my father staring at me, blood pouring from his lips, scarcely breathing. I looked down and I saw what I had done.” Payne closed his eyes and frowned, his whole body tensing. Elissa stroked his arm, running her fingers up and down, needing to do something for him. “I had skewered my father with the poker. I had driven it under his breastbone and straight through his heart... I had gone to the house to ask my father to take me back and love me again, and I had ended up killing him. I was no better than my father had accused me of being.”
He turned his head and opened his eyes, looking straight into hers.
“I am a monster.”
She shook her head, unwilling to believe that because it wasn’t true. His father had made him feel as though he was wrong in some way, an abomination and a monster. He had driven his son to murder, wounding him so badly that his vampire instincts had seized control and forced him to defend himself, driven by a dark need to survive. It wasn’t his fault at all. All of the blame rested at his father’s feet.
“You asked why I called myself Payne. I called myself Payne so I would always remember what I had been through, a constant reminder of how easy it was to make someone suffer, and that love could kill as easily as a blade.”
Elissa felt so sorry for him. He stared at her, grey eyes edged with red but dull and full of unshed tears. Tension flowed from him in waves and lines bracketed his dusky lips. She knew that he was waiting for her to judge him and that there was some part of him that wanted her to hate him, needed it, because he felt he deserved it. He wanted her to tell him that she believed he was an abomination now, a disgusting creature that didn’t deserve her affection.
A monster.
Elissa laid her palm on his cheek. “You’re not a monster. You only wanted your father to love you. You only wanted your family again. You did nothing wrong. They were the ones in the wrong. They all turned on you because you were different and that wasn’t your fault. They should have accepted you for what you were, not rejected you because of it. They should have loved you, Payne.”
He looked away from her, causing her hand to slip from his face. “No one can love a monster.”
Elissa wasn’t sure what else she could say to make him believe her. His parents had turned on him for something that was beyond his control and not his fault. His mate had tried to force him to change and had then betrayed him by using his trust against him, trying to enslave him to her will by using his real name. Now, Elissa had made him embrace his incubus side and had brought him to the place where his grandfather lived, and gods only knew what he was going to do when he saw the man. She had the terrible feeling that he would kill him for what he had done to his family.
“Say something.” His voice was hoarse and his grey eyes both challenged and begged her at the same time.
Elissa still wasn’t sure what to say, so she craned her neck and kissed him. He was quick to respond, his lips dancing with hers, a desperate and hungry edge to his movements. He needed this more than he needed words. She would show him that he was wrong.
Payne slid his arm around her and pulled her on top of him. He held her there, his hands grasping her backside, as he kissed her. She allowed him to master her, his aggressive kisses sending a hot rush through her and making her head spin until she felt dizzy, drunk on his passion and his desire for her.
She didn’t think he was a monster.
His pained confession had only awoken dangerous feelings in her, ones that ran deeper than compassion. He had reached out and grabbed her heart, and now she wasn’t sure what to do, but there was one thing she knew.
She was falling for him, and it was already too late to save herself.
CHAPTER 12
Payne wasn’t sure how to act around Elissa. He strolled along the bare pale blue corridor, his boots heavy on the wooden floor, heading away from their room with her trailing along beside him. She hadn’t said much since he had bared all and let her see beyond the barrier, but the way she looked at him each time he chanced a glance at her reassured him that she honestly believed he wasn’t a monster. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and she smiled at him, silvery eyes warm with what might have been affection. He wanted to believe that it was. He needed to hold on to hope that Elissa might become the one great thing in his life, the reward he wanted her to be, not another person that would end up cutting him to the bone and leaving him alone in this world.
Her fingers stroked his left palm and he didn’t stop her. He let her slide her hand into his and then shifted his, linking their fingers to heighten the connection between them. He liked doing this with her. He had held hands with women before, but not this way, with fingers locked together. He had always tried to keep a distance, even from the woman he had thought was his true mate. He could see that now that he was with Elissa. With her, he wanted to be as close as he could get, joined in ways that felt permanent and secure. He had slept with her locked tightly in his embrace, held flush against him, constantly aware of her body pressing into his, all softness and warmth, her feminine scent filling his lungs and her steady heartbeat sounding in his ears, a rhythm that had soothed him and kept the nightmares at bay.
He had never been into the poetic or romantic shit, but he kept wondering whether the needs he felt around her, the constant pressing urge to touch her in some way and be linked to her, was because she was his true mate.
His little witch.
Both sides of him purred in approval.
Payne tugged his hand behind his back, forcing her to follow her arm and press against his side. He turned into her, wrapped his free arm around her waist, and dragged her closer. He lowered his mouth and claimed her lips, stealing her moist sweet breath with his kiss. She moaned and rather than pushing him away and chastising him for slowing them down, pulled him closer and ran her hand around the nape of his neck.
The feel of her fingers ploughing through his hair sent a shiver dancing over his nerve endings and lit up his hunger, igniting his need for her. He walked with her, his mouth dominating hers, tongues tangling and teasing, and pressed her into the wall. She moaned, the sound sweet in his ears, and clawed his scalp, ripping a groan from his throat.
“Witch,” he growled into her mouth and kissed her harder, claiming more of her, unable to control himself now that she had turned wicked. A hot bolt of lust struck him right to his soul and he shoved her harder against the wall. Elissa wriggled against him. Payne grabbed her bottom and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he rolled his eyes, groaning again as they locked around his backside.
He rocked into her, already hard and aching in his jeans. She moaned breathily against his lips, the soft puff of air driving him out of control.
Payne snarled and kissed her again.
She tensed.
They weren’t alone.
Payne lifted his head and slowly turned it to
face the intruder. An incubus stood in the open doorway of one of the rooms down the hall to his right, naked as the day he had been born, his hand on his cock, slowly stroking it. The sure look in his blue and gold eyes, the way he smiled right at Elissa, and the fact that she reacted, pushed Payne over the edge.
He dropped Elissa, teleported to the man, grabbed him by the throat and slammed him hard into the doorframe, knocking the breath from him.
Payne stepped into him and roared in his face, baring his fangs and tightening his grip on the man’s throat at the same time, digging his claws in to draw blood. The incubus choked and grimaced, and grappled with Payne’s arm, trying to prise it away from him. Payne snarled again, getting in the man’s face, ensuring the dark haired male knew he was treading on thin ice and that he wouldn’t get a warning next time he turned on the charm with Elissa.
“Payne,” Elissa whispered and he refused to heed her command. He couldn’t let this male think that a female ruled him and could easily bring him to heel.
Payne tightened his grip, throttling the male who had challenged him. He growled, flashing fangs again, his eyes red and sharp, his vampire side fully in control. “Mine. Understand?”
The male frantically nodded.
Payne released him and then landed a hard right hook on his jaw for good measure, sending him crashing onto the wooden floor. It took all of his willpower to force himself to step away and not level a hard kick at his stomach while he was down.
He turned to face Elissa.
She stood with her back pressed against the wall. There was a nervous edge to her beautiful face and her heartbeat, but the scent of desire continued to roll off her and her enlarged pupils said that his display of aggression, the things he had said, and his possessive behaviour had aroused her.
Bewitch (Vampire Erotic Theatre Romance Series Book 5) Page 12