by RuNyx .
The same dreaded staircase her father had all but pushed her down from.
Morana came to an abrupt halt at the foot of the stairs, the memory of her disillusionment crashing through her body, the same bruised body that had only just healed at the hands of the enemy. Her father had not known whether she would live or break her neck in the fall. He’d just let her go, and lay a trap that she had fallen for hook, line, and sinker in her emotional state.
She wasn’t emotional now. No. She was logical, calm, and rational where he was concerned.
For some reason, the emotions inspired by the man beside her were much greater in intensity than the one inspired by these stairs, affording her that calm. And for the first time, she was grateful for it. She didn’t want him to witness that, to witness her being any more vulnerable than she had already been when it came to her father.
Without another word, constantly aware of his scrutiny of her, she quickly climbed up the stairs, knowing he was right behind her even though she could not hear him. She’d never thought she’d walk these steps again, and it seemed surreal to be doing so not only stealthily in the dead of the night but also with the man who’d vowed to kill her. She needed to keep reminding herself of that, even as she felt things change inside her. There was a reason he hated her enough to take that vow, and until she discovered it, she could not, would not let all her guards down.
She made her way hastily to her suite, unlocking the door and heading towards the study where she kept her equipment, ignoring any nostalgia inspired by her small haven. Opening the door, she stood for a moment on the threshold, looking around the little heaven she had created for herself in this strange place. She remembered every countless night she’d spent working here, remembered the dreams she’d had of getting away from it all in here.
That girl seemed so different from who she had become. That girl with hope and dreams and the fire to make it.
She didn’t even know who she was any more in so many ways. Had she lost the fire somewhere along the way?
“Get what you need.”
Whiskey and sin. Molten lava and dancing flames.
No, she hadn’t lost the fire. It just lay dormant inside her most days. And what she couldn’t figure out was why him. Why not Jackson, or any of her father’s men, or even Dante for that matter? Why this man with the voice of sin and the body of a sinner? He called her fire forth like a mage and she did not understand it.
Morana nodded to acknowledge his words and quickly hurried about, picking up her laptop from where it still lay on the desk. Opening the bottom drawer, she pulled out her hard drives, dumping them all in a small backpack from the desk. Taking a quick inventory, realizing she had everything she needed, Morana looked about the room one last time, memorizing it, and swallowed down the lump in her throat.
He was watching her, and she needed to be cool.
Inhaling deeply, she turned to him, only to find him leaning against the door casually, like he owned the place. Those focused blue eyes observed everything that crossed her face while his own remained carefully blank. Morana felt her heart start to stutter in that familiar way it did with him, the fire flooding her bloodstream, igniting every cell it touched.
This was not the place for this. If there was ever not a place for this, it was her father’s house.
“All done?” he asked quietly, his voice even but tone heated with something her body recognized and called back to.
She nodded.
He let her take the bag and moved out of the suite as she followed, her warm body not giving her the luxury of emotions at that moment. They went down the stairs, the house dark and quiet, and she didn’t know whether her father was in or not. Nor did she care.
Opening the side door, he escaped out first, pulling her behind him as they stayed in the shadows, walking towards the tree line.
Suddenly, a group of guards came around the corner, talking among themselves, their guns relaxed on their shoulders.
Morana halted in her tracks, her mind blanking as fear filled her veins, and she turned around to run for cover the exact moment a hand pulled her roughly and pushed her face-first against an alcove in the wall at the side of the house. Heart hammering in her ears, blood rushing around in her body with a vengeance, Morana stayed completely still, overwhelming sensations crashing over her as the scent of leather and musk permeating all around her as she took in a few deep breaths, becoming aware of many things all at once.
His arms trapped her against the wall, hands flat beside her head as his body completely covered hers from view, his large form curled over her in a way that was not protective but something else entirely, something she could not define. His breaths brushed over her ear, his scruff rasping against the skin of her neck as he tucked his head in to make them merge even deeper into the shadows.
But it was his body against her back, his tall, hard, lethal body against her small back that made her knees shake.
Her breath caught in her throat.
He did not move.
His erection pushed into her back.
He did not move.
The guards’ voices faded away.
He did not move.
The fire pooled in her belly, low between her legs, making her instinctively arch against him.
Then, he moved.
He pushed the bag off her shoulder to the ground, the strap of her top falling down to her elbow with it. His hand traced her bare skin with a rough finger. Breaths hitched, Morana closed her eyes, feeling the calluses on his hand rub deliciously against her soft skin, the goosebumps scattering all over her arms, making her nipples pebble, making her breasts hurt as heat licked between her legs.
He hadn’t touched her like this the last time. He hadn’t breathed against her neck like this and rubbed his jaw over the spot against her shoulder, all the while keeping his mouth away from her. His hand slowly moved around her neck, leaving her breasts untouched, unattended like last time. She wanted – no, needed – him to touch them. She needed him to tug on her nipples, and give her that sweet pleasure she knew her body was capable of. She needed to rub them against his thumb, and create that delicious friction she could feel pulse inside her core.
She needed his hands on her breasts.
But his hand closed around her neck, in that hold she’d come to recognize, firm but not tight, as his lips moved right next to her ear.
“Did you feel me inside you the next day?” he whispered against the soft skin of her shell, the whiskey in his voice going straight to her head, his words going straight to her core. Her walls clenched in the memory of that hard, fast fuck on the restroom counter.
Morana bit her lip, not giving him her response verbally, even as her hips pushed back against his. She felt his cock slip against her ass as she stood on her toes, the erotic friction making her behave like a cat in heat rather than the smart, rational woman she’d been until moments ago.
Her anger at herself though, her regret for letting this happen again was much less than what it’d been a few days ago. She didn’t know what that spoke about her, or even what it meant, but for now, she embraced it, her head falling back against his shoulder as she ground herself on him, with her front pressed to the wall.
His hand tightened around her throat, his hips thrusting against her as his other hand slipped inside her jeans, her panties, homing in straight on her sweet spot. Her mouth fell open on a pant as he buried his digits knuckle deep inside her.
“So fucking wet for me,” he growled in her ear, his hips pushing forcefully against her ass. His fingers worked on her front, the hard brick wall rubbing against her breasts, scraping against her nipples, making her walls quiver every time his fingers slipped in and out. His thumb rubbed over her clit.
“Fuck if I’m not hard for you,” he spat, his hatred, his desire, his possession seeping from his voice into her body. Her heartbeats pulsed everywhere she felt him. His scent, his warmth, his touch surrounding her, imprisoning her, invading
her in a way that made her blood so hot she felt like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.
His hand moved against her, inside her, as he moved behind her. The dual assault coiled the heat tighter and tighter into her belly, her spine tingling, arching, and pulsing with electric sparks of pleasure as she bit her lip to keep her pants contained.
Before she could question it or stop herself, Morana slipped a hand behind her, cupping him through the fabric of his jeans. She squeezed him hard as he cursed into her ear, his fingers speeding up impossibly inside her.
“Not – fucking – here.”
He gave her clit one rub, then another right before he pinched it hard, and simultaneously covered her mouth with the other hand. Muffling her noises like before, he pushed her over the edge as she came all over his fingers, panting loudly, her breasts heaving. Every single beat of her heart throbbed everywhere in her body.
She throbbed. She pulsed. She clenched. She quivered.
His fingers remained inside her for a few moments, milking out her orgasm as much as they could before he pulled his fingers out of her pants, wiping them over his jeans and picked up the fallen bag while surveying the area.
And Morana just stood there – speechless, stunned – looking at the wall.
The wall of her father’s house. The wall of the same house where her father lived. The wall of the heart of his territory.
And Morana had let Tristan Caine make her come like a firecracker, against that very wall, out in the open while guards patrolled the area, while he remained completely under control.
Fuck.
Fuck.
What was wrong with her? What was wrong with him?
This was the restaurant all over again except much, much more twisted. No, this wasn’t a proper fuck, and yes, it had been the mother of quickies. Still.
The worst part though? She didn’t feel an ounce of remorse.
A hand closed around her arm and turned her around, making her face those blue eyes still heated with the lust of an animal who’d caught the scent of blood, the hunger in them so intense her still-hot body pooled with molten lava, ready again. Just with his eyes.
He leaned forward, his breath whispering across her cheek, his scent engulfing her as his lips lined against her ears.
“Next time, I’m going to see how loud you can scream, Ms. Vitalio. I’m going to make you so sore you won’t know if it’s from the screaming or the fucking.”
This man needed a leash for that dirty, explicit mouth.
Morana rolled her eyes even as her heart stuttered, his words settling into her inflamed body.
“You give yourself a little too much credit.”
“Say that when I can’t still smell you on my fingers.”
She could too. And the fact that this knowledge aroused her while it shouldn’t have made Morana purse her lips, the reminder of his control and the lack of hers like a slap to her senses.
She straightened herself, pulling the bag over her shoulder, and gave him an icy glare. “Can we leave?”
His eyes narrowed slightly at her tone and he considered her for a long moment, his fingers flexing on her arm before he nodded. Turning, he pulled her towards the tree line. They walked in silence for a few minutes, Morana contemplative.
They were almost at the property wall when her phone suddenly vibrated with an incoming message in her pocket.
Ignoring it, Morana focused on getting to the hole they had entered through, seeing the guard waiting for them there. Morana reached the opening and climbed out of it, walking towards the parked beast of a bike, not willing or ready to think about what had just transpired inside.
She focused instead on the smell of the earth, the light from the moon bathing the house of horrors in clean white while watching Tristan Caine speak quietly to the guard.
Remembering the earlier message while she waited beside the vehicle, she pulled out her phone and unlocked it.
Unknown number.
Frowning, Morana clicked open the message, to find a multimedia image attached and no text. She clicked on the image, her brows furrowing as she made out the scanned picture of some old newspaper article.
Morana tapped on the picture and zoomed in, the words becoming clearer on the screen and read.
The Count of Missing Girls Shoots Up To 25
Tenebrae, July 8, 1989: In a ghastly turn of events that have shocked the city, 25 little girls between the ages of 4 and 10 have been gone missing in the 2 years. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Sources reveal that these are only the open and reported cases the police are working on.
The latest victim is the 6-year-old Stacy Hopkins (above), who went missing right from the sidewalk while her mother turned the corner at Madison Avenue. It is unclear as to who is to blame. While some believe this to be the work of organized crime groups, some have even talked of the occult. Most of the girls, from what our sources revealed, had gone missing from right under adult supervision…
Morana read the entire article describing the gruesome details, not understanding why someone had sent this to her. Who had sent it? And why? Had it been sent by mistake? It must have been.
Bothered about what she’d read but ready to put it out of her mind for the moment as Tristan Caine walked towards her, Morana almost locked her phone when something on the screen caught her eye. A tiny little note was handwritten in the corner with the headline.
Check the article from July 5, 1998.
An article dated twenty-two years ago.
She couldn’t decide if she was really, really brave or really, really stupid.
Maybe an odd combination of both.
Honestly, there were times when Morana wasn’t particularly proud of herself, even while she wanted to pump her fist in the air and jump in glee. The reason for that was simple – sometimes, Morana did things in her recklessness that she knew she shouldn’t but still when she succeeded in doing them, she wanted to preen.
Right then was one of those reckless moments that made her want to preen.
She contained the urge. Barely.
The reason for both her stupidity and her bravery was five cars down, driving a huge black SUV, the vehicle so huge she was easily able to keep her eye on it from so far down the lane. Not a good vehicle for covert operations at all. But since it worked in her favor, she liked it.
After returning back to the penthouse from her old house with her stuff, Morana had locked herself in the guest room and gotten to work on the new set of codes, while also running a background check for the newspaper article some mysterious person had sent her from over thirty years ago. Tracking the said mysterious person had been impossible despite her numerous tries, telling her the one thing she’d needed to know about him or her – he or she knew computers. Really knew computers, for having evaded her.
And it made her wonder if they hadn’t been related to the original theft of the codes.
She’d mulled over a lot of possibilities while doing the work. Thankfully, the owner of the apartment hadn’t bothered or interrupted her at all. Not once in the thirty hours that she’d been working tirelessly on the codes - not for food, or drinks, or just plain staring.
Nothing.
And honestly, after getting the article, she was grateful. Because there were things going on, things she had no idea about. She needed some answers before getting in deeper than she already was. Her stray thoughts had been evident enough for him on the ride back to the apartment, and he’d withdrawn himself.
For nearly thirty hours, Morana had worked on the base for the new codes. She actually made a whole lot of progress, but it wasn’t that which had sent her down the path to recklessness. Oh no. It had been the article, or rather, the background search.
Trying to find something on the Alliance had resulted in absolutely nothing. But trying to find about the series of kidnappings in Tenebrae thirty years ago had yielded more results and gruesome truths than she’d been able to digest.
I
t had been a series of forty-five abductions (at least those known to the public). Abductions of young girls from their homes or parks that had spanned over a period of ten years. The missing girls were never found, not one. Since they had been abducted sporadically over the years, it had been hard for the police to gather much evidence.
Morana was smart enough to connect some dots, yet she had no clue how that was related to the fall of the Alliance. She didn’t even know if it had something to do with it. For all she knew, the person behind the article could’ve been a lunatic or just a prankster.
Yet, she knew in her gut it was connected.
She had since the moment she’d seen the article and the note. The note had led her to the last article reporting the disappearance of a baby Jane Doe.
Morana had tried, after catching up on some much-needed sleep, to try and talk to Amara about it. It had been the beautiful woman after all who’d given her the first clue. But the moment she’d brought up the kidnappings and the Alliance, Amara had stiffened and zipped her lips tight. Morana knew it was because of the loyalty she felt towards Tristan Caine, but it had only frustrated her. Dante would’ve been as helpful as a goat, and asking Tristan Caine alone would’ve either resulted in her pressed against the nearest flat surface or dead.
And she wanted answers. Not his fingers wreaking havoc on her, or his knife slicing her skin open.
Just answers.
Which was why, under dire circumstances, her brain had come up with a plan after exhausting every single option (short of alien abductions). The plan was simple in theory - find out something about Tristan Caine, something to hold over his head (because that man’s closet of skeletons could accommodate a small country, she was certain), and then blackmail him into giving her the truth.
Or die. But at least she’d go down knowing she’d tried her best to find out the truth.
In theory, it was a good plan. In execution, it was reckless.