Iniquitous: A Dark Paranormal Romance (The Marked Book 3)

by Bianca Scardoni

  “It’s this one,” said Maz, jumping in front of me and Dominic to open the door to the guestroom.

  “Thank you, Maz,” said Dominic as he put his hand on Maz’s shoulder and halted him. “I can take it from here.”

  “You sure, Dom?” he said and then ticked his chin at me like an accusation. “She can get a little feisty, you know? You might need some back—”

  “It’s Dominic. And I assure you, I can handle her just fine.” There was a cocky way about how he said the last part that made me want to put his theory to the test.

  “Alright. Cool.” Maz nodded, giving it no second thought. “Holler if you need me.”

  “Will do.” Dominic swung the door shut in Maz’s face and then swiveled around to face me. Holding his finger to his lips, he listened for a moment to make sure Maz was gone. Dropping his hand to his side, his lips tipped up at the corners. “That was quite an impressive move you pulled.”

  “You liked that, huh?”

  “I did.”

  “You would.”

  His smile widened into a grin as he took a quick look around the room. “I’ll just make sure you have everything you need and then I’ll give you your space.”

  “You’re leaving me alone?” I balked.

  He cocked his head to the side. “Is that disappointment I’m detecting?”

  “In your dreams, Dominic.” It was more like sheer panic, but I didn’t bother sharing that tidbit with him. “I just thought we should go over our plan again, now that we’re alone.” I tried not to make my voice sound so desperate.

  His eyes skimmed over me briefly. “As much as I would enjoy spending the night plotting with you, or otherwise, that would only raise suspicion where suspicion is not needed.” He gave me a pointed look. “I’ll be right outside should you need me.”

  “I’m sure I won’t,” I mumbled under my breath as I turned in a circle and inspected the room.

  More ugly wallpaper and gold plated everything. You’d think Engel would have acquired some taste over the last couple of centuries, but no.

  I made a gagging noise. “Major yuck.”

  “Is the room not to your liking, Princess?” asked Dominic, still hovering around the door with his arms crossed behind his back. He had his signature lopsided grin plastered across his face.

  “It looks like the 1840’s threw up in here.” I said and then shuddered.

  Then again, anything was better than that cage.

  “Indeed, it does.” He chuckled as he rested his hand on the doorknob. “Try to get some rest, angel. You have a big day ahead of you tomorrow.”

  That was the understatement of the year. Tomorrow was D day. The day we attempted to break out of this hellhole and take out Engel for good. I doubted I would get any sleep at all.

  “Wait!” I whispered-yelled as he started to leave the room.

  He poked his head around the door and waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he stepped back in the room and shut the door behind himself again. “Yes, angel?”

  “I just…” I rubbed my palms against the dirty jeans that had become my latest uniform, and then turned around to think of some kind of excuse to make him stay longer. I glanced at the Victorian dresser in the corner of the room and then shuffled over to it. “You think there’s any clean clothes in this thing?”

  “There should be.”

  I pulled open the first drawer and found a satin nightgown from the same era as the decor. “Double yuck.”

  “I can have Nora bring you something else,” he said, suddenly very close to my ear.

  My breath caught as I spun around and found myself standing less than a whisper away from him. I didn’t hear him move in behind me and the sudden proximity was sending my heart rate into a tailspin. Not to mention he looked particularly luminescent in this weird castle light. What with his dark head-to-toe clothing and his smooth skin that always seemed to perfectly offset his luscious, blond hair.

  Had he always looked this good? I wondered, staring at his pouty lips.

  “Would that please you?” he asked, his gaze dropping down to my own mouth.

  Please me? Did he just say he wanted to please me? My cheeks burned hot.

  He blinked languidly, waiting for me to string a cohesive set of words together. “Are you alright?”

  I wanted to answer him, but I couldn’t get my bottom lip to do anything more than flap up and down like a half-wit. Whatever the hell was going on with me right now was making me look like a complete moron.

  “Angel?”

  “I…”

  “Yes?” He waited, arching an eyebrow at me.

  I inwardly kicked myself and finally blurted out, “I’m fine—I’m totally fine. I’m just tired. Very tired. I think you were right. I should go to bed.” I pressed my rambling lips together and then tried to swirl around him, but he quickly snatched my elbow and pulled me to his side.

  My heart galloped up into my throat.

  “What about the clothes?”

  I shook my head as I tried to force my heart back down into my chest. “I’m actually okay like this,” I lied.

  He narrowed his eyes at me, scrutinizing me. “Why is your heart beating so fast?”

  I swallowed loudly. “Well, because. I…and…you…and—why the hell do you think?” I snapped defensively and then tried to reign myself back in. “You just scared the crap out of me with your freakishly quiet walking! What do you expect?”

  He didn’t say anything. He just continued to examine my face. It was as though he were listening in for clues, for answers. Like he could see into my soul. Needless to say, it made me even more uneasy around him than I already was.

  “Can I go to bed now?” I asked, glancing down at his hand still wrapped around my arm.

  “Certainly.” He still hadn’t released my arm. Instead his other hand came up to my face and gently brushed across my cheek, sending a tirade of shivers throughout my body.

  He smiled again, but it wasn’t just any kind of smile. It was that, I-know-I’m-having-an-effect-on-you smile.

  And I hated that smile.

  9. KISS OF THE VAMPIRE

  I awoke in a cold sweat just before dawn to a night terror filled with bloodied skies and the muddled faces of my enemies. My stomach clenched into a knot as I looked around the room, searching for something to anchor myself down with—something to calm my racing heart, but nothing about the room was familiar, and it only intensified my panic. My mouth opened to call out for Dominic, but I quickly sealed my lips back together as I remembered where I was and everything that was at stake here.

  Still, I needed to find him. I needed him to ease my anxiety.

  Before I could climb out of bed and go off in search of him, my door suddenly opened and Dominic stepped through the threshold. It was almost as though he knew I needed him, like he could feel my distress without even being near me. He shut the door behind himself and then stood there quietly, staring across the room at me. Waiting. Knowing…

  I sat up in my bed and looked back at him. “I had a horrible dream.”

  “You’re just nervous about tomorrow, angel,” he said, without moving. “It’s understandable.”

  I’m pretty sure that would make anyone sleep bad, but it wasn’t even that plaguing my mind. It was something more.

  “I’ve had this dream before. The blood-red sky, the dark woods.” I shook my head, deciding to leave out that part about him being in the nightmare more often than not.

  “Blood skies?” He slid his hands into the pockets of his black pants.

  I nodded. “I can’t help but feel like something bad is coming. Something really bad.”

  “How long have you been having this dream?”

  “A few weeks. Maybe months?” I wasn’t sure of time anymore. “What does it mean?” I asked him.

  Somehow, I’d come to depend on him for answers, like he knew the secrets of the world and could make me privy to them if I just stayed close enough to him.r />
  “It’s just a dream, angel.” He hesitated, and then pulled his hands from his pocket as he moved towards the bed. He sat down on the edge, sitting dangerously close to me, the moonlight dusting his face with the most divine highlights I’d ever seen. “You need to rest,” he said, brushing a lock of hair from my eyes.

  I shivered from the brief contact and immediately found myself wanting more of it.

  Something had changed between us recently. I wasn’t sure what that something was, but it felt like everything. The only thing I knew for sure was that I felt better when he was near me, when he was speaking to me—touching me—but I didn’t know what any of that meant.

  I shook my head: at him, for him, because of him. I wasn’t sure anymore. “I can’t sleep. I’m too nervous.”

  “I know, angel. I can feel it.” He titled his head to the side and examined me, read me like an open book. “Would you prefer that I stay with you until you fall asleep?”

  That was exactly what I wanted, but I couldn’t answer him. Something else he said had snagged all my attention. “Did you say you can feel it?”

  He paused, not realizing he let that slip and then tipped his head up once.

  “You can feel what I’m feeling?” I verified.

  “I can feel your emotions—your uneasiness in particular.” He looked down at me with compunction in his eyes. “The bloodbond goes both ways, angel.”

  My eyes rounded out in surprise. That was brand new info to me.

  “There’s a connection now,” he explained, almost as if to justify himself. “A tether between us that lets me know when you’re upset or scared or angry. All I have to do is let myself feel it.”

  “Let yourself?”

  “Allow the connection,” he clarified.

  “And you have? You’ve let yourself feel it?”

  “Sometimes.” He blinked tiredly. “In spite of myself, of course.”

  “What does that mean?” There was something he wasn’t saying. Something he didn’t want to admit.

  “Never you mind that, angel. Just try to get some rest,” he said, leaning in beside me to prop my pillow up.

  I turned towards him, inhaling his scent. He smelled like chocolate and dark liquor, and something else. Something seducing and threatening all at once. “I don’t want to sleep.”

  He turned at my words, bringing his lips within inches of mine. Heat danced across my skin in waves and I suddenly had the urge to kiss him. To taste his lips and see if they were as savory as they looked. Unsure of my intentions and completely detached from what I was doing or thinking, I leaned in closer to him, bringing my mouth as close to his as I could get, but he promptly pulled away from me before I could make contact.

  It took me a minute to realize what just happened.

  I dropped my eyes, embarrassment and confusion warring inside my mind. Confusion because I had no idea what was going on between us anymore—what was going on with me. It was as though I was in some parallel universe where I wanted Dominic but he didn’t want me. I couldn’t seem to control myself anymore; to control my urge to touch him; to kiss him. Somewhere in the deepest trenches of my heart, it felt wrong, but that voice was so small and distant now that I barely heard it at all.

  “Why won’t you kiss me?” I asked him, despite my mind screaming at me to shut up.

  He blinked slowly, buying himself some time to answer. “I’m trying very hard to do the right thing here, angel, but you’re making it very hard for me.”

  “Since when do you care about doing the right thing? And what is the right thing? If I want to kiss you and you want to kiss me, why is that wrong?” I couldn’t believe the words as they were coming out of me. It was as though I wasn’t even in control of my own mouth anymore. “Unless you really don’t want to kiss me.”

  “Don’t do that, angel.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t play that game with me. It won’t end well for you, I promise you that.”

  A slither of fear crawled up my back. It was a warning if I ever did hear one, and yet my damn mouth persisted anyway. “I’m not playing any games with you, Dominic.” I scooched in closer to him; as close as he would allow me to get.

  His back stiffened as our breath mingled together like a forbidden cocktail.

  “I want you to kiss me.” I reached up and took his face in my hand, angling it so that he had nowhere else to look but at me. His skin, while cool against my fingers, was as soft as a feather and completely entrancing. My body swayed to him like a pendulum, and I followed it freely, bringing my lips to his like an offering.

  His hand came up to my neck, stopping me just before I could land the kiss. “You don’t know what you want,” he said, his fingers still wrapped loosely around my neck.

  “Yes, I do,” I insisted.

  He looked down at me, his smoldering eyes looking as though they were at war within themselves, like he was desperately trying to restrain himself. To do the ‘right thing’.

  I never thought I’d see the day, but it only made me want to kiss him more.

  “Go to bed, angel. For your sake and mine.”

  “Kiss me goodnight and I’ll go to bed.” Did I just say that?

  He licked his lips at my words, his eyes moving down to my mouth as though he were thinking it over. My heart picked up its thrum as his hand moved from my neck to my face, cupping my cheek with his palm as he stroked my waiting lips with the pad of his thumb.

  I shivered again. This time, the really, really good ones.

  “Go to bed,” he said in that strange voice I’d come to love and despise all at once.

  His words crawled through my mind, overtaking my own free will.

  I lay down on my pillow and glared up at him. “You promised you wouldn’t compel me.”

  “It’s for your own good, angel.”

  “I think I should be the judge of what’s good for me and what isn’t.”

  “Unfortunately, you aren’t equipped to handle that task right now.”

  I shot him a doubtful look. “And you are?”

  “Barely,” he said under his breath as he looked back at the door.

  I huffed out a sigh. “Well, do you want to feed at least?”

  His eyes snapped back to mine, rounded and stunned. And he wasn’t the only one.

  Apparently, my body wasn’t the only thing I’d lost control of. I’d also lost my damn mind. Although it wasn’t a secret that I’d come to enjoy his nightly visits—that I longed for his special brand of medicine that chased away all the un-pleasantries in my life, I certainly never thought I’d actually ask for it.

  Out loud.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Since when?” I whined, knitting my brows at him.

  “Since now. You’re starting to crave it. This is dangerous ground you’re treading on.” His words were a warning, but there was something else in his eyes that seemed almost…pleased by it.

  “I’m not craving it,” I lied. “It just helps me sleep.”

  He licked his lips again as he looked down at me, thinking it over—debating it in his mind.

  “Please.” I picked up my hair and moved it over my shoulders, exposing his favorite spot on my body. “Just one more time…to help me sleep,” I said, running my fingers along my neck. It was merciless and I knew it, but I didn’t care. “You might not get another chance after tomorrow.”

  His jaw muscles tightened as he stared down at my neck longingly, and I swore, I felt the exact moment he made the decision—the moment he gave in to me. I could feel it deep down in the marrow of my bones.

  Darkness filtered in over his eyes and in the next breath, he was hovering above my body. My head was swimming and my heart was pounding recklessly in my chest, but I’d never felt more alive in my entire life. Anticipation electrified my skin as he moved my hand out of his way and then lowered his mouth to my neck.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered—to himself, or me, or
some unknown master in the sky.

  His teeth clicked out and plunged through the soft skin just below my ear. There was no pain, no fear, no anything; only rapture and an instant sense of wellbeing. Of bliss. He groaned against my neck and bit down harder, taking more.

  It occurred to me just then that he may not be able to control himself, that without the prison door separating us and gravity pulling me away from him, he might not be able to stop himself from bleeding me dry.

  It was a brief, fleeting thought, of course, and it disappeared just as soon as the darkness began painting everything in shades of black. I was slipping away from this world again and I couldn’t wait to be gone. My eyes rolled back into my head as my heart slowed down its steady thrum. It was that familiar moment right before the world evaporated from my consciousness, and I waited for it each time with bated breath.

  Dominic stopped abruptly, drawing his face away from me, though his body still lingered above mine. He wiped the corner of his mouth and stared down at me, his dark eyes swirling with smoke and fire.

  I wondered how he’d been able to control himself? To stop himself from going too far. I tried to speak up and ask him the questions that were burning through my mind, but my words came out as a whimper.

  “Sleep now, angel,” he said, stroking my cheek again and then disappearing from my view.

  I wanted to get up and find him. To chase after him and make him stay with me. But my lids were too weighty and my exhaustion too heavy to fight away. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  10. SECRETS & LIES

  Lucy came to wake me the next morning, carrying a serving tray of all my breakfast favorites, courtesy of Engel. As usual, she didn’t speak to me or make any direct eye contact. I wanted to ask her where she’d come from and how long she’d been enslaved here, but Maz wasn’t far behind and I knew that asking her questions would raise suspicion in him. I couldn’t risk all the progress I’d made with Engel this past week, convincing him that I was acclimating to my place here. Frankly, I couldn’t handle even the thought of having to exist another day in this place, pretending like Engel didn’t make me completely sick to my stomach. Tonight was the night we were finally breaking out of this place and nothing was going to get in my way. Besides, if everything went according to plan, Lucy wouldn’t be here for much longer either.