Secret Unleashed sm-6

by Sierra Dean

  “How many doors are in nearby proximity?” I was mostly asking myself, but the other two leaned over it as well. There was a door beside it, jutting off from the stairwell, and a half-dozen rooms were in easy access to the stairs. From those rooms hallways fanned out and staircases went up and down to the different levels. Basically it narrowed our search to about forty-eight doors.

  “There’s also a linen room here.” Maxime pointed to a narrow hall. “I understand there are a dozen or more drawers in there. Any of them could have been outfitted with a lock.”

  I sipped my blood, grimacing because it had gotten cool while I inspected the map, and let my gaze tour over the blue-and-white maze before me.

  “It would help if we knew what we were looking for.” I sighed.

  “Our best bet is to start at the window. The tour follows this route.” Maxime walked his fingers like tiny legs over the path we’d be following on our haunted tour the next night. “When the group goes this way, we’ll hang back. By the time they make their next stop we’ll be out of earshot, and that gives us at least ten minutes before they can call another guide in to come searching for us.”

  The distance between the window and the place he said the group would stop didn’t seem all that wide, but if Max believed we’d have ten minutes, I was willing to believe him.

  “So…ten minutes to check almost fifty possible doors. Not counting the linen room.”

  “Right.”

  “And we can’t split up,” Holden pointed out. “Only one key.”

  “We’ll work in a sweeping grid,” I suggested. “Start closest to the window and move back and forth in a semicircle. Check as many locks as we can before they find us.”

  Again, I wished we had some better idea what it was we were hoping to find, if anything. Sutherland had hidden the key, which implied he’d left the item in the house to retrieve later. But if that was the case, where was he? What if he’d gone back already and found a way to get the item without the key?

  Or had someone gotten to him before he had a chance?

  What was it we were hunting that was important enough he was willing to risk being declared a rogue for it? And if he hadn’t run, what was so special it warranted abducting a vampire?

  I had no idea what kind of man my father had been, but my mother had loved him, and my grandfather had allowed them to be together. For a werewolf king to like a human teenager, there must have been something good about Sutherland, something decent.

  All of my mother’s goodness had faded the day Sutherland died, but was the same true of my father? I wanted to believe whatever once made him worthy of being loved still existed. I wanted to meet him and find out I wasn’t made up of entirely bad DNA.

  “We go tomorrow.” I finished off my blood with a scowl. “If we don’t find Sutherland, we’re damn well going to find something.” I was sick of coming up short on answers. The last thing I wanted to find was more questions.

  If I wanted questions going unanswered, I could just watch Lost.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Stop looking.”

  I was alone in the dark, unable to see anything. My nighttime eyesight worked a lot like night-vision goggles in that I could see but only if there was some small spark of light to begin with. If the darkness was complete, I was blind.

  I stood still, unwilling to move in case I ran into anything unpleasant or accidentally found myself on the edge of a bottomless pit. Who knew what lurked in the darkness?

  Nothing moved or gave me any indication someone was with me, but still the voice said, “Stop looking.”

  Shivers rocked me hard, like I’d been plunged into a vat of icy water and quickly removed. “Hello?” Holding my hand out in front of me, I hoped to feel something, but my fingers grasped at empty space.

  “You won’t find what you’re after.” The voice was masculine, not a common thing for my dreams, unless you counted the ones where I was naked with Holden. But this wasn’t a fun dream. I wasn’t totally sure it was a dream.

  Did I remember falling asleep? No. Nothing felt real here, and I struggled to keep one foot planted in reality.

  “How do you know what I’m looking for?” My voice echoed back at me, though what it had hit to create the echo, I didn’t know. The air was so heavy I wanted to sit down, but I didn’t dare. I still didn’t know where I was or what was around me. Dream or not, I didn’t feel like plunging to my death.

  “You want what I was looking for. Stop.”

  That male voice was unfamiliar, yet somehow I knew it. “Sutherland?”

  “I know what you’re doing. You have to stop.”

  “I’m looking for you.”

  “Stop.”

  “No.” I shook my head in case he could see me. “I have to find you.”

  “Because they want me back? It’s not worth it, girl. I’m not worth it. What you find…just stop looking.” His voice grew distant for a moment and then loud again, the way a phone with a bad connection might.

  “I found the key.”

  “It unlocks a cabinet of horrors.” Again his voice faded out, only now he sounded tired. “Don’t go.”

  Was this my dream or his? We shared blood, so it was possible for us to communicate this way, but it hadn’t happened before. In all my twenty-three years he’d never slipped into my head, nor me into his. What had changed? Was it proximity, or desperation? And whose need had made it happen?

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m with The Doctor. Stop looking. Stop.”

  “What doctor?”

  “The Doctor. Don’t unlock the door. He knows you’re looking. You have to go home.”

  I stood still, frozen in place. What was he talking about? What doctor? This dream infuriated me in new ways because it wasn’t similar to any I’d ever had. It wasn’t vague in a symbolic way; it was just vague enough to be annoying.

  “Sutherland, I need to find you.”

  The darkness flickered and was replaced with a dimly lit corridor. On either side, illuminated by individual yellow lights, was a series of doors. The layout was like the warehouse in the Tenderloin, except these doors all looked old and expensive.

  The key was in my hand.

  We were in his subconscious, not mine. I’d never seen these doors before. If only I could manipulate what he was dreaming, he might show me the right door in spite of himself.

  “If I start at the window, where do I go?”

  A dozen doors vanished, their lights going dark with the audible sound of a bulb burning out. I took a step forward, able to see a path through the murky darkness.

  “Stop,” he protested.

  “Show me the door.”

  Another set of lights went out—pop, pop, pop—and I ran forward to keep from being consumed by the dark.

  “You’ll regret it,” he promised.

  “I regret a lot of things. I won’t regret this. I have the key, now show me the door.”

  All the lights around me went out in a shower of sparks, leaving one door lit, seemingly miles away. I walked towards it, drawn like a moth to the flame, the key held outstretched in my trembling palm.

  “Don’t,” he shouted.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Two feet from the door the ground gave way beneath me, a darkness unlike any I’d known before opening up. I was swallowed into the vast, cold nothing, all light gone, and I fell, fell, fell. I fell for an eternity, the chasm was so endless. The pitch-blackness stopped being a mere cloud around me, and it transformed into emotion. I was drowning in fear and sorrow and regret, and I knew everything I was feeling was what my father was feeling.

  I couldn’t recall ever having woken screaming before, but I did that night.

  Bathed in cold sweat and reeking of fear so thick I could smell it on myself, I was dragged from my nightmare by the sound of my own screams. Even when my eyes opened, my throat continued to make hoarse, rasping shrieks, like I couldn’t believe I was awake.

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sp; Surely this was some sort of mocking limbo. A temporary reprieve to make it that much worse when I was dragged back into the abyss again.

  “Secret.” Strong hands held my shoulders, shaking me.

  My screams tapered off into hiccups as I struggled to catch my breath. Holden was lying over me, his arms braced on either side of my shoulders, and he looked terrified. “What the hell happened?” he asked when I caught my breath.

  “I found him,” I whispered, my throat too raw to speak any louder. “I went inside his dream.”

  “Sutherland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he know who you were?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so, but he knew I was looking for him. He knew what we were trying to do. He told me to stop, told me I’d regret it.”

  “A threat?”

  “I think it was a warning.” I remembered the fear, the terrible, terrible fear. “Definitely a warning.”

  “Why wouldn’t he want you to look for him, unless he was worried you’d find something he didn’t want you to?”

  I put my hands on Holden’s forearms, running my hands up and down them, feeling the hairs prickle against my palms. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so I trailed my fingers over his shoulders and down his chest, the smooth, hard muscles of his stomach begging to be traced. I needed to feel something good, and he felt like a warm Sunday morning to me.

  “Hold me.” It wasn’t a request, it was a raspy command. I needed him to put his arms around me, lest I be torn back into that dark place. “Hold me.” My nails scraped the skin of his back, urging him closer.

  For a moment he hesitated. Had I been thinking logically I’d have understood why. One second I was screaming my lungs out, the next I had my hands all over him. But he hadn’t been in this dream with me. He hadn’t been the one to go for a midnight swim in Sutherland’s terror. I had to feel loved right then, or I might not be able to feel anything warm and good ever again in my life.

  “Hold me.” I was practically crying from the need for it.

  He sat back on his knees and tugged me up off the bed, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against him. He wasn’t warm, but he seemed to absorb the frantic heat of my body, taking on my temperature as his own. I clung to him like a piece of flotsam in the midst of a stormy sea, the last thing floating when everything else was going down with the ship.

  Holden stroked my hair with slow, soothing motions, whispering nonsense words into my ears. “Hush, hush, baby, nothing to fear, no worries, shhh.” He couldn’t know what there was to fear. I had everything to fear.

  And the worst part was, I’d still go after Sutherland.

  What I’d felt hadn’t been my own emotion, it had been my father’s, and I’d experienced it through the buffer of a dream. Whatever he was going through in real life, the volume of his pain, would be amplified a million times over.

  I didn’t care about what the council was missing anymore. My sole mission was to find my father and bring him back from whatever was doing this to him.

  I looped my arms around Holden’s back, trying to grab handfuls of his skin so I could bring him closer. If I could have climbed inside him like a sleeping bag, I would have. I wanted to wear his comfort like a jacket, wrapping myself in it.

  The next best thing would be to have him in me.

  “Holden…”

  I wasn’t sure how my voice sounded to him, but to me it had never been so coarse with need before. The way I spoke his name was wanton and a little insane.

  He pulled his head back to look at me, and his eyes were charcoal black, blotting out the beautiful brown. I couldn’t stare into the blackness, it was too stark. I closed my eyes and kissed him, dragging my nails roughly through his hair, anchoring his mouth to mine. He gave me no resistance, opening his lips for me, stroking my tongue with fevered, electric attention that sent sparks through my veins.

  He cupped the back of my head in one hand while the other delved beneath the hem of my shirt, seeking out my bare skin. With each flick of his tongue and brush of his fingertips, I felt myself awakening, pulling free from the claws of the nightmare. The taste of him in my mouth was salty, almost coppery, a vibrant hint of the blood he’d taken the evening before.

  “I need you,” I croaked, when he released my mouth to let me gasp for air. He didn’t need to breathe, so he could have consumed me with kisses. What a fine death that would have been.

  “Are you sure?” He cupped my breasts, teasing my nipples into rigid points and torturing them by abrading the sensitive tips with his cool skin.

  I sucked a breath through my teeth, as if I’d be able to refuse him when he was playing me like a sonata. What I needed from him tonight wasn’t about making choices or building relationships. I needed him to keep me from exploding into tiny fragments of fear and vanishing. I had to feel something real, and good, and he could give me what I craved.

  “I’m sure.”

  He stripped the Yankees shirt off me, throwing it to the floor and leaving me in nothing but the stupid thong he’d packed for me. I might as well have been naked for all the good it did in covering me.

  His gaze caressed the front of my body like a third hand, appreciation for what he saw written across his face. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  Coming from him the statement was ridiculous. He was the most gorgeous creature to have ever once lived, and for him to think of me as beautiful seemed outrageous.

  “You too,” I mumbled, lowering my mouth to his exposed neck. My fangs were out, but I didn’t want to bite him, not yet. Biting was for later, when I wouldn’t associate fresh blood with fear. He’d need to go slow to get me there.

  I raked my teeth delicately over his skin, and his whole body shuddered, his big hands clutching my waist tightly. He cupped my buttocks and lifted me onto his lap, seating me over his erection. The pressure of his hardness along my inner thigh felt glorious, even through the layer of his silk pajama pants. Why had I insisted he wear pants to bed? What false flourish of modesty had made me think that was a good idea?

  I wrapped my fingers around his length, stroking him up and down, the silk slipping smoothly against his shaft. He tipped my head backwards with a tug on my hair and ran his tongue down the line of my throat until his face was nuzzled between my breasts. Each tightened nipple was lavished with his attention as he teased and licked, making sure they were painfully sensitive before he grazed them with his fangs.

  The wicked sensation of it, dangerous but controlled, made me lose my grip on his cock, my hands flying to the back of his neck to keep his mouth in place. I moaned, but the sound was so feral I didn’t recognize myself.

  With my attention focused on the ministrations of his mouth, I didn’t feel him move his hands until his fingers were inside the thin material of my underwear, stroking me in equal rhythm with his tongue. I was so taut from the feel of it, frantic with desire, I bit down on the top of his head, unable to think of what else to do.

  His tongue and fingers stilled for a moment as if he wasn’t sure whether I’d bitten him out of passion or as a warning for him to stop. “Don’t stop,” I said. “Don’t ever stop.”

  He chuckled, his laughter rumbling against my breast. “So you want to play rough, do you?”

  I hadn’t bitten him hard. He’d need to wash his hair to get the blood out later, but it was barely a scratch. He’d heal in less than a minute.

  “It was an accident,” I protested.

  He pushed me down firmly into the soft nest of blankets and pillows. “I thought you said you didn’t want me to stop.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Good. Tell me what you want.”

  He kept me pinned with one hand, his fingers loosely circling my neck while his other hand remained cupped over my sex, stroking in lazy, cruel, teasing gestures.

  “That,” I gasped. “More.” I could barely remember how to speak, let alone form commands, and he hadn’t yet begun to really touch me.

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nbsp; He picked up the pace, alternating quick flicks with long strokes, never setting a rhythm I could follow and occasionally stealing my breath by inserting his finger inside me before resuming his campaign of driving me mad.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  I wanted him. I wanted the weight of him on top of me while he filled me inside, but I no longer knew how to form those desires into words.

  “You,” I said at last, able to come up with something resembling a response to his request.

  “You want me?”

  I nodded furiously while he continued to toy with me, the intensity of his touch creating a ball of heat in my belly that fanned out through my whole body, making me feel light and hazy.

  “But what do you want me to do?” Now I knew he was tormenting me on purpose, the evil prick. I clawed at his arms, and his fingers tightened around my throat, choking me, but in a purposeful, nonviolent way. If he wanted to hurt me, he could have crushed my windpipe with the same ease as another man could snap his fingers. This was a game, a twisted, wonderful game. “Tell me,” he insisted.

  “I want you inside me,” I said, my words barely a whisper, using what air he allowed me to have.

  He moved to withdraw his hand, but I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, holding him in place. “Oh you do want to play dirty with me, don’t you, my naughty girl?” I’d never heard him sound so…British before. His UK accent had long since slipped away once he’d adjusted to life in America, but his old life was there, sneaking into his vowels and coy consonants. He didn’t sound posh, not the way his American persona would lead people to believe. The accent sneaking through was all Northern, gritty and mean. I got a little wetter just to hear it.

  “Keep talking,” I muttered, digging my nails into his wrist so he wouldn’t dream of releasing my throat. His grip didn’t clench farther—any more would border on risky—but he didn’t let up either. A pulse of his fingertips was warning enough he could clamp down harder at any moment, and my heart throbbed, with matching pulses hammering in my ears and groin.

  “You like it when I talk this way?” he growled. I didn’t know how to reconcile this version of Holden with the one I knew. My Holden was sleek and manicured, everything in its right place, the pinnacle of handsome respectability.