Edge of the Darkness (Hell on Earth Book 4)

by Brenda K. Davies

  Cries of pleasure reverberated in my head as I imagined him pressing me against the wall while he fucked me until nothing else in this world mattered, his skin sliding against mine as his arms enveloped me.

  I could taste his sweat and feel it gliding down my skin as our bodies joined together. I could feel the tautness of his ass in my hands as I squeezed it while drawing him deeper into me. His kiss, his taste, his possession of me was so palpable that reality and fantasy blurred for a minute.

  With him inside me, I could forget about this awful place, Fiora, and the darkness. With him inside me, I would finally learn the ecstasy of being in the arms of my Chosen.

  In the arms of your enemy.

  That reminder returned me to reality. I retreated from the window and found the furthest corner of the room away from him. I slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Drawing my legs against my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and dug my fingers into my shins while I struggled to suppress the need building inside me.

  I rested my head on my knees and refused to look at him anymore, but I could feel the swelling rush of his power building inside the room. I’d never ached so badly that it made breathing difficult before, but I did now.

  He’s everything I’ve always fought against.

  But if he was really my enemy, then why didn’t he let War destroy me?

  Because if you die, he dies. It’s as simple as that.

  But I suspected it wasn’t as simple as that for him. However, even if he would kill to protect me, he would also kill my king. And I could never allow that to happen.

  Wrath

  When I finished with the wraith, I released the pathetic creature and watched as it fell a few feet before making a feeble attempt to rise again. Then it plummeted to the ground and lay there. I felt no pity for the broken soul, it was getting what it deserved, but I did feel a rush of power.

  Locked behind the seal, we’d fed on the scraps of wraiths that found their way into the lower bowels of Hell. We were starving millennia before the seals collapsed and still weren’t up to full power because of it.

  I’d forgotten what it was like to feast on a wraith that offered so much power it caused my blood to rush as my muscles swelled with its strength. Now, every time I fed on a healthy wraith, I relished the strength it gave me. After years of deprivation, I fed more often than was necessary, but I would never forget what it was like to starve, and I would always appreciate these healthy wraiths.

  The scent of Bale’s heightened desire and distress drifted to me as my initial rush quieted. My body reacted to the need she radiated before I turned to find her sitting with her forehead on her knees. Her knuckles were white.

  I froze as my dick hardened, my heart thundered, and saliva filled my mouth. I didn’t understand that rush of saliva until my canines lengthened. Despite their newness in my mouth, the fangs didn’t feel out of place. Instead, they felt as natural as my tongue.

  Every part of me was desperate to claim my Chosen. My erection made walking difficult, but before I had any thought of moving, I was kneeling in front of her.

  “Bale.”

  She whimpered in response, and I barely suppressed a snarl. My Chosen was in need, and I could, and would, take away her distress.

  Brushing back the strands of her thick, fiery hair, I exposed more of her face, but she still wouldn’t lift her head to look at me. I stroked her cheeks and traced the contours of her ears. When my hands ran over her shoulders and down her sleeves, she shuddered, and her scent permeated the air.

  I restrained myself from grabbing her legs, pulling them away from her, and laying her out before me. I could have her pants off and be inside her in less than thirty seconds. I could be claiming her and satisfying this insatiable hunger she’d awoken in me.

  However, I couldn’t stop touching her. I’d never caressed someone like this before, and I couldn’t stop my exploration of her. I skimmed my hands down her calf and lifted the bottom of her pants to rub her silken skin.

  She whimpered again and finally lifted her head. Behind her compressed lips, I saw the outline of her fangs, and mine extended further in response.

  “I can ease you,” I said.

  I gripped her neck and was leaning toward her when she whispered, “No.”

  Unable to believe I heard her right, I froze. Her need was so intense I felt it in my bones. It enflamed my own to the point where I almost pushed her down and took what I wanted from her. She would fight me in the beginning, but she would eventually capitulate to her body’s demands and the rightness of our joining.

  However, I was many things, and I’d committed many atrocious things over my lifetime, but rape was not one of them. There had always been so many willing women that it had never crossed my mind before. And now, the only woman who would ever matter was telling me no, again.

  If I forced her into this, she would hate me. I didn’t know why that bothered me; I’d never cared what anyone thought of me before. I hoped they hated and feared me. I thrived on the demons who trembled when I entered a room.

  But now, I was considering her feelings. That was not who I was or who I wanted to be. I was Wrath. I was one of the horsemen. I was a demon who didn’t take any shit from anyone, and I was heeding the words of the woman who would deny us both what we craved.

  My hand tightened on her nape as I dragged her closer. Her eyes held fire as well as passion when they met mine, but when I went to kiss her again, she turned her head away and planted her hands on my chest. She pushed against me as my lips found her cheek.

  “No!” she yelled.

  The word was as much a denial as a cry of misery. She didn’t know what she wanted, but I did. I wrapped my other arm around her waist, dragging her toward me.

  “No!”

  I didn’t see her hand until it hit the side of my face. The blow was enough to knock my head to the side as the sound of it rebounded in the golden room. Shock drenched my out-of-control lust as my face throbbed from the punch. When I twisted my head to look at her again, I found myself staring into her eyes.

  She would deny us both what we so desperately needed, and I was so out of control, I was about to take it from her. With a snarl, I released her and rose as I stalked to the other side of the room.

  I couldn’t stay near her when she smelled of sex and her fangs were so clearly evident. I couldn’t be near her when I knew how amazing it could be between us and that she would never allow it.

  “You’ll destroy us both to save your king, but he wouldn’t give up anything for you!” I snarled.

  “Yes, he would,” she said with a conviction I’d never felt for anything before.

  I spun toward her as a horrifying possibility occurred to me. “Are you in love with him?”

  She briefly recoiled before lifting her chin. “No.”

  But now that the possibility had taken root, it was growing, and so was a jealousy that I’d never experienced before. We’d both been with numerous others; we were demons, it was what we did, but I could compete with the faceless demons of her past.

  I would kill them if I ever encountered one of them, but I could compete because I was her Chosen, and there would be no others after me. I could not compete if she’d already fallen in love with another. I planned to kill the varcolac, but if she were in love with him, then I would make his death something that would make War proud.

  “Only a fool would destroy themselves for someone they didn’t love,” I growled.

  “I love him, but I am not in love with him. I’ve never looked at my king in such a way, and I’ve never desired him. Kobal is my king, but more than that, he is my friend, and he set us free from Hell and Lucifer. I can’t repay his loyalty with a betrayal.”

  “I’m not a betrayal; I am your fucking Chosen!”

  “And you’re also the enemy.”

  Like a thunderstorm building on the horizon, the storm clouds of my power built. While the storm built inside me, I remained still as I stared at her
in disbelief.

  And then the storm broke.

  Before I tried to shake some sense into her, I turned and stalked toward the door. As I was stepping through it, I unleashed a series of bone-crushing blows to the golden wall.

  It dented and cracked until fissures sprang out from it and raced across the wall. My knuckles broke and my hand shattered, but I didn’t feel it. When my blood covered the wall, I finally felt stable enough to stop destroying it.

  I had to regain control of myself. An out-of-control horseman was one of the most dangerous things there was, and though she infuriated me, I couldn’t allow myself to become a threat to her.

  She already considered me a monster; I couldn’t prove her right by becoming something I’d never been before. Self-hatred and anger twisted inside me and rose in my throat to choke me as I recalled how close I came to forcing myself on her. I had to get away from her.

  Straightening my shoulders, I left the room without looking back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bale

  When Wrath returned to the room, the sun was beginning to turn the sky from gray to pink. After he left last night, I tried to ease my endless sexual frustration on my own, but I only became more frustrated when my hand didn’t relieve me.

  I dozed, but I couldn’t sleep when I didn’t know where he was or if he was okay. I found my gaze often traveling to the bloodstained wall. I was driving us both toward madness, but I was torn between him and my king. Torn between everything I’d always believed and my Chosen.

  I’d contemplated going after him but refrained. If I went after him, I would give myself to him.

  By the time the sun started to rise, I was ready to kill him, and me, to end this torment. I suspected he felt the same way as he stared at me with a mask of indifference on his face. However, his steely eyes told a different story. Seething with resentment, those eyes followed my every move as I pushed myself up from the floor and trudged over to the window.

  At least I felt somewhat in control of myself again. An underlying hunger for him still thrummed through my veins, but I wasn’t worried that I’d jump him at any second.

  The wraiths were gone, and the sun was beginning to turn everything into a blindingly bright, death-filled landscape again. When I turned back to Wrath, he stared at me for a minute before walking out of the room. I followed him back to the main entrance and outside.

  We spent the day exploring the golden caves with their myriad of frozen demons, but neither of us spoke. There were many times I started to talk and stopped myself. What could I say?

  I’d said it all last night, and though a part of me liked him, I couldn’t change the truth. We were enemies.

  We were almost to the end of a cave when he stopped suddenly. I took a couple more steps before he seized my wrist and pulled me to a stop. I almost jerked my arm away, but the subtle increase of pressure from his fingers and the look on his face stopped me.

  “Do you feel that?” he asked.

  The only thing I felt was the electric thrill that came from having his skin against mine. Again, I considered jerking my arm away, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was riveted on the end of the cave, only fifty feet away.

  And then I felt a subtle vibration in the ground beneath my feet. I looked down as if that would provide the answer before a jolt of hope shot through me. Was it Shax? He could move the earth; had they found us?

  Or was it something else?

  Dread rose in my stomach, but it couldn’t quite replace my hope. I refused to believe none of my friends had made it out of the forest, and if they survived the calamuts and nuckals, they were looking for me.

  It could be Shax out there, or it could be something far bigger and much more monstrous.

  Tugging my wrist free of Wrath, I rested my hand against the wall as I cautiously approached the end of the cave. Beneath my fingers, the continued vibrations of the earth grew stronger.

  Wrath followed beside me, and when I stopped at the end of the cave, my hope evaporated when I spotted the demon below. It had been centuries since I last saw Mytaz, but I would never forget him.

  He stood over ten feet tall, and his red eyes shone in the daylight. That was where the similarities between him and an ogre ended. He didn’t have tusks, and his skin was pale instead of the orange hue of an ogre’s. His broad shoulders were at least five feet wide as he stalked toward his palace with a look of determination.

  “He discovered War’s body and the hole,” I whispered. “He knows we’re here.”

  Wrath didn’t speak as he watched Mytaz with a curiosity that unnerved me. Was he considering how to get Mytaz to join their side?

  The possibility was a stark reminder of how little I could trust him. I wished things could be different between us; I wanted to like him, I did like him, but I wanted so much more than that from him.

  I shoved aside my unexpected longing for a relationship built on trust and love like my friends and parents found with their Chosen. Fate was a cruel bitch, and yearning for things that could never be was a foolish endeavor. I had many faults; I was stubborn, quick to anger, and unforgiving, but being foolish wasn’t one of them.

  When Mytaz entered his palace, Wrath turned to me.

  “We can stay hidden in these caves where we can detect his approach by the vibrations he creates. We’ll know when he leaves the palace. Or we can make a run for the tunnel while he’s in the palace and see what’s at the other end. There must be something there if he’s just now returning,” he said.

  I almost asked him if he was considering trying to turn Mytaz to their side, but if the possibility hadn’t already occurred to him, I wouldn’t put it in his head. If he approached Mytaz, he’d probably end up a statue. Mytaz had never been one for reason.

  “If we go for the tunnel, he might see us from inside the palace,” I said. “I agree there’s something at the other end, but we know it’s not an exit, or he wouldn’t be here.”

  “So, we’ll remain in the caves.”

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  When his gaze leisurely raked me from head to toe and then back up again, the aching need I finally managed to douse last night, surged back to fiery life. My nipples hardened, and I had to lock my legs into place when my knees wobbled.

  When Wrath’s eyes met mine again, I somehow found the strength to lift my chin. A smile curved the corners of his mouth, but it wasn’t the endearing smile that revealed his dimple. No, this one was callous.

  The man who smiled and laughed was gone. The demon I first battled in the minotaur cave had replaced him. There was no warmth or amusement from him anymore.

  What did I do?

  What had to be done. It’s better this way.

  But I couldn’t help questioning if that was true.

  Wrath

  I contemplated walking into the darkness of the cave and never looking back, but I couldn’t escape her or this place easily. Unsure if I would feel the vibrations from deeper in the cave, I had to stay near the beginning so I could watch Mytaz when he emerged.

  The caves went deep into the earth, but so far, all the ones we’d traversed looped back out again. All the beginnings and ends led back to the same place—that asshole’s golden palace.

  Resting my hand against the wall, I tried to will my erection away, but Bale’s nipples pressing against her shirt was emblazoned on my mind. My canines throbbed as I recalled listening to her last night, in that room, trying to ease herself and failing.

  At first, I’d gone as far from her as possible, but having to make sure she stayed safe, I returned to the room across the hall from her. I listened to her whimpers of pleasure and frustration while I pictured her sucking me off as I stroked my cock and experienced the same frustration she did.

  Nothing, other than her, was ever going to ease me again, and the stubborn wench was determined to make us both insane. And it was working. I could feel my control over myself, and my ability waning with every passing s
econd.

  Since leaving the seal, I’d been methodical in my movements and plans, we all had. We were all eager to make the varcolac pay for what he’d done, but we couldn’t end up locked away again, or dead. Some of my brethren were more foolish, and they’d paid for that with their lives, but I was not one of them.

  However, I worried Bale might push me into becoming like one of them. No matter how much I wanted to go to her, I would not do it. After my last two disastrous attempts, she would have to come to me. Which meant we would both suffer in a state of sexual arousal until one of us died. I gritted my teeth against the possibility this was my life from now and tried not to smash the wall.

  I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me lose control again. I dug my nails into my palms as I stared into the darkness of the caves.

  It took a while, but when I finally felt able to face her again, I turned to discover her standing where I’d left her. She leaned against the wall as she stared at the palace with her arms crossed over her chest.

  With a resigned sigh, I returned to lean against the wall across from her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bale

  The sun started to set again with no sign of Mytaz throughout the day. But all he had to do was sit in his palace and wait for one of us to feed on a wraith, and then he would know where we were.

  He had to sleep eventually, but we had no way of knowing when. Having fed last night, Wrath could hold out for longer than me, but I would only make it another day or two before it started to get to me.

  We were trapped like rats in this place, and the wraiths were the cheese. Hours ago, I slid down to sit against the wall with my arms draped over my bent knees. I didn’t feel hopeless, I’d been in worse situations than this, but I’d rather be fighting Lucifer, the fallen angels, and all the horsemen than sitting in this cave with Wrath so close yet so far away.