Black

by Donya Lynne

  “I am.” Lifting onto her knees, she maneuvered onto his lap, eyeing his mouth. “I’m very hungry.” Her hand eased inside the waist of his pants, and her palm glided down the length of his cock before wrapping around the base.

  Lying back, he pulled her down on top of him. “Mmm, then maybe I should feed you.”

  Her supple curves molded perfectly against him as she freed his erection.

  Reaching down, he helped her push his pants off then removed her panties.

  Hours ago, he’d needed hard fucking. Punishing sex. He’d needed to take, take, and take some more to drive out the shock and confusion that had resulted from earlier events.

  Now, none of that mattered.

  Sam was pregnant. He wasn’t sterile. He had new priorities that had nothing to do with his father and brother.

  There was nothing he couldn’t overcome now that he’d achieved what all male vampires aspired to once they’ve taken a mate.

  As Sam’s lips found his, he closed his eyes and let out a relieved exhale, pulling her against him, one arm wrapped around her shoulders, the other locked against her lower back. His mouth fused with hers, and his tongue slid past her lips. He gently rocked his hips between her legs, desiring the friction but in no hurry to bury himself inside her.

  Earlier, he couldn’t claim her fast enough nor hard enough. Now he wanted to take his time. Taste her inch by inch. Feel every ripple of her body. Worship her.

  The creation of life was a miracle in itself, but to carry that life? To nurture it as it grew and became another living being? That was truly miraculous. Truly divine.

  She was his goddess, and he her faithful subject.

  “You’re shaking,” she whispered, pushing up on her arms.

  He opened his eyes as a tear broke free and rolled down the side of his face.

  She ran her thumb down the tear’s trail and searched his face. “Micah?”

  He cradled her cheek then stroked his fingers down her face. “I love you. I love you so damn much.” His heart broke open at the way her green eyes sparkled, her expression softening. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing I wouldn’t do for our children.” He was changing. With each moment that passed, he was becoming a new version of himself, and he had no idea when the transition would end or who and what he would be when it was over.

  She kissed him. “I love you, too.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes for the longest time, their bodies gently rocked against each another. He still hadn’t entered her, but it didn’t matter. Feeling her slick core glide up and down his length was more provocative than being inside her, especially as her breathing intensified.

  She wrapped her fingers around his, clutching them tight, and pressed his hands to the pillow on either side of his head. Her exhales morphed into moans, each growing higher pitched than the last. Her hips rocked harder, forward and back, dragging her clit over the full length of him, all the way to the head, before driving down to the base again.

  He lay beneath her, fascinated by the way she took what she wanted and restrained him. By the way her eyes drifted closed before she forced them open again to stare into his, as if she took her desire by stealing it from his gaze. As if eye contact alone propelled her rising arousal to its climax yet kept her from launching skyward as her orgasm crested.

  Crying out his name, she threw her head back then forward. Her grip crushed his hands, pushing them hard against the bed, and her body fell into violent tremors.

  That’s when the primal warrior inside him broke free.

  In one fluid motion, he had her on her back, still in the throes of her orgasm as he drove into her, a relentless barbarian, unleashed and abandoned.

  “Micah . . . Micah . . . God, yes . . . MICAH!” She came again, driving her blunt nails into his back.

  His body seized, his hips convulsed, and a keening, sated growl roared from his throat as he emptied inside her.

  In the afterglow, both of them breathing hard, arms locked around each other, his cock still twitching every few seconds within her slick heat, an overwhelming sense of gratitude washed through him. Gratitude and peace. The priorities in his life had shifted. For a thousand years, he’d known only one life. Now, a whole new existence had opened to him.

  Sam and his unborn children were his life now. They were his heart.

  With his arms still around her and his face buried in her soft hair, he inhaled deeply and saw a new path for his life.

  “I’m done,” he murmured.

  Her fingertips skimmed up his spine. “Mmmm, I know. So am I. And it was incredible.”

  He pushed up on his arms and stared into her eyes. “No. I mean, I’m quitting my job. No more AKM.”

  Her eyebrows scrunched. “You’re quitting your job? Why?”

  “It’s time. Time for something else.”

  “Like what?”

  But he had no idea. He just knew he couldn’t go on being a grunt enforcer.

  He lowered himself over her again, resting his weight on his elbows. He gave a little shrug. “Maybe I’ll just stay home, make love to you all day, and make babies, now that I know I don’t need a calling to get the job done.”

  “If you stayed home all day, you’d drive me nuts.”

  “Good nuts?”

  “No, the bad kind.”

  “I’ve got a pair of good nuts with your name all over them.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Micah.”

  The concerns she was voicing inside her mind told him everything he needed to know about what she thought of his sudden desire to quit his job. She was worried he was jumping too quickly without thinking things through. She was concerned he would grow restless and frustrated if he wasn’t out on the streets, tracking down drecks and kicking criminals’ asses.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe not.

  More than anything, she feared he would become bored and, in an effort to keep himself entertained, try to interfere too much in the groove she’d created for herself and settled into as his mate. She had things she wanted to do without him. Things she needed to do to maintain her identity. Her independence was important to her, and if he was around all the time, she was afraid she’d feel suffocated.

  Honestly, part of him worried about all those things and more, but he just couldn’t see enforcing as a viable career option, anymore. Too many rules. Too many restrictions. It felt like for every step AKM took forward, they were knocked back three by the loosely worded terms of the truce. If they were going to make a real difference and put an end to cobalt distribution and the slow chipping away at the vampire race the drecks were getting away with, they needed a new approach. One that didn’t bind their hands. One that gave them a fair shake against the drecks’ new tactics, including those perpetrated by Bishop. Because everyone knew Bishop worked for Premier Royce. That he, in fact, had Royce’s blessing.

  “I’ll figure something out,” he said, resting his body weight on his elbows. “Right now, I just want to love you full time.”

  “That sounds dangerously like coddling.”

  “It’s just for a little while, then I’ll find something else. A new job.” He chuckled. “Maybe I’ll take up music and tour the club scene with Ari.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’d love that.”

  “Hey, we get along now. It’s not like how it used to be between us.”

  “Yeah, well, I doubt Ari is looking to become a duet with anyone other than Severin.”

  Micah rolled to his back, pulling Sam against him. “Then I’ll get a normal job.”

  A lightness filled his soul. He was daring to be something else. Someone else. All his life, he’d been a warrior of one kind or another, but now he was eyeing a future as a family man. Maybe he could get a regular job. Something that didn’t put him in harm’s way every night. Didn’t he owe that to his unborn children? Sam? Himself?

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Accounting maybe?”


  She laughed. “I can just see you the first time your accounts don’t balance.” She mimicked taking out a knife and stabbing something with it over and over. “Damn fucking numbers! Balance, little shits! Goddamn stupid . . .” she trailed off on a series of garbled curses of discontent that sounded like miniature roars.

  He shrugged. “Okay, so maybe not accounting.”

  She laughed. “You could become a hairdresser.” She ran her fingers through his hair.

  “That’s Aiden’s job.”

  Aiden was one of the youngest children from Cordray’s shelter, but despite being only three years old, she had mad skills when it came to braiding his hair.

  “Yeah, that kid’s got talent.” Sam brushed her fingers through his hair.

  “For a toddler.”

  Sam rolled her head and looked at him like he’d missed something. “Baby, she’s got talent for a seasoned Hollywood stylist for the superstars. I swear that girl is going to grow up to be the most in-demand hairdresser in the world. People will probably pay her to travel to London or Tokyo just to do their hair.”

  Micah laughed then sighed as Sam settled against him again. “Well, I’ll think of something to do. Something normal.”

  But would a normal job make him happy?

  Honestly happy?

  He craved action. He needed the adventure and mental sharpness that came with hunting drug dealers, vagrant drecks and vampires, and the occasional mutant. Normal might not cut it.

  He dismissed the troubling thought. His happiness didn’t matter as much as becoming a father. He didn’t want to leave Sam without a mate and his kids without a dad if something were to happen to him.

  “Micah, you know you’re not cut out for normal work,” Sam said, giving voice to the concerns rumbling through his own thoughts.

  “I could be.”

  She laughed and propped herself on her elbow. “You’re a fighter. You won’t be happy unless you’re out there fighting.”

  “You don’t know that. I could change. People change all the time.”

  Sam drew in her breath to reply, but the doorbell interrupted her, followed by a loud, urgent knock.

  “Who the fuck?” Micah growled up at the ceiling out of frustration. He was trying to have a serious conversation with his mate, for Christ’s sake. “Go away!”

  These untimely interruptions were one thing he wouldn’t miss once he officially quit his job.

  The knocking came again, more insistent.

  He had liked it better when the apartment had been a secret hideaway no one at AKM but Tristan knew about. Now every fool and their uncle knew he lived there. At least when he wasn’t at the house in the burbs.

  Sam scurried out of bed and started pulling on her clothes. “You’d better answer it. It sounds important.”

  “This”—he gestured between her and him—“is important.” He pushed himself off the bed and reached for his clothes. “That”—he pointed in the direction of the front door then began tugging on his pants —“is a nuisance. It’s why I want out of my job. I can’t even spend a night with my mate—the most important night of my life—without being interrupted.”

  She smoothed out her hair. “I know, I know, and we’ll discuss it. And I’ll support whatever decision you make, but right now, you still have a job to do.”

  Pounding came from the front door again, even more insistent than before.

  “Jesus! I’m coming! Lay off the fucking door!” He stormed out of the room as Sam followed.

  Whoever had come to throw water on his love fire had better have a good reason for being there, because they’d just landed on his boot-up-the-ass list.

  Flinging the door open, he frowned and took a step back.

  Severin stood in the hall with Micah’s dad and that dreck who ran Grudge Match, Digon, behind him.

  “What’s going on?” he said to Severin, eyeing the other two.

  Severin appeared stuck between bewildered and pissed off. “I could ask you the same question.” He glanced over his shoulder at the two males standing behind him. Clearly, Sev had gotten the lowdown on Daddy-O and was just as confused by Digon’s presence as Micah.

  “It’s your brother,” his father said, his expression grim.

  Micah’s sixth sense lit up. “Ronan? What about him? What’s happened to him?” He might not feel all warm and fuzzy about his father or his brother right now, but Ronan was family, and blood ran thick in Micah’s world. Nothing bad had better have happened to Ronan now that he’d only just learned of his existence.

  “You need to come quickly,” Digon said.

  “What are you even doing here?” Micah asked him.

  Digon sighed and gestured toward the elevators. “That’s not important right now. You need to come with us. Something has happened.”

  “I’ll determine what is and isn’t important, fuck you very much.”

  “Micah . . .” Sev took his arm, and Micah picked up all kinds of grave thoughts from the guy. Something about an attack, venom, blood, and Ronan in excruciating pain.

  “Somebody had better tell me what the fuck is going on. Right now. I’m seriously not in the mood for games.”

  Severin drew in close and lowered his voice. “Your brother? Ronan? That Skeletor guy . . .?” Sev’s blue eyes lasered in on Micah’s to let him know he knew the truth about his newfound family issues. “He got bitten by a werewolf.”

  “So?” Vampires couldn’t die from werewolf bites.

  “This apparently wasn’t a normal werewolf,” Digon said.

  That caught his attention. “How so?”

  “We’re still trying to figure it out, but it’s not looking good.”

  Cold gooseflesh prickled Micah’s body at the grave expression on his father’s face. “What do you mean, it’s not looking good?”

  His father sighed, and concerned lines furrowed his face, which sent stabs of dread up and down Micah’s spine.

  “Micah . . . it’s bad. Real bad.” He frowned and cleared his throat. “Ronan could die.”

  “From a werewolf bite!” This had to be a bad joke.

  Digon placed his hand reassuringly on his dad’s shoulder. “Like we said, Micah, they weren’t normal werewolves.”

  Well, shit. This night just couldn’t stop raining on his parade.

  Chapter 13

  King Bain sat across from his two top liaisons inside the headquarters of AKM, growing more impatient by the moment. When he arrived there, for personal reasons having nothing to do with ruling the race, he hadn’t expected to find Ulrich and Gregos huddled in discussion in one of the corridors. And he certainly hadn’t expected to be corralled into a private audience once they saw him.

  Then he learned that Ulrich’s daughter, Persephone, had been brought in from a cobalt overdose, which explained Ulrich’s presence, but not Gregos’s.

  And now he was in an increasingly heated back and forth with Ulrich in the AKM conference room regarding what he was doing about the accelerating cobalt problem.

  As emotions boiled over into impropriety, Ulrich pounded his fist on the oval table between them as he shot forward in his seat. “Not enough is being done about cobalt, Bain! You’re not doing anything to put an end to this crisis! I want action! I want justice! For my daughter and my family!”

  Gregos Savakis cautiously placed his hand over Ulrich’s forearm. “He is just upset about his daughter, Your Highness. He means no disrespect.” Gregos sent a cutting glare toward Ulrich. One that seemed more personal than professional.

  King Bain glanced from Gregos to Ulrich and back, a niggle of unease prickling the hairs on the back of his neck. He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong, but something wasn’t right between these two. They’d been exchanging private glances throughout this entire conversation, and the secret language they seemed fluent in made Bain increasingly suspicious.

  He definitely needed to get to the bottom of whatever was going on between them, but for now, he would let it stand. H
e had other more important issues to attend to in the foreseeable future. Issues that, if things went the way he hoped, would get around to uncovering whatever might be going on behind the scenes with Gregos and Ulrich, anyway, so why rush?

  For now, he would address the greater threat. That of a werewolf bite that was more potent to a vampire than any werewolf bite he had ever seen. Because if some new race of werewolf had evolved to threaten them, that was a more imminent threat than cobalt.

  Micah’s half brother, Ronan, was at this very moment fighting for his life, and Bain wanted desperately to end this tiresome discussion so he could get an update from the doctor overseeing the efforts to keep Ronan alive.

  He turned his attention back to Ulrich. “I will overlook your tone under the circumstances, Ulrich, but it would behoove you to remember who you’re talking to.”

  Yes, Ulrich’s emotions were high. Persephone had overdosed. Bain remembered his own emotional upheaval during Miriam’s cobalt addiction. An addiction she still fought every day. Thank God she had Io to help her through the cravings and phantom withdrawal. And thank God he’d woken his ass up to his part in sending her to those death dealers in the first place. Otherwise, it might have been Miriam in a hospital bed from an overdose instead of Persephone.

  Bain hadn’t even realized Miriam’s best friend, Persephone, was back on the blue shit. The last he heard, she’d been in rehab and doing well. Now here she was, back on cobalt, and from Ulrich’s recounting of the situation, she’d almost died tonight. Still might. From the sound of things, it was bad.

  If not for Ronan, she wouldn’t even have a chance. She’d already be dead. Micah’s brother had saved her.

  And now he himself was fighting for his life.

  From a fucking werewolf bite.

  What in the hell were werewolves doing in Chicago?

  That’s the issue he wanted to be getting to the bottom of right now. That was why he was here. Well, it was one of the reasons, but he would keep his personal motivations to himself for now. In time, all would be revealed.

  The point was, he didn’t have time to hear about Persephone’s cobalt habit, especially when her reasons for using the shit were sitting right in front of him.