Black

by Donya Lynne

The paddles remained over her, but didn’t touch her skin.

  Within a few seconds, the pain in her chest began to subside, and her breathing evened out, although the room faded from light to dark a couple of times, as if she were on the verge of falling unconscious.

  Something cold pressed against her chest.

  “Her pulse is stabilizing.”

  She blinked through the milky haze clouding her eyes as people blurred in and out of her vision.

  “Okay, clear the room. She’s back.” The female voice beside her sounded relieved.

  Scratchy cloth covered her exposed breasts, and most of the people hovering nearby began to disappear. A few remained, and as her vision slowly came back into focus, she realized she was in a hospital room. These people were doctors and nurses.

  A female with short blond hair leaned over her. Fingers pried her eyelids open, and a bright penlight swung left to right, then right to left, briefly blinding her. Her arms were lifted. Monitors beeped. Nurses scurried in with equipment and bags of fluid. But Persephone got the sense that whatever excitement had just occurred was pretty much over.

  “We thought we lost you,” the blond doctor said, wearing a relieved smile as she straightened and stuffed her penlight in the breast pocket of her white coat.

  “Hu-what?” Persephone blinked against the too-bright lights shining down on her.

  The doctor adjusted the sheets and blankets over her. “Your heart stopped. We had to shock you. I’m Dr. Snow. You’re at AKM.”

  Her heart had stopped? The haze in her mind was gradually clearing. “Are you saying . . .? Did I die?” She lazily rubbed her palm up and down her arm. God, she itched all over.

  “For about two minutes.” The doctor checked the monitors as more nurses left the room, taking the crash cart with them.

  Persephone watched them leave, taking her freedom with them. They’d stolen the only reprieve available to her. She wanted to scream at them. To flail her way out of the tubes taped to her arms and dripping lifesaving medicine into her so she could attack them for doing this to her. She’d been so close, and they’d screwed it all up.

  Instead, she swallowed her tears and stared down at her too-pale hands. Her vision was still blurry, and the mother of all headaches was setting up shop behind her eyes, but she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she’d been within arm’s length of true freedom and had lost it. Again.

  Now she was back where her life was nothing more than a stage show. Where she was nothing more than a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. Where she had to endure her father’s obsession with pairing her up with a “suitable mate” instead of letting biology take its course.

  Yes, she was lonely. Yes, she wanted a mate. Yes, she desired to have what Miriam had found with Io.

  There’s nothing like it, Seph! All those times we sat and fantasized about what it would feel like to find a true mate don’t even begin to describe how it really feels. You have to convince your father to let your biological mate find you. You just have to!

  But there had been no convincing her father. He refused to listen to her pleas and told her she would be paired with a suitable male by the end of summer, end of story. It was now the end of May, and he’d already found the male he intended to sell her off to. No money would change hands, but as far as Persephone was concerned, her heart was the commodity being bartered, and her body would be sold into sexual slavery.

  She didn’t want a male who hadn’t biologically mated her. She wanted what Miriam had. She wanted the supernatural sex, the intimate bond, the magical dynamic that had taken Miriam’s and Io’s hearts and melded them into one. One biologically mated, inseparable, no-one-will-ever-come-between-us heart.

  She had no interest in Cecil, the male her father had chosen for her. In fact, Cecil disgusted her. He was too thin, with oily hair, and his hands were clammy. And all he ever talked about was money. How much money he had, how much money he invested, how much money he spent, how much money he expected to make this year. He was such a bore. There was no way she could endure a lifetime of him touching her with his cold, damp hands, let alone sticking his penis inside her.

  Death would be a better option.

  And she’d almost had it. Forever sleep had been within her grasp twice tonight, and both times she’d been saved. Once by the good doctor, and once by . . .

  Him.

  The male in the mask.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  She’d seen his face. Only for a moment, but it had been long enough for her to know she’d never seen a more glorious male. He’d had the most beautiful eyes, the color of a storm breaking apart to reveal a dusky blue sky. And his features! Strong, dark, intense.

  She’d dreamed about him, too. When she’d been dead. She’d been with him. He had touched her. They had kissed, and it had felt so real, as if he’d really been there.

  She lightly touched her lips, remembering how his had felt on hers.

  But he hadn’t really been there, had he. It had all been a dream. A fantasy she had been taking with her into the afterlife, before the doctor and her team of nurses had brought her back from both the fantasy and the pearly gates.

  She was doomed to the reality that she had to live another day, another week, another month in this hell. It didn’t matter how many days she had left. She would find freedom another way. Somehow, someday soon, she would manage to succeed. No one could save her. She’d already decided to die, and nothing would change her mind.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” Dr. Snow stepped up to the bedside, her head tilted curiously.

  Persephone realized she was crying. She smeared the tears from under her eyes. “Why didn’t you just let me die?”

  The doctor recoiled as if she couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “It’s my job to save people, not let them die.”

  Persephone sniffled and swallowed past the lump in her throat. “You should have. Let me die, I mean.” She swiped tears off her cheeks again.

  The doctor drew nearer and took her hand. “Persephone . . .?”

  She couldn’t look at the older female.

  “Persephone, look at me.”

  She finally brought her gaze up to the doctor’s.

  Dr. Snow squeezed her hand. “You have so much to live for, Persephone.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows pinched together. “Sure you do. Your family. Your dreams.”

  Persephone let out a caustic laugh that could have corroded copper. “I have no dreams.” Her father had stolen them all.

  “Everyone has dreams, Persephone. Even you. You just have to find them.”

  “Why? What’s the point? He’ll just take them all away from me again.”

  “Who will?”

  Before Persephone could answer, her father’s booming voice ruptured the tender mood settling between her and the doctor.

  “Where is my daughter! Why haven’t I heard anything, yet?”

  Persephone cringed, and heaviness settled over her as she met Dr. Snow’s gaze again. “Him.”

  Chapter 27

  Micah’s eyes blinked open to the sound of the shower turning on.

  Sam wasn’t in bed with him.

  He rolled to check the digital clock on his nightstand. It was almost eight o’clock. At night. Damn. He’d slept all day. He never did that. Then again, last night had drained him both physically and emotionally. He had needed the recovery time.

  Apparently, Sam had, too, if she was just waking up.

  Stealing into their large master bath, he managed to relieve his bladder and rinse his mouth with Listerine without Sam seeing him then quietly opened the shower door and snuck in behind her.

  “Good morning.”

  She jumped then relaxed before leaning against him. “Good morning.” She tilted her head back so he could kiss her.

  As he did, he saw her engagement ring sitting on the shelf in the corner.

  He picked it up. “This should be o
n your finger.”

  She took it from him and gently set it back on the shelf. “Not when I’m showering. The soap dulls the shine.”

  “We can always have it polished.”

  She shrugged. “I know, but I like keeping it as shiny as I can.”

  He took her lilac-scented shampoo from her and poured some in his hand. “Turn around.”

  With an impatient sigh, she did as he asked. He rubbed his hands together, spreading the shampoo between them, and then began gently massaging it into her hair.

  “This wouldn’t be you coddling me, would it?” she asked, tilting her head into his hands.

  “Sshh, female.”

  “Micah—”

  His hands bunched into loose fists, pulling her hair. “Sh. Just enjoy it.”

  Her shoulders relaxed as she gave into him without another word. He rubbed her scalp, working the shampoo into her hair. Dollops of suds fell to the shower floor, and the air filled with the fragrance of lilacs.

  “I love that scent,” he said.

  “My shampoo?”

  “Mmm, yes. It reminds me of the first time I saw you.”

  “You mean the night I saved your ass.”

  He chuckled and guided her into the falling water to rinse away the suds. “I thought you were an angel.” He’d told her this before, but he never tired of remembering. “An angel sent to save me.” He scrubbed soap up and down her arms. “And you did. In more ways than one.”

  After he washed and rinsed her, he picked up the engagement ring again and held it out in front of him as he lifted her left hand.

  After sliding the ring back on her finger, he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, right over the ring. His lips brushed against the diamond. “There. Back where it belongs.”

  She smiled and gazed down at the ring as he released her hand. “And it’s still shiny.”

  He slid his arms loosely around her waist, planting a chaste kiss on her lips.

  They stood like that for a few seconds, letting the water shower over them.

  When he’d given her that ring, he’d promised he would marry her. She’d told him she wanted a human wedding, and he’d vowed he would give her one, even though it held no bearing on how he felt about her as his mate. After all, once a male vampire found his mate, not much could separate them. There was no such thing as divorce among vampires.

  Oh sure, arranged pairings could still be dissolved by royal decree, but for someone like him, who had formed a biological link to his mate, there would be no such dissolution. He and Sam were bound to each other forever.

  “Why do you want a human wedding when you’re not human anymore? When there’s absolutely no chance I’ll ever want to leave you?” He wasn’t questioning her, only her reasons.

  In only a few months, he’d come to know Sam in a way no one had ever known her. Not just because he could see inside her mind and piece together her past to discover who she was at her core because of what he found there, but because they were connected in a way that went beyond the physical.

  Theirs was a spiritual connection. One that defied logic and felt preordained by a higher power.

  Even so, some things about her were beyond his comprehension. Particularly, her reasons for doing and wanting some of the things she did. Like the nursing position. He fully supported her in her choice, but she’d wanted to go after the job on her own, without telling him. Her independence was important to her even as she coveted her relationship to him.

  He could make assumptions and educated guesses about why she behaved this way based on what he knew about her, but sometimes hearing her own words, spoken straight from her heart, was the only way for him to be sure.

  She shrugged. “It’s just something I’ve always wanted. You know, the white dress, the standing before God, friends, and family and declaring that this is the man—or male, in your case—I’ve chosen to spend the rest of my life with. I want that with you. The ceremony. The reception. The cake. The honeymoon. I want to do it right for once.”

  She’d been married before. To that jackhole Steve. He could see in her thoughts that she was thinking about their wedding day. How it had been planned hastily before her deployment to the Middle East. How she hadn’t even had time to buy a proper dress and order a cake. They’d run off to Vegas and said, “I do” in some little Elvis chapel. They didn’t even have time for a real honeymoon. They’d spent the night of their wedding in a cheap Vegas hotel room.

  That’s where Micah disengaged from her memories. He didn’t need to see what Steve had done to her on their wedding night.

  Not that it mattered now. She hated Steve. She didn’t want to think about those days any more than he wanted her to think about them. She regretted everything about her relationship with that asswipe.

  “Your wedding to Steve was a mistake, Sam.” He wasn’t asking or trying to point out the obvious. He was simply paraphrasing what he saw in her thoughts.

  “I know, but . . .” She let out a quiet sigh. “I got it all wrong with Steve. We rushed into it. I didn’t really know him—obviously.” She gave voice to everything he’d seen in her mind. “We ran off to Vegas and had a shotgun wedding that really didn’t mean anything. We had no friends with us to witness the ceremony. My parents weren’t there. I didn’t even have a proper wedding dress.” She issued a tender snort. “It’s not that I need a huge wedding that takes months to plan or the perfect dress with a mile-long train. I just . . .”

  He plucked the words from her mind. “You just want to do it right this time. You want the fantasy wedding all human women dream about.”

  She nodded and swept her wet hair off her forehead. It stood up in blond peaks for a moment before starting to fall again as water droplets weighed it down. “I do want to do it right. I want to stand in front of our friends, dressed in white, holding a proper bouquet, and take real vows.” A gentle smile touched her mouth. “Vows that mean as much to me as they do to you. Vows from the heart, you know?”

  “And you also want to wash Steve completely out of your past.”

  Her gaze penetrated his. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  She drew in an agitated breath. “Because I don’t like how it feels knowing I messed up so badly with him. Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but in my head, marrying you would wash the slate clean and erase that whole horrible time with him from my past. It’s like that part of my life isn’t closed, yet, and it feels like failure. Like if you and I don’t get married, Steve’s still in there. Inside me. Always in the way. And he’s laughing at me. Laughing because he got the last official crack at me since he was my husband.”

  “But I’m your mate, which is a much stronger bond than that of a husband.”

  She sighed, growing visibly upset. “I know it’s all just semantics, but I can’t get past it.” Her delicate eyebrows bent in harsh angles as old demons haunted her eyes. “He’s the biggest mistake I ever made, and sometimes it feels like his dark cloud is always going to be hanging over me. I just want him gone, you know? Just . . . out of my life. Out of our life. And . . . it just . . .” Her growing agitation felt like pinpricks on his arms.

  “Okay, ssshh.” He pulled her into him and tucked her cheek against his shoulder, gently rocking her. “I’m not criticizing. I just wanted to hear your reasoning, that’s all.”

  Her fingers curled against his back, but the tension began to ease out of her shoulders.

  He’d known for a while that Steve’s memory still haunted her. She still hesitated to go out in public. Still grew squeamish about using the credit cards he’d given her for fear Steve could use them to track her down. She’d lived a secret, hidden life for barely a year, but that had been long enough to leave an influential mark on her habits, just as Steve’s abuse had left its invasive mark on her freedom, as well as the scar on her stomach from where he’d pushed her onto a glass table, causing it to break and pierce her pristine flesh.

  Then, instead of taking her to the hospit
al, where his abuse would have been exposed, he stitched her up at home. It didn’t matter that Steve was a surgeon. Sam had deserved proper medical care and for someone to discover what that asshole had done to her.

  She exhaled against his wet skin. “I’m sorry to burden you with my problems when you’ve already got enough on your plate.”

  “Burden?” He frowned and pushed her away so he could look into her eyes. “Baby, you’re not a burden. Nothing about you is a burden.”

  She shook her head and dropped her gaze. “But you just found out that your dad is still alive, that you have a brother, and that Rysk and Argon are your ancestors, and . . . you’ve just got a lot more important things to worry about right now than me and my silly Steve issues.”

  Wedging his finger under her chin, he forced her to lift her head and meet his gaze. “Let me make one thing explicitly clear. There is nothing—and I mean nothing—more important to me than you.” He solemnly held her gaze. “And your issues with Steve are not silly.”

  As tough and independent as Sam was, it was easy to forget she needed someone to hold her up from time to time.

  “He will never hurt you again.” He looked her dead in the eye as he said it. “I will never let him or anyone else hurt you ever again.”

  And if a wedding was what she needed to know he meant it, a wedding he would give her.

  “You have a serious hero complex.” She said the words in jest, but the gratitude that shone from her expression made his heart swell.

  “Get used to it.”

  “Bossy.”

  “Only because I love you.” He reached over her shoulder for his body wash.

  “Oh, is that what it is?” She stepped backward into the water to rinse off any lingering soap and shampoo.

  Micah quickly lathered himself up then rinsed.

  “No more thinking about Steve,” he said, reaching around her and shutting off the water.

  “I’ll try.” She pulled their towels off the warming racks just outside the shower and handed one to him.

  “No trying. Only doing.” He gave her ass a light swat.

  She leaped away from him, covering her bare bottom. “Hey!”