Black as Midnight

by Mary Martel

  "You're not planning on moving out on me, are you?" he inquired quietly.

  I shook my head as his hands slid down my jaw and the pads of his thumbs trailed down the column of my neck. They hit the base of my throat and went wide, tracing my collarbone and, incidentally, the burn marks covering it.

  I froze in place, too afraid to move. Like the scar on my face, I never hid these or tried to cover them up. They were a part of me that I wasn't ashamed of or felt the need to hide. The only reason I'd ever cover them up would be because I got sick of people boldly asking me where they'd come from. You'd be surprised how many people actually came right out and asked about my scars. It made things horribly uncomfortable and made me incredibly angry, because I didn't think it was anybody's business but my own.

  I had a feeling Dash saw my scars differently than other people did though, since he had so many of his own.

  His gaze dropped to his hands, where they were trailing across my skin.

  His hands moved back up my neck and he cupped the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair.

  "You're a little warrior," he murmured, as his eyes fixated on my lips. "My girl, my warrior. My savior."

  I squirmed, uncomfortable with the words coming out of his mouth. I was no warrior, and I certainly wasn’t anybody’s savior and never would be. Most days I could barely take care of myself.

  "It was hot, you know?" he commented, and my eyes shot to his to see they'd heated with what could only be described as lust. "I bet I wasn't the only one who thought it was hot too. In fact, I bet the only person who didn't was Rain. Quinton's probably so pissed right now because I get to be in here with you and he's stuck out there doing clean up with Rain."

  "I don't think now is a good time to talk about Quinton or Rain," I said as my eyes dropped down to his lips.

  "Come here," he ordered.

  I happily complied, scooting over until I was melded up against his warm body. I wrapped my leg around his hip as his lips brushed softly against mine. My fingers went to his short, red hair at the top of his head and I dug them in. His beard tickled my face as his tongue invaded my mouth, and he kissed me like I was the only thing in his world that mattered at the moment and he'd die if he didn't get to keep kissing me.

  He groaned as his free hand slid around my shoulders and down. His grip on my hair tightened and he tilted my head to the side, deepening the kiss.

  I moaned into his mouth as his hand slid down my back, underneath my sleep shorts and panties, and he cupped my behind in his palm.

  I felt him harden against my inner thigh and fought the urge to rub myself shamelessly against it. Dash had the same thought it seemed, because he squeezed my ass as his arm pressed into me, and he rolled us over so he was on top of me. His knee went into the mattress and he used his thighs to spread my legs apart.

  I wrapped my legs around his hips as he ground his hardness against me.

  I clung to his hair, holding him tightly against my mouth, tangling my tongue with his in what felt like the best kiss of my whole life.

  I cried out in protest when his mouth left mine to trail kisses down my jaw toward my neck. He made his way down my neck, trailing kisses that burned all the way down the column of my throat, and then across my collarbone.

  Anybody else kissing me there and it would have been a huge turn off, but things between Dash and me were different, and I completely forgot all about my scars and lost myself in the feel of his lips moving across my skin.

  His hand slid up my sides, taking my tank top with them as they moved up my ribs. I shivered as his rough hands roamed over my bare skin, leaving a blaze of heat in their path. I loved that strange heat so much, it was comforting to me, and it immediately felt like it pooled between my legs at my core whenever they touched me and it lingered behind. I didn't think I'd ever be able to be intimate with another person again who didn't have magic, because I craved that heat so much. I didn't know how the guys who'd slept around with normal humans pulled it off. I knew I wouldn't be able to do it.

  Maybe it was different for guys. Especially if they were man-whores.

  Dash's hands spread out just below my breasts and the tank top went up no farther.

  His mouth moved down and he kissed his way across the top of my breasts that were exposed.

  "Dash," I panted as his mouth moved down farther and, over my tank top, he sucked one of my nipples into his mouth.

  Someone banged on the door and he immediately released my nipple and sat back. He looked down at me with eyes that burned with passion.

  He bit his bottom lip as he ground his erection against me again. I sucked in a shuddering breath as pleasure spiked through me and I couldn't stop the whimper that escaped me.

  A fist banged against the door again as Quinton yelled, "Goddamnit. Open this fucking door right now. Rain is downstairs and he is so pissed he looks like he's going to tear the whole place apart with his bare hands. He's demanding to see Ariel and refusing to leave until he does. Apparently Marcus joined the Council and Rain is freaking out. I need you to open the door, Dash, and let Ariel out of there. I need her to come downstairs and handle Rain before he loses his shit and we all end up fucked because of it."

  Dash immediately backed off of me and flopped down on his back on the bed. His hands went to his face where he pressed his palms into his eyes.

  "Shit," he muttered. "This is bad. So, so bad."

  "Not really," I told him and he immediately lowered his hands from his face to stare at me.

  "What do you mean, not really?"

  "I already knew about Marcus," I shared. "He told me. It's really not a big deal."

  Dash opened and closed his mouth several times like a fish out of water before shouting, "Are you out of your damn mind? Have you forgotten everything you've learned about the Council? And how could you learn something like this and not tell the rest of us?"

  For a second, my insides froze in horror as I waited for betrayal to cross over his face, but it never came. This could have gone so wrong and I hadn't even thought about the repercussions of keeping Marcus's secret from my guys.

  "You have to trust me just how I have to trust you," I whispered to Dash. "And I trust Marcus. I would trust him with anything. When he asked me to keep this to myself, I agreed because I didn't think it would hurt any of you. Well, except for maybe Rain's feelings because he's psycho where Marcus is concerned. Otherwise, I knew it wouldn't hurt any of you in a damaging way and it's about time you all trusted me as much as I'm expected to trust you."

  I opened my mouth but shut it when Dash's fingers pressed against my lips. "I get it," he told me in a quiet voice. "And you're not wrong. I trust you and, until Rain showed up and things went tits up around here, I would have told you that I trusted Marcus entirely. If you say this isn't going to hurt us and we don't need to freak out about it, then that's good enough for me and it will be good enough for the others."

  I worried, though, because even though I knew he'd be right when it came to most of the guys, there was still Quinton and Rain, and they were uber alpha males who would rather gouge out their own eyeballs than see anything hurt me.

  "Come on, beautiful." Dash grabbed my hand and dragged me off the bed behind him. "As much as I want to finish what I started and put my mouth all over the rest of that sweet body of yours, now isn't the time. We'll wait until we're home alone and it will only be me who gets to hear the noises you make when I've got my mouth between your legs, and then my cock buried in your tight, wet heat."

  Holy shit.

  My face flamed as things low in my belly tightened at hearing Dash talk like that. He'd always been very reserved with me, always asked for permission before getting hands-on with me, and was generally very careful with his physical affections where I was concerned—pushing to take things at a snail’s pace with me even though we lived together.

  It looked like the time for slow was over when it came to Dash, and I could not freaking wait.
>
  Maybe it would be what ultimately pushed the rest of them into being physical with me.

  God, I hoped so.

  Chapter Seven

  I wasn't surprised to find Quinton propped up against the wall in the hallway between my bedroom and Dash's. His arms were crossed over his chest and his feet crossed at the ankles.

  "Time to face the music," Dash murmured happily.

  I didn't think there was much that could deteriorate his good mood. A little bit of snuggling and tonsil hockey apparently did a body good. At least in Dash's case. I was willing to bet Quinton would agree with him.

  Quinton studied my face before smirking and stating, "You look flushed, baby. I didn't send you in there so you could get it on with Dash while we all entertained your father down in the dining room."

  I couldn't be more embarrassed if I tried.

  "Shut up, Quinton," Dash growled in a low, dangerous voice. His good mood suddenly gone.

  Ignoring them both, I headed downstairs.

  Dash was silent on his way down, but Quinton's cowboy boots clomped loudly the entire way. I had to give it to him, he looked damn good in those cowboy boots.

  "You're awfully calm for just having learned this news," Quinton said in an accusatory tone. "It's almost as if you'd learned about Marcus's rash actions before this morning. Like, say, maybe you might have learned of his treachery when he took you out to lunch with him just yesterday. And, perhaps, you'd forgotten about it and that’s why you didn't fucking tell me what he was doing."

  "Hmm..." I muttered noncommittally. He certainly had my number, that's for sure.

  I waved to everyone sitting around the dining room table as I headed straight for the kitchen. I had been up for far too long without my caffeine fix, and if I had to go much longer without it, then there was no telling what I might do to someone. They all knew how I felt about my coffee in the morning so it wasn't a surprise when not even Quinton himself followed me into the kitchen.

  The first coffee mug I pulled down from the cupboard had a pentagram on it and said something about summoning demons. It went right back into the cupboard and I pulled down a different one that had a pearly set of vampire fangs on it. Much better.

  Demons freaked me out. Six months ago I would have sworn that neither demons nor vampires actually existed. Now, I just assumed, like everything else unpleasant in this world, that they were lurking somewhere in the dark just waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

  It was disturbing really. All the things you always thought of as merely nightmares, the stuff of horror movies, when you found out they were actually real and all you wished for was for them to once again become the stuff of nightmares and no longer reality.

  I poured coffee from the carafe into the mug. Then milk and sugar. I liked it sweet and sometimes I even liked it a whole lot when it tasted nothing like actual coffee.

  I took my mug full of steaming goodness into the packed dining room and plopped down in a seat between Damien and Tyson. The spot between them was the only available seat and I found it odd that I was placed between those two of all the guys. The guys who had previously dated Annabell tended to like Ty a whole lot less than everybody else. To me, it was completely unfair and I wanted to smack some sense into all of them, but was so sick and tired of fighting with Annabell's ghost that every time I even thought of her with one of my guys it turned my stomach.

  I didn't want to come off as the jealous girlfriend, so I was trying to keep my mouth shut and my opinions on the matter to myself. It was getting harder by the day though. Sooner rather than later, I was going to explode all over them and tell them just what I thought of their stupidity and inability to move on from the past.

  I sat back in my chair and sighed happily as I sipped my coffee.

  All around the table males were angrily voicing their opinions as if they had a say in the matter and some of them were even going so far as to tear Marcus's character apart.

  I wasn't surprised by any of it, except for the fact they'd found out so soon.

  "After everything," Julian snarled, "he went through with his sister. Then having Ariel with us now. This treachery is absolutely unbelievable. To think he would actually join ranks with the very men who were the reason his baby sister ended her life... I cannot fathom it. What a fucking coward. I’ll be thanking everything I hold holy that he's no longer responsible for Ariel's well-being because, clearly, he's a traitorous cunt."

  That did it for me and pulled me out of my happy I have coffee daze.

  "Stop it," I hissed angrily. "Just stop talking right this second."

  Silence filled the dining room as every single person in the room focused solely on me. Several of them looked angry and they glared at me. The rest of them were giving me looks of calm understanding.

  Quinton's gaze was what surprised me the most, because he was of the calm and understanding variety. I had actually expected the exact opposite out of him.

  Dash was also one of the calm ones. No surprise there. When he lost his cool we all should really be frightened since he had the most reasonable head on his shoulders.

  Tyson was outraged. On my behalf, of course. And I wasn't surprised by this either. He had anger issues and was a bit of a hothead. But he was loyal to a fault. That he would immediately jump to attack something he thought might harm me wasn't a surprise in the slightest. I loved him and he was my BFF for a reason, his outrage on my behalf only being one of many.

  Julian, obviously, looked outraged.

  Damien appeared haughty but curious.

  The twins, however, were my biggest surprise because they both sat back, silently watching what was going on around them. I expected some type of emotion out of them. Be it outrage or sadness or something. But no, there was absolutely no emotion on their faces whatsoever.

  Rain was angry, practically fuming out of his nostrils. I had no idea where this hatred for Marcus stemmed from, and it seemed to be a whole lot bigger than I had originally thought it to be. I swear, Rain was getting on my last damn nerve. He was lucky he was the only blood relation I had and that I loved him.

  "Ariel," Rain started, "I don't think you quite understand what's going on here."

  He was wrong. It was him who didn't quite understand what was going on here and it was clearly up to me to set him straight.

  "It's you who doesn’t understand, Rain," I replied in a calm voice. "You're so blinded by your hatred of the Council and your jealousy of Marcus that you'll believe anything negative about him that you can grasp hold of. Marcus Cole is a damn good person and no amount of slander on your part is going to change that."

  That shut everyone up.

  I leveled Quinton with a glare. "Yes, Marcus did share with me yesterday at lunch that the Council had asked him to join them and that he was going to say yes. He wanted me to know first, which I appreciate all the more now that you people are acting like this. I'm glad I'm not one of you."

  "How can you be okay with this?" Julian ground out between clenched teeth. He was taking this incredibly personal.

  "For one, it's his decision to make, not ours. And, for two, he's not joining them because he wants to be a part of their debauchery. He's joining them because he thinks he might actually be able to do some good for our people that way."

  Rain slumped back in his chair in defeat. "Goddamn him," he grumbled. "Why am I not surprised that he'd do something for the better of our people, he's a fucking saint."

  I was right, Rain was jealous of Marcus and that's why he hated him so much.

  "He took care of me," I said as I looked Rain dead in the eyes from across the table. "She had lots of boyfriends, Vivian did, and the majority of them were not nice. Marcus was the first adult in my life to give a crap about me. He means a great deal to me so I'm going to need you to lay off of him. Do I think he's a saint? No, absolutely not. For goodness’ sake, Rain, he was sleeping with Vivian of all people. That does not say good things about him. It says the opposite in f
act."

  The guys all looked uncomfortable and were watching Rain carefully since Vivian had been mentioned. My father hated his sister more than I did, and that was saying a lot.

  "But what you need to get, Rain, is that none of that matters to me. He might have been with her, but that didn't stop him from taking care of me. I'm not his daughter, but we're family all the same."

  "You're my daughter," Rain growled in a voice full of gravel.

  I threw my arms up in the air in frustration. "I know that! Everyone knows that. Nobody's disputing that fact, not even Marcus. For fuck's sake, Rain, get over yourself already. You're my dad and I love you. You can stop being jealous now and give Marcus a break."

  Rain, whose face is usually a mask of emptiness, blinked back tears as he looked down at his hands in his lap.

  "You love me?" he rasped.

  It was me this time who blinked the emotion back from my eyes.

  I cleared my throat, twice, before I could respond. "Of course I love you, you're my dad. I don't think there's any way I could even not love you. You're awesome and you're fierce and you teach me things about magic that nobody else will. You gave me pictures of my mother and told me all about her. You told me about my family. You spent years and years looking for me and you never once gave up on me. That's crazy beautiful and I would have to be a soulless brat not to love you back. I’d never had someone love me before I moved into Marcus Cole's house and even then, it's not the same as it is with you. I needed someone like you... I... When she left me alone with them..." My voice caught and I choked on the words, not getting anything else out past the lump in my throat.

  All around the table the guys were avoiding eye contact and not just with me.