“Your dad was probably trying to stop the Cartwrights from completing the last step of whatever their plan was the night he died. And since nothing ever happened, he must have succeeded.”
Too many emotions were running rampant. Too many feelings, unnamed and untamed. I hated that he hadn’t told me any of this—that he’d left me alone. I was scared that they were still out there. But a sense of pride was also welling up in me that my dad, the jerk reporter, was in fact a hero and not just in the eyes of his little girl.
Rafe joined me on the couch and took my hand.
That’s when the real pain hit. “If I really am a Legacy, then he was doubly as powerful as me. How the hell am I going to find this thing that has infected the city when it took him down?”
Rafe stood and pulled me to my feet. “You’re going to start by not saying things like that.”
He grabbed my chin and forced our eyes to lock. The Charm sizzled to life and connected us.
“You are strong—and not because of what you are, but because of who you are.”
And I knew he believed it to be true, believed it so readily despite what he had heard and seen. It scared me to death.
“But I don’t know who I am.”
That was the last straw. The pressure of it all pushed on my chest, and it was hard to breathe. I needed more open space. I pushed myself away from him and leapt from the couch to pace. Halfway through a lap, I leaned over the back of the couch and tried to draw in a full lungful of air, but I could only manage shallow ones. My vision tunneled to the coffee table and the stacks of magical texts strewn everywhere. I was drowning in a sudden floodgate of answers, in the truths that swam around and didn’t let the air in.
My father had died saving the city from a Demon who threatened to possess it.
A Demon who now wanted me to finish his plan.
Going back to the couch, I dropped my head between my knees and assumed the position. Contrary to what airlines say, this is neither a calming nor comfortable way to panic.
“Is this you freaking out?” Rafe asked.
“Yes, this is me freaking out. I think I’m allowed. I was nearly killed. My entire life has been a lie, which is hilarious if you really think about it. The one person I trusted with almost everything turned out to be the one person hiding the most from me. And I got him killed. Now his brother and I are hunting down a Demon who wants to kill me and then there’s the whole Dad thing—”
In little more than the blink of an eye, Rafe was beside me. He swept me up into his arms and his lips were on mine faster than I could blink. As his wolf surrounded me, my stomach flipped over on itself as he leaned me against the back of the couch. I ran my fingers through his hair and let him take my lips, let him suckle them softly as he ran his hand along my jaw and tightened his arm around my waist. My heart stopped racing and the questions faded to gray as I inhaled his scent.
When my pulse beat normally and I was able to breathe again, Rafe pulled away. His lips were pink and his eyes were the bluest I had seen them since his shift.
“How do you do that?” I exhaled.
“Kiss someone?”
“Make everything stop.”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
I sighed and leaned my head against his forehead, closing my eyes.
“Did you really mean that? About not knowing who you are?”
I nodded. “Since Ethan, it seems to be the underlying question of my existence. I really don’t know. I never really wanted the answer. Total unexamined life.”
Rafe’s chuckle echoed in his body, and in his power around us. “You have a razor wit and a love of words that so infuses your being you misquote great literature without thinking. You always put others first, to a fault, and you need evidence to believe anything. You’re the daughter of a Lilin and one hell of a reporter. You are Merci Lanard, the girl who always finds the truth.”
It was hard to hear, like petting a cat backwards. Hard to believe. One month and he knew me better then I knew myself.
I wanted to pull away from Rafe. This was messy and rough and raw, but I couldn’t find a reason to distract myself from it. I wanted more. More of this peace he brought to me, more of this certainty that anchored me to reality. I tilted my head and kissed him. Took those perfect lips with mine and pulled him against me.
I pulled at the edge of his shirt, wanting to feel his soft skin against me. His muscles rippled under my fingertips as he pulled me to him tightly. His excitement grew between us and his embrace grew wild and rough. He twisted his hands into my hair and when my exploration of his body hit a bruise on his side, a growl thrummed between us.
But he didn’t stop this time. We both were on the same page, needing the same thing from each other, a moment of respite, a moment of something honest between us. No fate. No destiny. No legacies.
He slid his hand down my thigh and his firm hand cupped my ass. He squeezed then lifted, shifting us backwards on the couch. His body fully against mine, it was a warmth and pressure that called to life parts of me that had long been slave to the Charm, to the work, to the everlasting parade of evil in my life.
But not this, not the taste of him in my mouth, the weight of him against me, the feeling of him ready. There was only good in that.
I reached for the tails of his shirt and pulled upwards, wanting more of his warmth around me, against me. He leaned up and pulled the shirt over his head and I was able to take in his broad shoulders, the expanse of pectorals and the still lingering purple on his ribs.
He dropped his shirt to the ground beside the couch and pulled me up to a sitting position. He skillfully pulled my thermal up and over my head and down my arms in quick movement that left me completely exposed while he studied me with those eyes, pupils blown with contentment.
“You might actually be paler than me.”
“I’m a bit of a night owl.”
He smiled down at me as he knelt between my legs. Slowly, he reached out and took Ethan’s medallion. “I think this is ready to go.”
I took his hand and we pulled off the silver chain. As I watched the medallion hit the ground next to my shirt, a brush of his animal surrounded me and covered my bare skin in fur for a moment while my skin goose bumped.
He pulled me closer to him and sat up on his knees and buried his nose behind my ear and drew in a deep breath that brought his chest to mine, skin to skin. Everything tingled, everything sizzled and it had nothing to do with the Charm.
“You smell like roasted marshmallows.” His words cascaded down my neck and my nipples hardened on the inside of my thankfully padded bra.
His hand tangled in my hair, and he brought his mouth to mine and kissed me hard, needing. My hand slid up and dug into his shoulders and around his waist, wanting that hot skin against mine. He leaned us back on the couch again, and I could feel his hand work my bra strap down my shoulder and make its way around my back. His lips trailed down my neck, and his teeth grazed my throat.
Pleasure flooded through my body and my vision swam in colors, then lights, reds and blacks, and white streaks.
And then pain. Not from Rafe, god, everything he was doing was heaven and soft and warm.
Another streak of red across my eyelids and then a cold, icicle sharpness stabbed through my chest.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I had the strangest dreams about running and climbing. I rolled over to find the cool side of the pillow and was met with rough rocks. My eyes flew open, and I sat up to find the twinkle of city lights. The roof. I was on a roof in in my jeans and Ethan’s medallion danced cold against my bare chest.
I wrapped my arms around my legs and shivered in the frozen night. I scanned the rooftop and found Rafe crouched in a corner. I could see his bright eyes from across the space and his pale skin glowed in the faint moonlight.
“Rafe?”
“Merci?”
“What the hell happened?”
Slowly, he rose. He was only w
earing his pants, but his feet were bare on the rocky surface. He paced around the side of the roof, his eyes never leaving me. As he came closer, I could see fresh blood on his cheek and forehead and more bruises up his arms and across his midsection.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“No. Are you?”
I looked down at my hands. My nails were crusted in blood and my arms were scratched. My mind was blank; I had no memory of how it happened. “I don’t know.”
He walked carefully toward me, less like a wolf and more like a bird who would fly away at the slightest provocation. He knelt down beside me and carefully reached out, stroking my hands, my cheek.
I waited until I was ready to match his gaze. “What happened, Rafe?”
“You were controlled.”
I was going to throw up. I grabbed at my stomach and curled away from him. The silver of Ethan’s medallion burned against my bare skin.
“Let’s get you home.”
My skin was sore where he touched me. Getting back to the fire escape hurt my soft feet and the cold made every step a stabbing pain. He wrapped his arm around me as we walked the block back to my house, covering my more essential parts with my arms.
The door of my place was off its hinges and Rafe had to fight to get it back into place to lock it. I stood shakily on my own and surveyed the living room. It looked like a night after a bender. The picture on the wall was crooked, the couch was on its back, and books were all over the floor.
“Did we fight?”
“We? No,” he clarified. “But someone really didn’t want me to get in the way.”
My stomach churned again, and I ran for the bathroom. I made it just as my stomach contents reversed their resting place. The biscuits and gravy Piper had made from scratch that morning were pretty much the same color the second time around.
I rested my head on the cool porcelain and tried to breathe. Controlled? Like possessed? How the hell had that happened? Possessed by what? The same Demon that sucked all those people dry? Something else? How much about this world didn’t I know? And how much of it wanted to kill me?
My head started to spin and my stomach flipped over again, but with nothing to purge. I rested my head on my arm and a cold sweat made my skin sticky.
Rafe haunted the doorway of the bathroom. “I have some clean clothes, but you’ll feel more like yourself after a shower.”
I moved slowly, treating my stomach like a very full glass of red wine over a white carpet. Still in my jeans, I stepped into the tub and turned on the water. The full pressure of cold stream jolted me awake, made everything sharper. Through the stream of water, I looked at Rafe, who stood watching me carefully.
“Shower. Check.”
He shook his head and put the clean clothes on the counter. “Let’s get you cleaned up and into bed.”
I hurt from my hair follicles to the balls of my feet. Everything. My heart, my head, my body. I was a balloon that had been blown up and then let go to fly recklessly in circles, stretched and shriveled. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the tiles. Even the Charm seemed beaten back for the moment, like I didn’t have enough energy to even raise an eyebrow let alone a question.
I heard Rafe move and I was sure it would be to run far away from me. And I’m not sure that I would have blamed him. Instead, I heard the clink of a belt against the tiled floor and the shower warmed up as he slid in next to me and started to unbutton my jeans. My skin goose bumped in surprise, despite the steaming shower.
“Why aren’t you running? My living room tells me I kicked your ass.”
“I’m used to getting my ass kicked.”
I let him pull the jeans off and then leaned against him. I rested my head on his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t know what to say to him. I’d never been here before, never been so lost, so exhausted and yet the only thing I feared was him leaving.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize yet.”
“Yet?”
“We’ll have to see if I scar. You can apologize to me then.”
I sighed. “Aren’t you afraid it will come back?”
Rafe shook his head. “One thing at a time, love.”
A week ago, I would have protested. I was a grown woman. I didn’t need to be bathed. I didn’t need to be treated like glass. I’d been through hell before and no one had been there to pick up the pieces then. But this was different, this was bigger, darker. Even if I had the energy to work the Charm, I didn’t know what questions to ask, where to start.
His thumbs hooked into the waistband of my underwear and he slid them as far down as he could. I shook them from my legs as he took off his boxers.
Everything was so slow, so gentle, like he knew I was wearing my nerve endings on the surface.
He reached for the loofah and soaped it up with my honeysuckle shower gel. Even as he washed me he was slow, careful to draw the soapy ball across my skin, down my arms, in the curve of my hip. He had to scrub a little at my elbows to get some tar or dirt off, but he followed the rough actions with his fingertips, running them over the raw skin to soothe it.
I couldn’t do anything as he massaged his strong hands around my body, around my arms, my shoulders, as if he knew exactly where I hurt. He used the bubbles to lubricate his strong hands as they worked at the tension in my lower back and backside.
He paid special attention to my hands, making sure to carefully wash away the dirt, the blood, until they were pink and pristine between us. He brought my palm to his face and softly kissed the roof rash.
My breath caught in my throat at the intimacy. Here we were in the shower together and that’s what caught my attention as shockingly intimate. I trusted him. I was entrusting him with every part of me and it was the most intimate thing I’d ever done.
He stepped forward and brought our bodies flush in the water. He ran his hand up my throat and face, then gently pulled my head into the stream to wet my hair. As he worked up the suds in my hair, I felt the muscles in the length of his body, the overall restraint in his being as his fingers massaged my scalp. He was a perfect specimen of man and he was in the shower with me, really with me.
As I leaned back again in to the flow of water, he ran his fingers through my hair to get the soap out. I let the water carry away the pain, the guilt, the pride. Let it run over me, over us, and circle down the drain with the rest of the dirt.
Rafe ran his hand down my neck, my chest, and came around my waist to turn me around, toward the spray. He reached around me and pulled my toothbrush from the holder and laid on a stripe of the fresh mint.
He handed me the toothbrush. “I do have my limits.”
I nodded and I started to brush my teeth. It was only then that I became painfully aware of our nakedness and I tried to shift away from him.
“No, you don’t.” He grabbed my hips and pulled me against him again.
His body fit around mine like two pieces of a puzzle, the curve of my back and shoulders pressing against his chest, his arms looping around my waist, his hip bone pressing into the fleshy part at my own hip.
“This is weird.”
“That you are taking a shower after having been blood controlled or that you’re brushing your teeth,” he said, his lips brushing my ear.
I chewed on the brush for a moment. He was something else. I leaned my face into the spray to rinse out my mouth. “Weird that I’ve never brushed my teeth in front of anyone before.”
“So a lot of firsts for today.”
I turned to put my toothbrush back in its holder in the shower. The mundanity of the act made me feel better. More like Merci. I’d needed the shower and the minty fresh breath. How had he known?
I turned back around to face him. I reached up to run my thumb over his busted lower lip. “I am really trying to keep the questions at bay here. But I can only keep them down for so long before I go crazy.”
Rafe reached around me to turn off the showe
r. “Get dressed. I’ll fix you something hot to eat. I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Then you sleep.”
When I’d finally managed clothes and enough courage, I joined him at the kitchen table, still strewn with our research, but now bearing two bowls of soup.
He sat close to me, closer than he had ever before. His thigh pressing against mine and his heat surrounded me, massaged away the ache in my body, in my chest. I wrapped my hands around the soup as he wrapped an arm around my waist.
I blew across the top of the soup to give me two more second to formulate words. “I remember us, you know … and then waking up on the roof. Nothing in between. What happened?”
Rafe’s voice was calm, but his energy itched around him. He was as scared as I was, but he wasn’t running this time. “We were getting to the interesting part and you had this seizure and your eyes started bleeding. So that was a hint something was off. You launched me across the room and headed for the door. When I tried to stop you, we struggled. You ran, I grabbed the medallion and followed. When I finally caught up to you, that’s when it got viscous.”
I looked down at his forearm and reached out to run my fingers over scratches on his forearm obviously made by my nails. His skin goose bumped under my touch. Less than twenty-four hours after declaring his affection, I was drawing blood. I had warned him that being with me was going to be hard, but I didn’t think it was going to be this dangerous.
“I did this.”
“You did not. I’m not going to blame you for it, so you shouldn’t either.”
His instant forgiveness didn’t settle well, but I wasn’t sure why. “What was it trying to do?”
Rafe licked his lips and I could see that he fought with the truth, fought with the temptation to ease me into the truth. “I am assuming he was trying to bring you to him.”
A shiver racked down my spine, like someone hitting a pipe with a metal bat. It reverberated through my skin.
He pulled me close and rested his head on my shoulder. “I thought I was going to lose you.”
“Guess we’re even now.” Just a day earlier I’d been thinking the same thing about him. How is it that someone can work their way in so fast? Like a demon, Rafe had worked his way into me, filling the spaces in my soul. Maybe everyone was better with a partner.
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