I knew who I would see when I looked down onto the ocean-glazed rocks of the beach.
A man people thought was a monster who I knew in my bones was really the man ready to save me from any kind of harm.
It was hard to make out his form in the dark, but the moon was a round mirror in the sky refracting silver light onto the glimmering water and Priest’s long, lean form. He was moving, practicing some series of fighting sequences or throwing knives, I couldn’t tell.
But I knew I wanted to be down there on the ground learning to defend myself, not up in the room like some princess in a tower.
So, silently as possible because Zeus slept with one eye open, I descended down the stairs, grabbed one of Lou’s big, white puffer jackets from the hook by the door and a pair of her too-large UGG boots.
“Took ya longer than I thought it would.”
I startled, a little squeak falling from my lips as I stumbled over the boot I was trying to slip on. Looking up through my hair as I steadied myself, I saw Zeus sprawled in one of his leather living room chairs. The moonlight barely reached him, but I could make out the craggy set of his features, the low gleam of muted silver in his gaze.
I sighed heavily. “I feel badly for Monster and Angel. They’re not going to get away with anything in this house.”
Zeus’s smile was bright from the shadows. “Not much I don’t know ’bout in this house and in my club. When you give a shit ’bout somethin’ you pay attention to it. I give a shit ’bout you, Bea. You’re the only bright spot my girl’s got in her family, though Phillipa is learnin’, I’ll give ’er that.”
My lips twisted, sharp and malformed like a broken hanger in my mouth. “Yeah, well, Lou deserves the best.”
Zeus shifted his large frame forward in the chair, hands dangling between his spread thighs. “Fuck yeah, she does. But don’t mistake me, little Bea, the love I got in my heart for you isn’t just ’cause you’re my wife’s sister. It’s got fuckuva lot more to do with you as a woman, you hear me? Don’t think I know a girl so sweet as you.”
Something flipped over in my gut. I felt both sick and heart warmed, embarrassed that I needed independent validation and awed that I somehow elicited respect like that from a man who was larger than life.
“Which is why you’re guarding the door? Is it to keep bad guys out or me in?” I dared, fisting my hands on my hips.
A low, smoky chuckle. “Look just like Lou doin’ that. Nah, I’m not gonna pass judgment on ya. I fell in love with Lou when she was younger than you are now. Okayed my eighteen-year-old son datin’ his teacher. I’m a lotta things, but a fuckin’ hypocrite isn’t one of them.” He paused, then leveraged himself out of the chair way too gracefully for such a big man and came to me. My neck cranked back at an awkward angle to maintain eye contact and he stooped lower to chuff me lightly on the chin with his tattooed knuckles. “I gotta theory about you good girls ’cause I got experience with one’a my own. A good woman sees the good in all kinds. She’ll search the depths of a body until she finds some glimmer of light no matter how dark and broken a soul may be. It’s just in her nature.” He looked down at the thick wedding band on his finger and a smile of remembrance ghosted across his face. “Just as it’s in the nature of a broken man to race toward her light. You ask me, there’s a special kinda yin and yang in that. Two hearts find’a love like that it’s fuckin’ bindin’.”
I blinked up at him, wanting to cry. At this moment, I didn’t know if I’d ever felt so seen.
His voice was hoarse and sad as he continued, “But you gotta know, little Bea, a love like that scars as much as it heals, yeah? You don’t get outta that alive. You think Cress would’a had any kinda life if my boy, King, truly died that night on the cliffs?”
I sucked in a shaky breath as I shook my head, remembering the spectre of a woman she’d been those desolate months when we’d all thought him dead.
“Yeah,” Z confirmed softly. “So, you go out that door, I want ya to do it knowin’ I doubt the same sweet girl is comin’ back through it again.”
I struggled to breathe through the pressure of my inflated heart pounding in my chest, so I just smiled tremulously and tapped my hand lightly on Z’s tattooed chest. Backing up toward the door, I had my hand on the handle before I found the air to add, “If I ever have anything half so lovely as the love you and Loulou share, Z, I’ll count myself one of the luckiest people on the planet. You’d probably be surprised how much I’m willing to sacrifice for something so beautiful. Not all love stories play out in the light. Some of the best romances occur in the veil of shadows.”
Z’s smile was bright and quick as a lightning strike against his dark face. “I don’t fuckin’ doubt it.”
I nodded, smiling slightly as I turned around and left the warm house for the cold, dark night.
* * *
* * *
It was early November and there was the scent of snow in the air, a tingle at the back of my nose that teased at a white winter. I huddled under the big jacket, hugging myself as I navigated the path from packed dirt to large, smooth pebbles. The shush of waves gently kissing the shore was the only soundtrack to the clear night, soothing me as I walked toward what I fiercely prayed would be my future.
He didn’t stop as I drew close, but I had no doubt he knew I was there watching him.
I stopped a yard away, my eyes fixed to his form as his right shoulder reared back, torso barely following, and then whipped forward, the thin whistle of the blade slicing through the air only slightly higher than the hiss of the wind off the water. There was a thunk as it hit the target, an overturned trunk of a tree lodged in the rocks.
“Nice shot.”
Priest didn’t turn toward me or acknowledge my presence. Instead, he crunched over the shore to retrieve the five knives buried deep in the wood and trudged back.
I waited and watched, settling down on a damp log.
He threw first with his right hand, then his left. The next round, he started facing away from the target, his gaze fixed away from me, and then in a flurry of efficient movement, he twisted and released, each and every knife landing unerringly in a dark, vaguely circular blotch on the tree.
“You’re very good,” I complimented again even though I knew Priest didn’t need validation for his skills.
No, he was the kind of man who needed validation for those things he believed he was incapable of.
Warmth.
Love.
Happiness.
I straightened my cold, stiff body from the log and padded across the beach to his standing point. When he returned, it was as if I was a ghost. He stood just in front of me and turned his back to face the target again.
“I wonder…” I said silkily as I dared to take that last step closer and pressed my chest lightly to his back. He didn’t flinch, but I could feel the tension in his powerful frame. “If you would be so good if I did this.”
There was a brief hesitation, and I knew he was deciding.
Not whether he could meet my challenge. No, that was child’s play to him.
Deciding on whether to enter this game with me, to indulge in me the way I yearned to indulge in him.
I’d felt nothing but the helium of hope lightening my bones, trilling like a high note in the beat of my heart since he’d grabbed me by my throat and swore to protect me in front of the entire club.
He wanted me.
He had to.
There was no way a man like him pledged himself to anyone unless he was driven to, unless that person laid waste to his cold, clear mind and successfully wedged themselves beneath his iron skin.
I held my breath as he made the choice and promised myself I would walk away if he said no. I would stop stalking the poor man like his shadow and let him live his life. I promised myself I’d find a way to live mine outside of this feverish obsession I held for him, an obsession that burned so hot in my heart it warmed me even in the cold night on a barren beach.
An
d then he spoke.
“A chuisle mo chroí,” Priest said in what I assumed had to be Gaelic. The words, though indecipherable to me, held only warm, intimate praise in his cold, low voice. A juxtaposition that made me shiver with something more than the frigid night. “If you dare to test me, at least make it a worthy challenge.”
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
A brief pause for his free-form chuckle that warmed me like brandy.
Thunk.
All five knives outlining the dark circle in the wood perfectly.
I gasped when he turned against me and suddenly, I was up in his arms, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist, his hands beneath my nightgown, freezing and strong as they cupped my bare bottom.
“This,” he said gutturally, eyes edged with wildness as he looked down into my own. “This is a fuckin’ challenge. To hold you in my arms and focus on anythin’ else.”
I swallowed, but my heart seemed lodged in my throat, thrumming so hard it felt like I was choking. “You could focus on me instead.”
Priest’s smile was not a tame thing. It sliced across his freckled face, lips too red for a man, open over his white teeth like a wound over bone. When I touched my fingers to the edge of it, he snapped at me, catching the soft tips in his strong hold for an instant before releasing me. The pain sheared through me followed swiftly by heat that seared down my spine.
“You don’t want one hundred percent of my focus, Little Shadow. You wouldn’t know how to handle me.”
I sank deeper into his hold, pressing my groin to his torso in a bid to alleviate the tension I felt coiled there just waiting to spring.
“What would you do?” I dared to ask, vivid, almost violent images of passion morphing and breaking apart in my mind like a broken kaleidoscope tinged in red.
His lids lowered, eyes a narrow blade of pale green. “Just be grateful I don’t have my knives on me right now.”
I shuddered so hard he had to brace me tighter to his body so I wouldn’t fall out of his hold. “Oh.”
His laugh was sinister, the same hiss as the blades made arrowing through the air. “Oh,” he agreed. “You aren’t ready for that. You might never be ready for that.”
“For you,” I confirmed, watching the demons chase themselves across his eyes. I tightened my legs around his waist and slid a hand carefully into the side of his thick, surprisingly soft hair. He flinched slightly, eyes darkening with lust and something like panic, as if my touch was something to fear. “I’ve been ready for you for years.”
And just that quickly, Priest reverted to the man he presented to all the world. Cold, intractable as the blades he coveted. He dropped me without consideration, but waited until I landed on my feet before turning from me to retrieve his knives.
“It’s true,” I shouted to him over a gale of wind. “I’ve watched you for years. Wanted you for years.”
Priest scowled as he walked through the punishing wind, hair flying about his face, leather jacket flapping open to reveal the Hephaestus Auto hoodie beneath. He stalked right to me, his knives slotted between the knuckles of his right hand. When he raised them, the tip of two knives at my throat, I only canted my chin higher in the air to gives him space at my neck to roam.
His eyes flashed and a low growl rose from his throat to be lost on the wind.
“I am not afraid of you,” I told him, my voice ironclad, the words tossed down between us like a gauntlet. “You can try to scare me all you want, Priest. I like it.”
I gasped softly as his other hand banded over my low back and hauled me up against him. I could feel every hard inch of his upper thighs and the thick bulge at his groin that was hard just for me.
He bent down to me, his face looming and dark as storm clouds rolling in. “Don’t tempt me. I’m not some untrained boy wrapped around your little finger. I’m not even a man. I kill for sport, I love pain and fuckin’ court death daily. You play with me, Bea, you knowingly play with a monster, something more dead than alive. I’ll ruin you,” he promised.
I arched my neck into the point of the blades, felt them catch and pull sharply at my skin. My heart beat fast and strong, a staccato beat on the tight skin of a drum, but my voice was sure as I breathed, “So, ruin me.”
The night was cold and metallic on my tongue as I inhaled sharply when Priest jarred me closer still and then the only thing I could taste was him.
Hot enough to burn, the edges of my tongue curling into the heat, my inhibitions disintegrating to ash he ate out of my mouth. His groan rolled through me, dark and deep like a great dragon claiming his treasure. He curled me closer as he plundered, careful only with the hand that held the knives, angled with precise pressure at the side of my neck so I could feel the threat, but know no true pain. The feel of the steel there and the iron pressed thickly to my belly scorched like dragon’s breath down my throat to warm the apex of my thighs.
“The things I want to do to you,” he growled as he pulled back only enough to run his nose along my jaw, down the line of my throat to the place his blades met my flesh.
I gasped when he minutely flicked the knife as he drew it away. A warm bead of blood welled up, trembled over the wound then began to slide down my neck. The hot lash of Priest’s tongue was there, dashing away the blood and its trail, his lips vibrating deliciously against my skin as he hummed his approval.
“You taste so fuckin’ good,” he murmured as he sucked at my neck hard enough to leave a bruise. I shivered when his teeth scraped over the sensitive, slick flesh. “Feels too fuckin’ good havin’ someone like an angel in these bloody hands.” He pulled back to grin menacingly. “Feels like blasphemy to hold you like this.”
I pressed my hips against his erection, blushing at my wantonness even as I said, “Either that’s a knife in your pocket or blasphemy turns you on.”
I felt his gravelly laughter against my lips as he kissed me hard like a punctuation mark at the end of his statement. “Fuck yeah, it does.”
My giggle died as he opened his mouth over mine and stole the noise from my throat. We kissed there on that night dark beach as dawn bleached the stars from the sky and turned the water dull and grey as lead. I was so aroused I could feel the slick of it seep down my thigh. My nipples were furled into tight buds that ached for hard, plucking fingers. There was an eloquence in the sexual demands of my body I didn’t know how to give voice to with words, so I just moaned inarticulately as I gyrated lightly against Priest’s long, hard body.
A hand threaded through the back of my hair and tugged hard enough for my eyes to smart. I looked up at him, damp lips parted for my panting breath, fixed in position by his control and my own demanding desire.
He gazed down at me hungrily with a question in the quirk of his brow. “I don’t know how you do this to me.”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel,” he said, as if that in itself wasn’t tragic. “I’d thought I hunted down all emotion to extinction.”
“No,” I argued, softening in his hold to show just how much I trusted him even if he didn’t trust the goodness in himself. The roots of my hair stung and the knife at my throat was still and portentous presence. “You felt for Cressida when King was gone. You hunted down Staff Sergeant Danner for her, for Zeus, so that she could be free of her burden and he could be free from prison.”
His mouth hardened, but the severity only made his handsomeness more palpable. “I understand revenge. I understand the concept of an eye for a fuckin’ eye.”
“You understand protecting the people you care about,” I rephrased, reaching up even when he flinched, to place my hand on his cheek, running my fingertips through is beard. “It’s why you spent the whole night out here.”
His lips pulled back over a snarl. “No one is gonna hurt you. No one is gonna fuckin’ touch you––” he cut himself off with a choked off curse in Gaelic.
“No one, but you,” I finished.
He stared at me suspiciously as if I was a mirror
held up to his face and he didn’t trust the demons he saw lurking in his gaze. “No one, but me,” he finally agreed with a solemnity that felt like an oath sworn to God.
“Good,” I said casually, striving not to scare him away with the exuberance I felt in my chest, my heart a bouncy ball against the walls of my ribs. “Now, do you think you could teach me some of that fancy knife work? Just in case you can’t be there, I want to know how to defend myself.”
“It’s six in the morning,” he said flatly. “You should be in bed.”
“With you?” I asked hopefully, springing up to my toes so I could smile closer to his face, hoping to blind him with it so he might forget himself.
“No.”
I sighed dramatically. “Oh, fine. But I do want to learn. I suppose, if you don’t want to teach me, I could ask Wrath for help at Box N Burn…”
Instantly, I was in Priest’s arms again, his teeth over the hard pulse at my neck the way an animal might claim its mate. “No.”
“So, you’ll teach me,” I breathed as he bit down hard then licked the pain away with a long swipe of his tongue.
“I’ll teach you,” he confirmed reluctantly as he collared my throat with his hand and stroked over my pulse. “Because you are not weak. I’ll teach you to yield that knife I gave you properly and I’ll teach you to defend yourself usin’ just your mind and body. But you should know, from now on, there won’t be a time I’ll be absent when you need me. I may be more death than man, but I can still haunt you.”
I wasn’t sure, but as Priest turned to set up a trunk as a target closer for me to practice on and I watched his cool, efficient movements, I wondered if that wasn’t the most romantic thing anyone had ever said.
Bea
Eleven days, eleven body parts.
As if the arm wasn’t enough.
The killer placed them everywhere I couldn’t avoid going.
One day, at the mouth of the driveway to Zeus and Loulou’s house (sending Zeus and Priest into twin fits of rage, one hot with it, one cold).
Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6) Page 11
