DarkInnocence

by Madeline Pryce

  Dante took one look at me and had me out of the car and in his arms within seconds. I didn’t have to say anything—he just knew I needed him. His actions made the fact I’d just let some no-name guy screw me even worse. I didn’t deserve Dante’s comfort no matter how desperately I craved it.

  He closed his strong, burly arms around my waist and forced my chest against the rock-solid wall of his muscular front. Heat radiated off him and I burrowed in closer. I barely felt the cold wind twining around my bare feet and creeping up the back of my skirt.

  I drew in his scent, male and musky, and clutched his thin black t-shirt as the tears I’d been fighting won. He cupped the back of my head, turned with me in his arms and set me on the rumbling hood of his truck. Smooth, warm metal lined my backside and the vibrations speared right through me.

  Pathetic that an inanimate object could turn me on more than the nameless guy I’d let into my body had.

  I spread my legs in an automatic gesture and Dante filled the gap just as instinctually. The warm denim of his jeans rubbed my inner thighs and I fought not to squirm. Things weren’t sexual between Dante and I. The age gap between us kept my girl hormones in check—most of the time anyway. Things with us were comfortable. Familiar. Over the last several weeks, he’d become my best friend.

  Dante pulled my head from his chest and looked down at me. He was tall, massive and virile. Energy pumped off him in waves that engulfed me from head to toe. I might not be a hunter like my sister, but we were created from the same gene pool. A pool we now knew stemmed from vampires. I could sense the otherness about him and the other creatures of the night most normal humans didn’t know existed.

  Dante cupped my face and brushed away my tears with his thumb. His gaze searched mine. “We should get you home, you’re a mess.”

  “I can’t go home, not like this. Not when he…”

  Something hard filled his golden eyes and the hand he had wrapped around my waist tightened. “Is that why you got so fucked-up tonight, because of something Eli did?”

  I shrugged and couldn’t seem to make myself admit anything aloud. It wasn’t Eli, not exactly, that had driven me from the house we’d so recently moved into. The large Victorian structure had once belonged to my torturer, Lizbeth. Some cruel twist of fate decreed that since my sister killed the queen, she became queen and inherited all her crap. This included a basement full of archaic torture equipment.

  No matter how pretty the sprawling structure was on the outside, with its steep roofs, tall windows and fading orange-red brick walls, I hated it. Hated the sensations crawling under my skin when I stepped inside. Hated the imprint of Lizbeth’s tinkling, little-girl laughter imbedded into the walls.

  But the house was safe. Bullet-proof. Demon-proof. Vampire-proof. A perfect place for Ella while she sorted out who wanted to see her dead and who would stand behind her. The people-standing-behind-her list was awfully damn short. So I stayed out of the way as much as possible.

  When Eli had come into the fully decked-out kitchen with not one, but two gorgeous brunettes on his arm, it had solidified my decision to flee. I did not want to listen to their all-night orgy. I’d been lost, lonely and desperate to quiet the pain lurking in my veins.

  “You still with me?” Dante gentled his grip until I no longer felt the imprint of his fingers in my side. When I nodded, he said, “You can crash at my place tonight. We’ll curl on the couch and watch a movie, just like last time.”

  Guilt gnawed. “I’m sorry, Dante. You were probably out doing something, huh?” Or someone…not that I had room to judge.

  My thighs and ass squeaked against the metal hood when he slid me off his truck and onto my feet. He opened the door and, one hand on my ass, the other on my hip, hoisted me inside the vehicle.

  I turned to find him looking down at me with narrowed eyes. Had I spoken my last thought aloud?

  “You aren’t wearing panties, are you?” he asked.

  Wonderful. I pulled my lower lip between my teeth and tried to extend the hem of my skirt by smoothing it over my thighs. “Ah, that would be a no.”

  He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. I could almost see his lips moving, as if he were counting. The hand he held at his side curled into a boulder. When his lids finally opened, some unreadable expression tightened his jaw. “You’re killing me, do you know that?”

  “I’m sorry?” Was he disgusted with me? Angry? Annoyed? I’d disappointed the one man, aside from Eli, who seemed to think I could be more than just a pretty face.

  “Quit apologizing and get your fucking seat belt on.” Chastised and on the verge of new tears, I fumbled with the shoulder harness and couldn’t get the damn thing to click into place.

  Dante batted my hands away and secured me. He never looked away from my face. His voice, if possible, grew edgier. “The guy you reek of, he hurt you in any way?”

  Heat crawled up my neck and settled somewhere in my face. Mortified didn’t even cut it. The animal lurking inside him gave him strength, speed, an ability to heal almost anything and a heightened sense of smell. He could smell the fact I’d just had sex.

  “No, he didn’t hurt me.”

  His hand disappeared into my hair and he tugged my head back. The hint of pain both sped my heart and made my belly flip-flop. Something about Dante made me feel safe and that little bit of hurt, more than the drugs or alcohol, made me, the girl who forgot nothing, forget.

  He brought his face to mine, close enough for our noses to touch and I swallowed a mouth that felt full of cotton.

  “I know what that bitch did to you, Hannah. I saw it. Heard it. Felt it in my gut and have to live with the fact that I didn’t get to you sooner. But Lizbeth is dead. Gone. The way you keep hurting yourself is just giving her more power over you. Either you sit down and talk to your sister about this shit that’s eating you alive or I will. Your uncle come back to town yet?”

  “Next week, he’s still trying to gather supporters on Ella’s behalf. Other hunters who might be willing speak out against the Shadow Agency. It’s not going well.”

  After that statement, the ten-minute ride to his house was utterly silent. My head throbbed with my pounding heart, a direct reaction to the pulsating energy roiling off Dante. In the short time I’d know him, he’d never been rough with me. Never raised his voice. Tonight I’d pushed him and myself too far.

  God, maybe that’s what I needed. Someone to yell at me. Someone to treat me like a person, not a fragile piece of glass that was going to shatter at any moment. I loved my sister, more than life itself, but she didn’t know how to deal with me. I’d pushed her and everyone else out of my life because I didn’t know how to deal with me.

  Everyone except Dante because he was safe and unattainable.

  I didn’t hear the engine or the tires over pavement. The only noise was my spinning thoughts. Gradually we left the trendy college area and moved from one upscale neighborhood to another. Tall evergreens lined the road and swayed in the breeze. The houses eventually got smaller, more spaced out and the yards larger.

  Dante’s home wasn’t huge, but it was clean, cozy and private. It even had a white-picket fence, so not what I would have expected of him. We pulled into the driveway and my stomach rumbled. The back of my throat prickled. Saliva pooled in my mouth and I swallowed back the urge to vomit. The inside of the truck spun and sweat beaded between my breasts.

  “You’re going to throw up, aren’t you?” he asked.

  I put my hand over my mouth and mumbled, “Maybe.”

  My head swam and instead of seeing double, I saw triple. Darkness closed in around me and a full-body shiver chattered my teeth. Dante unclicked my belt and slid me out of the truck through the driver’s side. Keys out, front door unlocked, he had me kneeling in front of the toilet seconds before my body convulsed. I heaved into the toilet, once, twice, three times a charm. At some point during my body’s binge-fest, Dante left and returned with a blanket to put around my shoulders.


  He held my hair. Rubbed my back. I think he might have even sung to me.

  The last thing I remembered, after the degrading experience of emptying my stomach in front of a very hot man and having that same very hot man hand me a new toothbrush, was him carrying me to his large four-poster bed. He crawled in behind me, spooned our bodies together and covered us with something soft and black. Safe. Warm. Cocooned within the arms of a man who occasionally shape shifted into a six-hundred-pound lion, I passed out.

  Chapter Two

  The sun slowly disappeared behind the snow-capped mountains. Orange- and magenta-streaked clouds eventually gave way to night. I sighed. The sight mirrored my mood. Something bright and shiny snuffed out by the darkness.

  Wind blew into my room from the open floor-to-ceiling, side-by-side windows and sent the peach gossamer drapes dancing. They reminded me of the dirty, wrinkled curtains at the asylum. I shivered and pulled my knee-length knit sweater tighter around me. My full-body quakes probably had less to do with being cold and more to do with me being drug free for nearly seventy-two hours.

  Dante’s pep talk in the truck about Lizbeth and how I was still letting her punish me from the grave hit home. I was done being weak. Done being walked over. Done being a fragile glass ornament whose sole purpose was to add decoration. I mattered and it was time I started acting like it.

  Buzzing filled the room and I looked over my shoulder at the nightstand where my phone bounced across the hard surface. Right on time. I didn’t bother to check who it was. I referred to my new stalker as Mr. Restricted, something I should probably talk to Ella about. The calls now came routinely at sundown and lasted until sunrise. I was starting to think maybe it wasn’t just a prank.

  Tires crunching over gravel drew my attention to the window. I moved the flapping drapes to the side as a black Lincoln town car with windows tinted as dark as the night wound through the sheltering trees and up the driveway. Julian. He was the vampire I both hated for turning my sister into a not-so-evil bloodsucker and loved for saving her life. Twice.

  I padded barefoot across the smooth, highly polished wood floor and out of my room.

  “His majesty is here,” I yelled loud enough for the entire house, as big as it was, to hear.

  By the time I navigated through the halls, stairs and randomly placed sitting rooms with rose and ivory flowered wallpaper, the doorbell rang. I opened the door and looked up at the blond-haired, electric-blue-eyed man who put even a male as hot as Dante to shame.

  Julian’s pale lips curved into an inviting smile that showed only a hint of fang. My skin prickled at his otherness, as if I’d just stuck my finger in a light socket. Perhaps it was all Julian, or maybe it was a combination effect from the other two vamps standing behind him.

  Julian picked up my hand and drew it to his lips. The cool touch of his fingers turned my blood to ice. His breath, as cold as Lizbeth’s had been, feathered across my skin when he spoke to me in Swedish, “Min gyllene blomma, växa dig vackrare för varje dag.” My golden flower, you grow more beautiful every day.

  I yanked my hand free. No longer an ornament. “I’m not your ‘golden flower’, Julian. And if you hadn’t noticed the bags under my eyes, I don’t look beautiful. I look like crap.” I didn’t even try to smile. “Save the charm for my sister, you’ll need it.”

  I stepped aside to let Julian into the house. The moment he crossed the threshold, I closed the door. Well, I tried to at least. A shiny black boot stopped it from closing. The door was shoved open and a vampire I’d never seen breezed past me as if I’d invited him in.

  He stopped in front of me and my gaze met the vibrant shade of his blue eyes straight on. I didn’t have to look up or down, which meant he was around my height of five-seven. His head was bald and a jagged scar bisected his right cheek, the line curving down distorted the shape of his full mouth. The only redeeming features about him were the strong line of his jaw and the dark slashes of his eyebrows. In a previous life, he might have been handsome. In this life, he just looked scary.

  The vampire smiled at me and I took an automatic, self-preserving step back. He advanced. Before I could stop him, he trailed a chilled finger down my cheek. He leaned close and whispered, “You smell divine.”

  At my side, I curled my hand into a fist. This was my chance to stand up for myself. A low, prickling growl raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Before I could say or do anything, Eli, who must have just walked into the room, beat me to it.

  “Touch her again and I’ll break your finger.” His voice was dark, gravelly and sounded nothing like the man who’d once told me smart was sexy.

  “I’d like to see you try, wolf,” the vampire snapped back.

  I didn’t need to see Eli to know he crossed the room. The closer he got, the stronger his swirling energy affected me. He slid a warm hand around my waist and my pounding heart nearly exploded at the touch. Eli curled my stiffening body against his side. Heat. Muscle. Man.

  The jerk hadn’t looked at, spoken to or touched me in weeks and now he decided to get all macho? I turned my head to glare up at the person who’d broken my heart and didn’t seem to know it.

  I lost the ability to speak the second I looked at him. His once dark-brown eyes were amber. After the hospital, he’d kept his unruly hair buzzed short, and while I missed his curls, his short hair made him seem more…reckless. Attraction, want and desire slammed into me. The aura of danger surrounding Eli reminded me of Dante. At the mere thought of my lion’s name, my pulse sped in a way it didn’t with Eli.

  Maybe I’d been confusing my crush on Eli with real affection.

  I traced my gaze over his clenched jaw dusted with stubble to his thick neck. I looked lower to his bulging pecs covered with a sprinkling of dark hair. I swallowed. Apparently he hadn’t put on a shirt. His jeans, I realized when I followed the trail of hair down his washboard abs, were undone. Sweat glistened on his skin as if he’d been in the middle of working out…or not.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend!” A disheveled brunette with freshly fucked hair screeched.

  The woman stumbled into the foyer while simultaneously trying not to slip in her red fuck-me pumps and button her skin-tight jeans. Her tight sweater, mostly unbuttoned, showed off a lacy bra and the jiggling mounds of her heaving breasts.

  Disgust washed over me. What I was doing to myself wasn’t any different from the behavior Eli had engaged in. The realization smacked some sense into me.

  “Get your hands off me.” I shoved Eli away as hard as I could. To his latest conquest, I put in the extra effort and flashed her a dazzling smile, “He’s all yours, sweetie. I don’t want him.”

  And it was true. I was finished pining over Elijah McGregor. A plan formed in my too-crowded head and I started calculating if I had enough guts to move completely out of my comfort zone. Dante was the man I wanted.

  “I see you’re faring well, Elijah,” Julian drawled.

  “Cut the crap.” Eli crossed his arms over his impressive chest. The combination of his angry eyes and tight jaw were formidable. Since the transition from human to werewolf, he’d filled out his six-foot-four frame with pure muscle and looked like a giant. “You know the rules, you come in here, you do it alone.”

  “He’s right, Julian,” my sister said from the top of the stairs.

  Like the rest of the vampires in the room, Ella’s eyes were bright and unnatural. Unlike the other undead, her heart beat strong and fast. Hand in hand with her demon mate, Micah—Eli’s older brother—she walked down the stairs wearing boots, cargo pants and a tight tank top that showed off her slender curves. The delicate crimson lines of a tattoo curled over her shoulder. The glinting silver knives affixed to her forearms in black leather sheaths screamed badass.

  Where I was sunshine and flowers, my sister was darkness and death. It was a scary, yet oddly alluring, combination. The vampires flanking Julian sank to their knees and bowed their heads to their new queen.


  Ella’s eyes narrowed on her sire. “Quit speaking in my head.”

  One half of Julian’s mouth quirked up and he placed a hand over his heart. “As you wish, my queen.”

  “Seriously,” Ella hissed. “Knock that queen crap off. And, get those two morons off the floor and out of the house or I’m liable to stake them.”

  “We don’t have a meeting scheduled tonight, Julian, why are you here?” Micah, badass in his own scary-hunter kind of a way, stepped in front of Ella when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  His hair was rugged, sexy. Long enough to reach his ears, too short to pull back with a rubber band. His eyes, a strange fusion of green and blue, glowed with the presence of the demon lurking inside him.

  Julian opened his mouth, promptly closed it. One by one, everyone turned to look at me. Even Eli’s brunette glared at me as if I were the interloper in this impromptu meeting.

  Anger simmered, boiled, bubbled over. Maybe it was because I was still detoxing from the pills. Maybe I simply snapped from years of repressing and acting as if I was perfect. My father’s words echoed in my head.

  Honey, you aren’t fit for the lifestyle of a hunter, not like your sister, Ella. But I know you’ll make someone a great wife one day. You go be quiet now and play with your dolls.

  I crossed the distance between Julian and me and lifted onto my toes. I grabbed the back of his head with both hands—yes, his blond hair was as soft and silky as it looked—and planted a hard, quick kiss against his mouth.

  His mouth was soft and yielding—his tongue smooth and wicked. I pulled back and grinned at his pleased, slow-spreading smile. Cocky asshole. “That’s for saving my sister’s life.” I curled my hand into a fist. “This is for all the years you hurt her.” His smile dimmed and the blond slashes of his eyebrows dipped in confusion. I hauled back my arm, slung forward and punched him in the face.