by S. E. Smith
She looked at her reflection in the mirror above her walnut dresser. Her blonde curls were a fiasco, tangled and matted to her head from the combination of her hat and very unladylike sweat. Her face was smudged and three scratches were on her cheek. No blood at least, but no makeup or lip gloss either. She looked like a wild cavewoman from some nineteen forties black-and-white horror flick. Me Jane. You Tarzan. Ugh-ugh. Even worse, the black circles under her eyes made her look like a vampire from Salem’s Lot.
Here she was thinking about sex while she looked like a complete and total mess.
Time to stop whining and move. Keep moving. Keep breathing. Keep hunting for answers. That was all she’d done since Jiselle’s death.
With a herculean effort, she willed herself back to George’s house and gathered the metal into an old pillowcase. She lugged it back and dumped it in her garage before heading into her bathroom to strip. Showered and changed into soft, smiley-face PJ pants and a bright yellow tank, she headed for the hall closet and her pathetic selection of first-aid supplies. Everywhere the manacles had rested he’d been raw and bloody. It had to sting like the devil in the shower. She had some antibiotic ointment and basic bandages. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
She rapped with one knuckle against the closed door in case he was asleep. The door opened on lightly squeaky hinges and she did her God’s honest best not to stare. He had a navy-blue towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was sleek and wet. Combed back from his chiseled face, the thick length fell past his shoulders just like every girl’s dark vampire fantasy. His chest and shoulders were massive and looked hard as stone before tapering down into a trim waist and cut abs that disappeared beneath the towel in her own personal hell’s version of peek-a-boo. She wanted to rip it from his body and crawl all over him.
“I brought bandages.”
He stared, eyes lingering on the tight nipples saying hello to him through the thin yellow tank.
“Thank you, Zoey. But there’s no need.” He placed his hands next to one another, wrists up, and held them out for her inspection. His skin was clean and the wounds had closed. His new skin was like a miracle.
She stepped into the room and dropped her medical supplies on her sister’s white chest of drawers, forgotten. Zoey turned back to him and grabbed his wrists so she could run her hands over his skin. How could this be? She didn’t trust her eyes, but felt nothing under her sensitive fingertips but soft skin and muscle. Uncaring what he thought, she dropped to her knees and inspected his ankles, running her hands over flesh that not an hour ago had been worn down to bone in several places.
Stumped, she sat back with her feet tucked beneath her and placed her hands on her hips. “How did you heal so quickly?” She continued to stare at his ankles, a string of possible answers flowing through her mind…at least until she noticed the bulging calf muscles and soft hair on his legs.
Oh, God. She lifted her head so quickly she thought for a second it might snap clean off her neck. But that was an even bigger mistake. She knelt in front of him. Right in front of him.
Oh, if only the floor could swallow her up and make her disappear! Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. The heat in his eyes as he looked down at her told her he didn’t want it to. She scrambled to her feet and took a step back. “I…” She wrung her hands and grabbed at the bandages, desperate for something to do. “I’ll get you the clothes George brought over. I forgot. Sorry.”
“Wait, Zoey. Please.” She turned back to face him, sure her face was fifteen different shades of red. “Would you look at my neck?”
She hesitated, torn by the desire to touch him, and the urge to run.
“Please. I can’t see the back of my neck. I need to know.” There was something in his voice that called to the deepest part of her. Pain. It was pain.
“Need to know what?”
“If their claim on my flesh is completely gone.” He took the bandages from her hands slowly, as if afraid she’d run. She might. But his words hurt, a physical ache that had nothing to do with running around a mountain all night, or pacing for hours in George’s garage. Her feet and her head ached. This was more. This was inside her heart.
“Was it the Triscani?” When he nodded she asked what she both needed and feared to know. “Why did they take you?”
Aron grabbed her hand where it rested against her thigh and pulled her forward to begin her inspection of his neck. He placed her hand on his shoulder, turned his face away from her and lifted his hair. She had to stand on tiptoe to see anything, but she craned her neck and listened. “Because of my sister. They wanted to find her and destroy her.”
His sister? Zoey’s chest tightened like she was a cork in a bottle of wine and someone had started twisting the corkscrew down her spine to pull her apart. She placed both of her hands on his shoulders to hide their trembling. “Why? Why did they want her?”
The air in her lungs froze as she waited for his answer. The Answer. The answer to everything.
“Their leader is looking for a girl, born on Earth, a girl prophesied to determine the outcome of his war with the home world.”
“A girl?” She looked up, met his dark green gaze and held perfectly still waiting for more. This was the moment she’d been chasing for months. Her sister. His. Innocent girls hunted and killed because of a stupid alien prophecy? “You people are big on the whole prophecy thing, aren’t you?”
“Yes. They didn’t know who my sister really was. They made a mistake, thought she could be the girl from the prophecy and decided to kill her.”
“And did they? Kill her?” Zoey looked down to see that she was squeezing his shoulders so tightly her knuckles were white. He didn’t complain, didn’t chastise her. She loosened her grip and lightly rubbed the offended muscles in apology. But she couldn’t apologize, her throat was frozen closed with dread in anticipation of his answer.
“I don’t know. They killed my mother and separated all of us. I haven’t seen them since. I know my brother lives, it was his mate that helped me escape. But my sister? I don’t know what happened to her.” His fists clenched at his sides. “I can’t feel her anymore.”
“And are they still hunting for this Earth girl?”
“In all the years I was held captive, their leader came to see me but a few times. Each time was to gloat that he’d killed the girl again.” Aron lifted his left arm and wrapped one blonde ringlet around his finger.
His answer didn’t make any sense. “What do you mean again? How many girls have they killed?” She whispered her questions, terrified of the answers. Her knees wobbled and he wrapped his free arm around her waist to hold her up. Pressed against him, she felt safe for the first time since her sister’s death. Safe. It was such a lie. But Aron felt strong. Right. Ignorance was her enemy, it kept her weak. But with Aron, she’d know the truth. He’d make her strong, too.
“They’ve murdered countless humans to try to eliminate her. Millions.” With the words came images, memories he’d absorbed from the Triscani he’d killed raged in his mind…and hers.
Jiselle’s screams echoed through her soul. Jiselle’s sweet face twisted in pain and horror, and the Triscani who’d killed her had enjoyed it. Relished a young girl’s pain.
Aron had killed the one, the monster who’d taken Jiselle.
Her knees gave out and he swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. Leaning his shoulders against the headboard, he settled her across his lap. Her cheek rested pressed to his bare chest and she listened to the steady beat of his heart under her ear. He was warm. Alive. She focused on the sound and pushed the screams of the dying away until she could function again.
“By the gods, Zoey. I’m sorry. I never meant for you to feel any of that.” Aron’s right arm was wrapped around her waist, holding her close while his left hand massaged her temple and combed through her damp mess of hair. He kissed her forehead softly, reverently. “I’m so sorry.”
She couldn’t summon the will to be angry with h
im. His torment came with the noise in her head, his pain. The Triscani as a whole had killed millions of humans. The five monsters Aron himself had eliminated? They’d murdered hundreds and the memory of each act, the rage and evil behind every slaying, now lived inside Aron’s mind. How was he still sane? How could he summon the tenderness with which he held her? How was it possible for him to be anything but a crazed monster? She would be, if she’d had to live through all that.
“How long? How long were you their prisoner?” She waited for his answer.
“A very long time, Zoey. Since I was fourteen summers.” Holding her gaze, he reached up and pulled his hair to the side, giving her a clear view of the right side of his neck. She could see better now, sitting on top of his legs. She could see his skin, perfect despite centuries of captivity, and smell Jiselle’s unscented bar of white soap overlapping the overwhelmingly male scent of him.
“How long?” She lifted her right hand and ran it over his collar bone and the side of his neck to inspect for wounds. She already knew she wouldn’t find any lasting injury, but she needed to touch him. He was the only thing holding her together.
He sighed and closed his eyes. He dropped his head forward until his forehead rested against her biceps and she shifted to look at the back of his neck as he spoke. “Eight hundred forty-two years, twelve days, fourteen hours, twenty-seven minutes and four seconds.”
“How do you know that?” Unable to resist temptation, she buried the fingers of both hands in the hair at the nape of his neck and ran her fingers through it. He relaxed even more, falling slightly forward and letting his left arm drop to her lap. Seeking solace.
“I’m not human, Zoey. I’m not normal, even on Itara. I’m the Dark King of prophecy. Time and space move through me like my own blood.”
She’d suspected something freaky, but hearing him say the words still scared the hell out of her. Cheek to cheek, she held him tightly to her, clinging to him despite the fact that he was part of the reason she was afraid. “If you aren’t normal for an Itaran, what are you then?”
“Lost.”
Chapter 5
Aron held very, very still, careful not to startle or scare her. By the gods, he’d been fine, had been holding it together until George had shown him everything he’d been missing. Everything he’d forgotten.
Aron had buried the past so he could survive. Tenderness and dreams were tools his tormentors used against him, and so he’d locked the memories deep inside his mind where no one could reach them, where they’d be safe. His mother’s laughter. Dancing with her in the sunshine when he was young, no taller than her hip. Her smile as she twirled and sang to him. Wrestling with his twin brother, Ajax. His sweet sister, Aria’s, hugs. Aron had buried all of it, forgotten the first fourteen years of his life when he’d lived with his mother and siblings in hiding. He’d had to.
But that old man had gifted him not just with knowledge of this world, but with memories. The big moments in George’s life were all there, inside Aron’s mind, as if the memories and feelings were faded, but his own. He’d asked for knowledge, but George had insisted on giving him more, sensing the dark void inside his soul. It gave the old man comfort to know his family wouldn’t fade from the world when he died. He had no children to carry on his legacy, and so Aron became less than a real son, but more than nothing. He became George’s legacy.
He knew George’s joy at the birth of his son, Ryan, and his grief when the boy died too young. He knew the light and laughter of Zoey and her sister Jiselle chasing grasshoppers in the yard, laughing with the sun shining on their faces and delight glowing from their eyes.
Aron had paid more attention when Zoey had come to the front of George’s mind. He now knew she loved pineapple pizza and Merlot. That she was fiercely competitive at board games and crossword puzzles. She was a journalist who loved to read and a gifted painter who hid her canvases in the attic where George used to sneak in to see them. And Aron knew her secrets, that she chased the Triscani and the truth, and that she posted things on the internet that could get her killed by her own people, by the very humans she was trying to help.
Aron held her in his arms and reveled in the soothing rhythm of her hands stroking him, running through his hair. He breathed in her clean scent and the sweet aroma of her skin. George had memories of her, but he let his own memories push them aside like weak shadows. He didn’t need the old man’s memories, not when it came to Zoey. He saw her running to him on the side of the mountain, helping him to her truck. Fearless and kind, pacing and gnawing her lips with worry as George worked the cutting torch over his bonds. Kneeling in shock and running her hands over his feet and ankles like she had rights to his body.
Rights he happily gave her even now. She was tough, brave, compassionate, intelligent and stubborn.
She lived. She loved. Fiercely. And he wanted her to love him.
He knew the powerful and all-consuming love affair that George had shared with his wife before she died. He remembered loving people he’d never met, grieving a son he’d never had, and the burning pleasure of making love to a wife that wasn’t his own.
Memories of touching a woman’s body, hearing her cries of pleasure, and the fierce possessiveness a man could feel when another male admired the woman who belonged to him.
And none of it was his. The memories were shadows, gifts from a generous old man. George had felt pleasure. George had loved. The old man had been alive a fraction of the time Aron had been, yet he’d lived a thousand times more.
Aron had not. Before he faced the Triscani and lost his soul he wanted to touch Zoey that way. To hear her cries of pleasure. He wanted her for himself.
Zoey lessened her grip on his head and he held back his snarl. He needed her to hold him tighter, to squeeze until there was no chance he might float away. He’d suffered many hallucinations in his cage, some had been soft, like this. And waking from them? His own private hell.
He’d rather die than wake from this dream.
“The wounds are gone, Aron. They’re gone.” She dropped her arms to her lap and melted into him like it was where she belonged. As far as he was concerned, from now on, it was.
“Thank you.”
She didn’t answer. Exhaustion claimed her and he cursed himself a fool for not noticing the lag in her energy earlier. The moment she slept it was as if an invisible shield dropped and he felt her fatigue, her worry and her fear. He was aware of her heart beating, her muscles twitching in sleep, and the energy level in her body. Her strength was dangerously low. A mere flicker of candlelight to his own bonfire.
She slept, and he held her for several hours, slowing feeding her his energy, pushing his Immortal strength into her flesh. He didn’t need sleep. He’d slept for centuries locked in that prison, spent years in a trance state when they starved or ignored him. He wanted to experience every second with her. He wanted to live each moment and enjoy watching her dream.
But the child’s bed they sat on was small and short. He couldn’t stretch out and hold her. And his body hungered from his healing and from giving power to her. He needed something to eat.
Careful not to wake her, he carried her to the large bed in her room and settled her gently in the center. Her personal space was nothing like the militant simplicity of the room below. This room was soft and welcoming. Her bed was layered in cream colored cottons with fluffy pillows in chocolate brown and rust-colored red. The carpeting was thick and plush beneath his feet, so soft it felt like walking on a cloud. Her windows were completely covered, but hiding her privacy shades were layers and layers of fluttering silk lined with swirling feminine embroidery in a sweet chaos of wildflowers and vines.
The whole room smelled like wildflowers and woman. Like her.
He never wanted to leave.
He hurried to her kitchen and grabbed Ryan’s clothes. Removing the towel from his waist, he draped it over the back of one of her kitchen chairs and pulled on the GO ARMY sweatpants. He doubted his Zoey
would want him waltzing around her home naked, and, after centuries of suffering, he could not bear to put the Scout uniform back on his body. He fixed himself another microwave dinner, devoured it in record time, and then hurried back to her.
Stretching out beside her on the king-sized bed he pulled her into his arms.
She snuggled to his chest, threw her arm across his waist and tangled one of her legs between his. Heaven. Sweet torture.
Energy hummed between them instantly, flowing back and forth freely as if he’d opened a permanent bridge to her. Her weary mortal flesh took much, but as dawn approached he noticed an odd sensation in the purr that flowed between them. Hers. Her life, her soul, her energy was flowing into his body, mixing with his. Her light woke him up and chased away the dark souls that had lived and screamed inside him for centuries.
Sweet. Sexy. Bubbling with life and laughter. Her soul so much brighter than his. Zoey’s soul was a spark, an ignition point for a fire that burned away centuries of loneliness. Zoey’s heart was in everything she gave him. He knew her better than any man alive ever could. She lived inside his soul, the light of her spirit now sheltered and protected by his.
He didn’t know her history, all of her stories and trials. He could’ve absorbed her memories as well, but he didn’t want to. He looked forward to learning about her past slowly, as she whispered it to him over dinner or while lying in bed after a thorough loving.
If he had a choice, he would never be torn from her side, never leave her unprotected and vulnerable. Never leave her to mourn her sister alone. No, she would never feel alone or unwanted. Not while he lived.
A sense of peace settled over him like a blanket. Aron hadn’t felt a moment’s peace since his mother’s wet kisses had landed on his cheeks, his brother’s laughter had chased him through the woods outside their home, and his sister’s sweet voice had sung them all to sleep. More than eight hundred years.
Eyes closed, he focused his attention on the purring heat of her energy as it moved over and through him. No Triscani scum were close, he would feel them. Though they walked like men, their obsidian flesh and melted faces did not hold up well in the light of day. The Triscani were too alien to hide in daylight, even with the dark coats they cowered beneath to keep their identities secret from the humans. The sun had risen and they did not relish the heat of Earth’s star on their flesh. They would go home, to the dark dimensions, or they would hide in caves until the sun set.
