Dark Cravings

by Pryce, Madeline

  As one, Roy, Eli and I all looked at Micah.

  “I’m not a demon!” Micah bellowed.

  Gem shrugged her shoulders. “We should move away from the why and focus on how you and Ella are going to cope. You cannot be separated. If you do, you both may die.”

  “Is the bond reversible?” Roy asked as if he really believed Micah and I were actually mated on some metaphysical level.

  Gem gave a wistful sigh. “There is no stronger magic than what occurs between two soul mates. Demon children are raised to revere the bond above all other.”

  Soul mates. I snorted and used a push off the door to propel me into the tiny studio apartment. I hadn’t noticed much when I’d first walked in. There were no pictures on the off-white walls, only maps of the city, which were pinned with different-colored thumbtacks to show a spiraling pattern. It looked identical to the paper Roy had showed me days ago. Other than the bookshelf in the corner, there was nothing else personal in the entire apartment. No leather sofa. No black satin sheets. Just a tiny kitchen, a square table with two chairs and the bed Micah was sitting on.

  Who was this man? I realized, quite suddenly, that I knew absolutely nothing about him outside of our hunting. Hell, he could be a demon for all I knew.

  “The quickest way to reverse the effects of your separation is skin-to-skin contact. You need to get undressed and get into bed.”

  I stopped contemplating the floor and looked up.

  “Excuse me?” I squeaked.

  Naked? Skin-to-skin contact? Wasn’t that what had gotten us into this mess in the first place?

  I cleared my throat. “What exactly is wrong with him that requires me to be naked?”

  “Wrong with both of you,” she corrected. “The two of you are love sick. Micah is still half human and is feeling the effects more severely.”

  That got my attention.

  “And I do mean that literally. He’s been separated from his mate for too long. From the looks of you, you’re beginning to show signs of distress as well. Let me guess, you haven’t been able to eat or sleep? It takes most bonded pairs years to acquire the ability to be separated from each other,” Gem said.

  “You have not seen each other in what, a week? Very dangerous. You have a powerful bond. I don’t think I’ve encountered anything quite as unique.” She tapped her curved, dagger-like fingernails on her chin. “Why is this situation such a shock? You both participated in the mating ritual, I see his mating marks. May I look at yours?”

  Micah spoke and his voice was bitter. “Look, lady, I appreciate the help, but excuse me for saying, you’re crazy. There was no ritual. We fucked, end of story.”

  Crude, but true.

  Eli’s mouth dropped open before he snapped it shut. “Micah, not cool, dude.”

  I waved off his concern. “I know it’s blunt, but he’s right.”

  Had hell frozen over or had I just told Micah he was right?

  “We aren’t mated to each other, the idea is insane,” I continued. “We were attacked by some freakishly abnormal succubus who for some reason left us alive and gave us his-and-hers tattoos. I’ve got a reason for looking like shit and it has to do with the hole in my shoulder. Nothing else. Maybe Micah just needs food or something. I’ve being eating and sleeping just fine, thank you.” The lie tasted sour even as I said it.

  Gem laughed. The bitch actually laughed at me! Almost before I realized it, the cold steel of my Silverstone blade was in my hand, but Roy strode across the room and took the knife from me.

  Eli closed in on Gem and turned on the charm. The transformation knocked about five years off his age. Cute dimples on either side of his mouth deepened. His big brown eyes got just a little bigger. He gave Gem a gentle, soothing smile and some of the crackling tension in the room abated.

  “Why don’t we all just calm down?” Eli looked around hopefully. “Obviously, the situation is more complicated than we first realized. Right now, Ella, it doesn’t matter what’s wrong with Micah, if you two are mated, hell, if he’s a demon. What is important is that your presence is helping. You haven’t seen Micah over the last week. Please go to him, do what Gem says.” The plea was in his eyes. “He’s all I have. Hannah would want the same thing. Anything it took to get you better. I know you hide it well, but you’re hurting just as badly as he is. This will help you too.”

  Damn it. I went all squishy inside. Eli was dangerous—I’d just never realized it before.

  Micah and I stared at each other. The silenced yawned.

  “How bad are you hurt?” Micah asked in a gruff, unhappy tone. “Even if you weren’t dripping a puddle on my floor, I could smell the blood the second you walked in the door. Bandage, my ass.” He studied my appearance and his eyes narrowed. “And why in the hell are you and Eli covered in sand? We don’t have sand anywhere near here. ‘I slept just fine last week’. Bullshit. I heard you were chained in your basement for two days.”

  Micah threw back the covers and got out of bed. Whatever I was going to say faded away when my gaze found its way to his chest, then lower to his stomach and the pack of muscles there. Thick crimson lines flowed over his skin and I couldn’t seem to look away from the thin cotton pajama bottoms hanging off his hips.

  Yeah.

  I jerked my gaze up to his face and felt my cheeks get hot. Roy and Eli had gone over to Gem. Their hushed whispers didn’t reassure me.

  “Is this some elaborate ploy to get me naked?” I asked Micah.

  The concern in his eyes vanished. “Right, like it would take some scheme to get you undressed. From the way you’re looking at me, I don’t think it would take much effort to have you beneath me.”

  I made a disgusted noise in the back of my throat. It would be so easy to pull out my other knife and fling it at him. “Do you have to be such an asshole?”

  Micah’s jaw clenched. “You make it so easy. Get out of here and don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out. Roy shouldn’t have called you.”

  With that parting shot, Micah turned his back, walked the few feet to the bathroom and slammed the door hard enough to make stucco from the ceiling rain to the ground.

  Anger, more than hurt, stung my eyes. I’d been living in some warped fantasy for the last week. I imagined seeing Micah again, and… I don’t know. I suppose my thoughts never went past the stage where I buried my face in his throat and let him take away the pain.

  Roy stepped in front of me. His image blurred a little. My head throbbed and the pain in my shoulder made me nauseous. Stars flashed in front of my eyes and it took a lot of effort to blink them away. I just needed to sleep and not deal with this crap.

  “Give him some time, this is a lot for him to take in at once,” Roy said.

  He patted my cheek and turned for the door. Eli and Gem both followed.

  “Wait! You’re leaving?” Had that panicked shriek just come from me? “I don’t even have any dry clothes here.”

  “Apparently you don’t need clothes. Other things require my attention now that Micah is okay. You two need to work this out and come to some sort of an understanding until we can figure how to reverse this bond.”

  Every fiber of my soul wanted to argue. The look of utter authority Roy gave me stopped me in my tracks.

  “And for the love of Merlin,” Roy cut me with a lethal glare, “have Micah take a look at your shoulder. You need purifying salt and quite possibly some stitches.”

  Then they were gone. Everyone exited the apartment, leaving me alone with Micah.

  My life was turning out to be just fan-fucking-tastic.

  Chapter Seven

  Left alone in a man’s apartment, when he didn’t want me here in the first place, what was a girl to do? I snooped. Not that there was much to look through. The apartment consisted of one small square table, two chairs, a bed, a dresser and…not much else. I walked into the kitchen and gave myself the full tour. It was over in a few steps.

  The countertops were old but clean.
The sink was scuffed up a bit but empty of food and dishes. I had always thought Micah would be a clean freak. At least I was right about one thing. I opened a few drawers and found nothing exciting. Silverware, plastic Baggies, a few smudged napkins with numbers on them and some miscellaneous pens. Boring.

  I opened one faded, veneered cabinet door. I stared at the panel, which was now off the hinge and in my hand. Whoops. Super strength or cheap cabinetry? I looked behind my shoulder at the closed bathroom door before rigging the door back in place. More cautiously this time, I opened the other cabinet and found a set of mismatched dishes and a few cans of soup.

  The rusted, squealing refrigerator didn’t hold any secrets either. The cold air, however, woke me up a little. I poked around inside the fridge, looking for something moldy or expired. All I found was juice, eggs, fresh fruit and a carton of milk. Where was the beer? The leftover pizza?

  “What are you doing?” Micah asked from behind me.

  I jumped and smacked my skull on a shelf.

  Turning, I rubbed the bump at the back of my head. “I’m looking inside your fridge, what does it look like I’m doing?”

  My mouth fell open. Micah stood in front of me in nothing except a small towel that opened at his thigh and exposed his hairy leg. When he crossed his arms under his chest, I closed my mouth and tried to force my gaze away from the drops of water sliding down his stomach. The water droplets drove lower, across tight muscles. I swallowed, looked up.

  “I meant,” he said dryly, “why are you still here?”

  “Because I need therapy.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  I lifted my chin and concentrated on standing straight and still. Things were beginning to get a little fuzzy. I hoped the merry-go-round feeling was just in my head and not caused by me physically teetering in a circle.

  Micah’s eyes narrowed. He padded closer. “You look like crap.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Casanova! I must look as good as I feel, then.”

  “If you insist on staying, will you sit down? I’m getting dizzy watching you sway. What in the hell happened to you anyway?”

  I stumbled to the wooden chair. Before my ass could make that blessed contact with something solid, Micah grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the bed.

  He grabbed the wrong arm. I cried out, pain clearing the cobwebs. There was no choice but to follow. Any resistance I might have given would only have resulted in more agony. I landed on the mattress and tried to hide the pain.

  “It’s nothing, really,” I lied.

  Micah gave a little shove and I fell back so that I was no longer sitting but lying on the bed. My eyes closed and I gave a little sigh when the darkness began to close around me.

  “Bullshit.” He pushed my jacket out of the way to look at the claw marks cutting through my shirt and exposing my stomach.

  He cupped my face in his palms until I reluctantly opened my eyes. The moment my lids dipped shut, Micah gave me a light slap. He was going to pay for that.

  “Hey, fang girl, stay with me. Wakey wakey time,” he sung. When that didn’t seem to work, he shook me until I acknowledged him.

  Bastard.

  “Don’t call me that,” I groaned and shoved his hands away. “I’ll be fine in a few hours. I’m tired, really tired.” To my mortification, I began to mumble. I heard the slurred words and couldn’t stop them. “Missed you. Can’t sleep. The boogeyman is going to get me. Man, is he pissed. He wants in, but I won’t let him. God, your bed is comfortable, it smells like you. I like the way you smell.”

  Shoot me.

  Through my one open eye, I saw the smirk he was trying hard to suppress. Look who else had cute dimples.

  “Who’s the boogeyman?” Micah tugged off my boots and socks. Dried mud shook off onto the carpet.

  I sighed, snuggled into the scent of leather lingering on the sheets. “Why, Julian, of course.”

  His smirk turned into a scowl. “You haven’t slept because you’re afraid of the undead vampire fuck? Did he do something?”

  “He’s inside my head, ya know. Julian likes to invade my dreams, mess with me. I can’t deal with it…so I’m not sleeping. He’s waiting for me. Don’t let me fall asleep, ’kay?”

  “I hate to tell you this, but that’s not a good plan. Is your lack of sleep why you got tagged tonight by whatever sliced you up?”

  “I got ‘tagged’ because I pushed your brother out of harm’s way. He holds his own pretty good, though. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  Emotion passed through his eyes. “Let me look at the wound.” It wasn’t a request.

  With his help, I sat up and blinked sleepily at him. He had shaved the beard. The clean line of his jaw was strong and masculine. Why did he have to be so handsome? I was about to ask him until he peeled the ruined jacket off my shoulders. I wanted to whimper. Instead I bit my lip. He pulled the heavy material from first one arm and then the other. The blood-soaked jacket plopped to the ground.

  Black like the coat, my ripped shirt was covered in blood from the collar all the way to the hem. Where the blood had dried, the shirt stuck to my skin. Wonderful.

  Micah looked at the mess, then into my eyes. “A bandage. Funny. Let’s go into the bathroom, I have a feeling this is going to get messy.”

  He walked away and I felt the loss of his proximity like a punch in the gut. Micah pulled open his top drawer and brought out a pair of light-blue pajama bottoms, similar to the ones he’d been wearing when I walked in. In one quick move, the towel was gone and I had about three seconds to ogle the tight globes of his ass before they were covered. The man had a fine ass. He pulled on a shirt and I almost told him to take it back off.

  He helped me to my feet and put an arm around my waist to steady me.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said.

  His hot skin against me was delicious. I wanted to snuggle into that warmth and just forget everything else.

  “You’re right. I don’t have to do this. I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me. I don’t feel right fucking you when you’re injured and covered in blood.”

  My eyes popped open. “Excuse me?”

  Micah’s rich, deep laugh rumbled against me. “It was a joke. Jesus. Consider this a thank-you for saving my brother. Did the succubus kill your sense of humor or what? Wait, you never really had one, did you?”

  “You really piss me off.”

  “Same here.”

  The bathroom wasn’t much bigger than the kitchen. Instead of a full bathtub, there was a shower stall with a clear glass door. Across from the toilet was a sink, which sat upon a cabinet.

  I slid to the floor and tried to prepare myself. Getting patched up was worse than getting injured. “Start with my shoulder, it hurts the worst.”

  Micah knelt between my legs and I readjusted my body until my knees were touching his hips.

  “You’re not going to throw up on me, are you?” Micah asked.

  I didn’t think so. Not yet at least. He pushed my shirt up to expose the scratches etched across my stomach.

  Before the night in the hotel room, my skin had been tanned. Right now, where the maroon blood wasn’t dried and caked, it looked pasty. The three red scratches now looked like pink, puffy knots of scar tissue. Each welt had several purpling spider lines moving out from where the poison had spread. Micah encouraged me to lift my arms so he could discard the now-ruined shirt.

  No way. I couldn’t lift a finger, let alone my arm.

  “You’ll have to cut the shirt off. Do you have any sea salt? You’re going to have to purify the wound. I figure if you can get out most of the poison, my body should do the rest. I’ve been healing faster since…”

  “I’m a hunter. Of course I’ve got sea salt. And you know,” Micah remarked, grabbing one of my discarded Brimstone blades, “of all the ways I imagined getting you out of your clothes, none of them were like this.”

  Despite how awful I felt, I smiled. “So you think about getting me na
ked a lot, then?”

  The black knife gleamed as it reflected light from the row of large, round bulbs lining the top of the bathroom mirror. Even though two of the bulbs were broken, the two good ones gave off a surprising amount of light. Slowly, Micah drew the blade up, careful not to cut anything more than my shirt. In a different setting, the act might have turned me on.

  “Yeah, well, I’m only a man and you’ve got great tits,” he mumbled.

  Man. Demon. The verdict was still out.

  “Pig.”

  Slicing the fabric to the top, he peeled it apart as if unwrapping a present. My breasts strained against my black bra and the sight clearly captivated Micah. His eyes followed the crimson markings partially hidden by the lace. After a few seconds, he looked away and focused on the wound on my left shoulder.

  “Jesus, Ella,” he whistled. “Maybe we should get Roy back here.”

  Shaking my head made me dizzy but it was easier than talking. Seeing the wound always made the pain worse. With my right hand, I cupped Micah’s jaw until he looked back at me. My thumb moved over the smooth surface of his cheek. I missed his thick stubble more than I was willing to admit.

  “Since when do you care so much? If I really thought it was that bad, I’d have asked Roy to look at it while he was here. You can handle this.”

  He closed his hand over mine. He was serious. “Don’t you know I worry about you?”

  “You’ve never given me any reason to think you worried at all.”

  He released my hand and moved his fingers back to my shoulder. Micah delicately pressed down on the purple-and-black skin radiating from the wound. The gash itself was a round hole, wide enough that, if he wanted, he could have easily fit the tip of his index finger inside. Blood still trickled from the place where the inner tissue was barely visible. From within the hole protruded a thick ivory chunk of whatever had penetrated my skin. The bastard demon had left a memento.