by Donya Lynne
“Oh God . . . his mother.” Her voice whispered from between her lips on an agonizing exhale. “They’re burning her. Oh God, they’re burning her! And the house . . . his father . . . his brother. They’re inside. They’re trapped.” She began weeping and flung her forearm over her face, locked not just into Trace’s memories, but his emotions, as well. “Make it stop! Please stop! I don’t want to see this!”
* * *
Micah sucked in his breath. He needed inside Trace’s thoughts before he destroyed not only himself but Cordray.
He grabbed Trace’s chin and yanked his head around, latching onto Trace’s eyes with his own. “Let me in, Trace. Now. I need inside.”
Trace was panting, eyebrows scrunched, a film of perspiration beading on his face. His lips and chin trembled as tight exhales burst from his mouth. He shook his head, yellow eyes pleading.
“Now, Trace. Let me in there. I can help you if you just let me in.”
A shiver raced through Trace’s body.
“They’re coming after him,” Cordray said. She still had her face covered, so her voice came out muffled. “They want to burn him, too. They’re going to set him on fire. Oh, God, no. No! Run, Trace! Run!” She blew out a relieved breath. “He’s running . . . he’s running . . . back into the woods. Blindly running. I can’t see where we’re going. They’re running after him. It’s all his fault. He did this. He killed his mother. It’s all his fault . . . he thinks it’s his fault.”
Damn it, he needed to bring Trace back before he lost him.
“Cordray!” He smacked the table.
She snapped out of her daze and hurtled her pained, tear-filled gaze toward his.
“Help me!”
With a sharp nod, she took a tremulous step closer to the table.
“Hold up the towel. Get ready.”
He was going to try something. Something dangerous. Something that could go very, very wrong. But his intuition told him it was the only thing that would provide the right impetus to unlock that goddamn stronghold Trace had on his mind.
Cordray held the towel in front of her.
“Are you ready?” he said.
She nodded shakily. Obviously, whatever she’d seen inside Trace’s head had fucked her up, too.
“Can you do this, Cordray?”
She stared back at him, eyes wide, mouth open. He’d never seen her so shaken. If not for the seriousness of the situation, he would have laughed.
“I need to hear it! Tell me! Can you do this?”
She nodded, fighting back her emotions. “Y-yes. Yes, I can do this.”
It felt like he was defusing a bomb. One that only had a few seconds left on the timer. If he failed, everything would explode and he’d lose his best friend, his home, Cordray, Sam, himself. His entire existence seemed to hinge on this one critical moment.
And time was running out.
He grabbed the small, folded towel he’d soaked in alcohol and rubbed it as carefully as possible over Trace’s chest and stomach.
“Micah . . . no . . . what are you doing?” Sam gasped and covered her mouth.
“Trust me, baby.” He took a deep breath and raised the flaming baton over Trace’s body.
Trace growled. He sounded more like an animal than a vampire. He was one step away from going mutant. If this didn’t work, Trace was a goner.
And it would be his responsibility to kill him.
He couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t lose his best friend that way.
He nodded toward Cordray, who nodded back. He could feel her inside his head, so she knew his plan, as well as her part in it.
“Micah . . .” Trace’s deep voice curdled his blood. His eyes blazed. His fangs dripped with venom as he snarled.
Fuck. Maybe it was already too late.
Now!
He pulled the folded towel away and tapped the flaming baton to the alcohol. Fire erupted over Trace’s torso.
A monstrous screech split the air as Trace strained against the chains. Wind whipped through the dungeon. The sound of cracking and snapping wood took Micah’s gaze to the table, but thankfully it held.
Then lightning bolts of Trace’s thoughts fired inside Micah’s mind, intensifying rapidly.
“Not yet!” he shouted at Cordray, who held the wet towel at the ready.
As the wind tossed the pillows from the bed and lifted his floggers from their hooks, more memories, detonating at supersonic speed, launched into Micah’s mind, flying, streaming, discharging like a thousand nuclear bombs in less than a second.
Jesus! This was what Trace had been holding inside him?
“Micah!” Cordray’s terrified eyes collided with his as she lifted the towel. “Now?” Her long hair whipped around her face.
“Not yet . . . hold on . . .”
Trace shrieked again—the sound an agonizing wail of torment—as a lifetime of pain rocketed from Trace’s mind into Micah’s.
“Now!” The fire had burned through the vapor barrier and was hitting Trace’s skin.
Cordray threw the towel over Trace’s body just as the swirling wind blasted into Micah with enough force to pick him up and hurtle him against the far wall. He bounced off, tossed like a ragdoll onto the floor.
“Micah!” Sam raced toward him, dropping to her knees beside him.
He shook out the cobwebs and grinned weakly up at her.
“Are you okay?” She brushed his hair off his face, desperate concern pouring from her gaze.
“Better than okay.” His voice came out as a fractured whisper.
Her slanted brows bunched over her nose.
“I’m in,” he said. Trace’s mind was open. He was inside Trace’s head. “I’m in, baby.”
Chapter 27
Trace lay slack, his body warm, loose, and flying, even as the ghost of his childhood memories evaporated into ether.
He had finally opened up to Micah, and like a sinner confessing his crimes, a weight lifted off his soul. Guilt still resided in his heart, but the self-oppression no longer dragged him to the bottom of the ocean like a cinder block chained to his ankle, and the ache behind his sternum was gone.
Breathing more easily than he had in a long time, he became aware that something was lying on top of him. No, someone. A body draped crossways over his torso.
He peeled his eyelids open, lifted his head, and sucked in a pleasantly surprised inhale.
Cordray was slung over him like a blanket. Her long, partially braided hair lay like silken, ebony spider webs on his skin. Her full breasts pressed against his stomach.
She was the reason he was so calm. The reason his chest no longer ached. Not even a shadow of the pain he’d experienced for hours remained.
She’d taken his pain away.
Just by touching him.
His beast had completely receded . . . because of her.
He laid his head back on the wood between his arms, which were still stretched over his head. Quiet tranquility wrapped around him. He was a lily pad floating on a pond, the sun warming him from above, the water cooling him from below.
Totally Zen.
Micah was nearby. Trace could feel him. But wherever he was, it didn’t feel like he had the energy to do much more than lay there. Kind of like him. Kind of like Cordray.
He grinned. It felt as though the three of them had experienced a giant, explosive three-way orgasm. One that had completely drained them, leaving them flaccid.
The fantasy would have been perfect had Cordray not twitched against him just then. A moment later, her shoulders shuddered, and she made a quiet, breathless noise that sounded like a sob.
Wait. What?
Was Cordray crying?
He had never seen Cordray cry.
“C?” he said quietly. “Are you okay?” A week ago, he wouldn’t have cared. He would have been infuriated that her tears might be pity. Pity for him.
But something had changed between him and Cordray. He did care. And he could see that she did,
too, even if she had an odd way of showing it.
At the sound of his voice, Cordray bolted upright, dashing her fingers under her eyes, collecting herself and looking away before turning back toward him, keeping her gaze averted. “I’m fine.”
God, but she was more beautiful than usual with tears glistening in her eyes, making her irises shimmer like sapphires in the moonlight.
She was like the apple in the Garden of Eden, so tempting, yet so deadly. The combination made his balls tingle.
“Come here,” he said, hardly daring to breathe for fear of scaring her away.
She hesitated then slowly glided up his body as if mesmerized.
If only he could touch her. He yearned to push his fingers into her hair and hold her against him.
Her tears glistened like diamonds. Like stars. He wanted to catch them in his palm and bring them to his lips. Taste them. Savor their salty essence.
She drew closer, her face only inches from his, her gaze locked on his mouth.
Yes, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to feel her tongue slide over his. He had never wanted anything more.
He closed his eyes, lifted his head, held his breath.
And then Cordray jerked to a halt.
“What am I doing?” she said, as if to herself.
He opened his eyes to find her staring at him like she’d just caught herself buttering moldy bread.
She reared back. “I can’t do this.”
The about-face caught him off guard. It also pissed him off. “Why are you fighting this?” He tugged against the chains still securing him to the table. Anger at her rejection spiked in his blood.
She pushed off of him, leaving cold emptiness in her place. “I’m not fighting anything.”
“The hell you aren’t.”
“Don’t you dare presume to know me, Trace.” She spun around, and all that glorious hair fanned out like silk on the wind.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.” She stopped at the door and flashed him a pained glance over her shoulder. “I’ll petition King Bain tomorrow to terminate your community service at Asylum. You’re free, Trace.”
With that, she blew out of the room like a sharp gust.
Free?
She was letting him go?
What the hell was this shit? She couldn’t let him go.
Staring blindly up at the ceiling, his heart aching, he felt more like a prisoner now than ever. Because how could he be free when he wasn’t with her?
Chapter 28
Cordray raced away from Micah’s house, tears streaking her face.
She needed to go away for a while. The only way to recover from the hold Trace had on her was to put him in her rearview mirror and hope that time healed the ache in her heart.
At the ranch, she pulled into the garage, swept into the house, through the kitchen, and up the stairs to her bedroom, where she shut herself inside the bathroom and splashed water on her face for a good five minutes before lifting her head to look in the mirror.
The female staring back at her was a stranger. One who cried all the time like a pussy. One who’d been weakened by love. One who bore no resemblance to the tough-assed female she had become. For so long, she hadn’t wanted or even needed a male. She had purged that need from her system the night Gideon betrayed her. Trace would just give her more of the same, so why did she care so much?
She’d almost lost him tonight. But instead of making her want to confess her feelings to him and let the cards fall where they may, she’d wanted nothing more than to get away. Seeing him almost die was a painful reminder of how precarious a relationship with him would be. Another reminder of how dangerous it would be to allow herself to love him. Because peril would always follow Trace around like a puppy. He would always be one breath away from turning mutant. And she refused to put herself into another situation where the male she loved could be taken away from her in a heartbeat, leaving her crushed and heartbroken.
Sighing, she shut off the faucet, dried her face, and turned off the light as she opened the door.
And came face to face with Skeletor.
* * *
“I need to go,” Trace said weakly. His limbs, which were draped over the sides of the bathtub, were still as heavy as concrete from the working over Micah had given him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Cordray needed him.
He hadn’t been able to push her from his mind since she’d left an hour ago. It was like she was still there, inside his mind, even though she was gone.
Micah lifted his head from the edge of the oversized tub and gazed drowsily over the layer of lilac-scented bubbles at him. Sam was wrapped in his arms. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her nose was pressed against the side of his neck.
“You’re not going anywhere right now, Trace.” Micah’s voice sounded as weary as he looked.
It had taken Micah ten minutes to recover enough from being thrown across the room to lift himself off the floor and release Trace from his bindings.
“But—”
“No. I can feel how tired you are. I can see it.” Micah’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline as he tapped his temple. “And God how I wish I couldn’t.”
“I warned you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Micah laid his head back and groaned. “I’ll get used to it, but right now, all your mental vomit is giving me one hell of a migraine.” He lifted his hand out of the sudsy water and ran his palm down his face. “So much for aftercare. This isn’t at all how I take care of my subs after a scene.”
“I’ll live.” Trace’s deep voice echoed from his chest. It was the voice of a male well-soothed. A male who had just unloaded a heavy burden and could no longer hold himself upright from the sheer exhaustion of letting go of so much mental waste. Waste that Micah now helped him carry.
“Want to talk about it?” Micah’s eyelids cracked open.
“I thought you had a migraine.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t about me right now, buddy. It’s about you. I wouldn’t be much of a master if I didn’t put my own discomfort aside at least a little bit and tend to your needs first.”
Trace studied the way Micah’s eyelids drooped shut again. Clearly, he was exhausted. That had been some fucked-up shit back there. Connecting to Trace’s mind and his past had to have been like an acid downpour, laden with sorrow and heartbreak.
Micah’s eyes opened halfway again. They glistened with unshed tears. “At least you know now that your dad and brother didn’t die.”
“That doesn’t bring my mother back, though, does it? She’s still dead. I still killed her.”
Micah’s eyebrows ticked inward. “That wasn’t your fault. I saw what happened, Trace. You didn’t kill her.”
“You saw what I did. You saw how I disobeyed my mother and let my power out in public. You saw how I lost control and hurt those kids. If I hadn’t done that, their families wouldn’t have learned what a freak I am. That I was the son of a witch.” He curled his arms over his head and rocked forward, sending a gentle wave of water toward Micah and Sam’s end of the tub. “They never would have come after her—after us—if I hadn’t lost control of my power. They wouldn’t have killed her.” He splashed his arms back into the water as he dropped his head back.
Tears trailed out the corners of his eyes.
A moment later, Sam laid herself over his body, hugging him, kissing the side of his neck. “Ssshhh.” She kissed him again, but it wasn’t her lips he wanted comforting him. It wasn’t her body he wanted to feel pressed against his. He wanted Cordray. He needed her. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay now,” she said.
No, everything wasn’t going to be okay. Cordray had left. She had told him she was cutting him loose. Giving him his freedom. And yet, Trace didn’t feel free. He felt more like a prisoner than ever.
“Why doesn’t she want me?” he said softly, as if to himself.
“Hmm?” Sam lifted her head from his chest and frowned at him.
The moment Cordray left, an emptiness had opened inside him. That emptiness had spread inside his chest, to his stomach, out through his limbs, making him heavy all over. So heavy he could barely hold his head up.
Sam exchanged meaningful glances with Micah.
“What?” he said, perking up at their bloated silence. “What aren’t the two of you telling me?” He rubbed his thumb up and down his sternum as that goddamn ache stirred back to life, along with another vibration that Cordray needed him, this one stronger than the last.
Micah groaned and scrubbed his face again. “Damn it.”
“Tell me,” Trace said pushing upright. “What are you keeping from me?”
Sam sighed, glanced sideways at Micah, then looked at him. “She’s in love with you.”
“Who?”
“Cordray.”
He shook his head. How could she love him when she pushed him away at every opportunity. He’d kissed her the other night, and she’d practically burned a path in the carpet to get away from him. He’d all but invited her to kiss him tonight, and what had she done instead? Told him she was terminating his community service.
“No, that can’t be true.”
Sam’s eyes filled with sympathy. “Micah, tell him.”
Trace looked from Sam to Micah, who breathed out a heavy, resigned exhale and nodded. “It’s true, Trace. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s true. Cordray has fallen in love with you.”
“But it’s more than that,” Sam added. “Did you know she can’t feel?”
Trace frowned. “What are you talking about?” From the way Cordray reacted to him, she could feel plenty.
“Until you came along,” Sam said, “she couldn’t feel a thing. Nothing. Not even a bullet.”
“Did she tell you that?” If this were true, it shed a whole new light on Cordray.
“She told me last night.”
He searched his memories of all the encounters he’d had with Cordray. Of how she’d sucked in her breath and stared at his hand on her arm the first time he touched her outside King Bain’s courtroom. She had looked at him as if he were an alien. And every time he’d been around her since, she seemed to be on edge and intent on putting distance between them. He just assumed it was because he frightened her. And maybe she was frightened. Not of him, but of how he made her feel.
