Tormented by Darkness

by Claire Ashgrove

  When she stood before him, he fitted his hands at her waist and pulled her hips flush with his. Soft and enticing, his lips moved across her temple. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are with the wind in your hair?”

  “No,” she answered faintly. Her soul surged forward in a violent arc, darkness sensing satisfaction was a hairsbreadth away. She swayed in Mick’s steady grasp.

  His mouth dusted down her cheek, teased across her lips. His hands slipped to her bottom, and he pressed her forward against his confined erection. Pleasure swept through her veins. “Like an angel,” he murmured huskily.

  Her breath fell raggedly as a delicious shiver rolled down her spine. Somehow, she managed to push words through her closing throat. “I’m not…an angel.”

  “Mm.” He nipped at the sensitive skin alongside her neck, then soothed the painful pinch with a flick of his tongue. “In my book you are.” Another clench of his fingers, and his cock stroked the sensitive nub between her legs.

  Rhiannon’s knees threatened to buckle. To keep herself from falling, she braced her hands on his shoulders and curled her fingers into his cotton shirt. Her head tipped backward, and Mick’s mouth slid down her throat. Heat washed through her body in gentle, lulling waves.

  Keeping one hand against her bottom to hold her in place, Mick slipped the other beneath her sweatshirt. Calloused fingers scraped pleasantly up her waist, over her ribs, to the satin of her bra. He tugged the flimsy fabric down, releasing her swollen nipple. As his thumb swirled across the tight peak, a gasp tore free.

  “I can’t stop thinking about how good it feels to be inside you.” His words rasped against her skin, his breath moist, his voice like gravel. “I’ve never been there before—to that place you take me to when you come around me.” With a not so gentle twist of her nipple, he lifted his head and his gaze locked with hers. “I want it. This.” His gaze flashed to dark onyx, and he added in a hoarse whisper, “You.”

  The crisp pop of branches in the forest beyond yanked Rhiannon out of the heady bubble of bliss Mick’s words created. Her spine snapped to attention, and her gaze jumped to the trees. With a chuckle, she slowly brought her stare back to his. “Maybe we should pitch that tent first. I’m not sure that kind of introduction would go over well with my brothers. You’ve got a gorgeous ass, but I don’t think they’d appreciate it quite like I do.”

  A wry smirk curved one corner of Mick’s mouth as he pulled his hand from beneath her sweatshirt and tucked a thick lock of her hair behind her ear. “Point taken.” Turning her loose, he reached for the tent.

  At that moment, the wind swirled, stirring up the fallen leaves. It brought with it an icy chill that snuffed the brimming heat in Rhiannon’s veins. Rubbing at the goose bumps that coursed down her arms, she scanned the trees, sensing they weren’t alone. But Dáire’s essence was far from her, and she hadn’t heard a passing car.

  Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the breeze and concentrated on the stirring energy. Yet the more she tried to define the rolling vein of power, the more it faded, until at last, all that remained was the serenity of nature.

  Rhiannon expelled the breath she’d been holding. Drandar wasn’t here. It was just her imagination.

  She glanced at Mick, then scanned the deepening shades of purple in the sky. Before long it would be dark. They’d be lost without a fire. “I’m going to get some firewood.”

  A frown creased Mick’s brow as he looked over his shoulder. “Be careful.”

  Laughing, she headed for the trees. “Relax. I’ve been coming here for years. I know these woods like the back of my hand. There’s no boogeyman out here. Just a few foxes, squirrels, and rabbits.”

  ****

  Rhiannon’s confidence was exactly what worried Mick the most. People who took safety for granted were always the ones who turned up dead. They never stopped to consider the street they walked daily might be more dangerous than it seemed. Never considered the dumpster they passed every evening might make the perfect hiding place for a man bent on rape and murder.

  Grumbling to himself, Mick cursed his ever-present suspicion. Rhiannon’s laughter told him loud and clear what she thought of his over-protective nature. She didn’t want his worry.

  All the more reason to focus on the ways they differed instead of forgetting them and allowing confessions to slip free. That independent streak of hers would never accept his need to hold what was his close. Too close sometimes.

  Yet for a minute, when he’d turned around and found her gazing at the sky, her long hair swaying in the breeze, he’d lost himself to the fantasy. It gripped hard, grew roots, and sucked him down until all that mattered was returning to that perfect place being with her created. Where he was whole, and Rhiannon made him that way.

  Son of a bitch. He jammed the tent supports into the ground.

  Coming here had been a terrible idea. He couldn’t pretend to be something he wasn’t, and the next several hours would reveal things he didn’t want Rhiannon to see. Last night he’d escaped the nightmares by turning to her when the faceless victims rose behind his eyelids. But tonight, with her brothers nearby, he couldn’t screw her senseless. If he woke up in a cold sweat, she’d want to know why. And the last thing he could afford was to have Rhiannon pry him open.

  Though if he were honest with himself, he’d admit she was already peeling away the layers.

  As the subconscious thought registered, Mick’s hands came to a halt over a tent stake, and his gaze tracked to the forest. She hadn’t laughed at his tears. Hadn’t dismissed his grief with the trite assurance everything would be okay. She’d taken his vulnerabilities and protected them by sharing her own ongoing sorrow over her mother’s death.

  Uncomfortable feeling cinched his ribs together. Rhiannon understood him. Impossible as it might be, she knew exactly what he needed right down to telling him what he wanted to hear when he’d told her there couldn’t be a future between them, despite the feeling that radiated in her eyes.

  Maybe he wasn’t giving her enough credit. Maybe if he let her pummel all the way through—

  A sharp feminine cry jerked Mick out of his reverie. Too many years on the force had ingrained the sound of inflicted pain into his memory. He dropped the tent stake, made a mad dash for his bag, and pulled out his pistol. Heart lodged in his throat, he bolted for the trees.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rhiannon hauled herself to her hands and knees, her sharp cry fading into a pained whimper. She looked up through the mass of hair that gathered around her face and spit bits of forest matter off her tongue. Where her father had struck her, pain arced through her ribs. Her glare connected with his.

  “You can’t kill me, Drandar.” The effort of talking set off a dull, agonizing throb, and she grimaced. “I’m still immortal.”

  His low, lifeless laugh echoed off the high canopy of leaves. “I have no desire to kill you, daughter. What purpose would that serve? You are no use to me dead.”

  “Then why are you here?” Standing, she glanced around the narrow clearing in the trees in search of a weapon. She couldn’t kill him either, but in his mortal form, he was susceptible to injury.

  How had he snuck up on her?

  Mick. She’d been preoccupied with thoughts of Mick. Damn.

  He took two steps closer and grasped her chin between thumb and forefinger. With a fierce jerk, Drandar brought Rhiannon’s gaze back to his. “To remind you what you are. You have killed before, Rhiannon. Do not assume the piousness of light like your sister Isolde. It is a disgusting farce.”

  Rhiannon’s gaze narrowed. Yes, she had killed, but only out of necessity. Only when sustaining life affected the balance of nature. She would not let her sire accuse her of the dark bloodlust his favorite children, Taran and Brigid, shared.

  “This man you seek to protect is a weak mortal. He does not even care for you, and yet you are willing to forfeit the sacred gift I gave you to protect him.” His mouth pulled into a wicked sneer,
and his muddy brown eyes mocked her. “Pathetic.”

  Jerking free from her father’s punishing hold, Rhiannon spit in his face. Before she could take a step backward, his hand lashed across her face. Her head snapped to the side. Agony erupted, his knuckles striking bone. Rhiannon cried out and clutched at her cheek, the harsh blow threatening to send her back to her knees.

  Power emanated from the man before her. His long black hair whipped about his face as the negative energies he commanded stirred up a frigid breeze. Rooted in place by the dizzying effect of his strike, she watched as he called that energy into him, amassing it until the clearing pulsed with evil.

  Though it wasn’t the first time she’d witnessed her father in full rage, Rhiannon had never stood on the receiving end. Fear fingered the base of her spine. Instinctively, she took a step backward. He couldn’t kill her, but he could make her wish she were dead. And if he incapacitated her, Mick’s fate would be sealed.

  “You ungrateful little bitch.” Drandar stalked her, matching his advance with her retreat. “I created you. I gave you the gift of unending life. And yet you would seek to harm your own father.”

  Rhiannon’s back hit the rough bark of an elm sapling. Blood trickled through her fingertips where she held them to her face. Her heart hammered in triple time. If ever there was a time for her twin to sense her emotions, it was now. She couldn’t stop Drandar alone, and if she failed to damage him enough so he’d flee, the ritual would forever be lost. Which meant one of the eight would never know freedom from Drandar’s wicked curse.

  Where are you, Dáire?

  Drandar’s hand shot out, his fingers grazing her hair. She ducked beneath his arm, gaining a few sacred spaces between them. But as she swiveled to keep her sire in her direct line of sight, her right foot hit a large protruding rock at a sideways angle. She stumbled.

  As the ground rose up to meet her braced palms, her father’s knee thumped into her gut. Air rushed from her lungs, choking off her agonized cry. Her face hit the barren earth, where she lay still and gasping.

  A hand wound painfully into her long hair. With a jerk, Drandar pulled her torso off the ground and bent his foul head close to hers. Cold, fetid breath washed across her cheek. “I will bathe in your blood—and his—if you go through with this, daughter.”

  “We’ll…destroy you…first,” she wheezed.

  Laughter rasped near her ear. “Not as long as Taran lives.”

  Before Rhiannon could remind her father he would be reduced to an insignificant shell of himself if Taran was the only one who refused to accept mortality, a gunshot ricocheted through the clearing. Drandar’s soulless brown eyes widened, and his fingers released their painful hold on her hair. He tripped backward, his palm on his chest, partially covering a crimson stain just beneath his right shoulder.

  Her father’s gaze flashed with rage. “He is mine!” he whispered as he turned from her.

  Then, as Mick appeared in the corner of her peripheral vision, Drandar bolted into the heavy cover of trees.

  “Rhiannon!” Leaves crunched as Mick raced across the clearing. The toes of his boots stopped near her cheek, and he crouched at her shoulder. One warm, heavy palm tentatively touched her back. “Rhiannon? Are you okay?”

  The vise around her diaphragm let go, allowing her to answer with a hoarse, “Yes.”

  “Oh, hell, baby.” Relief flooded his exhaled words. Slowly, gently, he slid an arm around her and aided her into a sitting position.

  His dark eyes roamed her face, concern etched deeply into his handsome features. Rhiannon was quite certain he hadn’t meant to utter the endearment, but as he traced a fingertip over the cut on her cheek, she took comfort in the tenderness of his touch, the quiet utterance that revealed he cared for her in some fashion. She wasn’t just a means of forgetting his sorrow.

  An oath whispered past Mick’s lips as he wound his arms around her and drew her into the sheltering warmth of his embrace. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I thought…” A tremor vibrated through him into her, cutting off his whispered words.

  ****

  He’d thought she was dead. Mick tightened his hold on Rhiannon and tucked his face into her silken hair. He had cleared the trees, saw her lying on the ground motionless, and thought she was dead.

  In twelve years of police work, he had never known such paralyzing fear.

  A heartbeat was all the time it took to shatter all the barricades he’d erected, connect that fear with the trembling in his hands, and realize he loved her. A truth that made the tremors inside his gut seem like an earthquake in comparison to his shaking fingers. He didn’t want to love her, didn’t know how it had even happened. But it had, and she was wounded, and he’d been too far away to keep her safe.

  He eased her out of his embrace with a tempered exhale. “I need to check the perimeter. See if I can find him. I’ll take you back to the tent and call the authorities.”

  Rhiannon tangled her fingers into his shirt and gave a weak shake of her head. “No.”

  The tension building inside Mick released in an unsteady chuckle. “Sweetheart, that’s my job.”

  But as he gazed into her watery blue eyes, the blood trickling down her cheek hit him like a heavy fist to the sternum. A plea registered behind her gaze, one he instinctively knew she wouldn’t voice that begged him to stay with her. Very well, he wouldn’t leave her alone. He’d call the authorities, see what he could learn from her, and even though it completely contradicted every instinct he possessed, he’d sit with her until they told them they could leave.

  Mick folded her close and eased to his feet, cradling her in his arms. Her head rested against his shoulder as he carried her through the dense foliage back to the campsite and the sagging tent he’d left behind. At the doorway, he eased her to her feet. She wobbled, winced as she pressed a hand to her cheek, but remained standing without his help.

  He plucked his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, only to discover the weak signal he’d had before was now nonexistent. “Damn.” He tossed the useless gadget back onto the pile of their belongings. “We’ve got to go into town. I’ve lost service.”

  “Mick?”

  Her voice rang distantly, tolling the telltale vibration of shock. He swore again, all the more determined to get her out of the campsite and into town. Maybe even a hospital, though the injury to her cheek didn’t look as bad as it had on first glance.

  “Mick, I need to sit down.”

  Aw, shit. That dazed look on her pretty face couldn’t be anything but shock. He hurried to support her elbow and eased her to the ground, where she leaned against the thick peeling bark of a white birch. Her gaze scanned the overhanging limbs, touching the green-brown leaves that had refused to yield to approaching winter.

  “Let me pack this up, Rhiannon. You need a doctor.”

  She shook her head as her gaze drifted back to his. “I’m fine. We can’t leave here with my brothers coming. They’ll wonder and worry, and no one has signal up here.”

  “We’ll leave them a damn note.” He raked a hand through his hair, his worry finally breaking through the surface, driving home what had just occurred. The reality of Rhiannon’s attack. The man he’d injured, but who was still out there.

  “No,” she argued more forcefully. “I’ll be fine. I’m not leaving this tree.”

  Like hell she wasn’t. He’d put her in that SUV if he had to. Mick jerked a tent stake out of the ground.

  “I’m in love with you.”

  Her quiet utterance froze his hands. Warmth coursed through his blood, pleasant, but stifling all the same. Silence hung between them as his throat inched into a narrow straw.

  “I’m in love with you, and I need you to touch me. I don’t need a doctor, I don’t give a damn about that tent. Just…”

  She trailed away, drawing his gaze over his shoulder to rest on her liquid blue stare. Something moved inside him then, something so deeply buried that the heavy shift stole the a
ir from his lungs and left him feeling as if he’d plunged headlong into a bottomless chasm. He sank at a freefall, scared and exhilarated all at once. The unearthed stake in his grasp rolled off his fingers, rustling as it tumbled into dried grass.

  “Just you, Mick,” she whispered.

  Mick didn’t know who crawled between the short distance separating them, but Rhiannon’s mouth settled over his, grounding his fall. His hands fisted into her hair in a hold he knew was painful, but the urge to cling to all she was, all she offered, overruled the ability to soften his grasp. He couldn’t say he had ever been needed. Not like this. Not in a way he could taste, a way he felt in the urgent play of her hands and the tangle of her tongue. In her hands, he wasn’t a cop, wasn’t a false shell of himself, but he existed, flesh, bone, and blood. And needing her touch as much as she needed his.

  He had thought she was dead. Thought for one unending span of time he would stand at her grave, as he had stood at Steve’s this morning.

  He would have, but laying Rhiannon to rest would have killed him as well.

  Mick dragged his mouth down the side of her throat at the same time he dropped his hands to her sweatshirt. His lips worked lower, as his hands pushed the heavy cotton up, until fingers and mouth met at the swell of creamy skin above the satin edge of her bra. He trailed the tip of his tongue across the high rise of her breasts, sliding his hands around to unclasp the strap that barred him from what he most desired. When the fabric gave, he nudged it aside to draw one pert nipple into his mouth.

  Rhiannon’s nails pinched into his shoulders. “Mick,” she whispered. Her head fell back, long red hair dusting the ground, a pleasured moan sliding past her parted lips.