Oberon Boxed Set (Books 1-3) Welcome to Oberon

by P. G. Forte

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, I do. If we’d kept going the way we were going, then yeah. You’d have been screwed all right. Legally, as well as literally. And maybe then you’d have a reason to hate me. But it didn’t happen, so…” She shrugged and took another sip of wine.

  “Oh, I see.” Fury raged inside him. He took a deep breath, and reminded himself to stay calm. “So, you came to your senses just in time, and dumped me for Glenn in order to save me from myself? I’m touched, really. But I gotta tell you, if that’s your definition of getting lucky, I could think of a much better one.”

  Scout’s frown turned puzzled. “I dumped you? Where did that come from? Is that what you thought?”

  “No, Scout. What I thought is that you were just a kid who liked to play games. You must have gotten a pretty big kick out of pretending you were attracted to me just so you could piss Lucy off.”

  “Look, I—”

  Nick shook his head. “Forget it.” Jesus Christ, some great seduction this was turning out to be. How in hell had they gotten off on this tangent, anyway? “It was a long time ago. What difference does it make now? Water under the bridge, right?” He reached over and flipped up the cover of the pizza box. He picked up a slice and took a bite. “Come on, we better eat this. It’s not gonna get any warmer.”

  She didn’t move. And for a moment, she didn’t speak. And then, “You’re wrong, you know,” she said, staring at the island in front of her, her voice low and husky. He looked at her. Two bright spots of pink burned on her cheeks. Now what? He eyed her wearily, chewing pizza with dogged determination, although he might as well have been eating the box for all the flavor it had for him. “Wrong about what?”

  “I don’t know where Lucy comes into all this, but I certainly didn’t dump you. And I wasn’t pretending to be attracted to you, either.”

  Yeah, right. “Whatever.” Nick shrugged, and busied himself with opening another beer. He was curious to see if she would continue, but she just fiddled with the stem of her glass and refused to look at him. So what else was new?

  He leaned back against the counter and started on another slice of pizza. He could wait her out, if that’s what it was going to take. It was what he did best, after all. If he said nothing, she was bound to start talking sooner or later. Bound to say something – anything – to fill the silence. He gave her a cool, considering look. How long before she cracked? He could see her lower lip trembling, ever so slightly. Ahh, hell.

  “Okay,” he said, dropping the slice back into the box and folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll bite. You lied to me, not because you were trying to get me in trouble or tick off your friends, but because... you were madly in love with me? Was that it? And then, let’s see, you slept with your sister’s boyfriend, instead of with me, because... Gee, I don’t know. Help me out here, Scout. What was it? You were trying to protect me? You couldn’t resist him? The opportunity to piss your sister off was just too good? What?”

  “It was a mistake!” she yelled, and then she shook her head. “I just – Oh, forget it.”

  “Uh-huh.” He took a long, steadying drink before he asked her, “So, just for the record, when were you planning to tell me the truth?”

  “About my age and... and all? Well, not before I turned eighteen, anyway.”

  “Two years?” Nick set the bottle down on the counter hard and stared at her in shocked amazement. “Holy shit, babe. I realize you didn’t exactly have a high opinion of my intelligence, but you actually thought you could get away with lying to me about something like that for two whole years?”

  “Well, I was hoping I could.” A small smile flicked at the edge of her mouth. “It had worked so far, after all. And anyway, it wouldn’t have been two whole years, really. I just... I wanted you.”

  She looked straight at him then, and Nick felt as if her eyes were twin lasers, piercing their way through all the years of doubt.

  “I didn’t want to lose you, Nick. And I knew I would. I knew that when you found out, if you found out, you wouldn’t... you wouldn’t want me anymore.”

  “Oh, I still wanted you.” He grimaced, remembering just how much. He pushed himself away from the counter then, moving slowly across the narrow space that separated them, his eyes never leaving her face. “Even after I found out, I still wanted you. But you’re right. I wouldn’t have kept seeing you. And I definitely wouldn’t have slept with you. At least, I’d like to think I wouldn’t.”

  He stopped then. He was breathing hard with the effort it was taking to keep himself from grabbing her. He wanted to believe her. Oh, how he wanted to believe that she wasn’t lying to him now. But there were still a couple of feet between them, and although she hadn’t moved away from him, neither had she made any effort to close the gap. He needed her to make a move. Some move. Any move. Anything to show that she meant what she said, that it wasn’t just empty words.

  He forced himself to stay where he was and smile as he said, in an attempt at easing the tension, “I had some standards, you know.” Oh, like hell he did. Whatever standards he had wouldn’t have held for more than another week – at the absolute outside.

  Scout tried to return his smile, but she was just too tired for the effort. And too unbearably depressed. “Yeah. I know.” She swallowed hard and lifted her chin at him defiantly. “Unlike me, you mean?”

  “You want the truth, babe?” he asked, sounding angry again. “I didn’t really give a shit about your standards. I wasn’t expecting you to be a virgin. Hell, you knew that! But I sure as hell never suspected that I was just priming your pump! That you were taking all the passion we had, all that heat, everything I was building between us and just… just giving it away to some asshole!”

  His face had grown dark again. Dangerous. An icy rage was burning in his eyes. Scout’s breath caught in her throat; terror flooded suddenly through her veins.

  Oh, shit. No. Not again. Not again!

  She’d seen that look before. Just once before had he looked at her with that same mixture of anger and passion and pain burning in his eyes.

  “It wasn’t like that,” she croaked, trying to fend off the rising panic. She felt as if she’d been sucked off her feet by an undertow; dragged, with no warning, out beyond her depths.

  Twenty years ago she’d seen that look in his eyes and knew she had lost him.

  For twenty years, she had buried the memory, and the pain that went with it. She had stayed away from home for all that time because having nothing, feeling nothing, was better than having to endure this pain ever again. She felt the room whirl around her. And suddenly…

  She was sixteen again. Frozen where she sat. Hands clenched on the arms of the hard wooden chair, feeling the wood give slightly beneath the pressure of her nails.

  Sister Benedict’s office. Her father sitting beside her because a parent had to be present when a minor was questioned by the police. Sister Benedict sitting across from her because it was her office, her school, and that was the way she wanted it.

  Did they sense it, too? she wondered. Did they feel what was happening? Was the sudden drop in temperature perceptible to anyone but her? She felt their eyes on her, holding her in her place – like two arms of a vise – when she would otherwise have bolted.

  But she saw only Nick.

  Her eyes were locked with his, and the look on his face lanced through her. Like a stake through her heart.

  It was several seconds before Scout understood she hadn’t died from the pain. That she would not die. That something far, far worse was occurring. Before she understood that the booming silence in her head, and the slicing, tearing, cold sensation she had taken to be the blood draining from her heart, was merely the way it feels to watch your world come crashing to a halt.

  The undead, she thought in the absurdity of the instant. That’s what I’ve become.

  Stupidly, she thought of Juliet waking in her tomb and finding Romeo dead beside her. Her mind flashed on the image
of the dagger-shaped letter opener she could remember having noticed on the desk in front of her. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his to search for it.

  She couldn’t tear her eyes away from his until they had finished the job they had begun. Until they had burned through to the very center of her soul and turned to ash every last bit of life and joy and love and happiness that had been contained there.

  Until she had been left as empty and cold and unfeeling as a dry husk.

  Abruptly, the pressure in her chest receded and she found she could breathe again. She sighed and blinked and, realizing that Sister Benedict was speaking to her, turned to her tranquilly, and answered her questions, and then all of Nick’s queries as well, with unassailable calm and total indifference.

  As if he were no one she had ever met before. As if the information she gave them was of no consequence whatsoever.

  Oh, there’s that letter opener, a part of her thought incuriously. Not that it mattered. She had no need for it now. She did realize, in a detached, abstracted, disinterested sort of way, that this calmness was something different, something of a surprise, something that might have worried that part of her that had cared about things. If that part still functioned. But since it no longer did –

  With a complete lack of concern, she answered truthfully all the questions that were posed to her, except for one. When she was asked for her whereabouts on the afternoon of Mrs. Burnett’s murder, she turned cool, blank, passionless eyes to Nick’s face and, in a voice devoid of all emotion, she lied.

  The excuses she’d prepared ahead of time, the story she’d always planned on using in just such an event, sprang from her lips without any hesitation at all.

  “I was with Glenn,” she heard herself tell them. “At his house. All afternoon. We were making out.” And she saw that look again, full of pain and hate. Only this time it had no power to touch her at all.

  Now, twenty years later, Nick stood before her, in the kitchen grown dark and cold. And once again, his eyes were dissecting her soul. Suddenly, the memories flooded back. Her heart awoke in such an agony of feeling, it was all she could do to keep from crying out.

  This time, there was no one to stop her from moving. A distance of only two feet separated them and Scout launched herself across it without a single thought. Blinded by her need, she threw herself against him, clutching desperately at his shoulders. Her lips sought and found his mouth, and she kissed him with every ounce of strength that she possessed.

  Her assault took him by surprise. He staggered backward a step at the impact. But then his arms wrapped around her and he hugged her to him, as if it were possible to pull her any closer.

  The taste of her mouth, something he hadn’t even thought it possible to remember, almost made him cry. Oh God, it’s been so long! His hands slid under her shirt and over her back. And then down to her waist, and up again, over her ribs this time. Until at last he felt the weight of her breasts pressing against his thumbs, and her soft, soft skin under his palms. His brain reeled at how unbelievably good she felt, how soft and warm in his hands.

  The blood was thundering in his ears, and through the haze he heard her give a soft, shrill cry, like that of a wounded bird. Startled, he pulled his head back to look at her. Her eyes met his and the unremitting need that blazed there took his breath away. He bent his lips to hers again, and felt her respond as if her very survival depended on what only he could give her.

  And now, it was her hands that were moving; first grasping, and then tearing at the front of his shirt. With trembling hands that did not want to loosen their hold on her, he let go only long enough to help her pull it off. And then he took her shirt off as well, pushing it over her head in one quick motion, stroking the straps of her bra off her shoulders and down her arms.

  He groaned as she slid her hands over his shoulders to lock around his neck. She pressed herself back against him and her greedy mouth was on his again, and he was lost once more in a lengthy exploration of her mouth. For a long, long moment he could think of nothing else. Then his hands were reaching behind her to undo the clasp of her bra, and he was dragging his lips away from her mouth, and across her neck, and then down, down to her breasts. To her nipples, already hard and taut. She raised up on her toes and arched herself closer to him with a soft, feral growling sound that drove him to the edge of madness. Her nails were digging into the back of his head now, holding him just where she wanted him to be, and his hands were cupped around her butt, pulling her closer, tight against him, while he suckled and licked at her.

  A desperate voice in his head was whispering urgently of the need for a bed, a couch, the kitchen counter, the goddamn floor. Just pick someplace, damn it. Any place. Now!

  He pulled himself away and fought to get the words past the ragged rasping of his breath, as he held her close against his chest, where his heart was pounding far too fiercely.

  “Your bedroom. Where—” she heard him say.

  But she stopped him, her fingers trembling against the softness of his lips. “Don’t talk,” she told him, shaking her head slightly. She began to kiss him again, soft, hungry kisses. “Just don’t say a word.”

  The undead don’t crave words, she wanted to tell him, or even blood.

  What she needed was a soul.

  Back to Top

  * * * *

  Chapter Twenty Four

  * * * *

  Somehow they made it up the stairs and into her bedroom, stumbling to a halt so many times Nick thought they’d never get there. He’d never known such greedy desperation. And then, finally, down, down, down, they were tumbling onto the softness of her bed.

  They’d already lost most of their clothes along the way, and the sensation of naked skin on skin ignited every nerve he had. Her mouth had found his chest now, her tongue tickling, licking, tasting, teasing. He groaned and levered himself up on top of her, and then over, rolling her with him, refusing to let her go for even an instant, as he worked at removing whatever last bits of clothing they still retained.

  Thoughts began percolating up from the bottom of his brain again. Thoughts he really didn’t want to listen to and had, so far, managed to ignore.

  You didn’t think this would happen tonight. You didn’t come prepared.

  But his body didn’t care. His body screamed for his mind to shut the fuck up! Just go away. Just please, please let me have this.

  Please, God, let me have her now.

  But he knew it was no good. And finally, with a shattered groan, he pulled himself away from her. “Scout,” his voice raked against his throat, and his body trembled with the effort he was making. “Stop a minute. Honey, we can’t... no, wait. Wait! Listen to me.”

  She stopped. In the cold moonlight coming in through the windows he could see her eyes glowing black, hard as obsidian.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped, not believing what he was forced to say. “I wasn’t thinking. You – you kind of took me by surprise, you know.” He tried to smile. “We can’t do this. We need... we have to wait... we have to have some, you know, protection. Unless... do you have something? A condom? Anything?” Oh, God, please let her be on the pill.

  “No.” Her voice was low. Quiet. Final. Shit.

  “Honey, I...”

  “No,” she repeated, with a shake of her head. “And I don’t care about that. I want you.” The glittering black spheres of her eyes were fixed upon his face. “Now. I want to do this now.”

  Yeah, so did he, But “Listen to me. We can’t—”

  “No!” Oh, surely, surely he couldn’t mean to do this to her again? Scout thought in disbelief. Not again. Not now.

  Desperation flared inside her. What was he waiting for? What more did he want from her? Dear God, hadn’t they always stopped before? Hadn’t she always stopped? Whenever he’d asked her to? Every damn time?

  And look where it had gotten them. Where it had gotten her. For twenty years her soul had been dead within her, and she hadn’t even known
it. How long would he make her pay, and go on paying, for the sin of loving him too much? Her eyes held his and would not let go, would not relent, would not back away. He was not going to do this to her, she thought fiercely. Not again!

  But still, he hesitated.

  Oh, God. This can’t be happening. Scout’s pulse pounded frantically. Already she could sense icy fingers reaching out to seal her heart back up in the soulless darkness.

  “No, please,” she whimpered, “Please.” Not that! She could not go back to that. Could not bear to feel her heart reduced to ashes once again. What didn’t he understand? With a desperate cry, she pulled him down to her. “What more do...” she whispered, her voice a broken sob against his neck. “Nick…what do you want from me?”

  “Everything!” he gasped, as his resolve broke and he took what he had wanted for so, so long. His mouth found hers again, and all reason fled. He thrust both hands up through her hair, holding her head captive as he nibbled and sucked and licked his way slowly down her throat. And then he was taking her breast with his mouth again, while his hands stroked and caressed every part of her they could reach – as if he would commit the feel of her entire body to his memory.

  He was conscious of every gasp and whimper that she made, the sweetest sounds he’d ever heard. Of the taste and the smell of her. The wondrous, soft sleekness of her skin.

  And when he could no longer stand not being inside her, he rolled on top of her, groaning at the eagerness with which she received him, her arms reaching up to clasp him to her, her legs parting to cradle him between her thighs. He slid his hands up under her arms, sliding his fingers along the length of them until he’d grasped her hands until their fingers had locked together on the bed above their heads, their bodies stretching out together, in one long, fluid line, perfectly matched. Their mouths devouring each other with insatiable hunger.

  Scout wrapped her legs around his back and clung to him. He thrust into her, felt himself enter and join with her, merge with her. Felt himself pulse hot and mindless into the melted core of her.