His eyes were blue-green, the neon having washed away. He was calm and serious, and when he brushed his thumb over my bottom lip, I knew he was ready to talk.
“And now I’m going to talk to you, Scarlett. Because I almost lost you tonight. Do you fucking understand that?”
His words shivered with heat, with pain, and my broken, shattered heart fractured open just a little bit farther, but I didn’t pull away from him. Instead, I wiggled in just a little bit closer, straddling his hips, wrapping my legs around him in a full-body hug, wanting to keep him with me forever. In spite of the pain, in spite of loving him as I did, even knowing how desperately wrong we were for each other, I could never give him up.
“Why does that matter to you?” I asked.
“You know why.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I need to hear you say it again, Mercer. Without the threat of death lingering at our necks. Without the crunch of time ticking away. I need to hear you say it when things are just—”
“I love you, Scarlett. I always have.” His eyes shimmered, his voice cracked, and all I could do was lean my head on his chest and listen to him speak.
He started from the beginning, from the first second he’d seen me—human, smiling, in love with another man. He told how he’d slowly begun to fall in love, how it had been hell to keep his distance though he’d been forced to.
Then he told me of my death, how he was there.
I trembled because I thought I’d heard everything, thought I’d known it all, but he’d been there. He’d seen my maker, but I bit my tongue, determined to let him speak his piece.
Mercer told why he’d kept his distance—Death’s threats to me and to him.
He spoke of the risks he’d taken time and again to protect me from the pack and from myself, of Death’s warning that he could never feed me from his vein, that doing so would ruin him forever.
He shared the startling revelation that when he’d done it, I’d been breathed into his soul, that he’d not only felt my emotions but that sometimes during heightened moments, he could even hear me.
My heart rattled in my chest. “James and I?” I asked with a thread of horror laced behind it.
His nonanswer—betrayed by the way his body tensed, the way his jaw muscles worked—was answer enough.
“Oh God, Merc. Oh my God.” I shook.
He was still there, though, holding me tight and rubbing my back in soothing circles up and down and pulling me back from the nightmare he must have endured and the shame I felt that he’d heard us in the first place.
“But... but... why?” I asked after several more minutes.
His eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Why what?”
“How could you still love me? Why would you still want me? After all that? If I’d heard you with someone else, God, I think... I think I would have gone ape shit.”
He snorted as he grabbed hold of my flickering fingers, bringing them gently to his lips and giving each one a tender kiss, causing my stomach to curl and my breath to scissor in my lungs. “I did. Many fucking times. You have no idea.”
His eyes were distant, his mouth turned down, and I hated to see it there.
Did I forgive and forget? No, I wish I could say I was bigger than that. That I wasn’t just a fucking raw wound here, but I was. I’d been lied to for so long by the one person I’d trusted most.
Rationally, I knew why. I freaking got it, and I hoped that someday I’d be able to put the past behind us, but I was only human. Hurts like mine took years to build up. The scar tissue was thick. I wanted to wrap myself around him, take him into my body, and fuck him until I died from it.
Had he been anyone else, I probably could have.
Mercer was the peanut butter to my jelly, though, the yin to my yang, the ice to my fire, the sun to my moon. He was my whole fucking life, and his betrayal hurt, dammit. It hurt like hell.
I sniffed.
“Tell me it’s not too late for us,” he murmured brokenly.
I looked at him—I mean, really looked at him—at his gorgeous blond hair, the perfect blue-green of his eyes, the strong nose, the full mouth, the highly masculine features, and my heart thumped even as darkness spread like warm honey through my veins.
Yeah, she loved him, all right. She just didn’t know it yet. We both loved him, and we always would. I knew that as surely as the sun would rise in the east and set in the west. That indisputable fact would never, ever change.
Mercer had responsibilities, though, to himself, to Steven, and to the pack, and sometimes, love meant being able to let go.
I tipped my neck to the side, causing the ends of my hair to slide over my shoulder, exposing the bite.
He growled a male rumble of approval, and his fingers splayed hot over the mark, the act one of possession, of claiming. “Mine,” he was telling me.
My pulse sped. “Can you take this off, Mercer? Release me.”
His nostrils flared, his eyes going from bright turquoise to neon green in seconds. The shadow of his wolf stared back at me, angry, puzzled, desperate.
“You don’t want me?” he asked, voice snappish and rolling with hurt pride. His nostrils scented again. “And don’t fucking lie, because I smell it. Your need. Your desire.”
My eyebrows gathered, and I straightened, jerking back so he would stop touching me, so that I could try to think clearly. “That was never in question, not with me, and you damn well know it. I always wanted you from the first second you saved me from that animal.”
He’d stood back and let that animal have me first. I felt as if someone had squeezed my heart in a vice. I had to let his betrayal go, and I would, but damn... Whoever said love was just one big fairy tale could go right on and fuck themself.
His breathing hitched. “Then what, Scar? Why try to get me to take it off?”
“Because...” I swallowed hard, forcing the words past my suddenly numb lips. “Because of that—”
“The female? The one you told me about in the dungeon?”
I huffed, nodding and turning my gaze off him because I couldn’t look at him, not right then, not with my pride and hurt so close to the surface, not with the burn of tears shading my eyes.
His finger nudged at my chin. “Look at me, Scar,” he said in a thick burr. “Look at me,” he said again after a minute when I’d still refused to turn.
“What?” I snapped, glaring hotly at him, hanging on by a thin thread.
“My wolf’s mark is permanent,” he said softly.
“But Steven—”
His finger landed over my lips. I wanted to bite him. I wanted to suck him into my warm heat. I did nothing instead.
“Don’t worry about Steven. No harm will come to our brother.”
I trembled. “So we run away?”
I would have. I would have packed my bags right then and left, taken him and Steven with me and never looked back, gotten away from everything. As long as we were together, I couldn’t have given a shit about anything or anyone else.
“No.” A growl rumbled through his throat, a hot sound that sent shivers through my blood. “No. We don’t run. What kind of man would I be for you, what kind of example would I be for Steven, if we ran?”
“Alive.” I dug my fingers into his thick biceps.
His smile was soft. “You did not run last night, Scarlett. Though everything was stacked against us. You found a way.”
A terrible laugh bubbled out of me. “I killed them all. And I’m still not even totally sure how. It was her.” My voice quivered.
He kissed me, stealing the panic from me, making it his, absorbing it into himself and giving me his calm back. I trembled, shaking violently. How could I ever let him go now? How could I just walk away from this?
I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t.
His breath was warm and caressing as it glided over my bottom lip. “You did what you had to do.”
“They’ll come for me. When they learn what I did. They’ll come
.”
A gorgeous grin curved one corner of his mouth, making my heart hammer wildly. “Let them. There’ll be questions, but they’re too smart.”
I frowned.
“Scarlett,” he said as he gently rubbed the frown on my brow, “there were thousands at that ball. Powerful Veilers. Almost all. None of them stood a chance against you. They may want to know, but there’s not a damn thing they can do to you.”
I shivered, knowing he was right because if I’d done it once—if she’d done it once—she’d certainly do it again.
Something that felt a lot like heated satisfaction curled through me. Images of blood, of violence and destruction, invaded my thoughts. The darkness was pleased.
“Yes, I’d do it all over again...” Her voice was a lingering echo that made me cold.
“I don’t want it, Scar,” he said slowly, pulling me tight into his embrace and resting his chin on my forehead, “but I will take that title. For Steven. And you.”
“I... I can’t be your mate. I can’t be Alpha Bitch. I’m a vampire.”
He laughed, the sound deep and whiskey dark, curling all the way through me like a lover’s glide.
“You can. And you are. I claimed you. There can never be another for me. There never was anyway, Scarlett. It was always you for me. And it always will be. I can’t force you to stay, but I’ll never let you get far. You’re mine now. Forever. And always.”
Darkness flooded my body with heat, with laughter, deep and dark and decadent. Though every fiber of me was terrified, I knew he was right because I’d always find him, too.
Mercer and I had come too far, having gone through hell and back, and we would never stop fighting for the right to be what we were. Mercer was darkness’s compass, but he was mine, too.
He was the other half of me. Without him, I didn’t exist, and without me, he was nothing. Together, we were strong.
I’d get over the pain. I’d learn to be strong for him. I’d fight for him, for us... always.
“And you,” I said slowly, causing the darkness to tremble within me as I twirled my finger through the tips of his hair, “are ours. Now. Forever. And always.”
Only one way could a vampire seal a pact—in blood.
“You marked me, Merc. Now, I mark you.”
His body shivered, but his eyes, half blue and half green, filled with heat. The marking, the owning wouldn’t be painless. I would do something to him I’d never done to another.
Every vampire, whether an envenomator or not, had a tiny pouch of venom in their eye teeth. We almost never used it because to do so was permanent, a sign to all that we were owned and that we owned in return.
Punching out my fangs, I let that poison down.
He hissed even before I touched the tip of them to the sweaty heat of his broad neck. He tasted of bergamot, of life, of that intoxicating fragrance of autumn leaves and power.
With a hungry moan, I sank into him. Blood coated my tongue, sweet wine. He sucked in a sharp breath, then I pumped the venom in.
In less than a second, it mainlined through his veins. He jerked even as a howl ripped from his throat, full of pain, ecstasy, and even lust.
Wiggling my hips over his thick cock, I grew dizzy from the blood, from the excitement of both his pain and his pleasure. His hand gripped me tight, pulling me in farther.
Our breaths synced. Our hearts beat in tandem. Even our scents became one. I was his, and he was mine in every sense of the word.
“Scarlett,” he rumbled, the noise full of satisfaction and desperate need.
I rubbed harder, lost in my haze, drinking his blood like wine, coating my insides, my veins, my heart with the taste of him, being changed from the inside out.
I couldn’t believe that I was there, that we were there, that any of this was real. I kept waiting to wake up, to realize I’d only been dreaming.
Mercer growled, the sound low and sexy and on a razor’s edge of violence.
He grabbed my hands, threading our fingers together, panting and breathing harder and harder for me. I knew what I was doing. Even lost in my blood haze, I knew, but everything I did was for him, for tonight, for what he’d done for me. I would think about everything else the next day: Clarence’s return, James, the battle for the throne to rule as Alpha of the Clan McCarrick, and the faceless bitch who came with it.
Our breathing hitched, and my bite went deeper. He moaned. I rubbed one last time, then... we both released at the same time.
I trembled violently against him, sounds like I’d never made before spilling off my tongue as the profundity of the moment hit me like a sledgehammer
When I pulled back, I looked at him wearily. He was pale but grinning. We were a mess, but I didn’t want to leave the circle of his arms, not just yet.
Leaning his forehead against mine, he whispered, “And now I’m yours. Together, Scar. You and me.”
It wasn’t a question, but I treated it as one. “Yes. Yes,” I said as I traced the savaged flesh of his neck. My mark would gleam almost like molten silver beneath his skin once it healed.
“Good.” His gravelly rumble rolled through my head like a fine vintage, sexy and sleek.
There was no going back now, for either of us.
I shivered, and he kissed the crown of my head, but we both knew we’d just complicated everything by a whole freaking lot.
He nodded, and so did I.
Tomorrow was another day...
~*~
Turn the page to read “Honeysuckle Memories,” a short story about Scarlett that started it all...
Honeysuckle Memories: A Scarlett Smith Memoir
I didn’t want to walk through the door, didn’t want to face the memories of a night best left in the past.
The hustle and bustle of the Tennessee precinct was a buzz of discordant rhythms and noises in the periphery of my mind. Cops marched from one desk to another, some cracking jokes, others running errands, and some taking down witness statements.
At one desk sat a woman with mascara dripping down her chin from her tears. Her frizzy, flame-red hair stood up stiff, as though she’d drowned it in a bottle of cheap Aqua Net, and she was dressed in a black cat suit that looked ten years past its prime. Behind her stood a dark-skinned man with his hand on her shoulder, squeezing but not to the point of hurting her.
I’d have pegged them as hooker and john in passing, but studying the two of them further, along with the way she leaned into him as she gave her witness statement to a murder she’d witnessed, I was sure she trusted the man and felt safe with him.
Her heart didn’t hammer in her chest. Her pulse didn’t stutter with fear. It was just a gentle bump bump that actually helped ease my own nerves.
I clutched fingers to my shirt. The fabric was off white with tiny rose patterns. The buttons were a shiny pearl, and I wore blue-jean shorts cut low at the waist. I’d put on my cowboy boots that day, too.
Merc called them my lucky boots.
Lucky.
I snorted.
Last time I’d worn them, things had been far different. The clothes I’d worn that night had been stained black with blood, my underwear shredded so badly they’d stayed on only by the thinnest of threads.
Taking a deep breath, I looked up at the heavy black stenciling on the foggy glass window of the station’s resident shrink: Dr. Elijah Monroe.
I had one last examination to pass before I could become an official—and, most importantly, paid—liaison to the Silver Creek PD’s paranormal investigative unit, PIU for short.
Nibbling on the corner of my lip, I winced when fangs I still wasn’t quite used to pierced through and bled me of some of the precious blood I’d only just ingested an hour before. Swiping at my lip with my tongue, I sealed the wound and took another forceful and deep breath.
I could do this. If I’d survived death and lived to tell the tale, then surely I could go in there and pass a simple test.
I heard scratching behind the door, as thou
gh someone had shoved a desk chair back and was coming. If I was going to leave, I was going to have to do it right then.
I didn’t know if courage or fear held my feet fast to the floor, but I didn’t move when the door was suddenly flung wide and the comely Dr. Elijah Monroe filled my gaze.
Thick, wavy hair that was a rich, nutty brown framed a startlingly attractive face. His eyes were slightly far set but wide, almond shaped, and a striking shade of greenish brown. His bottom lip was fuller than his top. Eleven freckles were on the bridge of his nose. His cheeks held the hint of pockmark scars from his teen years. His skin tone was velvety brown, reminding me of coffee with cream in it.
I blinked, looking down at my feet before my eyes, which could see way too much, saw deep into the pores and blemishes undetectable to the mortal gaze.
“You must be Scarlett Smith,” he said with the casual drawl of one who’d lived his whole life in the deep South.
My lips twitched as I nodded uncertainly. “That’s me.”
I could hear the smile whisper across his lips, stretching them tight. I was looking down at his leather-loafered feet when he stepped back.
Judging by the rich color of them, I’d have said they were definitely Italian imports.
In another life, I’d been a budding fashionista with aspirations to someday become the next Michael Kors, but that was back when things like clothes and shoes mattered.
Nothing mattered anymore except catching the monster who’d ruined my life.
With each step I took inside, my stomach sank lower and lower to my knees. I took a quick glance at the place, committing it all to memory in less than a second.
White walls had only his graduation certificates on them. One potted fern sat on his gleaming mahogany desk but no pictures. A laptop was there and a pair of blue marble stress balls.
The inside of the room was far richer than the utilitarian desks and chairs the officers used outside. Though décor was sparse, it all smacked of quality and excellent taste.
“Sit. Please.” He gestured kindly toward the dark leather couch.
Nodding my thanks, I sat and clenched my knees tightly together, squeezing my fingers into a fist on my lap.
Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo (Southern Vampire Detective Book 2) Page 30
