Strife: Hidden Book Four

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  She hugged me tighter, and I felt her cool hands smoothing my hair. “It’s all right, my friend. It’s okay.”

  I tried to stop my sobs.

  “Let it out, Mollis. I’m here. The demon is here. You can’t hold all of this inside.”

  I didn’t think I could hold it in if I tried, so I didn’t. I let it out, and E kept smoothing my hair, whispering that it was okay, that I’d saved Shanti, that everything would be all right.

  When I was able to pull myself together, I pulled back from her. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would do without you, you know that?”

  She grinned. “Believe me, I know. I’m irreplaceable.”

  “You are.”

  “Come on. I am in need of hot chocolate and many marshmallows.”

  I laughed and followed her into the kitchen. She stood at the stove, mixing up some hot cocoa, and I sat on one of the stools, watching her.

  E finished making the cocoa and poured it into two of the large mugs from the cabinet above the coffee maker. She held up the bag of marshmallows and I made a face, shook my head.

  “You really are a barbarian. How can one drink hot cocoa without marshmallows?” she asked, setting my mug in front of me. I laughed. She took the stool next to mine, and we sat, waiting for the cocoa to cool.

  “Other than death and chaos and all of that, how are things, Mollis?” she asked quietly.

  I watched her. “Things are… weirdly good. I guess. Having Nain back in my life is confusing and awesome and maddening and just everything, all at once.”

  She sat in silence for a few minutes, seemed a little like she wanted to say something. She kept starting, then stopping.

  “What’s up, E?” I asked, and she gave a small smile.

  “I am sorry for what happened between the demon and I. I didn’t know him when you two were together, and the only one I ever knew you with was Brennan. I watched you mourn the demon, but I never got to see the other side.”

  “What side is that?”

  She smiled again. “The way you work together like a matched pair, like two beings whose hearts beat in time to one another. The way you are both aware of one another without even knowing you are paying attention. The love in his eyes every single time he looks at you.” She paused again. “If I’d known all of that, I never would have come on to him the way I did.”

  I hid a smile. “You came on to him? Really?”

  She nodded. “We broke up a fight together, and you know how very attractive he is when he’s all demon ragey.”

  I laughed. “Yeah. I do.”

  “And we got home, and I just sort of blurted out that I’d never been with a man and I wanted him to show me what I was missing. Except that I said it so fast I had to repeat it at least three more times before he understood what I was saying.”

  I laughed, and then I laughed harder, envisioning E asking Nain to take her.

  “And you convinced him, I guess?” I asked.

  “I made it clear I just wanted to see what sex was like. He was having sex with anyone who’d look at him at the time. I think he thought I’d be offended if he turned me down when he’d been with so many others.” She paused, met my eyes. “And I think, maybe, I reminded him of you. Creature of the Nether, glowing eyes, short and thin. All of that. When it was over, he thanked me, and he was sweet, but he looked like he was a million miles away. Likely, wherever you were.” She paused. “He stopped sleeping with other women after that night.”

  I put my hand over hers. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  “If I’d known the depth of feeling that was still there, I never would have. I swear it. And I am so happy that the two of you found one another again. I know you’re afraid. And I understand. But I also know that you’re a brave woman. Be brave now, my friend.”

  I leaned over and hugged her, and she hugged me back. “Can I adopt you as my sister?” I asked her, and she laughed.

  She got up, taking her mug with her. “Demon girl, you already did.” And then she smiled again and carried her hot cocoa upstairs. I shook my head, then I got up and washed my mug. With nothing else to do, I wandered back into the living room.

  I paced the loft, restless now with nothing to do, no disasters I needed to avert that moment.

  I felt like I was going to go nuts just hanging around, unable to sleep. There was one place in the loft I'd always been able to relax. Well, not technically in the loft, I guess. I took the stairs up to the roof, opened the door. It wasn't until I stepped out onto the gravel surface of the roof that I felt Nain's presence, realized he'd beaten me to it. I looked around and there he was, sitting on the old metal glider, the one snow-free spot on the roof. The same place I sat whenever I came up here.

  The one I'd always thought of as “our glider.” The place we'd sat so often early on. The spot we were sitting the first time he told me he wanted me. He knew I was there, and for once, I had no desire to run from him.

  I walked across the roof and sat beside him, leaving a little space between the two of us. He corrected that immediately, silently reaching over and pulling me closer, sliding me effortlessly across the smooth seat of the glider. He kept his arm over the back of the seat, and within moments, he was twisting a lock of my hair between his fingers, absentmindedly, just as he always had. His thigh was pressed up against mine, and, as always, I felt tiny beside him.

  “We’re probably the only two idiots in the entire city sitting outside right now,” I said, at a loss for anything else to say.

  He grunted. “It’s quiet. One advantage to not being bothered by the cold.” We sat in awkward silence for a little while, my stomach in knots, just being near him. I was surrounded by him; his arm draped behind me, his thigh pressed up against mine, his power and emotions roaring over me, making it feel like I was at the mercy of a hurricane. And I craved it, more than I’d ever craved anything in my life. It was comfort in the way nothing else ever had been, and I knew he felt the same around me.

  “I used to come and sit here, after you died,” I finally said. He stayed silent, listening. “I wasn't sleeping. At first, I wasn't eating. Wasn't talking. I couldn’t make myself do it. I just didn't care. But I'd come here, and I'd sit in this spot and stare up at the sky and I'd feel closer to you even as it made me miss you more.”

  “I didn't know that,” he said after a while. “They told me you didn't talk, refused to eat for a while. You want to hear something crazy?”

  I nodded, and his fingers kept twisting my hair.

  “I did the same thing after I got back. Came up here, sat in this spot, and thought about you. I thought about how bad I fucked up, lying to you at the end. I thought about how in my entire existence, no one has ever made me feel the way you do, and I destroyed that. Typical demon, right? Destroying anything good in life.”

  We sat in silence for a while, and the longer we did, the harder it became to breathe, the more my stomach twisted. I felt it from him, too: desire, pure, raw hunger. To his credit, he was being remarkably well behaved. Doing what I’d asked of him, giving me time.

  I was starting to think I’d had enough time.

  “I know why you did it,” I said. “And when I'm not pissed off at you over it, I recognize it for what it was. You did whatever it took to keep me safe, and you did it because you loved me.”

  “Love. Not loved. There’s nothing past tense about what I feel for you,” he said, voice low.

  I met his eyes for just a second, glanced away. The words, the serious way in which he’d said them, were exactly what I wanted. He wasn’t flirting. He wasn’t trying to hide his feelings behind his bad attitude or dirty jokes the way he usually did. I felt my last bit of resistance start to give way.

  “I spent so much time angry at you after you died. My anger was easier to deal with than my grief, and I held on to that. Without that, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed most days. And I would have been fine with that. But I knew assholes would still be out there, caus
ing pain, that the world wouldn’t stop just because my soul was bleeding. So I started to focus on the anger instead, and I worked, and I buried my grief under everything else.”

  “I'm glad you did. I know how I felt when I woke up in the Nether and felt our connection ripped away. I wanted to die again, rather than keep feeling that. But I knew that I couldn't make my way back to you if I just crawled into a corner and waited to die,” he said. I put my hand on his thigh, rested my head against his chest, and he stopped toying with my hair, lowered his arm and wrapped it around me.

  “I'm even glad you had Brennan, as much as I want to kill him every time I think about you in his arms,” Nain said after a while.

  “I learned a lot about myself when I was with him. I don't regret any of it, really, even with the way it all ended. I was kind of stupid. I wanted to believe everything was perfect, when I knew better. I mean, the Puppeteer had said it all, everything I already knew--”

  “What?” he asked.

  “That night with the Puppeteer,” I said, glancing over at him.

  “You told me the two of you killed the Puppeteer together. You never told me anything else, and I always had a feeling there was something you were hiding from me that night.”

  Oh. Right. I’d kept the whole Puppeteer incident a secret from Nain. “She got into his head. Used him against me. I ended up having to fight Brennan off, under her control, before I killed her.”

  “And what did she say about what was in his head?”

  “That he wanted me. Which I knew. That he was really angry with me for choosing you instead. That like many shifters, he was prideful and the way I’d turned him down over and over again made him feel anger and contempt for me, even as he wanted me.”

  His anger washed over me. “You knew that was in him, and you ended up with him anyway?”

  I glared at him. “Don’t even, demon. We worked our way through it. He was there for me during the worst time of my life. He was the only comfort I had. And he loved me and he wanted me. And maybe I’m fucking weak, but I needed it.” I paused, took a steadying breath. “But it never was as perfect as I tried to believe it was. Right? I mean, if it had been, he wouldn’t have been tempted away. He wouldn’t have gotten pissed off at me when I tried to tell him what I needed. When things were good, we were amazing. When things got a little out of the range of normal…” I shrugged.

  “Speaking of which, I think we need to get something straight.”

  I smiled. “Yeah? What is that?”

  “Did you really mean it when you said you believed we would have broken up eventually? That we would have hated each other?”

  I remembered. We’d talked about it, after I’d gotten home from the Nether. Made jokes about how we were a terrible match. I snuggled closer to him. “Mostly, I was still pissed off at you. And for a little while, anyway, I was determined to make it work with Brennan, and telling myself that we were never meant to be was part of that.” I paused. “And you’re not the same, and neither am I.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. I took a deep breath. There was something I needed to say, something I knew he needed to hear. And I was finally ready to say it.

  “Like you said. I was still wearing your ring when I died. I never took it off. Brennan and I were on borrowed time the second we realized you were alive. And if you hadn’t died… if I’d had any idea at all that you were alive somewhere out there, Brennan and I never would have happened.”

  He held me tighter, and I pressed my face against his chest, soothed by his presence, his touch.

  “You're very different in some ways,” Nain finally said, running his hand up and down my waist as he held me. “You're more confident. Tougher, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. Calmer. Less trusting, though, too.”

  “More afraid than I used to be,” I said softly.

  “And what scares you, baby?”

  “You do,” I whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because you're making me feel things I really didn’t want to feel again. And when we're together, it feels right and that scares the shit out of me. I'm going to end up hurting you again. And we're going to lose each other, and I don't think I can take another heartbreak,” I finished in a whisper.

  He reached up, tilted my chin up toward him, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You think I scare you? I'm fucking terrified of what you do to me. You make me need, and that's something I've never done, not this way.”

  I reached up and pulled him down for a kiss. The need coming off of him was only making me want him more than I already did, and I couldn’t get close enough to him. He held me pressed tight to his body, then he buried his hands in my hair, holding me close to him as he devoured my mouth. My hands gripped his biceps.

  His hands had just started making their way beneath my top when someone cleared their throat behind us. Nain pulled away from me, irritation, hunger rolling off of him. We both turned around. Stone was standing near the door.

  “Uh. Sorry,” he said, genuinely embarrassed. “There’s a call for you, boss. Jones.”

  “Oh. Right,” Nain said. He stood up, pulled me up with him. Stone turned and went back inside, and Nain bent down, kissed me again. “I have to take this.”

  “Okay.” I kissed him again, nibbled his lower lip before I broke away. “Do you need me for anything?”

  He smirked down at me. “I need you for plenty of things.”

  I rolled my eyes. “One track mind.”

  “Like that’s news.” I pulled away, held his hand as we walked into the loft. He put his hand behind my neck, pulled me in for one more kiss before heading into his office. I watched him walk away from me, appreciating his broad shoulders, the way his ass filled out his jeans. I took a deep breath, shaking my head in admiration.

  I sat down in his chair in the living room, intending to wait for him. First, my mind was on him, on the feel of his lips on mine. And, more, the way he’d been there for me, supported me through all the crazy shit that had happened in the past few weeks. And that made my thoughts turn to Shanti, to the way she’d looked when we’d first found her, and I tried to shut the vision away. My mind wandered again, to the increasing amount of fighting between supernaturals, but I really didn’t want to think too much about that either.

  I was exhausted, but I didn’t want to sleep. My mental state was just right for Nether to force her way through. My eyelids started getting heavy, and I forced them open, stared at the television. For the most part, there was nothing on but late night infomercials.

  Nain’s office door opened a while later, and he came over to me.

  He knelt down in front of me.

  “You’re exhausted,” he said quietly, and I nodded. He stood up and pulled me up with him. “Come on. Get some sleep.”

  “You’re just as tired as I am,” I started to argue.

  “Well. I’ll just have to hold on to you while we sleep then, so I know if anything’s happening,” he said as he steered me into his room. I didn’t bother arguing with him. Since our talk in his truck after my house had been bombed, he’d been attentive without being overly demanding (I mean, he was still a little demanding. This was Nain we were talking about) and when I’d needed to sleep, he’d stayed awake, sitting up on his side of the bed, reading. He’d planned for those nights, making sure he’d slept late or napped so that I’d have plenty of time to sleep. We had a kind of rhythm worked out, but the whole Shanti situation had taken its toll, and I could feel that he was just as tired as I was.

  “Any excuse, huh demon?” I asked as I started pushing my jeans down.

  “Pretty much.”

  I glanced up and he was watching me as I lifted the sweater I was wearing over my head, down to panties and a tank top now.

  “We really need a vacation,” he growled, hunger coursing through him as he looked at me. “It is a fucking crime that I have you in my bed all the time and all we d
o is sleep there.”

  I blushed, shook my head. “You’re giving me time, remember?”

  He pulled off his shirt, which did nothing to calm the way my body was responding to the situation. Nain in nothing but boxers is one of those images that pops into my head at very inconvenient times. Seeing him standing across the room like that was enough to start making me reconsider how tired I actually was.

  “I’m giving you time,” he said. “And you are going to reward me for my exemplary behavior someday.”

  “Exemplary?” I asked, crawling into bed. “I think that’s stretching it a bit, don’t you?”

  He turned off the lamp, and as soon as we were both in bed, he pulled me close to him, his hand on my hip, his body just a fraction of an inch from touching mine.

  “Considering what I want to be doing to you right now, I’m being a fucking saint,” he said, giving my hip a rough squeeze.

  We lay there in silence for a while, his hand heavy on my hip, his breath warming the back of my neck.

  “Nain,” I said softly, knowing he was still awake.

  “Hm?”

  “There’s nothing past tense about what I feel for you, either.”

  He rubbed my hip, dipped his head and pressed a warm kiss to my bare shoulder. I shivered, and he kissed the side of my neck.

  “It always did amaze me, how sweet you are when it’s just the two of us,” he said against my neck. “You are so warm. So giving. I never expected that. When I fell for you, I fell for the hard, cold, strong woman I knew.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I started seeing more. I started seeing how kind you are. How good you are. How you would do anything for the people you love, and just as much for those you don’t even know. And that was when I was lost. That was when you took a part of me, and I’ll never get it back,” he said.

  It was hard to breathe. I knew Nain had this ability to be sweet. The letters he’d written me had showed another side of him, one I hadn’t seen much of in the short time we’d been together. Now, with time and a lot of insanity behind us, he was letting me see him. And he was freaking irresistible. “You’re going to ruin my rep as a badass, saying shit like that,” I finally said. He squeezed my hip again, pressed his lips to my shoulder.