Darker Than Desire

by Shiloh Walker

  No buts. The past was just that. Over and done.

  Brooding, David hooked a hand over his neck and focused on the floor. “He was my grandfather. I’ve known awhile. I’ve got his hands. His eyes. I saw a picture in his house and you see it, you can’t miss it.” Without looking away from the boards of the floor, he sighed. “He’s gone, because of me. Louisa is dead, because of me. Because she was pissed off and yelling at me at the funeral.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Sybil’s voice, cold and dismissive, cut through the tense silence.

  Sliding her a look from under his lashes, David asked softly, “Is it?” Without waiting for a response he turned away. “Brumley shot at Hank, but I pushed him out of and I got shot. A few minutes later, Brumley is dead.”

  “And what about Taneisha?” Behind him, he could hear Sybil pacing, her feet whisper quiet on the floor. “She didn’t try to kill you, even if she was pissed off at you.”

  “She was out at my place.” Out at his place, where he’d felt that weird sensation of eyes crawling all over him.

  “I know that,” Sybil snapped.

  At her words, he turned and lifted a brow.

  She met his gaze dead-on. “She was there, but it’s not like she tried to kill you.” Sybil’s gaze raked over him. “If she had, you’d look a little more battered.”

  That was entirely likely. But he shrugged and said, “Max didn’t try to kill me, either.”

  For a long second Sybil just stared at him, and then she spun away, shoving her fingers into her hair, and tangled them there, tugging like it might unravel the problem. “I don’t understand, David. Maybe I’m a little slow here, but I’m not following. Exactly what is the connection here and why am I supposedly in danger?”

  He turned to look at her, standing there framed by the dim light filtering in through the window. It gilded her body with soft light, but her face was lost in shadow. Hunger swamped him. Need battered him.

  Slowly, he crossed the wooden planks of the floor, stopping in front of her so he could look into her eyes. Reaching out, he curved a hand over her neck, half-expecting her to pull away.

  She just stared at him.

  “Max was an old man, lying in his bed, and somebody smothered him. You’re asking me to help you make sense of somebody who could do that.” He edged in closer, unable to ignore the siren call of her nearness. “Louisa was a nosy old bitch. I didn’t like her, but in the end, she didn’t matter to me. But somebody beat the hell out of her—she was beaten to death, Sybil. It’s just that simple. Taneisha came and laid into me because I hurt you. And while Brumley sure as hell deserved to die, he’s dead because he missed Hank and shot me. The connection is me.” He rubbed his thumb over her lip. “Now … why else do you think you have a cop sitting in front of your house?”

  Sybil curled her lip. “I don’t see any reason for Thorpe to be sitting in front of my house. We’re over, right? You don’t want that ugliness from your life to affect mine,” she said, her voice scathing. “Put out an announcement in the paper or whatever you have to do. You dumped my ass.”

  She curled her hand around his wrist, tugged his hand down until he no longer touched her.

  The loss of contact was like a visceral pain. “Go on, David. You don’t need to worry about me, okay? Thorpe is out there, and if I hear or see anything I’ll call him, flash the lights or whatever. You don’t need to concern your—”

  * * *

  The flash in his eyes was the only warning Sybil had before she was trapped between him and the door.

  His hard body crushed up against hers, one big hand framing her face while the other was braced over her head on the door. “Shut up,” he muttered.

  She blinked, caught off-guard by the sheer fury in his tone.

  Well, for about two seconds.

  Then she shoved up against his chest. He didn’t move. “Excuse me?” she snarled, remembering at the very last second to keep her voice down. “Did you just tell me to shut up?”

  He boosted her up, one heavy, solid arm wrapping around her waist and hauling her up until they were nose to nose. “Yes. I said shut up, Sybil. Do I need to spell it out?”

  “Put me down.” She spoke the words through clenched teeth, something hot and heavy pumping through her. She wasn’t sure if it was hunger … or rage. But under it all was misery. A knot formed deep in her chest and she curled her hands into fists to keep from reaching for him. “Do you hear me? Put me down.”

  He didn’t listen and she balled up a fist and swung it out. He caught it in one hand, but since he had his other arm wrapped around her waist he couldn’t block her other punch. In the end, he spun around and took her down on the couch, catching her wrists and pinning them over her head. “You son of a bitch,” she hissed, bucking against him. “Get off of me and the hell out of my house. You don’t get to do this! You…”

  Hurt, angry words built inside her and she bit her inner lip to keep them from spilling out.

  But then he touched his lips to the corner of her mouth.

  “Sybil…”

  Squeezing her eyes closed, she thought, No—

  In desperation she jerked her knee up, but he just rolled, moving off the couch and taking her with him until she sprawled across his chest. He still held her wrists. “You don’t get to do this,” she said again, her voice hitching. “You can’t just walk away, break me like that, and then try to come back.”

  “You’re not broken,” he murmured against the hollow of her throat.

  “What in the hell do you know?”

  He turned his face toward hers and she heard it as he breathed in, like he was trying to breathe her in.

  “You’re too strong for that. For me.”

  Shows what you know.

  She twisted against his wrists again. If she didn’t get away from him soon—

  He moved again, and this time she ended up on her back with him splayed between her thighs—and he’d let her wrists go. Groaning, she reached up, catching the heavily muscled torso as he settled his weight down on hers.

  “Tell me to go.” He said the words against her collarbone.

  “I’ve already done that.”

  He flicked open one of the buttons on her sleep shirt. “Say it again. I should go. We can’t keep doing this. It’s not good for you.”

  That familiar ache spread through her. “I don’t see why you get to decide that,” she whispered, her voice sounding hollow, even to her own ears. “I decide what’s good for me. Not you.”

  His lips brushed against hers. “You should be with somebody who makes you happy.”

  “I didn’t spend ten years with you because you made me miserable, David.” She sniffed, the ache in her chest expanding. “Well, not until recently. Recently, you’ve made me really miserable.”

  His thigh pushed between hers.

  She shuddered at the feel of it.

  He was right.

  They shouldn’t do this again. Because he wouldn’t stay. If he couldn’t be with her, all this was going to do was hurt her again. Break her.

  But when he flicked open a button on her nightshirt, and then another, all she did was open her eyes and watch him. When he pressed his lips to the skin he’d bared, she curled her hands into his hair and pressed him closer.

  And when he stripped her nightshirt away, she was the one to urge him to his back and mount him.

  If they’d have another night, she’d make the most of it.

  She didn’t tell him she loved him, though.

  She’d done it once, stripped herself bare and watched as the shutter fell over his eyes.

  No more.

  He bucked underneath her and his fingers tightened on her hips, leaving bruises as he shuddered and came, her own orgasm crushing her in its grip. Tears burned in her eyes, and in her chest there was a bittersweet ache.

  * * *

  He lay on his stomach, face turned to stare out the window. He didn’t remember when he’d picked her up and carri
ed her into her bedroom, but he’d done it.

  Now Sybil lay tucked up against him, one arm across his lower back as she slept. That he could take her touch was one of those little miracles he’d never taken for granted, one of those little miracles he didn’t know if he could live without.

  And now, as her body tensed, he had to brace himself.

  She woke quickly, going from a soft, sleepy woman to alert and ready in the blink of an eye.

  She sat up and he turned his head without moving anything else. Once he moved, this ended and he had to decide. Not just where to go, what to do next. But about everything. It hadn’t been fair of him to come back here.

  He shouldn’t have done this and he knew it.

  Lying there, staring into her wide, unreadable eyes, he had to admit the truth. He’d never been able to think past the moment, not when it came to her.

  She reached up and he tensed, breath locking in his lungs as she touched a mark, up high on his shoulder. It was an ugly raised ridge of flesh. He could remember, vividly, when it had been put there. The stink of scorched flesh flooding the air, his screams muffled behind cruel hands.

  It was a brand. In the shape of a sickle, it was the mark of Cronus. Their fucking mark.

  They’d put it on him the first night they’d dragged him down there.

  “They still have you.”

  Stiffening, David went to pull away.

  But, before he could, her eyes caught his.

  She didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything to stop him.

  Instead of pulling away, he fisted one hand in the pillow and just stared at her.

  “How long has it been since one of them touched you?”

  Shutting his eyes, he rolled away into a sitting position and sat up, his back to her. When the light, soft touch of her fingers ghosted over the mark, he tensed. She didn’t stop. “Twenty years? More?”

  Silent seconds ticked by. He opened his mouth to tell her, once more, to stop, but to his surprise, it was something else.

  An answer.

  “More.”

  The assaults had stopped right before his sixteenth birthday. The beatings hadn’t stopped. If anything, those had gotten worse, but they’d started to talk to him, tell him how he was growing up. Getting older. Bigger. Stronger. Soon it would be his turn.

  His turn—

  Clenching his fist in the sheets, he thought about how often he’d thought about killing them. One by one. Himself. Doing both. But he’d been too scared, then. As a boy, he couldn’t have done it. Once he was older, he could have, but Max had already done that job.

  “Twenty years.” David stared into the darkness as he spoke. “The last time my father raped me was the day before I turned sixteen.”

  Sybil stopped tracing the scar—the brand—on his back.

  Her hand moved to rest on his shoulder and he reached up, covered her hand with his as he continued to stare outside. There was nothing to see, just the bright white paint of the fence he’d put up for her a few years ago. “It didn’t end there. But that was the last time one of them—”

  She moved then, sliding around to curl up in his lap. “I don’t need to know this. Not unless you want to tell me.”

  Closing his eyes, he buried his face in her hair.

  The curls blocked out the light, the room, the world.

  Want to tell her … of the shame, the horror. They’d done their job well, teaching him to expect the pain, to almost need it—hell. Almost? He needed pain now. It was the one thing that centered him, and they’d done that to him, taught him to function on pain, to function through it.

  No. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  “No.” The word came slowly, through a throat gone tight and rusty. “I don’t want to talk about this, not any of it. But they broke me down there.”

  “You’re only broken if you let them keep you down there.” Her hand smoothed down his shoulder. “You’re still trapped, David. Still barely living. Don’t let them do this to you.”

  He barely even heard the words. “They expected me to be just like them.”

  She stiffened in his arms then.

  Looking down at her, he told her what he’d told no other soul. Oh, he knew the cops probably suspected, but he’d never told anybody. It was too ugly, too evil, to think about it. Saying it was even harder. “That’s what it was. Their fucked-up, sick little boys’ club was a family thing. They passed it down from father to son, uncle to nephew, grandfather to grandson. My father expected me to join—to be another one of the monsters. And if I had a son, they’d expect me to be one of them.”

  Her low intake of breath told him that she hadn’t figured it out. A lot of people probably hadn’t. When the trials started, more people would begin to understand, but for now there was speculation. There were lies and rumors and gossip.

  But nobody really had the faintest clue.

  Brushing her hair back, he met her eyes.

  “My father was brought in when he was the same age I was. And I suspect the same thing of his father. It was one long, ugly cycle.”

  * * *

  The sheer, utter horror of what he was telling her just froze her.

  She couldn’t think past it. She didn’t want to think at all, but she couldn’t shut this out of her head.

  It hurt and it sickened and it infuriated.

  His gaze, always so direct and unflinching, cut into her and she wanted to look away.

  But she couldn’t. If ever there was a time to meet that hard, blunt gaze, it was now.

  “But you ended the cycle.” He’d fisted a hand in her hair and she reached up, curled her fingers around his wrist. “You made it stop. That matters. Now finish the job. Get out of the hell where they tried to break you.”

  “I am broken,” he said, his voice soft. “And I ruin everything around me.”

  Then he eased her off his lap and rose, moving to pace the bedroom.

  His voice, so final, so steady and sure, was a slice against her already raw heart. “You’re not broken,” she said, fighting the urge to go to him. Again. She couldn’t make him accept her love. She couldn’t make him accept this.

  And if he walked away … again …

  If he couldn’t break the chains of a past that was strangling him …

  Tears choked her. She needed him. So much. She knew he needed her. But sex without anything more would slowly kill her. She needed more. And she knew he’d never let himself give anything more. That he was even here now was a shock.

  Sighing, she sat up, reaching for the blanket, chilled to the bone.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. It had been hours since he’d shown up and she knew he was convinced that she was in trouble somehow, but she still wasn’t following. With her body aching from hard, bone-melting sex, her brain spinning from what he’d told her and her heart one giant bruise, she didn’t know how she’d process what he had to say, but he needed to say it.

  So she could make him leave.

  But he continued to pace, like he hadn’t even heard her speak.

  “David.” She said his name again, watched as this time he came to a halt, turning to look at her. “Why are you here?”

  * * *

  Why are you here?

  The soft question cut through the noise in his mind, but the thunderous torrent that followed wasn’t really a welcome distraction.

  Black truck.

  Max …

  Taneisha Oakes was attacked—

  Without saying anything, he turned and moved out of the bedroom, looking around until he spied his jeans in a tangle a few feet away from the door. He snagged them and gathered up the rest of his clothes before retreating back into the bedroom. It was past midnight. If he could, he’d spend the rest of the night here, wrapped around Sybil. He could hope that she’d turn to him, again, and that he could hear her voice break as he made her come again.

  Or maybe, those softly whispered words.

  Words she hadn’t given hi
m again.

  Not even once.

  Could he have said them to her while she’d slept? It had been decades, maybe even a lifetime, since he’d given those words to anybody.

  If he’d ever harbored any feelings of love for his mother, that emotion had died long before she had. May the bitch rot in hell. Some part of him wished she were still rotting down in that cellar, but the discovery of her miserable corpse had set in motion a series of events that would eventually be the downfall of Cronus, for good. So he couldn’t really regret it.

  He’d never told his father, but his father had been a monster.

  His father …

  Closing his eyes, he thought about that evil bastard.

  It had been twenty years since David had seen him, climbing out of the car on the winding road leading out of Madison.

  Max had seen the car, pulled over. It had started to rain. Blood had been pumping out of him.

  Peter had that good ol’ boy grin on his face. I don’t know what my boy has told you.…

  And Max had lifted the gun.

  Peter had gone white.

  After that, David’s memory had gone black, fuzzing in and out as blood loss and shock settled in.

  He didn’t remember much of anything after that.

  The first clear memory he had after Max had leveled that gun after his father had been when he’d been lying in a bed, staring up at a wooden roof.

  “David?”

  Fighting the urge to just go to her, he dragged his clothes on and started to speak.

  “It’s all about me,” he said softly. “Whoever killed Max, Louisa, Brumley. Whoever attacked Taneisha, it’s about me. I’m not just broken, Sybil. I’m poison.” But I’m going to fix it. I’m going to purge it. Just—

  He clenched his jaw. Just what? he thought, half-wild. Give me time?

  She’d given him ten years. How much more time did he need to purge that poison, to cut out the diseased parts of himself?

  “You are not poison,” she said, her voice stark. Then she sighed. “But I can’t make you believe otherwise, and I’m tired of trying.”